Short Box Classic: Bill Watterson Artist Spotlight & Calvin Hobbes Retrospective

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intro music plays

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Yoo, Short Box Nation, welcome back

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the first "yoo" of the new year. I was starting to doubt if I actually remember how to do this. It's nice to be back and talking with you guys. If this is your first time tuning in, my name is Badr and this is the Short Box Podcast, the comic book talk show that brings you the best conversations about comics with the people that put their blood, sweat, and tears into making them. As you could probably tell from my voice, even though I think my voice has gone a lot better, but I have been dealing with a fever and upper respiratory thing for the last couple of weeks.

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rough, but I'm feeling better now and I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. So my apologies for the radio silence and the delay in episodes, but like I said, I'm getting back on the horse as they would say. Now obviously I have not been feeling well, so I have not done a lot of recording. So I figured today's episode would be a short box classic, meaning that this is an oldie but a goodie and it's coming to you from the short box archives. This episode was originally released back in January 2023 as episode 379.

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And it was technically the last artist spotlight that we put out. In this episode, we talk about the life and career of Bill Watterson, who is the legendary and iconic and very recluse creator of Calvin and Hobbes, who to this day is still rather recluse. Ever since he quit or retired from Calvin and Hobbes, he's been kind of low key. But to this day, this is one of our best played episodes. It's also one of the best received artist spotlights that we've done as well. This was our attempt to focus and put the spotlight.

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on a new strip slash comic strip artist. And who better than to talk about Bill Watterson, who has created one of the most iconic duos in comics with Calvin and Hobbes. So it was a lot of fun learning about Bill Watterson, I admit, before this episode. I wasn't that familiar with his career, just the strip itself. But yeah, if you are unfamiliar with Bill Watterson, you're going to learn a lot and have a whole new appreciation for Calvin and Hobbes.

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And you'll get to hear from Cesar and Ed since they were there for the original recording. That was a lot of fun. And I think if you haven't heard this episode before, you're in for a treat. Like I said, it's one of our best played episodes, one of the best artist spotlights that we've done. So yeah, this will be a short box classic today and I'll be back with a new episode next week. And me and Drew will also be back recording more bonus episodes later this month. So if you're not on Patreon, if you're not a patron of the show,

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I advise that you hop on over to patreon.com slash the short box. That is your best way of getting bonus episodes and getting access to a whole archive of unreleased episodes and things like that. So if you want to support the show and get bonus episodes and free comics and things like that, check out the Patreon at patreon.com slash the short box. And for that being said, let's go ahead and jump into the short box classic and I'll catch you guys next week. I hope you guys are feeling much better than I am.

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I hope you're a new year. I hope your 2025 is off to a good start. I'll catch you around. See you next week. Take care of yourselves. Peace.

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The term nostalgia derives from the Greek words, nostos, return, and augos, pain. The literal meaning of nostalgia, then, is the suffering evoked by the desire to return to one's place of origin. For me, my place of origin? A cold October Sunday in Waldorf, Maryland.

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My dad is not turning the thermostat too high to save money, thus freezing out the rest of the family. I'm holding my copy of Bill Watterson's Yukon Ho and I'm laughing out loud by myself. The cool thing about Watterson's work is that I don't long for a friend who isn't there. I can pick up that book in my office now, and just like that, I'm back there. No pain. No love lost. Just like Hobbes, when no one is around.

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Those pages come to life.

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I'm sorry.

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Watterson lives and his work waits for me every time. My reservoir of joy will never run out thanks to him. It's a magical world Hobbs old buddy. Let's go exploring. Short Box Nation, we proudly present the artist spotlight of Mr. Bill Watterson.

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You, Short Box Nation, welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing today? To all of our new friends joining us for the first time, my name is Bodder here at your service to welcome you to the Short Box Podcast, the comic review and talk show where you hear the best conversations about comic books and the pop culture they inspire. This is episode 379, and if that excellent intro didn't clue you in enough, today is all about us taking a nostalgic step back into the school-lastic book fair era.

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of our lives and revisiting the adventures of comics terrific tandem of Calvin and Hobbes as well as paying our respects to the genius behind their creation. He's been called the Bigfoot of comics, but we like to call him Mr. Bill Watterson. Who says that? There's actually a quote, I'll have to find it, but another comic cartoonist had called him the Bigfoot. That was a good Stan Lee intro you did. That was nice. I like the alliteration. Now you'll learn why he's been called the Bigfoot of comics later on.

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But let's welcome the panel that's coming along for this trip down memory lane. Here in the studio with me is the exceptional Edmund Danzart. Oh, what's up, Ed? How you doing? I'm trying to, you know, I'm always trying to build you up, Ed, finding all these $10 words. What exceptional? Is that $10 word? All right. You've got more than five letters. Overpaying for whatever you're using. Come on. All right. Now I'm looking out for you. All right. All right. And calling in from Daddy Daycare is the man responsible for the intro you heard at the top of the show.

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I'm going to give them a round of applause because it's been a minute. We got Cesar Cordero here with us. For those that know, I was in a ska band called Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kabluey. And if that doesn't prove my Calvin and Hobbes cred, you guys can get fucked. That's good. I'm going to try to top that. And she may not be here in person, but god damn it, is she here in spirit with us. This next shout out is for our sister in podcast arms. Our good friend.

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Co-host extraordinaire Ashley Lanny Hoy. I want to go ahead and give her and her family a round of applause for the arrival of their precious boy, Shiloh Reese Hoy. Super excited about that. Covering from the noodle incident. Mm. That was a good time. Was it another deep cut? That was a good time. So Ashley was having her baby at the same hospital that Sarah works at, and Sarah was able to kind of peek in. And funny story is that.

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After Sarah had her c-section, she wasn't able to move and they kind of advise you, kind of like, hey, just don't really get up. You don't have to. In fact, you shouldn't. So Sarah goes to knock on the door to visit Ashley and Josh and Ashley answers the door. She's like walking around. She's like, hey, what's up? And Sarah's like, what are you doing? You should be lying down. She's like, I feel fine. I'm like, oh my God.

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So Ashley already being an irresponsible mom from the jump. Congratulations. We wouldn't expect anything. She don't think the rules apply to her We're excited for you Ashley and we're dedicating this one to you and your baby boy, right and while we're on Acknowledgements, let's go to talk about our incredible sponsors collective con and Gotham City limit One is North Florida's premiere pop cultured event and the other one is North Florida's premiere comic shop Both are the best at what they do and they play a large part in helping us keep the lights on

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alongside the contributions of our incredible Patreon community. And speaking of Patreon, ham-fisted Lee speaking of Patreon, we owe them a round of applause. I thought you were going to say we owe them money.

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That money's spent, Jack. The show has gotten so bad that we owe the patrons money. Wait, only at the short box would we owe our patrons fucking money. That money's spent, son. Every month. I promise we'll get better. We never promise anything. We are in the negative, all right? Just to clarify, we never promised that.

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Thank you. That's coming from our legal department. This is from the legal department? Yeah. All right. Earlier in December, I believe that was the time, I presented our patrons with three classic comic strips to pick from. I wanted to do an episode highlighting the geniuses behind some of them, behind some of our favorite comic strips. So they, our patrons had the choice between Charles Shultz and Peanuts, Zitz and Calvin and Hobbs. For Zitz? Zitz. Zitz is a personal favorite of mine.

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It was my choice to pick the artist spotlight poll and that's what I went. I know you're rolling your eyes See, but I went with it. How many how many people voted for this? Okay, zero one and it's I know Cesar wants to let out a louder laugh. But like I said, he's got he's got a sleeping baby and I respect you My daughter is sleeping right now. I've tried so hard Y'all are not gonna sit here in disrespect. Let me see. What was negative 8%

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Negative 8%. Wait till we get to this. I'll show you. Wait till we get to this. All right. Here is the poll results for you assholes, right? Calvin and Hobbs won the poll with 67% of the votes, Peanuts with 22%, and Zits with 11% of the votes, all right? Third place, sure, but it wasn't no one digit vote. There was at least one or two other people. No Farside? Oh man. Look, this man thinks Zits is better than Farside. I know. Bloom County?

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Boondocks? No, even no boondocks. I almost picked boondocks, but. But the beautiful writing and artwork and zits just completely overshadows anything Aaron Magruder has done for the movie. It wasn't the best poll, but no surprise there. Calvin Hobbs came out on top. And this is why we get to, you know, this is why we're together today. Yo, your mom has zits. How about that shit? Oh!

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Fuck that, my mom's got beautiful skin, right? That's that Moroccan oil. She does. Natural. She does. Now, if you're a listener and want to take part in these terrible polls that I pick, or just seriously take part in picking the topics that we do discuss, I highly encourage you to join our Patreon community. We'll be looking to our patrons a lot this year to pick the topics for some upcoming episodes we got planned, including one for Ant-Man. We want to do an episode about King the Conqueror.

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So I'm going to have some choices for comics for our patrons to pick. And I know the thought of paying for another subscription is daunting. All right? No, it's not. It's not? Moneybags over there? Mondo posters? No, not at all. No, no. Well, for some of us... This is a flex, by the way. Oh, major flex. If you're watching the video version of this podcast, see, he took note of all you haters out there complaining about his backdrop, and he brought the Mondo posters out. But for some of us, at least, that aren't moneybags like Cordero over there.

