“As comic strips are printed smaller and smaller, the drawings and dialogue have to get simpler and simpler to stay legible. Cartoons are just words and pictures, and you can only eliminate so much of either one before a cartoon is deprived of its ability to entertain”. – Bill Watterson, 1990

Bill Watterson is the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, one of the most popular and successful comic strips of all time. He admired early newspaper comic strip creators, who were often given an entire newspaper page for their strips and could play with innovative design, layout and storytelling. By 1990, not only had the size of the newsprint shrunk, but editors crammed multiple strips onto one Sunday comics page.Because of the popularity of Calvin and Hobbes, Watterson was able to convince newspaper editors not to print his Sunday strip smaller than 1/3 of a page in the final years of the strip. The artwork in these strips harkens back to the early days of comics. Unfortunately, Watterson was not able to reverse the overall trend of comics shrinking, which has only continued since he stopped drawing comics in 1995.

Calvin and Hobbes daily stripBill Watterson
Calvin and Hobbes
November 11, 1987
Ink and whiteout on paper
Bill Watterson Deposit Collection

Calvin and Hobbes SundayBill Watterson
Calvin and Hobbes
January 1, 1995
Ink and whiteout on paper
Bill Watterson Deposit Collection

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