Episode 6 min
0:00 on 12/31/1995 a comic strip that ran in 2,400 newspapers worldwide just stopped mhmm gone last week we talked about daniel day lewis and the finality of closing a door but this feels different this is bill waterson ending calvin and hobbes and it wasn't just walking0:29 away it was building a fortress around what he'd made0:35 a fortress is a good word for it because the pressure on him was immense we're talking about a strip that at its peak had hundreds of millions of readers the syndicate was begging him for merchandise begging is a polite word they saw a gold mine they wanted hobbs dolls animated series lunch boxes everything and waterson said no1:04 to all of it to everything he had this conviction that the strip worked because it was a strip it was ink on paper the magic was in your imagination filling in the gaps he famously said that a talking hobbs doll would just be a cheap soulless thing and that's the part that gets me it wasn't about being1:27 a purist for the sake of it he was protecting the reader's experience he was protecting the world he built not just for himself but for us he knew that a cartoon would give hobbs a specific voice and part of the magic is that you don't know if hobbs is real or not the cartoon would have to decide1:53 exactly he was preserving the central ambiguity of the entire work and he fought that battle for years he took two sabbaticals which was unheard of at the time just to recharge and fight off the burnout from the daily grind and the corporate pressure so he's fighting his own syndicate fighting burnout and he's at the absolute height of2:16 his fame and influence and then he decides enough that's the moment he writes this letter to newspaper editors and says basically i've done all i can do here he felt that he'd said everything he wanted to say with calvin and hobbs and that continuing would just be repeating himself he wanted to leave while he was still at2:40 his best it's such a rare kind of self awareness to know when the story is over think about it he could have kept it going for another twenty years you know just cashing checks no one would have blamed him a lot of artists do but for him the artistic integrity was the whole point the final strip it's3:06 perfect calvin and hobbs are out in the fresh snow with their sled it's a magical world hobbs old buddy let's go exploring and then they sled off the edge of the panel and that was it he went exploring and we didn't get to come with him wow and he really meant it he completely disappeared we've talked about3:31 people like salinger and garbo but waterson's silence feels louder somehow i think it's because the work itself is so full of life and joy it's not the work of a recluse it's the work of someone who deeply loves the world but from a very specific private distance he didn't owe us anything more that's true4:02 he gave us ten years of perfection but what has he done since i mean does he just sit in a room somewhere no not at all he just lives a normal life in ohio he paints he plays music every few years he'll quietly do something he secretly drew a few panels for the comic strip pearls before swine4:27 a few years ago he created a poster for a comics festival in france wait really so he's still making art oh yeah he's just not making it for mass consumption he's making it for himself he uncoupled creativity from commerce and that might be his most radical act he didn't just quit his job he quit the entire system4:52 that came with it so the story isn't that he stopped being an artist the story is that he decided to be a private one he defined what enough meant not just for the strip but for his entire public life he drew a boundary and he's held that line for almost thirty years he has complete control over his5:17 legacy because he refused to let it become a product calvin and hobbes exists now exactly as it did in 1995 it's a preserved thing it's like he put the whole world of the strip in a snow globe on that last day and just let it be no sequels no reboots no talking dolls just a perfect finished story5:43 and in a world where no ip is ever allowed to die what's more powerful than that