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Another subscription is, you know, it's a pain in the ass. But I'm going to tell you straight up, we are not only cheaper than Netflix, but we are way more entertaining, all right? You're actually going to get your money's worth investing us, investing in us. And we're only asking for a couple of dollars. You couldn't even get it out. I started thinking how much we owe our patrons. The patrons. This guy is not me. But honestly, we are worth investing a couple of dollars into, especially if you want to support what we do in a bigger way in exchange for bonus episodes, perks, and other rewards that we got going on.

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Check out our Patreon membership plans by going to shortboxjacks.com or scroll through this episode show notes and click the support this show button. All right, shameless plug is out the way. The table is now set to talk about our main topic today, Bill Watterson and Calvin and Hobbes. Gents, I remember checking out every single Calvin and Hobbes book that my middle school library had to offer back in the day. And occasionally, if I'm being honest, sometimes I wouldn't return them, right? Sometimes I just keep them.

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because I knew it was worth my mom paying the late fee. All right, that's how much I love Calvin and Hobbes. Oh, you mean stealing. I got, okay, I get it now. Stealing, you know, purposely laws. I mean, it's a great area. What do you think, legal department, Ed? Was I stealing? There's the, what is it? Enough time has elapsed. There we go. It's okay. Thank you so much. Statute of limitations. Statute of limitations, there we go. See, take me back to the first time that you were exposed to Calvin and Hobbes, man. Do you remember your first conscious exposure?

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I do actually. I had to write this down because it's kind of weird, but it's one of those earliest memories I can actually remember. The ones I have, I was five years old and I lived in California at the time with my dad. My dad was stationed in San Diego. He's in the Navy. I was walking around with my mom and dad at a mall in the 80s and there was the first collection just simply called Calvin and Hobbes.

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at a Beat Alton bookstore. Here's what I remember is because I couldn't read at the time, but I very, very, very vividly remember seeing Calvin and Hobbes on the cover. And I was like, the artwork is so fantastic. Like it's, it's cartoony, but like the watercolors just pop. It's something I, it was burned into my brain so much so that the next time I would see a Calvin and Hobbes book would be five years later when I, when we moved to Maryland.

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And that was at the book fair at my elementary school there. What about you, Ed? You got a favorite memory of the comic strip? I think my first encounter, I want to say my brief time in the Boy Scouts. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Shout out to all the weeblos out there. We've been recording for almost, what, eight, nine years? And I think that's the first time I ever heard that you were in the Boy Scouts. Very, it was not a memorable time. Was it like for 48 hours or something? Zero badges. Didn't even try.

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You just got a participation badge. Thanks for joining, I guess. No, it was very short time, but we went camping. And there was this other kid who, usually when you're young, the kids who draw have some kind of artistic light. They like doing things artistically, kind of gravitate towards each other. So this one kid was like, hey man, you ever see Calvin and Hobbes? And newspaper strips were still around, but they were on their last legs. They were kind of.

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on their way out or what represents them on their way out or what I would like in a comic strip. So he showed me one of the books and then like you said, you see that beautiful ink and watercolor cover of them on the sled just bursting out of the woods. I forgot which one it was. But he would show me because those books, they had those nice watercolor intros like those kind of the ones that weren't in the paper.

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So I remember, I think that's my first exposure to it. And then my folks were getting just the Sunday paper at the time. So I would always ask for the, mom would get the coupons and then I would get the Sunday paper and they were like the top. I think at the, I was reading it towards the end of the run. So where he got like the half page, you know, or quarter page. And he was doing some really cool stuff with panels. So I got to see kind of right before he tapped out.

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So I got to see kind of like his, you know, what he was fighting for the whole time he was doing this stuff. So I got to catch kind of the tail end of his career as a little kid. But I think that's my introduction to the characters. Cool. All right. And this next part goes to our. Well, what about you, dude? Oh, well, I mean, he stole it. Remember, he stole it from the library. And it's not completely untrue. But I want to say, I mean, it was either middle school or high school. I.

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Right before I got into, as I was getting into superhero comics and the Marvel books my dad had, I'd go to the library or any of the Scholastic book fairs, and I was looking for anything comic related. So it just happened that, I mean, you know how it is at Scholastic. The closest thing to comics you're going to get were either the Marvel universe. Garfield books. Yeah, comic strips. And then if it was Marvel related, it might be a handbook or something like that, or a character guide. Sure. You know what I'm talking about?

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So I would just scoop up those and then anything comic strip related. And I just remember having this period of trying to read and consume as much Calvin Hobbs as I could. And I know other kids were into it. We would trade books and trades. And I'd steal those too and be on the run from bullies and stuff. So I had a problem as a kid. I still do. But yeah, Calvin Hobbs was really big for me as I was getting into comics and diving to that world. Then you saw Zits. And that just totally took over here.

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He's never gonna let that down. Man, this is my jam. I am proud to say this is my jam and you guys will soon learn that Bill Watterson. And Bill Watterson also is a fan. So fuck you guys. I don't think I read that anywhere. A memory that I cherish from my younger days, my grandpa on my dad's side, who he lived in Jersey for his whole life. But during the last couple of years, maybe.

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three, four years of his life. He moved down to stay with us. This is after his wife, my dad's mom passed away. So he was really like the only, one of two only grandparents I really got to know. I only got to know my grandma on my dad's side for my dad's mom for only like a couple years and then she passed away. So I really got to spend time with my grandpa. He lived with us. And because of him, my dad bought a Florida Times Union subscription because my grandpa just loves to read the paper.

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and he'd get it daily and Sunday. And that was something that we bonded over. I'd come in the garage. He'd be sneaking a pack of cigarettes knowing damn well he wasn't allowed to smoke, but you know how it is. And he'd give me the Sunday paper to keep quiet, like, you know, don't let your dad see this. So yeah, I used to just consume comic strips, man. And Calvin Hobbs, I mean, wasn't syndicated then, obviously. I mean, it ended in 95. So I was catching up on trades and anything the library or Scholastic Book Fairs had.

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But it had a big impact. And that's a big reason why I wanted to do an episode highlighting comic strips and the work that these creators put into. Because something that me and C were talking about is we've highlighted plenty of times on this show the trials and tribulations and the amount of work that goes into creating a monthly comic book. But when you think about comic strips and that whole business model and the syndication

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You know, that is an extraordinary feat of labor that goes into creating these comic strips on a daily basis. You think about the writing. That's your full-time job. Bill Watterson talks about having to scour and excavate any minute of his life for a possible idea for a story and how it was just so taxing. But the payoff for him was that he was able to...

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say he was a legitimate artist. He's like, I'm taking this serious, and I'm not just a joke machine for insert publication. And it wasn't like a lot of strips, especially, I guess, now it's almost like cut and paste, and it just serves the punch line. The images are secondary. This is off to a good start. And before we go any deeper, I want to take a quick step back, and I want to offer a hyper condensed crash course.

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and to the very rich career of Bill Watterson. We won't get into the nitty gritty, there's Wikipedia for that, and there's a really good documentary from 2013 that's on YouTube. It's called Dear Mr. Watterson, and that's a good starting point as well. What I'm gonna share is really just a level-D playing field for anyone listening that isn't really familiar with Bill Watterson's overarching life and in the high points.

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Alright, here we go. Bill Watterson was born in Washington DC in 1958. He moved to Chagrin Falls, Ohio at six years old. Watterson was described by his parents as kind of a recluse child. He was kind of a loner, but he could draw and he found an escape in the arts. So no surprise there, but he was also a fan of comic strips of the time, like the Peanuts. I think Pogo was one in the Crazy Cat. Walt Kelly's Pogo, yeah. Throughout high school and well into college, where.

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Watterson would major in political science. He was feeding that creative fire by drawing comics and superheroes with his friends and contributing cartoons and strips to his school newspapers. He was pretty confident and dead set early on on being a professional cartoonist one day. After college and very early on in his career, Bill Watterson would befriend one of his biggest inspirations, Jim Borgman, who was a political cartoonist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, but also the creator of one of my favorite comic strips, proudly, the Zits.

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Bill Watterson, big fan, wanted to be just like Jim Borgman, so much so that he kind of mimicked Jim Borgman's career pretty faithfully early on. Watterson would land his first professional gig as a cartoonist for the Cincinnati Post, which was a competing paper to Jim Borgman's Cincinnati Enquirer. But Bill Watterson would not enjoy the same longevity as Borgman because he was fired pretty early on in his contract.

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Watterson would bounce back and he found work at an advertising agency as a designer. A career path that we've seen echoed among other comic rates. Neil Adam comes to mind kind of pursuing the same. Just to jump in, he was doing ads for like a grocery chain, like a grocery store. So he's designing coupons and stuff. Yeah, and I understand that he wasn't a, you know, obviously wasn't a really big fan of that work. And that actually kind of motivated him to start working on coming up with comic strip ideas and getting those out and trying to see what would work.

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Of course, it was here that he developed the comic strip that we're talking about today Calvin and Hobbes was picked up for syndication by Universal Press syndication and it debuted in 35 newspapers on November 18th Calvin and Hobbes in its heyday ran in over 250 newspapers it was translated across the world for a global audience for a very consistent and very successful 10 years from 1985 to 1995

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But despite immense acclaim in winning a shit ton of awards for lack of better terms, this guy has so many Eisner and Harvey awards to his names and collected editions. It wasn't enough to stop him from retiring the strip on November 9th, 1995. He wrote a letter to the editors and fans, initially stating that, quote, I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. In later interviews, he cited that heated contract renegotiations and pressure.

