Existentialism in Bill Watterson’s Comic Strips

Bill Watson is a writer of a famous manga "Calvin and Hobbs", a unified American cartoonist from 1985 to 1995. Among these short stories, Calvin is full of childish mischief, and with Hobbes, is a creative child full of deep thoughts. Tigers, they are all examples of cartoon existentialism. Through desperate choice and decision on much of the story in Calvin's story, he is trying to deal with the changing world. The behavior of this character depicts people coldly confronting human disorder, cruel nature, cruel world, and inevitable death.

In "Calvin and Hobbes", Bill Watson uses Kevin 's innocence to tell about human behavior. This is the theme of a successful manga. It is to use a simple situation in parallel with the reality of life. I will analyze the cartoon above to prove this. Common 3-panel cartoons are usually constructed like this: premise, contradiction, solution or distortion. This manga is no exception. Hobbes started talking, "Why are you planning to dig a hole?" Kevin replied: "I am looking for buried treasure" and pierce the ground. This sets the position, motivation, and map of the strip. "Looking for buried treasure" is a phrase commonly used to metaphorically represent undulating people and inventors looking for the next big thing, similar to rough diamonds.

In a speech at Kenyon College in 1990, Bill Watson, a comic producer of Calvin and Hobbes, says: I like this job, I draw a cartoon book for five years, I am driving home. Manga fun is not money, it is a job. Everyone should write in some form. You do not have to write for publication, and you do not need to be the next wonderful thing. Many people I know are talking about writing wonderful novels that rotate in their heads, but they have never done so. They describe themselves as great novelists, bend their computer keyboard somewhere in the apartment and pour their heart and soul into the page so that they can see their great novels.

Today Adam Gurri posted a link to his answer to Bill Watterson 's Twitter speech ... The Cheapening of the Comics. Gurri said that Calvin and Hobbes were favorite comics of his childhood. I like Calvin and Hobbes, but I do not like peanuts. It is not surprising that Watterson likes peanuts as well. His mother can reasonably guess that he punishes him for engaging in such destructive behavior. She tries to teach him that this behavior is unacceptable. Will she quantify the harm of his behavior? Yes, it is. Punishment should be suitable for crime. The scale of punishment should inform Kevin exactly about the real scale of the crime. It is a relatively big penalty to be put on hold for a month, so it tells Kevin that his crime is relatively large. By understanding the real scale of various crimes, he can make more informed behavior decisions.