Just got finished watching a documentary called Dear Mister Watterson, about the creator of Calvin and Hobbes and the impact it has had on people’s lives and on the medium of cartooning, so it’s time for me to talk about it.

First off, don’t get too excited, like I did. Watterson does not appear in the film. I admit, I leaped to that conclusion based entirely on the fact that it was 100 minutes long and surely he had to appear in there somewhere, right?

But no, of course not. He is intensely reclusive and doesn’t talk to anybody. As a writer and an artist myself, I respect that decision, although as a fan and a human being, I find it intensely frustrating because we all want to worship our heroes in person or at least gaze upon them from afar.

Because he’s such a recluse, this is a rare sort of documentary : one about a person who does not appear in it. Berkely Breathed of Bloom County fame said that Watterson was the Sasquatch of cartooning. You might see a footprint here and there or other signs that he’s been through, but only two or three people have ever actually seen him.

An exaggeration, of course. I know from the documentary that he gave a speech at a cartoonists’ association dinner once, and presumably he did not do it Wizard of Oz style, so they got to see him at least.

But it gets the idea across.

Like I said, I respect his decision to not engage his public directly and to speak entirely through his work. I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t do the same if I am in his position some day. Part of me would always want to be friendly and engaged and to make beautiful moments for my fans in the way that only the famous and beloved can do.

But I am also extremely reclusive, and I don’t know which side would win. I sure as hell would not want total strangers knocking on my door wanting a piece of me. Fuck THAT noise. That would be completely unacceptable. I am not a spontaneously friendly person who is always ready to drop whatever he is doing to be with people.

I am, instead, a person who needs considerable recharge time after being “on”, and people would have to respect my boundaries as I have clearly and publicly defined them or I would become increasingly hard to deal with.

That is why I have always wondered if I would get a reputation as a curmudgeon or even as some sort of fan-eating ogre if I was ever lucky enough to be a famous writer. If the wrong things happened, people would see my dark side, and it can be pretty damned dark, especially to people who are used to my sunny side.

In my life as it is now, I have all the alone time I need, and interruptions are almost never a surprise, and so everybody sees my sunny side most of the time. And that is exactly how I like it. I don’t want to have to get all loud and pushy and sarcastic with people in order to maintain my boundaries, but at this point in my life, it seems highly possible that what others would find to be perfectly normal socialization would make me go all stormy.

I’m working on that.

Then again, I am feeling grumpy lately. I am still working on integrating the fiery side of my personality, with all the anger and passion and motivation, into the rest of my otherwise soggy muddy self, and that means getting in touch with my anger, and damned that makes things more complicated.

About Calvin and Hobbes itself : some of the people in the documentary had started reading it when they were Calvin’s age, and I am totally jealous of them. I did not discover C&H until my later teens, way after I was in Calvin’s age range, and so I could never have the same sort of relationship with it as someone who grew up with it.

Heck, the strip started in 1985, when I was already 12. Hard to imagine it being a product of the 80’s and 90’s, isn’t it? It just seems too innocent for such a jaded time.

But even if I had been the right age at the right time, I never really identified with Calvin very much. I was a quiet, serious, well-behaved kid for the most part, and I never lived in a world of my own imagination where I was Spaceman Spiff, or really played any sort of make-believe games like that.

I just read books and watched television and played video games.

I do wonder sometimes if I was an unnaturally boring kid. But I know that I was just too timid (and too practical and sensible, to my detriment) for that sort of thing.

I did wander around exploring my neighborhood sometimes, so I was not entirely dull. And once I had a bike, I would take trips to other parts of town, usually in search of video games other than the ones at my local arcade, but sometimes just to see what was there.

But as the years went on and the bullying came into the picture, I become increasingly agoraphobic, and the time I spent outside of the house got less and less.

The only way in which I ever identified with Calvin was those rare moments where he was just a little too smart for his own good or otherwise showed signs of having problems related to being a smart kid in a world not made for smart kids.

That is totally me. I always got good grades, because why not, it’s not hard, but I often knew more than I was supposed to for my age and gave people very mixed messages with my child’s body and adult’s mind.

Still a kid at heart, though, and that was hard for others to see.

Anyhow, talk to you tomorrow, folks!