Can it really be just 14 years ago - December 31, 1995 - that Bill Watterson said goodbye to Calvin and Hobbes and left the comics pages and most of us very, very sad? That’s longer than the 10 years that the strip ran. In honor of the anniversary of Calvin And Hobbes’ retirement, here’s a quote from Watterson about how the strip came to be:

“It was a slow process, and actually what happened is another odd coincidence. One of the strips I’d sent (the syndicate) had Calvin and Hobbes as minor characters. Calvin was the little brother of the strip’s main character, and Hobbes was like he is now, a stuffed tiger that came to life in Calvin’s imagination. One of the syndicates suggested that these two characters were the strongest and why didn’t I develop a strip around them? I had thought they were the funniest characters myself, but I was unsure as to whether they could hold their own strip. I was afraid that maybe the key to their wackiness was the contrast between them and the more normal characters in the rest of the strip. I wasn’t sure Calvin and Hobbes would be able to maintain that intensity on their own. But I tried it, and almost immediately it clicked in my mind; it became much easier to write the material.

“Their personalities expanded easily, and that takes a good 75% of the work out of it. If you have the personalities down, you understand them and identify with them; you can stick them in any situation and have a pretty good idea of how they’re going to respond. Then it’s just a matter of sanding and polishing up the jokes. But if you’ve got more ambiguous characters or stock stereotypes, the plastic comes through and they don’t work as well. These two characters clicked for me almost immediately and I feel very comfortable working with them. That syndicate, oddly enough, declined my strip.”

Of course they did. Better to keep the IV drip in Nancy than try something different. Cheers to Bill Watterson and may 2010 find him happy and content!

[Excerpt from the interview with Bill Watterson in Honk! #2, January 1987. Interview conducted by and © Andrew Christie. Honk!‘s founding editor? Me.]

[Artwork: Calvin and Hobbes, of course, © Bill Watterson]