New documentary "Dear Mr. Watterson." If you already know what it is about simply from the title, good for you.

Courtesy of Slate:

On New Year’s Eve of 1995, Bill Watterson published the 3,150th and last Calvin and Hobbes strip. Since then, we’ve seen a host of good-to-very-bad takes on the comic: cartoons, apps, bizarre live-action reboots—even a search engine. 

Now there’s a documentary, Dear Mr. Watterson, which explores the impact the boy and his anthropomorphic tiger had on both readers and Watterson’s colleagues. The film began as a pet project for director Joel Allen Schroeder, who started interviewing fans of the strip in 2007; his Kickstarter project, created in 2009, then raised more than twice his initial $12,000 goal. The movie’s been picked up by a distributor, and the first trailer has just hit the Web. 

Calvin and Hobbes was initially viewed as too literate for kids and too fantastical for adults, but instead the strip’s subtle riffs on loneliness, friendship, and adolescence bridged the gap between the two. It’s unclear if Dear Mr. Watterson will delve into Watterson’s complex artistic ambitions or stick with praise for his obvious achievements. Either way, it’s probably a must-see for diehards. It’s scheduled to arrive in theaters Nov. 15.

I am not sure if I have already shared this or not, but I am a huge comic strip fan. And I mean HUGE! 

This is only a portion of my collection.

It started with Charles Schultz's Peanuts of course, and I always made sure to check the box by at least two pocket books every time the Scholastic book pamphlets were handed out in my elementary school.

From there my interest spread to B.C, The Wizard of Id, Hagar the Horrible, and the irascible Andy Capp. (Also my father's favorite.)

Before I left for college in Hawaii, as a young adult, I bought to paperbacks by G.B. Trudeau to read on the long flight from Anchorage. By the time I landed I was a HUGE fan of Doonesbury and made it my mission to purchase every single pocketbook that the bookstores carried.

I actually never stopped discovering new strips and buying their anthologies. Even into my middle age.

I currently have Dilbert, Foxtrot, Zits, Herman, Bloom County, and of course Calvin and Hobbes in my collection.

As much as I loved other comic strips Calvin and Hobbes quickly replaced them as my favorite, and in my opinion it remains in a category all by itself.

The strip seemed, if I might put my atheism aside for a moment, magical.

And it did not hurt that I connected with Calvin on a very fundamental level. There were many times as a child that I too spent huge blocks of time taking up residence in my fantasy world, where animals could talk, ghosts haunted every dark corner, and my wishes could come true if ONLY I could be the well behaved little boy that my mother so wanted me to become.

I am looking forward to this documentary, perhaps for no other reason then to see so many people paying homage to a man that I believe is a true genius. A man who remembered to never let the little boy inside grow up, and then brought him out of his subconscious for all of us to enjoy.

I literally could have chosen any C&H  strip to close out this post and it would have been awesome, so I chose the one below randomly.

And of course, it's awesome!