I'm willing to take the blame if the strip goes down the drain, and I want the credit if it succeeds. So long as it has my name on it, I want it to be mine. Bill Watterson More Quotes by Bill Watterson More Quotes From Bill Watterson I chose to tell the story visually, so that anyone of any age, from any country, could understand it. Bill Watterson age stories country I always think of "Popeye" and "Barney Google" as quintessential comic strips in that old rollicky, slapstick way we've sort of lost. Bill Watterson google way thinking I still read newspaper comics, but without much hope for their future. Bill Watterson newspapers stills I have enough friends who are gamers. I actually enjoy watching them play because of the visuals and the storytelling of the games. I just love being able to go on an adventure and games are just so sophisticated now that you can just get lost in a world for 20 hours and just be someone else in a very visceral, emotional way. And that's just fascinating. Bill Watterson emotional love-is adventure I've always been a huge fan of fantasy and adventure, putting yourself in someone else's shoes, I'm sure that's why I'm an actor. It's why I played with action figures as a kid, that's why I wrote and drew and read comics as a kid. Bill Watterson shoes adventure kids Cleveland is a really hard place, it's a very creative place, it feeds you creatively, but it's a very hard place to make a living creatively. Bill Watterson cleveland hard creative I played in rock bands in college and then right out of college I moved over to Europe and lived in Ireland for about four years playing in indie rock bands. I love and miss being in a band, I still am in a band but pursuing that as a career I definitely missed it but I felt like that ship had sailed. Bill Watterson rocks college years The more words you have at your disposal, the more precisely you can express yourself. Bill Watterson express-yourself Too often cartoonists just look at other cartoonists and, after a lot of inbreeding, everyone has the same funny look. The challenge of drawing is that there is no one right way to visually describe something. It's a good thing to confront your limitations and preconceptions every so often. Bill Watterson inbreeding drawing challenges Animation, by necessity, is a team sport, and the fewer people with input into my work, the better I like it. Bill Watterson team sports people Books are almost always better than the movies made from them, because there are things books do well and things movies do well, but usually those things don't overlap: the same with comics and animation. Bill Watterson animation made book We consume everything like potato chips. In this environment, I suspect the cartoonist's connection with readers is likely to be superficial and fleeting, unless he taps into some fervent special interest niche. And that audience, almost by definition, will be tiny. Bill Watterson fleeting connections special If you're a painter, it's simply taken for granted that you'll spend a lot of time in museums studying great paintings, but if you're a cartoonist, it used to be very hard to see an original cartoon drawing. Bill Watterson drawing taken museums I enjoy the drawing more than the writing, so I try to think of ideas that will allow me to develop the visual side of the strip as fully as possible. Bill Watterson writing ideas thinking Each kind of story has its own problems in writing, but my main concern really is to keep the reader on his toes, or to keep the strip unpredictable. I try to achieve some sort of balance between the two that keeps the reader wondering what's going to happen next and be surprised. Bill Watterson balance writing two I was offered a job at the Cincinnati Post as their editorial cartoonist in a trial six month arrangement. The agreement was that they could fire me or I could quit with no questions asked if things didn't work out during the first few months. Sure enough, things didn't work out, and they fired me, no questions asked. Bill Watterson agreement fire jobs My guess is that the editor [Cincinnati Post] wanted his own Jeff MacNelly (a Pulitzer winner at 24), and I didn't live up to his expectations. My Cincinnati days were pretty Kafkaesque. Bill Watterson winner editors expectations I think comics overall would be better. I think there's a tremendous potential to be tapped. Bill Watterson would-be thinking I don't enjoy lettering very much, but that's the way I write and that belongs in the strip because the strip is a reflection of me. Bill Watterson reflection writing way I'd like to see cartoonists measuring their work by higher standards than how many papers their strips are in and how much money they make. Bill Watterson standards higher paper
