Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson retired in 1995 and vowed to never return. The Washington Post calls him the J.D. Salinger of comics—an elusive, reclusive genius. However, he and his artwork miraculously resurfaced for a few days this week in Stephan Pastis' Pearls Before Swine.
Pastis said working with Watterson "is like getting a call from Bigfoot." The collaboration also raised money for Parkinson's research.
"“Several years ago, when Stephan did one of his strips that mocked his own drawing ability and mentioned my strip in comparison, I thought it might be funny for me to ghost ‘Pearls’ sometime, just to flip it all on its head,” Watterson said. “It was just a silly idea, and I didn’t know Stephan, so I never pursued it, and years went by.”
“I had expected to just mess around with his characters while they did their usual things, but Stephan kept setting up these situations that required more challenging drawings," Watterson said, "so I had to work a lot harder than I had planned to! It was a lot of fun.”
[via the Washington Post]
