It is easy to run short on adjectives when describing Bill Watterson’s beloved comic strip, Calvin & Hobbes.

Running from 1985-1995, Calvin & Hobbes is undoubtedly one of the triumphs of modern newspaper cartooning, and the strip has lost none of its humor, warmth, or potency in the over-a-decade since its end.

In the prologue of his new book Looking for Calvin & Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip, Nevin Martell writes:

Though Watterson’s influences are somewhat easy to ascertain, the man himself is an enigma.  During the ten years that Calvin & Hobbes was drawn and was entrancing millions and millions of readers around the world, the man behind it tried to remain as anonymous as possible.  As the boy and his tiger reached new highs in readership, their creator shrank deeper into self-imposed obscurity.  Watterson never felt comfortable sharing himself with his readers in a public way and he never allowed his work to be licensed.  On the extremely rare occasion that he did make a public appearance or grant an interview, he only spoke openly about his work and went to great lengths to avoid discussing, or divulging, any details from his personal life.

To call him the J.D. Salinger of American cartooning is to take the easy road, but the fact remains that this incredibly talented comic artist is one of the most elusive characters of the late twentieth century — so elusive, in fact, that only a handful of pictures of him have ever been published.  He gave his last interview with a journalist in 1989 and his last public appearance was a commencement speech he gave at his alma mater, Kenyon College, in 1990.  Since officially retiring Calvin & Hobbes, Watterson has emerged infrequently and sporadically, and never in person.

So how do you find the man who doesn’t want to be found?

Although Mr. Martell does make some effort to actually find Mr. Watterson physically in order to conduct an interview with him (spoiler alert: it doesn’t happen), most of Looking from Calvin & Hobbes consists of Mr. Martell’s attempt to piece together a picture of Mr. Watterson’s life and work based on an exhaustive review of pretty much every interview Mr. Watterson has ever given and every essay he has ever written, supplemented by an array of new interviews conducted with a wide variety of Mr. Watterson’s friends, family, and peers, as well as the legion of creative folk who were inspired by his work.

It’s an effective approach, and the result is a fairly comprehensive look at Mr. Watterson’s development as a cartoonist as a kid and in college, his years-long post-college efforts to establish himself as a cartoonist, the creation and development of Calvin & Hobbes, and his many struggles with the success that followed which lead to his ultimate decision to abandon the strip.

As has become popular for many documentary filmmakers these days (I’m thinking of people like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock), Mr. Martell has inserted himself as a character in his book.  While of course Mr. Watterson is the primary focus, as Looking for Calvin & Hobbes progresses we continually return to Mr. Martell’s descriptions of his efforts to put the story together, to track down his interview subjects, to answer his questions about Bill Watterson, and his thoughts on those experiences.  This is occasionally distracting (I didn’t really need to read about Mr. Martell’s google searches in order to find cartoonists who felt they had been influenced by Watterson, nor was I all that interested in his description of his recurring nightmare in which Mr. Watterson calls him for an interview, only for Mr. Martell to discover that his digital recorder is broken), but on the whole this lends the book a light, peppy style that makes it engaging and easy-to-read.

For me, the most interesting sections of Looking for Calvin & Hobbes were the chapters entitled Working on a Dream and Making Friends.  These chapters recount, in impressive detail, Mr. Watterson’s early years as a cartoonist and his efforts to establish himself as a working illustrator.  It was very interesting to read about the ups and downs that Mr. Watterson went through after college, and I was endlessly fascinated by all the little twists and turns that lead his early comic strip ideas to develop into what would become Calvin & Hobbes.  How easily he could have gone in a slightly different direction, and the world would have been denied a masterpiece!  Mr. Martell does a great job at filling in the blanks of Mr. Watterson’s younger days, and, despite my being fairly knowledgeable about Bill Watterson and Calvin & Hobbes, these chapters were a treasure trove of new information for me.

I was slightly less interested in the sections of chapter 4, A Boy and His Tiger, that recounted the different characters in the strip.  Anyone who has bought a book called Looking for Calvin & Hobbes surely doesn’t need to be reminded who Miss Wormwood is.  I also found myself getting a little bored by chapter 8, Under the Influence.  This chapter is filled descriptions of Mr. Martell’s interviews with a variety of cartoonists and other creative individuals about how they were influenced by Calvin & Hobbes, and while I was extraordinarily impressed by the depth of Mr. Martell’s research (and the wide variety of individuals he contacted, including Jonatham Lethem, Craig Thompson, Jeff Smith, and Dave Barry), the interviews got pretty repetitive, pretty fast.

But on the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed Looking for Calvin & Hobbes.  For fans of that dearly-missed comic strip (and who isn’t??), I recommend this new book.  I also highly recommend the Calvin & Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book (from which Mr. Martell quotes liberally).  Published in 1995, this wonderful collection of cartoons from throughout the strip’s run are accompanied by extensive essays and notes by Mr. Watterson himself, in which he details numerous aspects of his work on the strips, his goals and aspirations, his struggles with the syndicate, and much more.  If there is a reason why some aspects of Looking for Calvin & Hobbes felt like they covered familiar ground for me, it’s because I have pored over that 10th Anniversary Book for years and years.

