the thing about watterson that blows me away every time no matter how many times I have the same realization: I could see a SOLITARY LINE - not an object, not a tangible thing, just one line- drawn by him and immediately peg it as watterson. that’s how goddamn good he is, one pen stroke is beautiful
His last strip remains both beautiful and my first experience with melancholy and just..... THATS what I measure TV series finales against.
Just in these two strips alone, the detail and accuracy of aircraft to the point you can reasonably determine the real-life counterparts for the time and the detail on the trains. It's just mind-boggling how good he was drawing background that so many comic artists would treat as throwaway ground.
and his trees good lord nobody has ever drawn a tree that compares to the most throwaway tree he’s drawn
What’s wild is that as amazing as his brush and ink lines are, the original drawings include lots of white-out, where he fixed things he wasn’t satisfied with.
i know we're talking about the art but "his eye twitches involuntarily" is so good too
Such a huge fan.
Calvin and Hobbes/Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing are the only reason my youngest brother was not brutally murdered and buried in a shallow grave as a kid. Both were reminders that he was a normal little boy and families all over the world were dealing with the weird shit.
When you see those highly detailed fantasy sequences he drew, you realize that most of the time he's holding back like 90% of his drawing abilities to focus on jokes, and I think that's amazing.
There is just no question he elevated the art form of the comic strip. There have been other greats, but the longer I look, the better they get.
I wish a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon existed just so I could’ve made an attempt to get a role in it. And I’m not even a voice actor.