Dear Mr Watterson: Thank You.
Joel Allen Schroeder’s Dear Mr Watterson, a documentary that examines Calvin and Hobbes with the same painstaking effort Spaceman Spiff devotes to exploring alien planets, is due November 15th. It’ll be available in select theatres and video on demand, for your nostalgic pleasure. If you were hoping to get a glimpse of Watterson himself, forget it; the Sasquach of Cartoonists is as elusive as ever, but you will see plenty other luminaries, from Fox Trot‘s Bill Amend to Berkley Breathed of Opus and Bloom County.
Watterson’s a rare bird, the kind of creator who didn’t care for merchandising and refused to have so much as a bumper sticker with Calvin on it. He’s also one of the few to give his creation a definite ending, rather than pass it on to other creators to let it continue for generation after generation, long after the creative spark that powers the series dies. It’s still a favourite, both for folks who knew Calvin when they were kids, and for new fans just coming to grips with the series in book form. It’s that enduring legacy that Dear Mr Watterson eulogizes, which should make it all the more wonderful when it finally hits the screens.
On that note, Dear Mr Watterson: Thank You. Very much. You don’t know how much, and that doesn’t matter. Good luck to you, wherever you are.
Source: Wired
