Bill Watterson facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Bill Watterson
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William Boyd Watterson II
July 5, 1958 Washington, D.C., U.S.
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| Education | Kenyon College (BA) |
| Occupation | Cartoonist |
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William Boyd Watterson II (born July 5, 1958) is an American cartoonist. He is famous for creating the popular comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. This comic strip was published in newspapers from 1985 to 1995. Bill Watterson decided to end Calvin and Hobbes because he felt he had done everything he wanted with it. He is known for his strong opinions about how comics are shared and sold. He also worked hard to make newspaper comics seen as a true art form. After Calvin and Hobbes ended, he chose to live a more private life. Watterson was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. The suburban setting of Ohio helped inspire the world of Calvin and Hobbes. He lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio today.
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Bill Watterson's Early Life
Bill Watterson was born on July 5, 1958, in Washington, D.C.. His father worked as a patent attorney, which is a lawyer who helps inventors protect their ideas. In 1965, when Bill was six, his family moved to Chagrin Falls, Ohio. This town is a suburb near Cleveland. He also has a younger brother named Thomas.
How Bill Watterson Started Drawing
Bill Watterson drew his first cartoon when he was eight years old. He spent a lot of his childhood alone, drawing and creating cartoons. This continued through his school years. During this time, he discovered famous comic strips like Pogo, Krazy Kat, and Charles Schulz' Peanuts. These comics greatly inspired him to become a professional cartoonist. When he was in fourth grade, he even wrote a letter to Charles Schulz, who wrote back! This made a big impression on young Bill. His parents always encouraged his artistic talents. They remembered him as a very imaginative child, but not like the wild character of Calvin he later created. In school, Watterson drew superhero comics with friends. He also contributed cartoons and art to his school newspaper and yearbook.
College Years and Inspiration
After high school, Watterson went to Kenyon College. He studied political science, which is the study of how governments work. He already knew he wanted to be a cartoonist. He thought studying political science would help him become an editorial cartoonist, someone who draws cartoons about current events and politics. He kept improving his art skills. In his second year, he even painted Michelangelo's famous Creation of Adam on his dorm room ceiling! He also drew cartoons for the college newspaper. Some of these early cartoons featured "Spaceman Spiff," a character who later appeared in Calvin and Hobbes. Watterson graduated from Kenyon in 1980 with a degree in political science.
Later, when he was creating names for his comic strip characters, he chose Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin was named after John Calvin, a 16th-century religious thinker. Hobbes was named after Thomas Hobbes, a 17th-century philosopher who had a strong view of human nature. Watterson said this was a way to honor his college's political science department.
Bill Watterson's Career Journey
Early Steps in Cartooning
Bill Watterson was inspired by Jim Borgman, a political cartoonist for The Cincinnati Enquirer. Borgman had also gone to Kenyon College and offered Watterson encouragement. After graduating in 1980, Watterson got a trial job at the Cincinnati Post newspaper. However, he quickly found the job challenging. He wasn't familiar with the local politics in Cincinnati, which made it hard to draw political cartoons. The Post ended up firing him before his contract was finished.
After that, he worked for four years at a small advertising agency. He designed grocery ads while also working on his own cartoon ideas. He also contributed to a political cartoon magazine. As a freelance artist, meaning he worked for himself, Watterson also drew other things. This included album art for his brother's band, calendars, clothing designs, and magazine covers.
Creating Calvin and Hobbes
Watterson has said he works for his own personal satisfaction. He once told a graduating class, "It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves." Calvin and Hobbes was first published on November 18, 1985. Watterson shared that he was influenced by other great comic strips like Peanuts, Pogo, and Krazy Kat. His drawing style also shows the influence of Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay.
Like many artists, Watterson put parts of his own life and beliefs into his work. For example, he enjoyed cycling, and his own father's talks about "building character" found their way into the strip. His real-life cat, Sprite, was a big inspiration for the personality and look of Hobbes.
Watterson spent much of his career trying to improve newspaper comics. He felt that the artistic value of comics was being ignored. He also believed that the space they were given in newspapers kept shrinking. He thought that art should not be judged by where it appears. To him, there is no "high" art or "low" art—just art.
Fighting for Artistic Control
For many years, Watterson fought against pressure from publishers to sell merchandise based on his comic. This means putting Calvin and Hobbes characters on things like mugs, stickers, and T-shirts. He believed that selling merchandise would make his comic less special and would cheapen the characters.
Watterson said that his publisher, Universal, kept pushing him to license his characters. He had signed his first contract without reading it carefully because he was just happy to find a company willing to publish his comic. He later found out the contract was very unfair. It meant Universal could license his characters even if he didn't want them to. They could even fire him and continue Calvin and Hobbes with a new artist.
Eventually, Watterson won this battle. He was able to change his contract so that he owned all the rights to his work. However, he said this fight over licensing made him very tired. It even led him to take a nine-month break from the comic in 1991. Watterson has said that "Only thieves and vandals have made money on Calvin and Hobbes merchandise."
