Calvin, meanwhile, takes his name from John Calvin, the cheerless Protestant theologian responsible for founding the strand of Christianity that now bears his name. (h/t to the excellent Calvin & Hobbes fan site Magic On Paper.)īoth Calvin and Hobbes are named for historical figures.Īs any undergraduate philosophy student will know, Hobbes is named for Thomas Hobbes, who’s best known for his weighty 1651 treatise Leviathan. The artwork is credited to one “Fang Wampire,” a pseudonym for the singer’s famous brother. He did the artwork for his brother’s band.īehold: the cover art for a 1992 tape released by The Rels, featuring Tom Watterson on guitar and lead vocals. According to a mutual friend, Borgman was two years ahead of Watterson, and both studied under the same drawing teacher. Jim Borgman, who’s been drawing Zits since 1997, also attended Kenyon College. He attended the same college as the guy who draws Zits.

Some of this work is available online, and as you can see from the example above, his distinctive style was already pretty much fully formed long before Calvin and Hobbes entered the picture. He worked for six months at the Cincinnati Post in 1980, right after he graduated from Kenyon College in Ohio (with a degree in political science, incidentally). And indeed, watching the film has roused our own Watterson geekdom - so here’s a selection of things you mightn’t have known about the artist and his work!īill Watterson was briefly a political cartoonist.

Calvin & Hobbes has always inspired a special brand of obsessive geekdom, after all, and it’s good to see that the filmmakers didn’t go out of their way to pursue the strip’s reclusive creator.

Happily, the film is as much a celebration of the strip as anything else. Watterson, a documentary about Bill Watterson, the author and illustrator of the much-beloved cartoon strip Calvin & Hobbes.

Thomas hobbes leviathan illustrated