Watterson quit drawing “Calvin and Hobbes” by the end of 1995 using a brief statement to newspaper editors and his readers which he believed he’d achieved all he could in the medium. Watterson is famous for his perspectives on licensing and comic strip syndication and his move back into private life after drawing “Calvin and Hobbes” came into a close.
As he told the graduating class of 1990 at Kenyon College, “It Is astonishing how difficult we’ll work when the job is completed only for ourselves.” Watterson wrote the opening to the primary volume of The Komplete Kolor Krazy Kat. Watterson’s style also reveals the influence of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. Like many artists, Watterson included components of his life, interests, beliefs and principles into his work—for example, his avocation as a cyclist, memories of his own dad’s addresses about “building character”, and his views on merchandising and corporations. Watterson’s cat, Sprite, very much inspired the character as well as physical characteristics of Hobbes. Watterson spent much of his career attempting to improve the climate of paper comic strips. He considered the aesthetic worth of comic strips had been sabotaged, and the space they inhabited in papers consistently fell, subject to arbitrary whims of shortsighted publishers. Also, he opined that artwork must not be judged by the medium which is why it’s created (i.e., there’s no “high” art or “low” art—only artwork).
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