No matter.  I applaud Nevin Martell for his efforts in devoting scholarly attention to one of the greatest creative talents of our time.  Looking for Calvin & Hobbes only reinforces my appreciation for Bill Watterson’s genius, and my sadness that he has not produced any new public work since 1997.  Needless to say, after finishing the book, I went over to my bookshelf, picked up my battered copy of Something Under the Bed is Drooling, and started reading.  What a delight it is to re-live, once again, the brilliance of Calvin & Hobbes.

Lots of great Lost analysis out there.  Click here for EW’s Jeff Jensen’s in-depth write-up of the season 6 premiere.  I’m a big fan of “Doc” Jensen’s weekly Lost write-ups — they’re always insightful and ridiculously detailed.  Click here for Mr. Jensen’s interview with Lost masterminds Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindeloff, and click here for collider.com’s interview with Mr. Lindeloff.  Both contain some tasty morsels of hints about what awaits us in season 6.  (And here’s a great interview with Mr. Jensen himself in which he discusses Lost’s final season.)  On a less serious note, check out this very funny (and also super-detailed) review of the season 6 premiere from bestweekever.tv.  (The graphic of Jacob’s note to the Temple-Others is phenomenal.)  Lastly, this review of the premiere from chud.com is worth your time.  This dude has a Lost re-watch blog that I often checked out while conducting my own Lost re-watch project.  I hope you all enjoyed my extraordinarily lengthy list of the burning questions left hanging after Lost’s first five seasons.  Can’t wait for tonight’s episode!

Click here for a terrific interview with comedian Patton Oswalt.  Click here for the Onion A.V. Club’s interview with Aziz Ansari.  Both are great conversations with two very smart and funny individuals.

Speaking of interviews, for anyone out there who loved A Serious Man as much as I did (read my review here), you MUST read this phenomenal interview with Fred Melamed.  Mr. Melamed is the actor who portrayed Sy Ableman, one of the my favorite new characters that I saw created on screen in 2009.  The interview is a hoot, particularly when Mr. Melamed declares his effort to “bring the pompous, Jewish, overweight, rabbinic figure back to the center of American sexuality.”

Bill Waterson, the amazingly talented creator of Calvin & Hobbes, is well-known for having pretty much disappeared from planet Earth following the end of his beloved comic strip.  He hasn’t granted interviews, he hasn’t appeared at conventions or other gatherings of comic strip artists, and he hasn’t allowed any licensing of his characters.  So die-hard Calvin & Hobbes fans like myself took notice when he agreed to an e-mail conversation with a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  Click here for the question-and-answer exchange!

This is very disturbing. Back to the Future Part III is officially ruined for me forever.

That’s all for today!

I followed a link the other day to the 10 Most Insane, Child-Warping Moments of ’80s Cartoons.  Pretty funny stuff there.  I’d also like to direct your attention to this list of the 10 Star Wars Toys that Unintentionally Look Like Other Celebrities.  (It’s worth your while if only so that you, too, can be stunned by the resemblance of General Riekaan — from The Empire Strikes Back — to Senator John Kerry!!)

I’ve just discovered a phenomenal web-comic called Let’s Be Friends Again.  It’s mostly about comic books.  I love it to death, and it’s well worth your precious time, so check it out.

Have you seen this ten-minute fan-made live-action G.I. Joe film, Battle For the Serpent Stone?  I’m a big proponent of fan-films, and this one is of pretty high quality.  It’s quite an achievement — take a look.

Here’s a link to an terrific interview with IDW Comics editor Scott Dunbier, discussing his work in putting out the gorgeous new hardcover Bloom County: The Complete Library, Volume One (1980-1982), the first of five books that will collect every single strip (many of which have never before been collected) of Berkeley Breathed’s masterpiece comic strip.  I lust after this collection, and very much hope that Mr. Dunbier is able to move forward with collections of Outland and Opus as well.

This is a great story about an annoying movie theatre patron.  I wish there was a theatre like The Alamo Drafthouse here in Boston, because I would be more than happy to spend an enormous amount of money watching movies there and nowhere else.  I am sick to death of having my enjoyment of a movie interrupted by some jackass talking, texting, or some other such nonsense.

Harvard University is offering a class on The Wire??? Sign me up!!

I never believed it would happen, but filming on the two-film adaptation of The Hobbit is coming closer and closer to getting underway.  Click here for an interesting interview with director Guillermo del Toro with some updates on how things are progressing.

Despite my renewed appreciation for the final run of episodes of Battlestar Galactica, this hilarious evisceration of the plot points in the last 45 minutes of the finale is impossible to argue with.

Here’s a terrific list of one fellow’s Top 15 Episodes of Batman: The Animated Series.  It’s an interesting list.  I absolutely adore episodes such as “Over The Edge,” “Mad Love,” “Robin’s Reckoning,” and “Heart of Ice,” and I was also pleased to see some lesser-known gems like “The Ultimate Thrill” and “Growing Pains” make the cut.  (However, while “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?” and “The Clock King” are solid episodes, I definitely wouldn’t count them among the series’ 15 best.)  I posted my own best-of episode list for Batman: The Animated Series last year, so click here to read my selections!