At the end of 1995, the beloved
Calvin and Hobbes
sledded off the comics page for the final time, and its long-reclusive legendary creator, Bill Watterson, retired from the business, never to draw another syndicated newspaper strip.
Until now.
Last week, the millions of readers across generations who have pined for the cartoonist's return got a sudden glimmer. Turns out, Watterson's brilliant artistic hand has recently been hiding in plain sight. Readers don't need to go back a couple of decades to see his work; they need only go back, say, a couple of days. That's because Watterson has returned home to the comics page - if only briefly.
For three days, Watterson - once known as the J.D. Salinger of the strips - resurfaced, his inspired visual wit intact. For this, we have Stephan Pastis' real estate and surreal humor to thank.
Watterson's artwork was featured in Pastis' strip, Pearls Before Swine, which appears in The Inquirer and other papers.
So what, exactly, lured Watterson back to the page for the first time since ending his immensely popular boy-and-tiger comic in December 1995?
"Several years ago, when Stephan did one of his strips that mocked his own drawing ability and mentioned my strip in comparison, I thought it might be funny for me to ghost Pearls sometime, just to flip it all on its head," Watterson said.
A couple of months ago, Watterson says, Pastis got in touch with him when the Pearls author was in the Cleveland area on his book tour. At the time, Watterson knew that editor and designer Chris Sparks was looking for new ways to raise money for Team Cul de Sac, a charity cofounded by Sparks and cartoonist-illustrator Richard Thompson that raises funds to fight Parkinson's disease, in coordination with the Michael J. Fox Foundation.
Thompson, a longtime Washington Post artist who lives in Arlington, Va., ended his award-winning syndicated strip Cul de Sac in 2012 as he underwent therapy and surgery to treat his Parkinson's; Watterson is an enormous fan of Thompson's, and the two now have a dual exhibit at Ohio State University's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum in Columbus.
"I thought maybe Stephan and I could do this goofy collaboration and then use the result to raise some money for Parkinson's research in honor of Richard Thompson," Watterson says. "It just seemed like a perfect convergence." Pastis was more than happy to give it a shot.
From Wednesday through Friday, Pastis ceded his middle panels to Watterson, who also did the first panel on Thursday.
The original Pearls strips featuring Watterson's work will be auctioned for the Cul de Sac charity.