The Bill Watterson Interview

Calvin and Hobbes is America’s hottest comic strip. After less than three years in syndication, it appears in more than 600 newspapers. The three Calvin and Hobbes collections are permanent fixtures on The New York Times best-seller list. And its creator, Bill Watterson, has already won the coveted National Cartoonist Society Cartoonist of the Year award.

So why haven’t you seen the Calvin and Hobbes characters splattered across the American landscape on burger glasses, greeting cards, and as stuffed toys? Because Watterson says “No” to licensing. In fact, Watterson probably says “No” more than Calvin’s prank-weary parents. Frankly, he’s not interested in it, and he tells us why in this interview. Watterson was born in Washington, D.C., 1958. At Chagrin Falls High School and Kenyon College in Ohio, he drew for the student newspapers and yearbooks. Upon graduation in 1980, he became the political cartoonist for The Cincinnati Post, an experience he remembers as relentlessly depressing but mercifully short. Unable to fulfill his editor’s fuzzy notion of what an editorial cartoon should be, Watterson was fired before the end of his first year. For the next five years, Watterson submitted comic strip ideas to the syndicates. Six were developed; six were rejected. United Features Syndicate was the most encouraging, and Watterson’s seventh development contract, this one with UFS, resulted in Calvin and Hobbes. Ironically, UFS declined to distribute it, saying they didn’t think it would sell. Universal Press Syndicate snatched it up and launched it on November 1985. Watterson values his privacy and only rarely gives interviews. He agreed to do this one on the grounds that the strip be the center of discussion. The interview was conducted, transcribed, and edited by Richard West, editor of the late and lamented political cartoon journal Target, and longtime friend of Watterson.

BILL WATTERSON: Really, I don’t understand it, since I never set out to make Calvin and Hobbes a popular strip. I just draw it for myself. I guess I have a gift for expressing pedestrian tastes. In a way, it’s kind of depressing.

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