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From Universal to license and merchandise, Calvin Haas played a big role in his decision. He said he was leaving millions of dollars on the table, but it was never enough to make him waiver from his anti-merchandising stance, believing that doing so would cheapen his characters. Watterson has since lived a peaceful and private life in Ohio with his wife, pursuing other artistic ventures that come along the way and staying pretty far away from the press and spotlight. I think he's only really great. What's in the water in Ohio, dude? Right? I mean.

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Dave Chappelle lives in Ohio, he did the exact same thing. Left millions of dollars on the table for artistic integrity, man. Well said, yep. Watterson, for the most part, has stayed away from the press, from the spotlight, like we said. He's really only kind of graced his loyal fans with the occasional poster, maybe a print here, comic strip cameo here and there. I believe one of the most notable things he did was he took over for Pearls and Swine one day out of the year and actually drew that whole entire strip.

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You can find that online pretty easily, but for the most part, it's been kind of dry for Bill Watterson and Calvin and Hobb fans since then. Ed, you're someone that loves comic history and studying the careers of comic greats like I am. Were you familiar with Bill Watterson's career? Did you learn anything new or interesting in your research? It's been a while since I've looked at a Calvin at Home comic strip, honestly. It's one of those things where you revisit it and it's just as...

25:06
good as you remember it, if not better, because you appreciate it more. But he's always been a mysterious figure, even back then. Like I said, I was familiar, but I did learn some new things. I learned that, like I said, you went over some of them, but like I said, I know that there was a chance for him to get signed by United, but they wanted him to use a character called Robot Man.

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So it basically goes like, hey, this is a cute comic, kid. Instead of that tiger robot man, there's this guy over in England, Peter Shelley. He's like a music label executive pop singer songwriter type of guy. I'm telling you, kid, we're doing the full Garfield treatment here. We're doing buttons, we're doing underwear, we're doing calendars, we're doing toys. And this was early. This was before he got signed to Universal.

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that could have been an instant in right there. Money's on the table and he turned it down. That's always been the constant thing is how much his perspective and his integrity, over these years, it's like he could have made, I mean, I've read like they could have made at least half a billion dollars they left on the table. I'm rich, bitch. And the fact that he didn't do it and the fact that

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He could have done it and I don't think he would have lost any respect as an artist. Look, Jim Davis is still around and nobody shits on him. So he's the exact opposite. Those are the two pol—'cause Jim Davis basically, he pretty much stopped drawing Garfield in the 80s. Like you look at early Garfield and you look at mid-80s Garfield, that's not the same guy drawing it. But he has that stamp with his name on the corner, that's for damn sure. And he's got about a dozen people running his empire. And I remember reading a thing, it's like, I got into this for the art.

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to draw comics, not to run like a factory of bullshit. So that's a crazy thing I didn't know that was, I mean, he had that easy in and some people would take that as an in and then, okay, now I can do my thing. I do this, it's like you do the safe picture, then you do the indie artist picture. You do the blockbuster, then you do the artsy stuff. Two for them, one for me. Yeah, two for them, one for me. But he was steadfast and it wasn't, I don't know if it was a hundred percent against him.

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I mean, there's a big part of it, but I think the main thing is he wanted the control of what to do. Like I said, I know he was approached to do animation. That's something I learned too. But it was one of those deals where it's like a developmental deal. But it's like, here's a grand, we get first right refusal. So that's not going to pay the bills for too long. Another thing I learned too is he did get his rights when he resigned in 91. So he was able to get the rights to his characters back. So that's why we still haven't seen any dolls.

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official merchandise for Calvin and Hobbes. And he kind of went to New Mexico to even be more secluded. I'm sure part of that is like his love for George Herriman's Crazy Cat and his kind of desert. If you look at those Crazy Cat cartoons, you see those ink lines and stuff. You can see, okay, I see where a lot of this is coming from. So he's got references to it in his own work. So I can picture him like if you've seen Kill Bill, like his Bill's Brothers in the Desert in a trailer.

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He's just at the drawing board in the middle of nowhere in the desert, just drawn. Is that where he ended up retiring? I think he went back to Ohio. OK, got it. I don't think he can stay to New Mexico. How long can you live there, honestly? For real. That's stupid. I think we should also say, if you are someone that has seen or owns the infamous sticker that you'll see in the back of a lot of trucks of Calvin pissing on whatever it may be, right? You can Photoshop whatever underneath the piss.

29:00
That is a bootleg, ladies and gentlemen. That is not official Calvin and Hop's merch. Yeah, and he kind of laughs about it now, but he said it was too much to try to, he can't sue everybody. Yeah, he can't hunt everyone down, so he just kind of let it go. And then along with those Pearl Before Swine, where he did the guest panels, there was also Berklee Brethead, who's a friend of his. Oh, yeah. He, there was like, and I haven't read his stuff in a while, but in

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2016 to 2021, Hobbs as the doll would just pop up in random strips. Not Berkeley's art, but like how Watterson would draw them. So it could be either he, what I think happened, and I could see him doing this, is he sent him a blank Bristol board. He drew, he had it all paneled out and he would draw Hobbs in whatever panel and then he would just write around it. So that's kind of cool he had that little Easter egg in his comic strips for that long.

29:57
Good stuff. Thank you, Ed. I'm going to add one little tidbit to everything you shared, which I think you and C might really fuck with this. Bill had a brother named Tom Watterson, who in the early 90s had a pop rock band called The Rells. Bill actually did the artwork for all of the band's releases using a pseudo name Fang Vampire. You can find a couple of those cover art. Who knew Bill Watterson was a goth dude? If you read Calvin and Hobbes, yeah.

30:25
Yeah, it's some depressing stuff. You can find some of those album covers and projects that he did on Google pretty easily. But it looks nothing like his art in Calvin Hobbes. If anything, it looks like either the prototype or his best take on Bill Sienkiewicz's style, which I think they were doing around this time. Bill Sienkiewicz was doing New Mutants. It is super trippy compared to Calvin Hobbes. Yeah, I could see Sienkiewicz and Ralph Steadman kind of stuff in there too.

30:54
See, there's only a few episodes where you would threaten my livelihood if I record without you. And this one, I think, was one of those for sure. It was cool to talk to you leading up to this weekend, excited for the episode. And I'll be honest, I didn't know that you had that many copies of Calvin and Hobbes and basically had what it sounds like the entire kind of collected trades and whatnot. What strips or material did you specifically read for this episode? And what was like a standout?

31:20
Just for the record, I did not threaten your livelihood. I would never do that. I would never take another man's money. I threatened your manhood. I said I would chop off your weave if you did not. Cut off your Johnson, Lebowski. It's hard for me because I'm constantly reading and rereading his stuff. I'll go on the record as far as this episode is concerned. Calvin Hobbs is my favorite comic. Just because it inspired and influenced me so much.

31:50
So when you ask me a question like, hey, what strips? It's like, it's like, ah man, how do I pick? 10th anniversary is a good place to start if you're a fan and you want to know what the inside of Bill Waterston's head looks like. And as a result, there's a strip in there where Calvin and Hobbes find a baby raccoon that's been injured and Calvin goes to get his mom to see if

32:20
she can do anything, nurse it back to health and do something. And it's one of the most heaviest strips. And the other strip I think that resonated with me was when Calvin broke his father's very expensive pair of binoculars and he is eating himself alive with guilt for like, I guess because it's a weekly strip, every day he's putting something out.

32:49
comic book adventures you get Calvin just if you've ever been in a situation where you had borrowed something from a parent or guardian and You broke it and you felt horrible right and you didn't know how they were going to act about it and oh the the the pain he captures it so well and it's funny because Now that I'm a dad. I'm looking at my daughter and she she gives me these like

33:15
She's nine months old, so she's looking up at me and giving me these kind of like, hee hee, mischievous grins and stuff. I'm breaking this shit. And the way she looks is just kind of like, oh man, I'm going to enjoy these comics on another level because Calvin's parents are good, they're good people. Tenth Anniversary is a good book. It's just all around. And those, both those strips are in there. You just kind of have to dig through. Yeah, I kind of want to just follow up on that raccoon one because I was going to mention that as well.

33:45
like heavy, like you said, but there's like the, the follow-up strip was like after the main strip where he's like, uh, it's like, man, this is so unfair that, you know, I just met this guy and he, and he died, but in a weird way, I'm happy this happened. So he's learning empathy as a kid. He's not nihilistic. Yeah. He's not a sociopath. Calvin is, is a kid. I never thought of him as a bad kid per se. He's six years old. He's six years old. He's

34:15
And I relate to this, he's just a lonely kid. You look at his world, his parents are, and they're doing, and I don't think the parents are negative figures. The parents are always- They both have jobs. Like the teacher's always brow-beating him, he's bullied at school, Susie can only stand him for a few minutes. And his buddy is Hobbs. This is a lonely fucking kid, but he's also a six-year-old. So he has this enlightened thought of-

34:43
I'm glad this happened even though it's so sad. And then the six-year-old in the final painting is like, what a stupid world. Or what a dumb world or something. No, it's stupid. He says, I wish he wasn't dead even though he is and I'm sad and it hurts that he's gone. I'm happy to have met him and I didn't even know he existed.

