Bill Watterson

Bill Watterson is the creator of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin and Hobbes, in Watterson's own words, was about "private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships". In more practical terms, it was a strip about a six-year-old boy, his stuffed tiger, his wild imagination, and his cheerfully demented view of the world... not to mention alien-shaped snowmen, killer bicycles, and the infuriating girl next door. It was a wildly funny comic strip, and it was a serious blow to comic readers everywhere when, in 1995, Watterson abruptly announced his retirement and retreated to the hinterlands of Ohio, where he's been hiding ever since.

Aftertaste:
This is something that really irritates the hell out of me, so you'll have to forgive the length.

Cartoonist Jim Davis has been inducted into the Licensing Hall of Fame. Garfield the Cat(TM), Davis's fat, orange, lasagna-loving claim to fame, is the ultimate corporate shill, ready to pimp products for anybody who can afford Davis's licensing fees. Davis's strip (which he no longer writes or draws, instead serving as a "creative consultant") has been around for what seems like forever, and I'm sure it will continue to appear for years to come, regardless of the fact that it hasn't actually made anyone laugh since, oh, 1989.

At the other end of the comic strip icon spectrum, we have Bill Watterson.

Bill Watterson fought to keep Calvin and Hobbes from turning into a Garfield-style scam (insisting that "characters lose their believability as they start endorsing major companies and lend their faces to bedsheets and boxer shorts") and he currently owns 100% of the licensing rights to Calvin and Hobbes. And how has that no-selling-out policy worked out for him? Well, take a gander at virtually any Chevy truck you pass on the highway. Ugly, tasteless, counterfeit window stickers of Calvin relieving himself on the Ford Motors logo are everywhere. Watterson's images have been stolen, cheapened, and tampered with. If you have one of these because you're actually a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, do yourself and Bill Watterson a favor: throw it away.


Availability:
Everywhere.

Other Recommendations:
Anything by Berkley Breathed, who also hates Jim Davis, although I suspect that in Breathed's case it was because he never managed to make anywhere near as much money as Davis did, despite the fact that his strip was about a thousand times funnier.