Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for November 17, 2011

Good jump, Calvin!

She is smart and prepared

Jai Alai!

Calvin never learns — Don’t mess with Susie!It’s so true to life, and that what makes it so funny

I just returned from California, where I was at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa. What a great place to visit:Click here: Schulz Museum

In December 1999, when Charles Schulz was suddenly forced to announce his retirement because he was dying of cancer, Bill Watterson wrote a tribute to Schulz. Here are a couple of excerpts, which tell us as much about Bill Watterson as they do about Charles Schulz.

“Comic-strip cartooning requires such a peculiar combination of talents that there are very few people who are ever successful at it. Of those, Charles M. Schulz is in a league all his own. Schulz reconfigured the comic-strip landscape and dominated it for the last half of its history. One can scarcely overstate the importance of Peanuts to the comics, or overstate its influence on all of us who have followed.”“I’ve never met Schulz, but long ago his work introduced me to what a comic strip could be and made me want to be a cartoonist myself. He was a hero to me as a kid, and his influence on my work and life is long and deep. I suspect most cartoonists would say something similar. Schulz has given all his readers a great gift, and my gratitude for that tempers my disappointment at the strip’s cessation. May there someday be a writer-artist-philosopher-humorist who can fill even a part of the void Peanuts leaves behind.- Bill WattersonBill Watterson ended Calvin and Hobbes in December 1995. When he wrote this tribute to Schulz four years later, I doubt that he ever imagined that, more than another decade later, reruns of his own strips would still be extremely popular and would continue to fill a large part of the void that Peanuts had left behind. And, he certainly never imagined that reruns of his strips would be number one at a huge online site like GoComics, ahead of so many first-run comic strips, and even ahead of reruns of Peanuts.

Here is one of Charles Schulz’s best strips, which perhaps provided some of the inspiration for Bill Watterson’s strip that we are reading today:Click here: Peanuts (1961)

Susie doesn’t lax in lacrosse skills.

Incidentally, the kids at the Schulz museum thought it was really neat to see a live tiger walking around on two feet. Surprisingly, the parents seemed unconcerned. It was as though they thought I was as harmless as a stuffed animal.:>)

That’s gonna leave two bruises.A small one on Calvins body, and a large one on his ego.

You don’t mess with a skilled lacrosse player but more importantly you don’t tug on superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off of that old Lone Ranger and you don’t mess around with Suzie

@Hobbes…thank you so much for that this morning. Is Bill Watterson still alive?

“Grenade” – Bruno Mars

The ‘net’ result is a triumph for Susie!

and i stil miss you Sparky…

Point of info: LaCross is the only TRUELY American sport. It has it’s origins in a Native American game called Bagetawe, pronounced Bah-get-a-way. Teams were sometimes in the hundreds and the fields could be as large as a half mile or more. It was one of these games that was a prelude to the masacre at Fort Michilimackinac at the Straits of Lakes michigan and Huron in 1763.

@JazzyBellaHi JazzyBellaYes, Bill Watterson is still alive, and he is only 53 years old. He lives in Ohio now, but he has retired from cartooning and, like Charles Schulz before him, Bill prefers to live a very private life.Bill Watterson only drew Calvin and Hobbes for 10 years, and he only drew about 8 years’ worth of material, since he took two sabbaticals during the 10 years. But after 10 years he felt that he had reached the limit of what he could do without lowering his standards and allowing the strip to decline if he had continued to draw it, so he retired.Personally, I’m amazed that Bill Watterson was able to maintain the incredibly high level of this strip for 8 years. He makes it look easy, but it is extremely difficult. For one thing, the strip is primarily about one character – Calvin – and sometimes primarily about Hobbes but with Calvin present. In contrast, Charles Schulz introduced about 65 characters over 50 years. Many of them were temporary, but many became permanent or at least lasted for many years. This not only gave him a lot of main characters to choose from each day, but it also allowed him to use a very large number of combinations of main characters.In the same way that Bill Watterson expressed disappointment at the loss of Peanuts when Charles Schulz retired, many people in this forum have expressed disappointment at the loss of Calvin and Hobbes resulting from Bill Watterson’s retirement. Personally, I have dealt with this by saving a large number of Calvin and Hobbes strips that I have never read, so that I can enjoy fresh examples of Bill Watterson’s work for many years into the future. I have done the same with Peanuts, and there are still a small number of strips by Charles Schulz that I have not yet read, since they were never published until recent years. Whenever I read a new Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts strip for the first time, it’s like enjoying a great piece of classical music that I have never heard before, coming from a composer with whom I am very familiar.That’s the long answer to your question. The short answer is “Yes.”

one more for Susie

@Hobbes….Thank you! You are a wealth of information!

