Look, Bill Watterson gave somebody an interview.

Go read it, as it will probably never happen again.

But because we're disagreeable on this blog, I would like to offer a bit of pushback on this:

It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.

I think some of the reason "Calvin and Hobbes" still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.

I've never regretted stopping when I did.

Obviously, Watterson probably made the right choice for himself. But the idea that it's "always better to the leave the party early" is one that I've never really been able to get fully behind. For example, Peanuts in the 90s was clearly not as good as Peanuts in the 60s. But I wouldn't actually want to give up those latter-day Peanuts. And I don't complain at all about newspapers rerunning all those old Peanuts. Because Peanuts is awesome.

The comics people curse newspapers for running are the bad ones, many of which you can find running down the sidebar of this fine blog. Just as Peanuts never became tedious or dull or otherwise bad, there's no reason to believe Calvin and Hobbes would have either. It may have become not as good, and if Watterson felt that was likely, than it's entirely his right to walk away from it. But as a fan, I would gladly have taken another fifteen years of not quite as good Calvin and Hobbes. And speaking as someone who occasionally tries his hand at various forms of art, if I every create something of worth, I plan on running it into the ground.

(Via friend of the blog Talcott Starr)