In Which Calvin And Or Hobbes Are Transmogrified

Destroying the World

by NOAH DAVIS

Dear Mr. Watterson
dir. Joel Allen Schroeder
90 minutes

Calvin and Hobbes is gone but Calvin and Hobbes has not been forgotten. This is the simple thesis at the heart of Dear Mr. Watterson, a documentary from filmmaker and self-professed Calvin lookalike Joel Allen Schroeder. Starting in 1985, Bill Watterson wrote and illustrated thousands of comic strips featuring a six-year-old boy and his very real stuffed tiger. He stopped on December 31, 1995 but nearly 20 years after Calvin and Hobbes looked out over a fresh snowfall and said "Let's go exploring," the panels remain engrained in pop culture. Schroeder, 34, set out to learn why.

The film begins with a series of seemingly random people offering their thoughts about the effect the strip had on them. A young redheaded woman holds up a copy of "The Lazy Sunday Book," one of the book collections that have sold over 45 million copies in two dozen languages, and sheepishly admits that shoplifting the tome was her "first and only crime." Another man who happens to be a 300-pound black man, offers that "Calvin's the kid you want to be. Even if you're a 300-lb black kid, you still want to be Calvin." Seth Green, wearing a Star Wars shirt written in Japanese and not one of the bootleg Calvin and Hobbes shirts he will later admit to having made with his friends, says, "Calvin and Hobbes is such a subversive comic but it has such a purity to it that most comics don't because it is so joyful and very much in imagination of this kid." Other testimonials alternate between simple recollections that grasp at meaning and Green's overblown praise. These come within the first 10 minutes.

All of which is to say that people like Calvin and Hobbes. They really do. Jenny Robb, curator of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum to which Watterson bequeathed many of his original drawings, has never met anyone who felt negatively about the strip. A father on a bench tells the camera that "it's one of those things that when you find it, you want to share it," and proceeds to explain how he shared it with his son. 

For the most part, Dear Mr. Watterson sticks to this format: clips of interview subjects attempting to extrapolate their own personal experiences with the comic into universal truths. Schroeder also talks to contemporary comic strip artists but the idea is the same. While there are bits and pieces of revelation in these recollections, too frequently it's simply people talking about themselves and and their banal thoughts about what a little boy and his tiger told them about What It All Means. It gets trying, quickly.  

But these trips down comic memory lane, the periods of nostalgic recollection, aren't entirely bad. On at least one level, Calvin and Hobbes is a comic about nostalgia. Watterson brilliantly wrote and drew the world of an imaginative child but it's universal enough to bring all kinds of adult readers back to their youths. Calvin and Hobbes is praised, correctly, for dealing with deep, philosophical issues but the reserve is true, too; it speaks to the part in all of us that wants to put on a pair of snow pants, make a fort, and fight off the evil snowmen. Nostalgia can be remarkably simple, whether it comes in the form of a comic strip or memories shared with a filmmaker.

Nostalgia also sells. Schroeder spent six years making what he hopes is his masterpiece, raising more than $120,000 over two Kickstarter campaigns. The money, presumably, comes from people who wouldn't be out of place in the film itself. If Robb and others are to believed, that's all of us. This is, admittedly, a somewhat cynical and negative reading of a film that's clearly a personal labor of love (albeit one that cost at least $120,000) for a filmmaker who loves his subject. But Dear Mr. Watterson feels shallow. Schroeder tries hard but most of the film is only satisfying because it is about Calvin and Hobbes and it gives fans, of which I consider myself one, a reason to reminisce. There's value there, but hardly a full-length documentary's worth.

Ironically, the film is at its best when it gets closest to the elusive Mr. Watterson. Schroeder travels to Chagrin Falls, Ohio, the small town outside of Cleveland that Watterson calls home. The filmmaker never attempts to make contact with his subject – the documentary gets its name from the only line in a word document Schroeder has never finished, or even really started, to the writer and illustrator – but the city serves as a proxy. We see live footage of the forest Calvin plays in, the triangle of streets at the center of town Calvin towers over in one strip where he's blown up to Godzilla proportions, and other glimpses into the world we already know on paper. We begin to understand how the man captured the all-encompassing universe of a boy.

We also learn that Watterson was guilty of his own particular brand of nostalgia. At a 1989 comic convention, he gave a speech titled "The Cheapening of the Comics." It's a long, frequently eloquent, always passionate dissection of the state of comics, lamenting the loss of creative control at the hands of the syndicates, the newspapers, and the cartoonists themselves. It's a call to arms, a bold stand by an up-and-coming creator who is frustrated by an industry he loves. Contemporary comic creators in Dear Mr. Watterson tell us that his remarks were appreciated by some members of the industry and disliked by many others. But they were genuinely his views based upon his principled stand, a stance that continues to cost him hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing fees. While some interviewees in the film understand his choice and others don't, they all respect his decision. Watterson, like his main character, chose his own path. So did Schroeder in bringing Dear Mr. Watterson to the screen. You have to suspect the unseen creator of the comic would be proud.

