It’s Star Wars meets Calvin & Hobbes! It’s awesome! It’s a T-shirt! It’s $20!
There is now a Calvin and Hobbes search engine
Do one thing, and do it well — that’s the key to success in any field. So, enter the Calvin and Hobbes search engine.
That is all it does.
Of course, this cannot be allowed to stand. A note from the creator, Michael Yingling:
I am a little worried, however, that the popularity of this search engine will ultimately be it’s demise if Andrew McMeel Universal (who owns the rights to Calvin & Hobbes) threatens legal action against me. Hopefully I can put ads for the books in the search results, allowing people to buy the books and it will be win-win for everyone, but I can only do that if AMU agrees to it. In that case I may even be able to host the images locally and prevent traffic from crashing them again in the future. Update: Someone at AMU got in touch with me; a C&D was (is?) headed my way, but they seem open to finding a better solution, which is AWESOME. You may see some changes here in the next few days/week, but hopefully it will be in the best interest of everyone!
Why is a cease and desist order the first action they take? Sigh.
What Calvin looks like to other people
Thankfully, Calvin & Hobbes is a comic strip. Because when it’s just a lonely boy talking to his stuffed tiger, well there’s nothing comic about that.
Calvin Minus Hobbes is an obvious riff on Garfield Minus Garfield, but its creator says he’s given up:
I won’t be posting any more of these. They’re too sad. If any brave soul wants to take up the project … have at it.
Calvin and Hobbes documentary planned
Remember Keith’s and Amy’s posts about Calvin’s awesome snowman sculptures? I always wanted to try to make some of my own. Well, I started reminiscing about the glory days of Calvin and Hobbes. It’s hard to believe that this past New Year’s Eve marked 14 years since the final C&H strip — which only published for 10 years, and that was with two lengthy interregnums, too.
I guess I’m not the only one reminiscing. Some enterprising filmmakers are working on a movie they call a “thank-you” to Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes.
Check it out at DearMrWatterson.com. Here’s the trailer:
Of course, they’re looking for your support. But something like Calvin and Hobbes is bound to get a lot of attention and a lot of support. If you really want to make an impact, I’d urge you to check out ….
New interview with Bill Watterson — first in 20 years
Wow — reclusive Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson has given an email interview. It’s kind of short, but insightful. Says Watterson on the fact that fans still “grieve” for Calvin and Hobbes:
If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now “grieving” for “Calvin and Hobbes” would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I’d be agreeing with them.
I think some of the reason “Calvin and Hobbes” still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.
Read the full interview here. It’s part of a story that ran in on Cleveland.com marking the 15th anniversary of the final strip.
So how did writer John Campanelli score an interview with Watterson, considering that the cartoonist hasn’t done an interview since 1989? Well, according to this piece, he just sent an email and asked.
Wish I’d thought of that!
Some of the best Calvin & Hobbes ever
At this time of year, I always hope that life imitates art and I will see real-life creations such as appeared in Calvin and Hobbes. I am, of course, referring to Calvin’s snowman creations.
Who hasn’t tried to recreate at least one of Calvin’s snowmen? Unfortunately, the results are almost always disappointing. Take heart, however. We can always enjoy the strips themselves.
Here’s a great collection of most, if not all, of the Calvin & Hobbes’ snowman strips.