Bill Watterson

Bill Watterson (born 1958) is an American cartoonist who created the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, which ran in newspapers from 18 November 1985 to 31 December 1995.

Born on 5 July 1958 in Washington, D.C., he grew up in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, whose suburban setting partly inspired the strip, and graduated in political science from Kenyon College in 1980. After brief spells at a newspaper and an advertising agency, he launched Calvin and Hobbes through Universal Press Syndicate in November 1985. At its peak it appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers worldwide.

Watterson refused to license his characters for merchandise and campaigned for larger Sunday strip formats. He ended the strip at the close of 1995 and has since lived largely out of public view, taking up painting. His first published work in 28 years, The Mysteries, appeared in 2023. He won the Reuben Award in 1986 and 1988, the Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2014, and entered the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2020.

For collectors

Eighteen official Calvin and Hobbes collections were published by Andrews McMeel between 1987 and 1997, starting with Calvin and Hobbes (April 1987) and including the larger treasuries The Essential Calvin and Hobbes (1988), The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes (1990) and The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes (1992). The 1987 debut collection is the first Calvin and Hobbes book. The three-volume hardback The Complete Calvin and Hobbes followed in October 2005. Because Watterson licensed no merchandise, the books are the main official Calvin and Hobbes material available.