Getting my four year old into Tin-Tin was a bomb, but now I am thinking Calvin and Hobbes might do the trick. I can't imagine there being a time when I couldn't read and didn't care if I did. There was though, and per my mother it was solved by Bill Watterson's childhood daydream fantasies of a boy and his tiger. I have been checking out some of the collections recently and the books are filled with great watercolor work, realistic characterization, and social critique. I also found out with a little research that Watterson was firmly against licensing of his characters for t shirts, toys, and cartoons for he felt it would "cheapen the work". That means all of those horrible stickers on the rear windows of trucks with Calvin urinating on logos of truck brands, sports teams, and politicians you don't like are fraudulent knock offs. Watterson ceased producing Calvin and Hobbes in the mid-nineties, and since then he has been quite the recluse. There has been approximately one work from Watterson since then. An oil painting depicting a character from another comic strip called Cul de Sac.Here is to hoping for more works in the future.
