Today is the 25th Anniversary of the end of Calvin & Hobbes 2 2

[sfcityduck]

Clearly, one of the top comic strips and Sunday comics ever published.  Can't believe it's been 25 years!  The strip is still timeless, so much so that when the present Covid-19 debacle got me down, I sought out C&H comic and magazine covers as a  diversion.  NYTimes has an appreciative article on the strip in today's paper.  I'm sure there are others.  My rarer C&H acquisitions this year:

Edited December 31, 2020 by sfcityduck

[sfcityduck]

Link to NYT article:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/12/31/calvin-hobbes-bill-watterson/

Final strip:

[sfcityduck]

Waterson was interviewed in today's Washington Post.  A very rare event is a BW interview:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/12/31/bill-watterson-berkeley-breathed-comics/

Highlights for me:

“The reach and impact of newspaper comic strips,” Watterson says by email, “is almost impossible to fathom now.”

“A cartoonist could talk to tens of millions of people, from all walks of life, every single day, year after year,” Watterson says. “Newspaper comics were about as democratic an art as you can get. The mass media had its faults, but I do miss the way it created a shared cultural experience.”

 

Other stellar strips continued to attract many readers after 1995, and Watterson notes that in the early 2000s, Richard Thompson’s “Cul de Sac” proved that the launch of great new comics was still possible. But that, he says, was during the era when “the Internet came and blew apart the newspaper ecosystem.”

“A lot of the technological change has been exciting, but it’s really changed how creative works are valued,” says Watterson, noting that if cartoon art can be digitized, “it’s probably out there, free for the taking. The old business model doesn’t work anymore. It’s hard to compete against instantaneous, plentiful and free.”

 

 

[WoWitHurts]

He started his strip while I was a delivery boy and I read the strip every day before I started rolling papers. That and Farside. I loved those two. Good stuff.

[sfcityduck]

3 minutes ago, WoWitHurts said:

He started his strip while I was a delivery boy and I read the strip every day before I started rolling papers. That and Farside. I loved those two. Good stuff.

Farside, Bloom County and C&H all ended the same year.  

[sledgehammer]

Wow.

That was a fast 25 years. Made me walk to the closet, and check the top shelf.

 

[Talapas1]

3 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

Clearly, one of the top comic strips and Sunday comics ever published.  Can't believe it's been 25 years!  The strip is still timeless, so much so that when the present Covid-19 debacle got me down, I sought out C&H comic and magazine covers as a  diversion.  NYTimes has an appreciative article on the strip in today's paper.  I'm sure there are others.  My rarer C&H acquisitions this year:

Love these!   Very nice!

[evilskip]

I've actually been re-reading Calvin & Hobbes this week. What a wonderful strip. It was funny and tugged at your heart strings at the same time. Nothing comes close today.

[Spidey 62]

I never really got "The Far Side", but I was hooked on C&H.  My soft covers are well read. 

[01TheDude]

I saved the last Bloom County. Wish I had saved C/H

The Far Side was always a favorite and I have tons of those books. Used to always get the yearly calendar joke a day desk top one.

 

[World Devourer]

I have the hardcover box set of C & H.

Worth every cent!

[KirbyJack]

Calvin and Hobbes was my much-missed mother's favorite, and I remember when she first pointed it out to me. When she passed, I got her paperback collections. For me, nothing will ever approach it. C&H is just the very best ever.

[Math Teacher]

On 12/31/2020 at 12:59 PM, sfcityduck said:

The strip is still timeless ....

 

Truer words have never been spoken.

[FoggyNelson]

Many times I laugh out loud on that strip🤣🤣👍

[Fan Boy]

Calvin & Hobbes is among the top 10 strips I enjoyed to read the most in my life. Far Side, Peanuts, D. Tracy, Bloom Country and few others. They were running daily in newspapers delivered to my family house for years and years until    Newspaper stopped being delivered then. I was there the day when the last C&H strip was published, then realized that was it. A tear come out.

some years later my former LCS had the hardcover slipcase set of C&H up for sale. I brought it and read all through. Loved it. I still saved much of my Sunday newspaper comics in storage ... someday, I will bring them out to light to read. 
 

Bill Watterson, I understand your view and your decision ... but I still miss the two best friends! 

[sledgehammer]

I'm not smart enough to understand how to communicate why this was just so special.

Far Side definitely got to that level for me too.

I've saved about 4 or 5 cut from the paper for a very long time. Here's a couple.

[Lazyboy]

On 12/31/2020 at 2:25 PM, WoWitHurts said:

He started his strip while I was a delivery boy and I read the strip every day before I started rolling papers. That and Farside. I loved those two. Good stuff.

You don't say...

[Lazyboy]

On 12/31/2020 at 4:49 PM, evilskip said:

I've actually been re-reading Calvin & Hobbes this week. What a wonderful strip. It was funny and tugged at your heart strings at the same time. Nothing comes close today.

That may be going a bit too far, but C&H is definitely part of an elite group.

[Robservations247]

I am “COVID coping” with CH, too. The levity and philosophy are refreshing. 
I found a few lots of dailies for sale and started to reconstruct my own ‘complete collection’ 

The repeats during BW’s 2 sabbaticals are proving tough to untangle. Still it has been fun to revisit my childhood friends. 

Edited February 14, 2021 by Robservations247

[FoggyNelson]

Calvin always made me laugh , wish the strip would start up new again