Bill Watterson’s Calvin And Hobbes comic strip ran from 1985 to 1995 and helped define my childhood (and possibly yours as well). For the past nearly 20 years, the only new Bill Watterson work we’ve been able to see was this movie poster, so we’ve had to settle for cool stuff inspired by Watterson, like cute GIFs, lots of amusing cosplay, a biopic in the works, theme weddings, and funny Calvin And Hobbes-style snowmen.
That’s one way to kill time while waiting for life to shower you with meaning and happiness, but now there’s *pause to turn on a megaphone* NEW BILL WATTERSON COMICS YOU CAN SEE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!
Stephan Pastis, creator of syndicated strip Pearls Before Swine, revealed the secret collaboration on his blog today (via Gizmodo). It started when Pastis contacted Watterson last April about a Pearls Before Swine comic which joked about hitting on women by claiming to be the creator of Calvin And Hobbes.
As Pastis explains in an interesting post, Watterson responded with a proposal to collaborate on the comic. Watterson was familiar enough with the comic to know Pastis often pokes fun at his own drawing ability, and Watterson wanted to play with that theme. Pastis then created a new character named Libby (a reference to the name Bill). Libby is a precocious second grader who thinks she can draw the comic better than Pastis.
Here’s a sampling of the three Watterson collaborations so far. See if you can guess which parts of these were drawn by Watterson.
You can read more about what it was like to work with Watterson here and see all of the Pearls Before Swine comics involving Libby in chronological order here, if you are inclined to go exploring.