Watterson certainly carved out a place in the world. "I think Calvin and Hobbes are the last great cartoon characters. He nailed that. It's great to be first but it's also great to be last," Berkeley Breathed, creator of Opus, says late in the film. For a variety of reasons – mostly due to Watterson's singular genius but also the destruction of the newspaper industry, the fracturing of the comic community, etc. etc. – we will never see another comic like Calvin and Hobbes. And that's fine. The boy and his tiger will continue to exist in memories and books, waiting to be discovered by future generations. That's a fact. But you have to wonder how much that reality really needs exploring.

Noah Davis is a senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Brooklyn. He last wrote in these pages about Haywire. He tumbls here and twitters here. 

"When You Break" - Bear's Den (mp3)

"Isaac" - Bear's Den (mp3)

The new EP from Bear's Den is entitled Agape.

In Which I Just Don't Trust Anybody

Schulz and Friends

by BILL WATTERSON

The comic strip Peanuts was more than a decade old when I started reading it as a kid in the mid-1960s. At that time, Peanuts was becoming a force of pop culture, with best-selling books and a newly burgeoning merchandising empire of plastic dolls, sweatshirts, calendars and television specials. The overwhelming commercial success of the strip often overshadows its artistic triumph, but throughout its 50-year run, Charles Schulz wrote and drew every panel himself, making his comic strip an extremely personal record of his thoughts. It was a model of artistic depth and integrity that left a deep impression on me.

While growing up, I collected the annual Peanuts books and used them as a personal cartooning course, copying the drawings with the idea of someday becoming the next Charles Schulz.

At that time, most of the strip went over my head, and I certainly had no understanding of how revolutionary Peanuts was or how it was changing the comics. Peanuts pretty much defines the modern comic strip, so even now it's hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty, the inner thoughts of a household pet, the serious treatment of children, the wild fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous scale -- in countless ways, Schulz blazed the wide trail that most every cartoonist since has tried to follow.

David Michaelis's biography, Schulz and Peanuts, is an earnest and penetrating look at the man behind this comic-strip phenomenon. With new access to Schulz's personal files, professional archives and family, Mr. Michaelis presents the fullest picture we have yet of the cartoonist's life and personality.

Born in 1922, Schulz always held his parents in high regard, but they were emotionally remote and strangely inattentive to their only child. Schulz was shy and alienated during his school years, retreating from nearly every opportunity to reveal himself or his gifts. Teachers and students consequently ignored him, and Schulz nursed a lifelong grudge that so few attempted to draw him out or recognized his talent. His mother was bedridden with cancer during his high-school years, and she died long before he could prove himself to her -- a source of endless regret and longing for him. As a young adult, he disguised his hurt and anger with a mild, deflecting demeanor that also masked his great ambition and drive.

Once he finally achieved his childhood dream of drawing a comic strip, however, he was able to expose and confront his inner torments through his creative work, making insecurity, failure and rejection the central themes of his humor. Knowing that his miseries fueled his work, he resisted help or change, apparently preferring professional success over personal happiness. Desperately lonely and sad throughout his life, he saw himself as "a nothing," yet he was also convinced that his artistic ability made him special. An odd combination of prickly pride and utter self-abnegation characterizes many of his public comments.

Peanuts launched in 1950, appearing in just seven newspapers. The comic strip grew slowly at first, but as its vision expanded and the characters solidified, it caught fire with readers. Schulz's fixation on his work was total, and his private life suffered as a result. Mr. Michaelis uncovers quite a bit of Schulz's more personal tribulations.

Schulz's strong-willed and industrious first wife, Joyce, grew disgusted with his withdrawal, and she often treated him cruelly. As the marriage finally unraveled, Schulz had an unsuccessful affair, and he later broke up the marriage of the woman who became his second wife.

Schulz's life turned more peaceful after he remarried, but he never overcame the self-doubt and dread that plagued him. Work remained his only refuge. At the end, deteriorating health took away Schulz's ability to draw the strip, a loss so crushing that it can only be considered merciful that he died, at age 77 in 2000, the very day his last strip was published.

It's a strange and interesting story, and Mr. Michaelis, the author of a 1998 biography of artist N.C. Wyeth, paces the narrative well, offering many insights and surprising events from Schulz's life. Undoubtedly the most fascinating part of the book is the juxtaposition of biographical information and reproduced Peanuts strips. Here we see how literally Schulz sometimes depicted actual situations and events. The strips used as illustrations in "Schulz and Peanuts" are reproduced at eye-straining reduction and are often removed from the context of their stories, but they vividly demonstrate how Schulz used his cartoons to work through private concerns. We discover, for example, that in the recurring scenes of Lucy annoying Schroeder at the piano, the crabby and bossy Lucy stands in for Joyce, and the obsessive and talented Schroeder is a surrogate for Schulz.

Reading these strips in light of the information Mr. Michaelis unearths, I was struck less by the fact that Schulz drew on his troubled first marriage for material than by the sympathy that he shows for his tormentor and by his ability to poke fun at himself.

