Sasquatch is my latest contribution to The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Reduxe Edition blog. There are many amazing renderings of all the popular and not-so-popular Marvel characters on there. I recommend that you check it!
Visit the site of the remarkable Joe Rubinstein also! He’s the man whose pen made the original Official Handbook to Marvel Universe possible!
-tony
In the blog post on Looking for Calvin and Hobbes, I wrote that “I got the impression that Bill [Watterson]… didn’t really want the attention that fame brings and didn’t understand why people would regard him any differently than the average person.” Perhaps it would be more fair to say that he would prefer that the attention be focused on the results of his labours rather than on the labourer who created the comics and it’s my bias describing Bill as an example of egalitarianism.
Because, let’s face it, nobody likes being treated like everyone else. We would all like to be treated better than others if not uniquely special. To have the keys to the executive washroom, or fly first-class.
I suppose there are burdens to being a celebrity… a loss of privacy, people demanding your attention, unsolicited obligations… possibly. If I’m ever famous, I’ll let you know.
-tony
This may be similar to the previous Living Legend question– but I suppose they don’t have to be living so…
Who is your favourite historical hero?
-tony
The Webcast Beacon is hosting Blind Date 2013, a Valentine’s Day webcomic event where creators are paired up together to make beautiful magic in the form of comics. This year, David Tulloch and I were matched up and we created mad science!!!
Please check out David’s site and the other Blind Date comics on the Webcast Beacon!
-tony
I remember the halcyon days of going to my aunt’s house and rummaging through her recycling to read all the Calvin and Hobbes comics printed in the newspaper. Bill Watterson is definitely one of my artistic influences and I wanted to learn more about him when I read Nevin Martell’s book Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip.
Overall, I’m glad I read it. I was interested to find out about Watterson’s days as a young artist pre-C&H. I found out that Bill and I have a lot in common. We both have artwork featured in our respective school yearbooks, we both submitted cartoons in our university newspapers, we were both born in July. It’s like we were separated at birth – give or take 20 years.
One of the problems with the book is that there was no interview with Bill. I got the impression that Bill, sometimes described as a recluse, didn’t really want the attention that fame brings and didn’t understand why people would regard him any differently than the average person. People love his comic and that’s fine but why would knowing Bill’s favourite colour make any difference? Bill declined Nevin’s invitation for an interview.
That’s not to say that Nevin didn’t uncover interesting facts. I was interested in finding out about Watterson’s trials and tribulations with the syndicates, hearing the story from the editor’s point of view and interviews with some of Watterson’s peers. Reading the interview with Bill’s mom was also pretty good though a little odd. I imagine all interviews with moms to embarrass their children.
I wish the book was more concise. There were interviews with cartoonists who didn’t know Watterson (they said nice things), descriptions of scenes in comic strips (because the best way to read a comic strip is to have it described to you), and details of music, food and settings that are inconsequential to the point of the book. I’m afraid that this makes up approximately half of the book.
The biggest punch in the jeans is that this book was published in 2009 and a year later Bill gave an interview to The Plain Dealer. I feel like the most appropriate analogy to make is that after a famous archaeologist gives up on her lifetime search for the Holy Grail a couple of kids at a lemonade stand start serving beverages from an old wooden chalice. Maybe that’s not the most appropriate analogy.
-tony
