Guest Comic Annotations – Patrick Tsao
This follows the beats of Calvin and Hobbes’s “wagon ride strips” well enough that I thought parts of it might’ve been direct quotes from Bill Watterson’s classic. My research didn’t turn up any matches, but maybe I missed one.
C&H is one piece of popular culture I expect will be half-forgotten in about ten more years, partly due to the shrinking of comic strips’ cultural influence in general (their role seems increasingly filled by memes) and partly due to Watterson’s heroic-seeming refusal to be adapted (it’s a bit more complicated than that, to me). Still, the strip has a lot of intellectual descendants, so its influence will probably continue a bit more indirectly.
Tsao’s main comics jam now is Half-Man with writer Anna Leue. He also has a game project, Never to Return.
I just hope Waterson isn’t remembered for all those bootleg Calvins pissing on whatever.
Don’t worry — my family is passing him on to children’s children.
Watterson is echoed all over comics, both printed and electronically distributed. It’s most clear in ‘Frazz’ and ‘Zits’, among others.
I don’t get most memes. I usually don’t know what pop culture references they’re making and don’t understand what point the poster is trying to make.
I can see why you’re worried, but I think Calvin and Hobbes will last a while longer, if only in the way that Looney Tunes preserved a lot of the popular culture of the early 20th century. It’ll be niche, but I think it will have that “Hey, this is what that thing was referencing!” audience for a long time.