I recently stumbled upon an interview with Bill Watterson, and it's said to be his first since the late Eighties. Here's the link:
http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/bill_watterson_creator_of_belo.html
Of all the things I love, Calvin & Hobbes has been in my Top Five since I was eight. That's staying power. I was devastated after it's last Sunday Comic appearance. It wasn't just the complexity of Watterson's humor, which I appreciate a little more with each accumulating year, and it wasn't his stylish, understated artwork; it was the intelligent, sophisticated portrayal of childhood that resonated on so many levels; the science behind an upturned cardboard box, or the physics involved in a red wagon hurdling at light speed down a bumpy hill, the zen of lying against a tree in the middle of a summer afternoon. I loved the depiction of parenthood as a battle between adults and children who love one another in spite of what they've gone through at the dinner table, and I was struck by the frustrations of an unconventional mind forced to deal with the constraints of a stifling education system.
However, it was the simplicity at the core of the comic strip that was the driving force in creating perhaps the most beloved characters of all time. The stories possessed a distinct emotional heart that manifested itself in the friendship between a boy and his tiger. Despite the Calvin's thinly veiled tirades against religion and politics and culture, or Hobbes' ruminations on the nature of man, the strip was at it's best when it slowed down and focused on the title characters; two best friends who fought and bitched and did everything together and who'd do anything for each other, and who proved that it was, indeed, a magical world.
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