Impressive, seeing as how she’s actually too short to use a net that long.

i’m thinkin’ susie can do whatever she sets her mind on

I remember that Peanuts strip when it first was out in the newspaper!

Gee, who knew that Susie has such a strong left lacrosse?

@Hobbes:

Thank you for the quotes and the Peanuts strip. Glad you’re back

I know a minister that begins his Sunday morning sermons with a C&H strip or two.

The number 7…

Susie, being as smart as she is, is trying to edumacate Calvin on Newton’s Laws of Motion…lol

not nice…Calvin’s but I still Love C&H

Your own fault, Calvin.

If Hobbes were there he would of said the same.

LOL xxx

With your problems with Moe, Calvin, I am surprised you could be such a bully yourself! LOL! You got your come-up-in’s! :-)

@bizakerHi bizakerI’m not aware of Bill Watterson moving to the Southwest. As far as I know, he’s still in Cleveland or Cleveland Heights Ohio, where he moved several years ago from another Ohio town. On the other hand, since he’s always very careful about maintaining his privacy, it’s possible he could move someday without the public knowing about it. Another cartoonist named “Bill,” Bil Keane of the Family Circus, moved to Arizona many years ago.I’m really not a Bill Watterson expert, and I’m still learning about him. But it seems like it shouldn’t take too long, since there is so little information available.

LX013Hi LX013You don’t need to apologize for your English. I can understand what you mean, and I’m always impressed with anyone who speaks more than one language.But even if I couldn’t understand what you meant, you still wouldn’t need to apologize. Most posters on this site are very kind people and they are happy to read other posters’ English, and even to help them improve it if they ask for help with how to say something.Reading the comics is a very good way to learn American English, because they contain so many idioms and expressions. I’ve also been impressed by how the English of several posters on this site has improved just during the past year.

It took me a while to get the joke on this one when I first read it.

Great pick up on the #7. Must be a Mantle fan.

NEVER mess with a Lacrosse player.

I think he made her la cross…

I miss Charles Schulz and new “Peanuts” cartoons every day. Hard to believe he’s been gone 11 (almost 12) years now. :-(

 

Hobbes (the poster): Got a question maybe you can answer since you just returned from the Charles Schulz Museum . . . how did he come up with the name “Peanuts” for Charlie Brown and the gang anyhow??? Thanks!

@GretchensMomHi GretchensMomSchulz originally called his strip Li’l Folks, but the syndicate forced him to change the name because there was another strip called Little Folks. The syndicate chose the name Peanuts, and Schulz always intensely disliked it. He would have preferred to call it something like “Good Ol’ Charlie Brown.”If you look at his Sunday strips over the years, you will see that in the early years the first frame contained simply the name Peanuts, like the one that I posted this morning, but in later years Schulz changed it to Peanuts featuring Good Ol’ Charlie Brown.

I LOVE CALVIN AND HOBBES

<< Snoopy Fan wrote: "@Hobbes, Did you get any hugs or smooches from the pretty girls? >>Hi Snoopy FanJudging from your name, it sounds like we have something in common. No, I didn’t get any hugs or smooches, even though I spent a whole lot of time hanging around the Warm Puppy Cafe at the Schulz ice rink, looking cool by wearing my Mickey Mouse pants and sombrero.But I did draw a Snoopy for a ten-year-old girl with a nice smile. She was copying a picture of Charlie Brown and was quite talented.I also got to meet two of Charles Schulz’s neighbors who had known him for many years. I think they are in their 70s. No hugs or smooches there either.

@Dogsniff:If GoComics is getting slower, perhaps someone is bogging down their server by writing numerous, long postings…….

@SharuniboyHi SharuniboyYes, you are correct that Bil Keane passed away recently. I looked up his birthday, and he was 89. Bil was a close friend of Charles Schulz, and they were the same age. Keane was born one month before Schulz.

Apparently, from what your words say of you, you have had such a classroom, and have learned well in it.

Why thank you everybody, who thinks Susie Derkins is amazing XP