Changing the Sunday Comic Format
Watterson also had strong opinions about the way Sunday comic strips were laid out. When he started, Sunday strips usually had three rows with eight panels. This took up half a newspaper page. Some newspapers would cut out the top two panels to save space. Watterson felt this forced him to waste space on jokes that didn't always fit the story.
When he returned from his first break, Watterson talked with his publisher about a new format for Calvin and Hobbes. He wanted a format that would use the space better and almost force newspapers to print it as a half-page. Universal agreed to sell the strip only in this half-page size. This made many newspapers angry and led to criticism for Watterson from editors and other cartoonists.
Eventually, Universal offered newspapers a choice: the full half-page or a smaller version. Watterson admitted this meant his comic appeared smaller in many papers. But he felt it was worth it because he was giving readers a better comic. He also said he wouldn't apologize for drawing a popular comic.
The End of Calvin and Hobbes
The very last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip was published on December 31, 1995.
Life After Calvin and Hobbes
Since Calvin and Hobbes ended, many people have tried to contact Bill Watterson. However, he has largely stayed out of the public eye. He has shown no interest in bringing the comic strip back. He also doesn't want to create new works based on the characters or start new commercial projects. He has published several "treasury collection" books of Calvin and Hobbes strips. He does not sign autographs or license his characters.
Watterson rarely gives interviews or makes public appearances. His longest interviews include one in The Comics Journal in 1989 and another in a 2015 exhibition catalog. In 1999, he wrote a short piece for the Los Angeles Times to mark the retirement of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz.
In 2004, Watterson and his wife Melissa bought a home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. They moved there from Chagrin Falls in 2005. In 2005, Watterson answered 15 questions submitted by readers online. In 2007, he wrote a review of a book about Charles M. Schulz for The Wall Street Journal.
In 2008, he wrote a foreword for the first book collection of Richard Thompson's comic strip Cul de Sac. In 2011, Watterson sent a painting of a Cul de Sac character to a fundraising project for Parkinson's disease. This was done to honor Richard Thompson, who had been diagnosed with the disease. This painting was the first new artwork from Watterson that his publisher had seen since Calvin and Hobbes ended in 1995.
In 2013, a documentary called Dear Mr. Watterson was released. It explored how much Calvin and Hobbes impacted culture. Bill Watterson himself did not appear in the film. In 2014, Watterson published his first cartoon since Calvin and Hobbes ended. It was a poster for a documentary called Stripped. He also co-authored a book about Richard Thompson's art.
In June 2014, Watterson drew three guest comic strips for Pearls Before Swine. This happened after a mutual friend connected him with the cartoonist Stephan Pastis. Pastis described this unexpected collaboration as getting "a glimpse of Bigfoot." Watterson said he hoped the collaboration could help raise money for Parkinson's research.
On November 5, 2014, a poster drawn by Watterson was revealed for the 2015 Angoulême International Comics Festival. He had won a major award there in 2014. On April Fools' Day in 2016 and 2017, cartoonist Berkeley Breathed posted comics featuring Calvin and Hobbes, claiming Watterson had signed over the characters. These were April Fools' jokes, but they showed the lasting impact of Watterson's characters.
Exhibitions of His Work
In 2001, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University held an exhibition of Watterson's Sunday comic strips. He chose 36 of his favorites. The exhibit showed both the original drawings and the finished colored versions. Most pieces included Watterson's personal notes. He also wrote an essay for the exhibit, which was called "Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985–1995."
From March to August 2014, Watterson had another exhibition at the same museum. He also participated in an interview with the school for this event. A book called Exploring Calvin and Hobbes was released with the exhibit. It contained a long interview with Bill Watterson.
The Mysteries
In October 2023, Watterson released his first new published work in 28 years. It is called The Mysteries. It is an illustrated "fable for grown-ups" about "what lies beyond human understanding." He created this work with illustrator John Kascht.
Awards and Honors
Bill Watterson has received many important awards for his work. He won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award twice, in 1986 and 1988. His second Reuben win made him the youngest cartoonist to receive this honor. He was also only the sixth person to win it twice.
In 2014, Watterson was given the Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. This is a very prestigious award in the world of comics. He was only the fourth non-European cartoonist to receive it in the festival's first 41 years.
- 1986: Reuben Award, Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year
- 1988: Reuben Award, Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year
- 1988: National Cartoonists Society, Newspaper Comic Strips Humor Award
- 1990: Max & Moritz Prize, Best Comic Strip, for Calvin and Hobbes
- 1991: Adamson Award, for Kalle och Hobbe (Calvin and Hobbes)
- 1992: Eisner Award, Best Comic Strip Collection, for The Revenge of the Baby-Sat
- 1992: Angoulême International Comics Festival, Prize for Best Foreign Comic Book
- 1993: Eisner Award, Best Comic Strip Collection, for Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons
- 2014: Grand Prix, Angoulême International Comics Festival
- 2020: Inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame
Images for kids
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Bill Watterson's signature
See also
In Spanish: Bill Watterson para niños