35:12
until a couple days ago. And like Ed said, then like the last panelist, him walking away with Hobbes saying, what a stupid world. And there's the six year old. There's a whole page, a whole extra days with four more panels where Hobbes and Calvin are in bed and they're talking about the nature of death and they're like, man, that's crazy. How this all happened and what does it all mean?

35:40
And then the last panel is then under their bed because they scared themselves into a weird existential dread. And they're like, why are we talking about this at night? At the Sega sounding a little meta right now, hearing us how recognizable these stories are, and us kind of throwing off, hey, that strip about the raccoon, hey, the strip about that, it almost sounds like we're talking about our favorite song.

36:07
or something like that, right? Like our favorite movie. And I think that's a commonality when I talk to other people about Calvin Hobbes is everyone knows the classics and then everyone's got their favorite B-side or strip that maybe most others don't like. And I think that's just a testament to one, I think the longevity of Bill Watterson's career, even though like compared to maybe some other folks you're like, ah, 10 years is short and maybe the bigger picture of things. But when you drill down to how many,

36:37
365 days in a year, like he was writing a strip almost every day. And he had no assistants. A lot of those guys have a team working on it. One man shop. Yeah, just like Charlie Brown. Charles Schultz. Sorry. Wow, that's weird. But yeah, he's basically Charles Schultz. Even though he kind of had this big kind of commercial empire, he was drawing those strips till the end. You could see with the line and kind of how it was a shakier line towards the end of the peanuts run.

37:06
going to the very end. He even at that point in his life, he worked by himself. I wanted to chime in and say that for this one, I went ahead and dusted off Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monsters Snow Goons, pay paperback or collect it edition. Snow goon. One because the name is so wild and funny. Snow goon is a great fucking phrase. That's what I call all my snowmen. I don't make snowmen. I make snow goons.

37:33
The one where it looked like a car hit him, or like a group of snow. Oh my god, it's so funny. It's not the title story that was my favorite in this collection, but it was one in particular where Calvin and his neighbor Susie are playing doctor and patient. Oh, that's a great one. And the art style is flipped. It's like Mary Worth or something, like an adventure comic or a serial comic. Yeah, it's like a romance comic from the 60s. Yeah, so it's like a baby. I don't want a baby.

38:03
So if you don't read it to the very end, you're like, where the hell is this coming from? The art style has changed. Who are these adults? Who's this doctor? When you read the dialogue, it is so funny. Two adults in a doctor's office setting, doing a routine visit. But the dialogue and words coming out of their mouth, it's like, oh, this is obviously just two children fucking fun at each other. Even the first throwaway joke is like, I brought something home today. He's like, I hope it's a divorce or something. That's when they're playing house.

38:32
He's like, Mr. Buncan be our baby. He's like this. So that, so Bader to, I think what you're, what you're tapping on here is that typically in Calvin and Hobbes, you have a child and a stuffed tiger speaking like adults. Here, the comedy comes from adults, treating each other like immature children. And it's chef's kiss good. It's a prime example of how Bill Watterson's comedy

39:01
works on so many levels. Like there's the joke at the surface, there's a middle layer, and then there's a deeper one if you want to go that deep. And I think this is a prime example of that, but also the range of Bill Watterson's style and abilities as an artist. Like that, you know, he can go ahead and completely give you a different style in the same collection. And he does this quite a few times, whether it be like going monochromatic.

39:28
Doing the spaceman spliff spiff the spaceman stuff and some of the other adventures that he puts Calvin in like he shows you Like I can I can kind of do it all right. He's not he doesn't strike me as someone that that brags You know verbally he doesn't sound very verbose But he really lets the his his work kind of speak for it And it's cool because it's the fantasy part of the strip is the more realistically rendered yes So it switches that element of what's? fantasy because he's always said this comics more than

39:57
an imaginary friend, a rabbit that, or I'm sorry, a tiger that comes to life when no one else is around. So in going on that, I really loved his dinosaur stuff. And I remember in that 10th anniversary book, there was like one, he said that when Jurassic Park came out, he didn't draw dinosaurs for like a year. He's like, how can I compete with the millions of dollars on screen? But there was one I thought, and it's, and you can tell he can kind of

40:27
think like kind of go back to being a kid. There's a couple it relates. One was the Tyrannosaurus Rexes in the F-14s or F-16s. And then there's one where he's flying and then blows up his skull with a jet and he got so much heat for that. And he's like, who? It's like, I hated school. Like what kid didn't dream about, you know, blowing up their school, you know? And this was before all the, you know, school.

40:54
shootings and stuff happen. This was way before that, but it's just a kid fantasy. At this age of finding Calvin Hobbs, I think Bart Simpson was also another character that I looked at as a kid like, oh, I wanted to be Bart Simpson, but I was not gonna get an ass whooping for all the shit he's done, right? Like I was not gonna risk that. Calvin Hobbs or Calvin to me was I think who I maybe related to closer at that age, where Vivid Imagination didn't have a

41:21
a bunch of friends, I think, you know, my brothers were my friends, right? But school friends wise, I didn't have a lot, but I was always drawing. So like Calvin really resonated with me as a kid. And you would think that, you know, Bill Watterson writes Calvin so well gives him such a unique and believable child. Like, you know, this is an adult writing a child, like a really believable child. You would think like, oh, he's just pulling from his own life. You know, this must have been how he was as a kid. And he just

41:49
This is where that well of inspiration is coming from. But then, like I said in the beginning, his parents are telling you, no, he was actually recluse. He wasn't very social at all. So even for Bill Watterson, it must have been, I wonder if he was therapeutic to write what he wanted to be as a kid. What would he wish he would have been able to do? If you have the 10th anniversary, he talks about it. He says that he loves the character of Calvin because he's so not like him. Yeah.

42:16
He says, I love writing for Calvin because I'm nothing like him and it's easy for me to put myself in a state of, okay, what wouldn't I have done as a child? And just really go in places where my mind is like, this is fun because it's not me. He says he very often disagrees with Calvin. Yeah. And that's kind of what Hobbes, that's kind of where he kind of argues against the imaginary friend thing.

42:46
at odds. They have a lot in common, but there's a lot of philosophical differences between the two, named after the philosophers. Yeah, Tom Hobbs and John Calvin. But even when you said, when he would do the strips with the kid drawings and the kid style lettering, it's like, that guy is a fantastic letterer. He would do when Calvin's drawing something to show his dad or whatever, and it goes back to like, it looks like a legit children's drawing.

43:16
He's such a good, he's so technically precise in his work. I think I would be able to pick out that typeface for Calvin and Hobbes and the font he uses from anywhere. You could just have it lined up in a bunch of other types and I could probably pull that out. I wanted to make one more mention as far as one of my favorite comic strips. And this was one that honestly, I was introduced to just this morning by Cesar. We hopped on a call, you know, just sharing our excitement for the episode again. I know you're going with this. And...

43:43
I was asking him what his favorite was. I was telling him about the Doctor one. And C shared with me one I hadn't seen. It was one, I don't think it had an official name, but it starts off, you know, first there was nothing, then there was Calvin. And it's basically Calvin imagining himself as God creating a universe. That's a good one. See, what I'm saying is like, I don't even have to, there doesn't, there is no names or titles for these. He's like, he has his hand. Yeah, he looks, he's got the beard. These are the best hits, right? Like Calvin Hobbs has got, so anyways, that strip is so good.

44:13
Good. Once again, art style completely throws you off in the beginning. You're like, oh shit, okay, this is one of those stories where the imagination, this is that perspective. In the last two panels, I don't even think the last two, I think the last panel brings it home and you realize, oh, it's Calvin playing with these new toys of his and he's playing God or whatnot. There's an example of what you're talking about. What syndicated newspaper comic strip artist was basically saying, okay, I'm going to

44:41
Here are the influences I'm going to pull in for this particular episode. I'm going to use Michelangelo's, you know, version of God visually. I'm going to comedically kind of spoof the idea of maybe some of these religions that portray God in a bloodthirsty way might be saying something about the childish nature of that kind of a God.

45:10
while also then kind of bringing it home and saying, by the way, the stakes are freaking low guys. I wasn't really saying any of that because turns out it's just a shitty little kid playing with Tinker toys. And his parents are none the wiser, right? So it's like, there's so much going on and there's so much set up, set up, set up punchline. Is that the one where like, he's been quiet for a while, we better go check on him. It's literally only one panel and the parents are proud. Like it's like, you know,

45:40
Calvin's really been, you know, really taken with these Tinker toys. Like he hasn't said much. Like it's kind of like, yes, he's rich and he's acting like a crazy God, this evil deity. It is imagination squared captured on paper. Like, once again, going back to like how multilayered it is, these characters are products of Watterson's imaginations. So you've already got that.

46:03
But then he's portraying the imaginations of said imagined characters that he came up with, right? Like it's, it's, it is so multi-layered. And like I said, you could take it at face value. It's a really well-drawn strip. Very funny. You could go down deeper down the rabbit hole to where Cesar took it. And then there's that middle layer. It's just impressive all around. And to think that he was able to do this every, you know, 24, what are it? 365, seven days a week, whatever it may be. Yeah, he had to dig in some very deep places.

