Bill Watterson: Give Your Comics "a Distinguishing Spark of Life"

 

"Really, it's the writing that counts. More than just being funny, you have to convince readers to care about your characters by developing rounded personalities people can get involved with. That will give a strip a distinguishing spark of life. Unfortunately, it's not something anyone can explain how to do. Just practice, and have a lot of patience." 

-- Bill Watterson, in a 1986 letter to Mike Lynch

 

The hardest thing to do is a job with no clear, standard path. I mean, if you work hard and pass the tests, you can become a doctor, a lawyer, a professor. But to go into a creative field, there's no guarantee that hard work and persistence will cut it. But for some people -- people like me -- cartooning is a calling. 

Back in the 1980s,  I was working a couple of fast food jobs and reading Love and Rockets, and newspaper comic strips. Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes comic strip had launched in the fall of 1985. It was, as we all know now, a thing of cartoony beauty.

I wrote him a letter. I asked: How do I do what you do? What's the path? And then I suggested we meet. (I had learned he lived nearby. Now how I got THAT information I don't know.)

I had no idea if he would write back, but in June 1986, he did. Declining my lunch offer, he then went into what he felt the key was in developing a good comic strip: character development. "Just practice, and have a lot of patience," he wrote. 

I didn't know then what I know now. I was able to become a professional cartoonist. By the next decade, I had begun a cartooning career. I drew a magazine cover and got a book deal. It was beginning to happen. By the 2000s, I was off and running, with lots of clients. Thanks to Bill Gallo, Stan Goldberg, Frank Springer and other cartoonists I had met, they recommended me to be on the board of the National Cartoonists Society. In addition to drawing cartoons for The New York Daily News, Reader's Digest, The Wall Street Journal, etc., I was also teaching and lecturing. A big change. Mr. Watterson was right. Patience and persistence were key.

This letter is currently up for sale at ComicLink. 

I'm away for a time. Tomorrow's my birthday. I'll be flying out to see family. I hope to be back before too long. Persist!