#he deserved better please dont disrepect him by framing his success as a given he Fought and argubaly Lost a lot and it matters even he Won

[shhhhimwatchingthis]

Feel like it's disingenuous not to add that while he is responsible for the elimination of of the 'standard Sunday strip panel' and revolutionized his industry and art form by pushing for quite literally, 'outside the box thinking' it wasn't just handed or given to him

Bill Watterson fought tooth and nail for the right to draw Calvin and Hobbes the way he wanted and he lost a lot. It exhausted him. He dealt with genuine mental health struggles and breakdowns as a result of the way newspapers treated him and his art.

like yes the above is true, but framing him as some genius who was respected and loved and waved his hands and got what he wanted is not. he struggled a lot, and while NOW he's beloved and regarded as a genius and master of his craft he was not treated that way by his employers and its disingenuous not to acknowledge how brutally hard he had to fight to make Calvin and Hobbes what it is.

Calvin and Hobbes is one of the greatest peices of art I've ever read. Bill Watterson is a genius and created a genuine masterpiece. The conditions in which he was forced to work legitimately damaged his mental health, effected his passion for the work and eventually resulted in him stopping both Calvin and Hobbes and writing comics at all.

I thinks folks expressing incredulity at the quality of the writing and composition in Calvin and Hobbes are often missing the context that Bill Watterson is arguably the most influential sequential artist of his generation. Like, this is a guy who once told the editors of nationally syndicated newspapers to go fuck themselves when they wanted to mess with his panel layouts, and not only did he keep his job, he got his way. He could have had literally any gig he wanted, and he chose to be the Sunday funnies guy because that's what made him happy. He's basically the Weird Al of sequential art.