46:32
Can I also make a recommendation? Yeah, hit it. The Washington Post. And I actually cut it out, and I saved it when I was, gosh, 1995. I was in eighth grade about to go into high school. They put out an article called So Long Kid, and it was written by a journalist. His name is Frank Aarons. So if you can find So Long Kid by the Frank Aarons, Washington Post, it's a tearjerker. It's amazing. And it's a really good tribute to.

47:00
Calvin and Hobbes. I actually still have the cutout article in the 10th anniversary book. It's freaking yellow and old and I need to laminate it or something. That's good stuff. I'm going to stop myself from also jumping in on this best of Calvin hit list and I want to move the conversation to talking about some of the themes that you find prevalent in this work. We've kind of touched on some of them. I want to go a little deeper.

47:26
And so what are some of the themes that you find abundant in his work? And see if you don't mind taking that first. Sure. I don't know if his work is thematic so much as it is an autobiography written in parable. And if there is a theme to his work, I think it's never underestimate the reader's appetite for quality. That's what I would say the theme is. That pregnant pause was...

47:53
He dropped this mic, hold on. Yeah. That's a good mic sync. Well said. He tends to sprinkle in commentary too. On the comic medium. The occasional commentary about the industry that he's in. His working and personal encounters with fame and what he had going on. But I don't think you would catch that. It's not very apparent unless you knew about his struggles.

48:20
you know, with the syndication thing and, you know, pressure to merchandise. Like, I think this is where his private nature benefits the comics, where it doesn't feel, unless you know what's going on. If you know, you know. If you knew what was going on behind the scenes, then you can kind of catch certain Easter eggs. But I don't think he ever lets the behind the scenes drama take center stage. It's always about, like, you know, embodying, like, innocence in childhood imagination.

48:47
I can't really put one wide net over it because he does tackle a lot of different things. Even if it's just for a strip, he'll make fun of our criticism. But I would say there's some really subversive, misanthropic stuff about humanity, which is Hobbes' nature, or Hobbes the philosopher's philosophy. And just boundless imagination, but there's that.

49:16
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just projecting because of my childhood. But there's kind of like this loneliness and this kind of escapism with this imagination that's, you know, it's a lot of reflective stuff, a lot of insightful things. But it's, I see it and I see this with peanuts too where it's just kind of this, you're making the best of a relentlessly cruel world. You're like said, Charlie Brown never gets the redhead girl, never wins the…

49:45
the baseball game, everyone calls him a blockhead, never kicks the football. The kid is just, but he still goes to his only friend is Snoopy. I see a lot of parallels there. Yeah. Good people won't add to the misery this world has doled out randomly. And if they can make it a little bit better, then that's what we need to concentrate on. Even

50:15
As imperfect and as petulant sometimes as he is and as you said, misanthropic as he is, he still adds to the world with his creativity, his imagination and his empathy. It's just like that last trip where it's like, well, we have this blank canvas. Let's go exploring the world. It's a nice reset point. We have chances in life that we can reset things. We can start over. We can kind of take a new path.

50:44
That snow represents that. It's like, let's go exploring. And he just drives a beautiful end to that strip. Oh, sick. Yeah. All right, guys. So you both know, Watterson, he hasn't been in the news much at all since his retirement. But there was a recent headline back in November of last year about an original hand-colored Calvin and Hobb strip selling at auction for $480,000, making it one of the most valuable comic strips ever sold. You're both artists in your own right. What do you think makes his art style unique?

51:14
and a standout from his contemporaries. What set him apart, especially for comics at the time, was just the skill level he would develop. I'm not saying a lot of these artists can't draw. Maybe Scott Adams. I will. He took the words out of my mouth. The visuals are secondary in a lot of comics during that day, but he wanted to put those visuals in the forefront. He's...

51:41
He's old school, he's using a Windsor brush, he's using pen nibs, he's using classic equipment. He's not, this is pre, you know, pre-digital coloring, or at least the early stages of digital coloring. He's working in these very strict parameters. Every strip looks different, even if it's just Calvin standing around. You never see like a stock cut and paste foreheads with a punchline, you know. That's what set him apart.

52:07
I mean, he's like a throwback. He was like a throwback to George Herriman, to Windsor McKay, to a lot of those classic newspaper artists when the medium was at least given more room to be expressed, you know, given more room in the paper. The technical skill that he was showing at comics that time, it just, it popped off the page, especially when he was getting that half page layouts and playing with the panels where it wasn't just the nine panel grid, you know, or however many panels it was.

52:37
It was just like circles. It was no panels. It was just one big picture sometimes. Man, he was really doing some inventive stuff in a medium that doesn't exist anymore, essentially. Well said, thank you, Ed. So you want to chime in on that? Sure. So Watterson is unique in that he desperately wants to shove in as much artistic beauty in as many styles as you can shake a stick at in six panels on Sunday and four.

53:06
every day of the week. That's a lot of art. His contemporaries, as far as I'm concerned, they're not Scott Adams, they're not Gary Trudeau, and that's not throwing shade on those guys. They're Neil Adams, they're Al Williamson, they're Gary Gianni. I name dropped Gary Gianni and Al Williamson because they both worked on Prince Valiant, which is another one of those art strips that like, say what you want about the story, but the artwork is...

53:35
fantastically beautiful. Alex Raynard, the guy that created it. It's so boring, it's boring but beautiful. God damn, it's boring. It's what I'm saying, yeah. It looks good. Bernie Wrightson, too. I'll throw him in there. You can say even Wally Wood, Frank Rosetta, those guys started in Stuart's, too. Sure, sure. Since our listeners are maybe more familiar with comic books as opposed to the graphic art of comic strip, I would compare him to Stuart Imonen in that both he and Stuart Imonen

54:04
are similar in that they can change styles at the drop of a hat to match the story. The versatility. Yeah. Well said. I'll add in that I think there is a believable and effortless movement between panels whenever he draws, especially any strip involving Hobbs pouncing on Calvin, which is kind of a running gag. Oh, it's definitely kinetic. Yeah, yeah, right? The way he shows movement in those specific comics,

54:34
Your eye, like it just flows really well, even between the gutters. Like, you know, there's nothing there, but the way he draws it, it's kind of like a seamless connection from the previous panel, you know, even though, and the way he plays with time too, right? Like it's not every second, but you can still see, like your mind still kind of fills in the blanks in between that kind of gutter spaces. I'll also say like his settings, man, whimsical, really detailed, and it feels like he transports you like on location, right? Like grew up in Jackson, Florida all my life, right?

55:03
But when I read Calvin and Hobbes, I feel like I'm being transported to a small town or on a home that's got like some woods in the back. And I've never seen woods. I was going to say, let me tell you right now, he nails it. I grew up in a, I didn't grow up in Florida. So now that I've lived here long enough, I realized there's nothing but just swamp and palm trees. And the seasons don't change. Up north.

55:30
I was able to enjoy Calvin and Hobbes because I did build snowmen. I did go out sledding. I had a cold in the wintertime and it sucks. All the stuff that they're talking about and waiting for summer to come and be like, oh, I can't wait because winter is awesome for the first two months. Then you're like, oh, we got how many more months of this? Then you get the flu or whatever. But anyway, yes, Botter. He nails it.

56:00
And I'll go ahead and say it, I think he draws some of the best snow. John Romita Jr., I think draws rain, like really, he draws rain like it is pouring 40 days and 40 nights. Bill Watterson and snow is a match made in heaven. You feel like you could grab snow from the comic itself and make a little snowball. And last but not least, I'll say Bill Watterson nails expressions. The range of faces that he can give Calvin are so impressive and it feels like

56:29
there's no limit to what facial expression Calvin may have. And that is one thing that I think made it really stand out to me when I was really into comic strips and reading the Daily Paper and the Sunday Paper was comic strips like Garfield and even Boondocks. Even though I loved Boondocks, I really enjoyed Garfield, it got a little stale because it was always the same facial expression. The character designs didn't really change a lot. Like, you just knew what you were getting into. But if Calvin Hobbs were like we had mentioned,

56:59
he plays around with the style so much. And the face is always like a really emotive. And I think that's what really sets it apart from some of his contemporaries. For sure. Like we've kind of mentioned, Bill Watterson is a very private person. You can count on two hands how many interviews he has granted the public in the span of his career. Like literally, you could count them all on like two hands very easily. And that list is even shorter if you're counting official artwork that he's put out in the pub.

57:28
to the public since the end of Calvin and Hobbes. Like he's very selective with his projects if he takes any projects at that. Like the man is a reclusive, the highest magnitude. I was curious to hear from both of you. Do you think Watterson's private nature and the lack of like merchandising and that stuff, has that had a positive or negative impact on the legacy of Calvin and Hobbes and potential discoverability for like future generations? If you ask me when I'm 10, I will tell you.

57:58
Why isn't he, why can't I buy a Hobbs stuffed animal? But I'm 10 and I'm an idiot. If you ask me now, I think he did the best possible thing as an artist. He brought so much credibility, so much credibility to anybody that's ever wanted to do a newspaper style strip. Anyone that's ever wanted to do it and thought, well, the only way I can...