Lucy, for all her domineering and insensitivity, is ultimately a tragic, vulnerable figure in her pursuit of Schroeder. Schroeder's commitment to Beethoven makes her love irrelevant to his life. Schroeder is oblivious not only to her attentions but also to the fact that his musical genius is performed on a child's toy (not unlike a serious artist drawing a comic strip). Schroeder's fanaticism is ludicrous, and Lucy's love is wasted. Schulz illustrates the conflict in his life, not in a self-justifying or vengeful manner but with a larger human understanding that implicates himself in the sad comedy. I think that's a wonderfully sane way to process a hurtful world. Of course, his readers connected to precisely this emotional depth in the strip, without ever knowing the intimate sources of certain themes. Whatever his failings as a person, Schulz's cartoons had real heart.

The cartoons are also terrifically funny and edgy, even after all these years. The wonder of "Peanuts" is that it worked on so many levels simultaneously. Children could enjoy the silly drawings and the delightful fantasy of Snoopy, while adults could see the bleak undercurrent of cruelty, loneliness and failure, or the perpetual theme of unrequited love, or the strip's stark visual beauty. If anything, I wish Mr. Michaelis's biography had devoted more space to analyzing the strip on its own terms as an art. Knowing the sources of Schulz's inspiration does not explain the imaginative power of the work.

I was also surprised that Mr. Michaelis largely glossed over the later years of the strip, despite major shifts in its focus and tone. As newer characters developed into dominant voices, Charlie Brown receded, becoming almost avuncular, and Peanuts abandoned much of its earlier harshness. It would have been interesting to learn how Schulz's conception of the strip changed over the years and what Peppermint Patty, Spike and Rerun offered him in the way of new expressive possibilities. I was not always enthusiastic about Schulz's later choices, but it says something for Schulz that he resisted the simple, robotic repetition of a successful formula. In this, too, "Peanuts" was unlike most other comic strips.

For all the influence that Peanuts had on me, I was content to admire Schulz from afar, and like most of his millions of readers I never met him. Mr. Michaelis has done an extraordinary amount of digging and has written a perceptive and compelling account of Schulz's life. This book finally introduces Charles Schulz to us all.

Mr. Watterson is the creator of the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes."

"The Sound of Your Heart" - Eskimo Joe (mp3)

"Childhood Behavior" - Eskimo Joe (mp3)

"Losing My Mind" - Eskimo Joe (mp3)

In Which He Grew Larger Over Time As Do Us All

Partner

by ALEX CARNEVALE

He didn't like school that year. It was more difficult than it should have been, and his new clothes chafed at him. When he came home his parents had an expectant look on their faces. He went to his room, closed the door. It was the ending of a John Updike story, but it was still going on.

He was not the first boy of this sort, whose imagination grew too large for the confines of his little life. His father had played with him as a child, but work grew more time-consuming, and he never saw joy in his father's cheekbones. His mother cut her hair.

Snow came heavy and sogging, getting in his clothes and things. The warmth of fall evaporated. The trees lost their leaves. In the back of his closet, digging for a textbook he'd misplaced the year before, he saw an old-stuffed animal, dirty with the smell of sand and a vacation he found he didn't remember with any clarity. He took it out, never put it back.

A creek a quarter mile from his backyard had frozen over. Despite explicit instructions from his parents and classmate neighbor, he trod on the ice, feeling a growing excitement at the thought of being something larger than himself. After an hour, he went back to his room to look for the stuffed tiger. Not finding it, he searched every room, each nook, each spot worriedly. There, finally, sitting by the curb, was Hobbes.

While he danced on the ice, waiting to fall through and possibly die, Hobbes spun on his vibration, watching him. A dance wasn't silly if someone watched you, a joke was funnier, more perceptive.

Later: he and Hobbes spinning like a galaxy.

He became more and more distracted at school, less interested in what was going on around him. He spent his life in a near constant daydream, imagining the vagaries of entertainment where none could readily be found. Snow was a continuous reminder of the distance between him and everything, in his shoes and bartered clothes, his mother's hand on his neck, writing something at a hard desk, walking with his head down.

The world was tight with a fervor he could not explain, a method that was madness.

He was convinced, finally, that he would remain a little boy forever. When he looked in the mirror, nothing changed, at least nothing he could track. He grew no stronger; he ate, but did not get fat like some adults did. When he and Hobbes went into nature, even their visions were enigmatic, sinister.

Slowly, he learned to ride on the little joys: a burst of fleeting violin, a strike of lightning, a salty manner, a playful and clever trick. He found pleasure in mayhem caused to his neighbor, his parents. Tearing events apart with your fingertips was fulfilling, watching it burn from the inside begat a twisted sense of joy. He could make the world -- others could make the world -- but he could also make the world.

The mind is a bitter friend, he learned, but it was the only one he had. If he could ring in the day this way, if he could craft himself in his own image, drift off in the tiger? Who knows what gleeful horror might unfold.

The world is a cynical, needless place. We have nothing to do to pass the days here but mere amusement. There is no future; there is only the present, hanging by a thread. To see ourselves in others is a great joy, but it is a simple one. Nothing complex survives very long in space.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here.

"I'll Take The Long Road" - Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens (mp3)

"Trouble In My Way" - Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens (mp3) highly recommended

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