Guys, I didn’t watch this trailer. I couldn’t bring myself to. I know what the movie is about – the brilliant and elusive Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes – and I know what the trailer contains and what it doesn’t – namely an interview with said genius – but I have such a deep, nostalgic, emotional connection to Calvin & Hobbes (as I know many of you do, too) that I couldn’t bear to watch it. I probably won’t see the movie, just because of how deeply, deeply sad the end of Calvin & Hobbes made me. Initially, when the comic strip ended, I was sad to see it go but comforted myself by knowing that Watterson was just going to move on to something new, different, bigger or even better. But he hasn’t. Bill Watterson just disappeared after the end of C&H, and to me that’s a literary tragedy on the same scale as Douglas Adams dying before finishing the third Dirk Gently book.
Regardless, I would really love this kickstarted labour of love to get as much recognition as possible. Maybe if we all try really hard, Bill Watterson will at least start illustrating a new comic. It doesn’t have to be Calvin & Hobbes, but c’mon, man, you created one of the best comic strips of all time and you just…walked away from the medium entirely?
In other news, The Onion reports that Bill Watterson writes, illustrates and shreds a new C&H strip every day. I feel bad that my sadness has allowed me to wonder whether or not this is, in fact, true.