58:25
and hold on to my artistic integrity, I don't care about the money is to sell out." And he was like, no, you don't have to do that. If you care about the art form, then care about the art form. He lives. He's never going to die. Calvin and Hobbes is his Bible. It's autobiographical. Like he's, in 10 years, he's managed to basically

58:54
lets you peek inside of how he thinks about things politically, philosophically, what his views are on the afterlife, what he thinks of his mom and dad, does he believe in the power of love, imagination, loyalty, friendship, bureaucratic systems, I mean, he's institutions, favorite foods, he's got it all in there. Like, it's really, really cool. And I think that he is...

59:23
His work is an exercise in parable. And I can have a good time anytime I pick up any one of those books and not worry about whether or not the integrity of his work was ever compromised. I can't speak for the future. After he passes away, I don't know what's gonna happen. And someone might, something evil and some draconian machination might make it so where his stuff is available for the public.

59:53
to consume in a way that is not in line with his wishes. We'll burn that bridge when we get to it, but for now, he's the goat. Well said, and I think when you think about what you just shared, I think it amplifies what Watterson himself shared in that last letter to the editors, which was, for lack of better terms, I've said everything I've had to say. Ed, what about you, man? What are your thoughts on lack of merchandising and impact on the legacy?

01:00:22
Yeah, I agree with C. It adds to his mythos. I don't want to see him on Twitter talking about political views. I think he's, for me, as private as I am, he's kind of like, if I could have made it as an artist, that's like, man, this is like the perfect career. Although I would love some action figures of my stuff, I'm not going to lie. But it's like you said, he believed in the art form over...

01:00:49
I remember reading something where he's like, it's not, if we can merchandise, it's like, why should we? We need to ask why we're doing this. I don't think, because we even growing up in the 80s and 90s, we're used to like, okay, we get the comic, the comic, we get some toys, we get the movie, we get the, you know, but he wanted, and he could be a control freak, I don't know. I don't need to know the man personally. It's like, you don't want...

01:01:19
I kind of like that mystery about him. I don't want to know his, you know, piccadilloes and his odd, you know, things that make up everybody. You know, sometimes you just want some distance. And I think I'm glad he came up without Twitter and social media and stuff. Although I'm kind of curious to what he thinks about the Wild West we have now as far as doing comic strips where... He loves it. You can. So if you... He's comic... It's actually in the first four pages of the 10th anniversary.

01:01:49
He talks about how not comic strips, comic books. He says they're flourishing. This is 1995, so that means he's aware of what's going on. And at that point, Image had already come out. By that point, Marvel and DC were already well-established household names. But even like webtoons or even like daily strips that are just online specifically. Oh, I'm sure he's jazzed about that.

01:02:16
You know what he would say? He'd say, y'all ain't getting paid for it. It could not be me. Yeah. That's the thing too. That's what you give up because you have this publishing house, this syndication, where I think he made, you know, he didn't need to get rich, but I think he's all right because of the book sales. They're New York Times bestsellers. They've been in reprints, millions of editions. Like I said, those nice hardcovers that came out five or six years ago, there's going to be another hardcover set that comes out, I'm sure.

01:02:44
He's getting those checks still, so I'm not worried about him financially. But it's nice that he basically did something artistic completely on his terms, and that's rare. Nobody meddled with him. Even in the merchandising things, I think if he signed off, he wouldn't even have to run a factory. I don't think if he put out a limited edition statue or dolls or something, I don't think anyone would call him a sellout.

01:03:13
It's like, you know, once you get into like the kids meals and, you know, once you get into like underwear and like all kinds of crazy shit and then we can have that talk. But he just stood firm and he could have cashed out and he could still cash out. He could come up and say, yeah, I want to make a Hobbs doll official, put them in targets, 20 bucks. You know, he could do that in a snap. He holds himself to such a rigorous standard, you know, like.

01:03:39
The normal is here and his standard is here and it's like, Bill, we just want you to meet us in the middle. And that's the thing with artists, always say we don't do it for the money, but we need money to pay shit. You know, JEA don't accept, you know. You take this trade from my electricity bill thing. So here's a cool thing about what you just said, is that Roger Corman has this really cool speech where he talks about film being a compromised art form in the sense that

01:04:08
If it's just one guy making a movie, which means he has the money to make it, to buy all the equipment, he's the only person doing all the work, shooting, editing, lighting, all that stuff, then that is the one singular piece of work that will not be compromised artistically, right? But that's not the way it works. You have to hire people, camera people, you have to hire all this stuff.

01:04:38
movies are a compromised art form. So it's kind of hard to criticize them because they're compromised, right? I still do and I still try and it makes me cry and it hurts my penis. Oh, ouch. But- We see a doctor. There's no hope for me. Anyone that knows me, there's no hope for me. But the cool thing about Bill Watterson is that he did it. He is the one man show and his work is

01:05:07
not compromised in the least artistically. So it's like even comic strips by their nature are a compromised medium in the sense that, look, you can be a freaking Michelangelo all you want, but at the end of the day, these things are here to sell papers. And he worked within that world and fought and wrangled, and you know, every day. He took sabbaticals. It was just like, I need breaks, you know.

01:05:36
And I got to even hand it to the syndicate. In that beginning where you had no clout, they could have made dolls. They technically owned the rights to it. And I don't know if that's part because of the book sales we're doing. So I don't know all the behind the scenes. But the fact that they could have pushed that, they could have said, sorry, bro, I'm going to get someone else to draw this now. Hit the bricks, Junior. So they withheld. They kept up.

01:06:05
their end of the bargain, which is rare as well. It's surprising as hell right now. I think Bill Watterson has left it in the hands of fans like us to pass it along to the next generation. I think if you're considering how this current generation consumes media and the need for being on digital, merchandising for awareness, things like that, I think when you think about it from that perspective, it leaves much to be desired. But then you've got folks like us that are keeping his name alive.

01:06:34
Like, see, I can imagine when Sammy comes of age, you'll probably be reading Calvin and Hobbs to it, right? We are the generation. Oh, I'm getting our stuffed tiger. And painting it yourself. Yeah, like we are the generation, I think, that will keep Calvin and Hobbs alive. In regards to the comic industry, Bill Watterson was actually just recently inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame. I think he was inducted in 2020. So in regards to the comic industry, he's still making news. They're still showing their appreciation.

01:07:04
But I would like to think much like reading Calvin and Hobbes, the actual strips, it's not always, I don't think it's always going to come easy, right? Like, Watterson never spoon-fed, you know, the jokes or the meanings and things like that. So I don't think he's worried if a new generation finds it or gets it. I think, you know, it's a chapter of his life that is now closed that he put his all into and he enjoyed. And I would imagine that for him it's like, well, if you find it and you love it, great. If you don't...

01:07:31
That's on you. I don't think he's that concerned with legacy. I'll tell a story that is to your point. When he was in Ohio, he would very sneakily go into a bookstore and autograph his books and then put them back in there for people to buy and not tell anybody, you know. You think he ever got caught? Like, hey, hey, this asshole's writing in the books. Get him.

01:08:01
He stopped doing it because people were selling them online. Yeah. And when he found out, he was like, okay, Jesus, I can't even do this. Can't have nice things. Yeah. Damn. I've never met someone so allergic to capitalism than Bill Watson. I love it. It's like, I tried to do, fuck you guys. You'll never see me again. Ninja vanish. All right. With that said,

01:08:21
The chances of Bill ever hearing this episode are definitely slim to none. He doesn't have a Twitter. I don't even think he's probably got a phone. No, it's not. I'm so sorry if we've offended you. He's in the woods painting. He's painting a lake somewhere. Exactly. I can't live my life knowing if I've made him mad or if he doesn't like me. I don't want to know. He's on that Bob Ross tip. He's like, it's all right, brother. You guys suck and that's okay. Embrace it. I probably got to see you laugh. I got my cabin made out of gold. I got my...

01:08:50
2,500 acres in Ohio. And none of that, he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy that would indulge himself in praise. Anyways, but regardless, I think we did him and Calvin and Hobbes proud with this episode. I think we covered as much as we could for today's intent and purposes. So I'll address the listeners, all right? If you enjoyed this deep dive and this style of conversation, check out other artist spotlights that we've done, like the one we did about Rick Remender, one of the hardest working names in comics back in episode 369. And if you're a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, if you know something about Bill Watterson that we don't know,

01:09:20
that you'd like to share with us, man, chime into the conversation. Shoot us an email, hit us up on Twitter and Instagram. Let me know if you want me to share it on the episode. We'd love to hear from fellow Calvin and Hob fanatics. Let's get to our next topic for today, all right? And that's looking at the future of comics and the titles worth picking up next month. Let's go ahead and grab a fistful of comics.

01:09:44
You can either have a mouthful of tea or a fistful of comics. Fistful of Comics is a segment dedicated to helping all you comic curious newbies and regular Wednesday warriors find the best new titles worthy of your time and attention. Of course, we are lucky enough to be joined by Ben Kingsbury for this part of the show. He's the owner of Gotham City Limit, Jacksville's premier comic shop, and nothing makes this man happier than helping people take their comic shopping experience.

01:10:14
to the limit.

01:10:36
Ben was really excited to hear that we were doing a Calvin and Hobbes episode today. I mean, Ben's already at a 10, right, as far as energy goes. When he heard we were doing a Calvin and Hobbes episode, his energy's now at a 15. So we did something really special with this week's list and recommendations. Like he always does, he provided me with a list of three new comics that he thinks are worthy of the short box stamp of approval. I'm going to get the music going and we're going to see what's on the agenda today. All right. First up.

01:11:04
So like I said, he was super excited about the Calvin Hobbs. He's got a whole theme for these recommendations and an interesting one at that. So I'm gonna let him tell you what his first pick is. Good morning, good afternoon, and or good evening short box listeners. I'm Ben Kay representing Gotham City Limit, Jacksonville, Florida. And these are my three final order cutoffs you should add to your pull list immediately. You know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change.

01:11:33
But pretty soon, everything is different. That's probably one of my favorite Bill Watterson quotes. I'm a huge Calvin and Hobbes fan. Still own all my original Calvin and Hobbes books from when I was a young man. My best friend, Pacer the Amazing Shop Dog, and I live our lives like we imagine Calvin and Hobbes would. So in honor of Calvin and Hobbes, here's my FOC picks with a little dynamic duo twist. First up, Marvel Comics Rogue and Gambit number one.

01:12:03
Destiny Strikes for your favorite X-Men duo. With Destiny kidnapping Rogue, it's time to hop on for a thrill ride with Rogue and Gambit that will lay bare some of Krakoa's biggest secrets. Calvin and Hobbs, Rogue and Gambit, peanut butter and jelly. Add this to your poll list now. That's funny. I would have never thought to imagine to put Rogue and Gambit in the same conversation as peanut butter and jelly and Calvin and Hobbs.

01:12:32
All right, Rogue and Gambit number one comes out March 1st. That's the first pick on Ben's list. This next one continues this theme of dynamic duos. But Ben's taking us to outer space to highlight a iconic dynamic duo in comic books. Here's Ben for you. Next up on the list, another dynamic duo, Han Solo and Chewbacca. Issue number 10. Why issue number 10? Because this is the-

01:12:57
first issue of a major new event coming to the Star Wars universe. We all know the hardest part of going to a comic book shop is figuring out where to start. Well, if you love anything to do with Star Wars and or Han Solo, Chewbacca, make sure you add this one to your pull list. Han Solo and Chewbacca, Calvin and Hobbes, Peanut Butter and Jelly. Get this one added. I'm going to tell you right now, I'm getting hungry. He needs to stop. I'm getting real hungry right now.

01:13:27
Hans Solo and Chewbacca also hit shops March 1st. Get that on your poll if that piqued your interest. And last but not least on this list, Ben is wrapping up strong. He's bringing us back Earthside for a husband and wife combo that we all know and love. And finally, DC Comics presents Superman number one. What's this dynamic duo? Well, Superman and Clark Kent, of course. All right. Well, that's a stretch. However, I needed to fit this one in.

01:13:56
absolutely crushing all of DC's new comics, including the Lazarus Planet series ongoing right now, is back to bring in the dawn of the new DC. Superman, number one. Jamal Campbell doing the artwork, that's a dynamic duo in and of itself. So that's it. Those are my FOC's picks of the week. Thanks for being here. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility, and always take it to the limit. There we go. That was Ben Kingsbury, ladies and gents, and you've just been taken to the limit.

01:14:28
All right, our lawyers are back and down. They're back and down. Yeah, our lawyers got it. The stopwatches. That is fair use right there. Ladies and gentlemen, how many of your local comic book shop owners have the personality and the sheer chutzpah to go on this podcast and basically say, hey, look, guys, I'm going to be on here talking about peanut butter and jelly just so you'll come into the store.

01:14:56
and have an experience. Ben is willing to go out of his way to go crazy and be silly for the sake of you, the listener, to come out to Gotham City Limit and have an awesome experience at his store. Come on. You can't say no to this man. You guys got to go there. Get your butts over there, for God's sake. For Ben's sake. I feel like if you buy any of these titles, Rogue and Gamut number one, Han Solo, Shubaco, or Superman number one.

01:15:20
Ben should give you a free peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A free peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I think that'd be a great idea. Oh my gosh. A crustable, a crustable at least. A crustable, a crustable. That's a little safer. Easier to store. All right, gents, of the three options that Ben has given us, which one is worthy of making it on your pull list? Which one gets your sample approval? Go ahead, C. Man, I have been in a real Superman kick recently. So I'm going to hit Superman for sure. All right, cool. What about you, Ed?

01:15:49
as much as she is way too good for this douchebag. I'm going to do Rogue and Gambit. Rogue murdered someone. What are you talking about? She's perfect for Gambit. Still too good. That was an accident. They're both like the trashiest people on the X-Men. I'll take my trash Southern. Thank you. Well, they're both Southern. Oh, non Creole. I think I'm going to echo C on this one. I'm going to go Superman number one because there's a shit ton of covers, alternate covers for that issue.

01:16:19
And I'm here for it, man. DC has gotten my attention for a good bit now. It's the first non-Batman title in six months. Right? Shit. Right? Yeah. So I'll probably check out Superman number one. And all that, it comes out sooner than the rest. And you guys know I'm impatient as hell. So I'm going to check that out. But listeners, that is the list for today. If any of those grab your attention, heed Ben's words, all right? Go to your local comic shops. Get your pre-orders in. And a big shout out to Ben for that. Get your sandwich.

01:16:47
Yeah, and get your sandwich. Well, no, that's the thing, see? If they're going to another comic shop, I mean, more power to them, but they ain't getting, they ain't getting the BB&J deal. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, I didn't say go to another comic shop. I said go take it to the limit. There we go. And get your sandwich. There we go. Big shout out to Ben for the help this week. And remember, even if you're unfortunate to not live in Jacksonville, you bums, you can still take it to the limit by shopping at GothamCityLimit.com for comics and exclusive variants you won't find anywhere else.

01:17:16
Oh, wait, they can do it online? Yeah. Oh, shh. That's what I'm saying. They got no excuse. No excuse. None. All right. Next up, we'll talk about how we've been spending the non-comic reading parts of our free time. But we're going to go stretch our legs for a little bit and go on a quick music break. I'm still going. I'm still finding new stuff in this music folder that DJ Crumbs gave me a few years ago. And it always feels like I'm coming across a new song I like. And this is one of them. So enjoy the music, and we'll be right back.

01:17:46
Yeah

01:18:25
The music you just heard was by our good friend, DJ Crumbs. Do me a favor, if you're on Instagram, give him a follow, right? We got a link to his profile in the show notes. That's the least you could do. He's always given us great music. Big shout out to DJ Crumbs. Now we've got no emails to read today, but if you feel like we missed anything too glaring during our Calvin and Hobbes segment, maybe you know something that we don't know, or maybe you have a favorite memory of reading Calvin and Hobbes that you wanna share with us.

01:18:52
I invite you to reach out to us on Instagram, Twitter, or email. And you may have noticed that Cesar has interrupted me yet. And that's because he had to drop off or he had to go. He had Daddy Doody was calling. So he had to drop off a little early. But we are fortunate enough that we got him for at least an hour in that last segment. So it'll just be me and Ed doing the rest of this show. But we get closer to the finish line anyways.

01:19:18
It is now a perfect time to tell you about the best entertainment options, worthy of your time personally backed by us. It's time for champion season.

01:19:31
It's time for Champion season.

01:19:41
Champion Season is a part of the show where we highlight the movies, TV series, books, video games, and other entertainment options that we've been spending our free time on. Ed, it's just you and me, so if you don't mind taking it first, I'll close it up. Yeah, I want to just kind of go with the theme of Calvin and Hobbs. There's another comic strip that I really like called The Far Side by Gary Larson. Oh, classic. There is a big book called, if you like to get the artist's annotation, and just to see how funny.

01:20:10
Gary Larson is. This book came out a while ago. It's called The Prehistory of the Far Side. There's a giant dinosaur skeleton with one of his weird little ugly people he drew. But that has a lot of talking about complaints he's gotten and just struggles dealing with the syndication and just coming up with ideas and how he came up with ideas. He has a very odd sense of humor. But I've always enjoyed his work.

01:20:39
Another one is, I'm going to champion a 90s book called Body Bags by Jason Pearson. He passed away last month, but they just recently announced it this week. He was part of Studio Guy Gin in Atlanta with guys like Brian Stelfreeze, another big guy, another I think super underrated artist.

01:21:06
12 gauge studios, I believe, but he did a lot of work for Marvel and DC. He had a run on Deadpool. I remember meeting him 2010 at a HeroesCon. I saw that he was going to be there, and this was probably maybe 10 plus years. I brought my body bags issues with me because it's like, oh man, I like this guy. I had no idea what he looked like. No idea. So, I was just going in there blind and saying, oh cool, he's here. He was like the main guy I wanted to see, surprisingly.

01:21:36
Um, and, uh, I went up to him. He's a really cool guy. He was like dressed in a suit, looked like a million bucks. He was so cool. And I showed him the body bags and it was like, he saw like a relic. Oh man. He will read this shit. Yeah. He was looking at it. He's like, man, I haven't seen this and no one's brought me this in forever. You know, cause he's been working at that time. He was, you know, doing Deadpool run. So he was, you know, he was in the.

01:22:03
I guess major leagues if you want to use that terminology. It's like, man, this is cool, man. I really appreciate you bringing this to me. So I bought a couple of prints. He signed. He was just a really cool guy. Like I said, he definitely stood out because he wasn't, you know, he was dressed up. He represented himself really well and I was talking to him and I was like, man, you should, man, I'd love for you to go back and do more, you know, body bag stuff. And he's like,

01:22:29
I love to, but man, Deadpool pays the bills, man. I got to do this. And that's kind of where I put it. It's like, okay, that makes sense, kind of understanding kind of more the business side of things. But I followed him on Facebook and Instagram. He's had some issues over the years. They're not, nothing secret. Definitely if you followed him on Facebook, he said some pretty crazy stuff. But I know he was getting his demons in order.

01:23:00
Unfortunately, he was working on actually a new body bags that he had kickstarted a few years ago. So he was wrapping that up. Hopefully we'll see something from that. I'm not 100% sure what the progress was. But like I said, he's one of those guys that I think should have been bigger than he was, you know, selfishly. It's like this guy should have been in that top tier of 90s guys. His stuff was so cool. I think body bags now would be a little...

01:23:27
problematic. I think you'd have to tweak some things. But I still love that world. I love the characters. Super, he draws action really well. Dude, this looks, I'm just looking it up on Google right now. These covers are awesome. I've never seen this. Yeah. Like I said, he's done work for everybody, but I think probably one of his biggest runs was his Deadpool run. He might've gotten a year on that, but he had a lot of personal issues and things.

01:23:54
But he was still working. He was still cranking workout. And like I said, he was working on a new body bags story, but stuff was so animated, it was just so cool. So stylized, so cool. Like I said, he should have been one of the best. Like I said, the way he put pages together. And like I said, he was just a cool dude overall. And it sucks that he passed away. And he did a short run, I think.

01:24:23
He did a short four issue mini Savage Dragon spin-off series. He's one of the few guys that drew Savage Dragon besides Eric Larson. So I think it's Baptism of Fire. I'm not sure. It's kind of its own standalone thing. Really cool stuff. If you haven't heard of him, check out his work. Like I said, revisit some of his stuff, but I'm going to champion him because like I said, he was like, so he's only 52. I believe he had a heart attack or a stroke. I'm not sure. I got some conflicting.

01:24:53
articles saying some different things. But I've been following him for a while and I know he was kind of turning things around and looked like he was kind of getting back into it. And unfortunately, it's just one of those stories that not everything works out like you think it should. But he was one of those guys that had unlimited potential. He should have been, like I said, he should have been one of the top guys coming into current times. Because like I said, he has thousand percent had the skill and the style.

01:25:21
Thank you for sharing that, Ed. You're always putting me on to some stuff, man. And this looks like something I should have been on. Yeah, there are no image did a... It was originally a Dark Horse book, but Image did a... Kind of collected it and did kind of like a recolored collection of it. So it's... It should be out there. You can easy to... It's easy to find. Actually just picked up a copy, so... Cool. Yep. All right. Thank you, Ed. I've got two champions today. One is a manga. It is called Adam the Beginning. It is by...

01:25:47
Osamu Tezuka gets credit on this because it's Astro Boy based. But the other two authors on this is Tetsuro Kasahara and Masami Yuki, I believe is how you say it. So it starts as a prequel to Astro Boy by following the lives of the two main scientists from that series, Umotaro Tenma and Hiroshi Ochano Mizu, I think is how you say it. So it follows like them in college, like studying robotics.

01:26:16
building their first AI and having to do robot wrestling and fighting rings to make money. Because they're part of a really low tier school. So they have to do whatever they can to make money. Robot wars. Yeah, exactly. I would describe it as, and I know that Marvel's done a series like this. I just don't know the specific name. But I would describe it as a series, if they made a series about Professor X and Magneto's younger years. You know how you have those two?

01:26:43
conflicting and sometimes overlapping mythologies. Or like Richard's Victor Valdun. Yeah, exactly. Like two like genius scientists with like conflicting personalities, but they still get along because they respect each other's work. And it's like just telling this story of their origin and you know, kind of split early on. There's a lot of action in this manga series. The style is artistically fresh. The storytelling is really interesting with it being a prequel and you know, adding something new to

01:27:13
you know, something that is iconic, right? Like Astro Boy, the god of manga, Osamu Suzuki's work, you know, it's definitely a big, I think it's a ballsy task to wanna tell the prequel story to something like Astro Boy, but they managed to pay like proper homage to the source material. I'll show you how it should have been known, old man. That's how, this was all right, I guess, but let me, this is what you should have done. No, it is like a big shadow, for sure. It is. So far it's been.

01:27:41
really fun. If you remember Metabots? Remember that cartoon show Metabots? We loved it as a kid. So it's like if you enjoyed Metabots and you love stories about the morality of artificial intelligence or like Blade Runner and stuff like that, then Adam the Beginning is worthy of picking that up. It's only on only two volumes of the manga have been translated to English. There's a third one coming out in February, but I have...

01:28:07
I've consumed both of the first two volumes. I love it. I highly recommend it if you're looking for something manga to read. And my second champion is the Invincible Season 2 trailer that we got this week. Ed, you had posted it on our Instagram. And I ended up watching it again for the second or third time this morning before we recorded. And for those of you that might be scratching your head, maybe you missed it. It's really just a short vignette that really was kind of like a meta commentary.

01:28:33
of Invincible and Alan the Alien sharing a hamburger. Well, Alan Alien is eating a hamburger, and Invincible is really just kind of like watching him. But they kind of just have a conversation. It's a meta commentary addressing the release date, providing an update why it's taken so long. Late 2023. Yeah, right? Super, super meta, but it's a funny interaction between Mark and Alan, and Seth Rogen is in prime form. And what I got out of it was, look, motherfuckers.

01:29:02
It takes a lot to make an animated series. And I don't know. The character designs, it's like, half of that sounds made up. Yeah. And do you agree, maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I feel like the animation looks better. It looks pretty sharp. Yeah, it looks like really good. So if they needed all this time to get the animation looking right and whatnot, I'm here for it. It sounds like it will come out this year. I got Bezos bucks going. Right. Hopefully this is better than that Lord of the Rings series.

01:29:29
But I am excited for Invincible. I'm glad that we at least got a trailer to hold us off. And that's what I'm a champion. So I've got the manga, Adam the Beginning, and Invincible Season 2 trailer. I didn't know about that. It looks cool. I like the redesigns. I'm telling you, it is rad, man. Like, you could tell they spent the way they draw the different robots. And they're all based on the classic robots from the main Astro Boy series. There's another series called Pluto.

01:29:57
I don't know if you've ever heard of this. I forget the name of the, I'll try to look it up. But there's a manga series called Pluto that also kind of served as a, you know, a kind of a weird tie-in slash a retelling of Astro Boy. Oh, here it is. It was written and illustrated by Neko Urasawa. And it was a murder mystery. It revolved around like this detective, just like this android that was a detective. And there was a murder mystery going around.

01:30:25
Someone was killing all of the original robots and all the original robots were like Astro Boy characters that manga Pluto is it's long as hell. There's eight volumes of it in total, but it is so Good. So it was that was another series where the writer was like, I love Astro Boy I'm I want to do the story that ties into it. That's more of an homage Yeah, I know it's sacrilege to even think I could

01:30:50
you know, add to the lore that Osama has done, but please. And you know, both of these have gotten the blessings from the family. That's cool. So that's a bonus one. Short Box Nation, that's the end of the segment. It's your turn to chime in, all right? This is your homework, right? Tell us if you got a killer champion that we should check out, or if you try out any of the recommendations that we shared today. We'd love to get some feedback. Hit us up on Instagram, Twitter, or email, all right? Ed.

01:31:16
Since it's just me and you, man, this will be an easy one because I could just look at you and ask, do you got any parting words, any lessons learned, or words of wisdom that we should share with the listeners before we sign off? Don't sell out. Not even for a fucking dollar, right? I don't care if it's one stuffed animal. God damn it, you are not merchandising. I like this quote that Bill Watterson says, and I think it's kind of encapsulates his whole leaving Calvin and Hobbes and maybe his ethos. But it's.

01:31:44
Quote, it's always better to leave the party early. I like that he was conscious enough to see that he had hit the pinnacle in this high and there was probably really, I mean, I'm sure that he probably could have had another solid run and years of acclaim and fame, but I like that he decided that he made the hard decision of, I'ma leave early. It's the opposite of what Kanye West tells you to do, which is don't leave while you're hot. That's how Mace screwed up. It's like, we can't miss you if you don't go away.

01:32:14
Exactly. Exactly.

01:32:19
Well there you have it Short Box Nation. Thank you for hanging out with us this week. If you enjoyed this episode, do us a favor and help spread the word to a friend or someone you know that loves comics as much as we do. Next week we are taking a break, right? We're gonna drop something on our Patreon to hold over our number one fans, but as far as regular weekly episodes, we're gonna take a break next week. We'll come back the following with something for you. So this is why I encourage you, if you just can't wait, if you love having Short Box content every week, to hold you over.

01:32:47
Become a member of our Patreon community. You'll get access to bonus episodes and videos. And we got an episode voting poll going up by the time this episode drops to help us pick the topic for a future episode. So if you wanna take part in that and enjoy all those extra rewards and perks, click the link in the show notes or go to patreon.com slash the short box to check out what's waiting for you there. Until we meet again, short box nation, take care of yourselves, have a great day, and please continue to make mine and yours short box. We'll talk to you soon. Peace.