This is a message I got today from Drew Browne, a fan of the comic strip. It’s good to be reminded that what you do does make a difference.
I just felt that I wanted this to be known.
You talk a lot about Calvin & Hobbes and the influence/effect that it has had on your life and that is how I feel about Bob. I grew up reading Calvin & Hobbes and my daughter (who is currently 12) has read my collection from time to time and my son (who is has seen/read a good amount of them too but now, they make sure to read every Bob the Squirrel and Squirrelosophy cartoon every time that they are with me (I have shared parenting with their mom). They always want to know what Bob is doing and some of the humor that they don’t quite get, I get to explain it to them. My daughter perfected her reading skills reading what Bob thinks about the world and now my son is doing the same. Every time it snows and they are with me, we break out the Calvin & Hobbes collection to find a new “snowman” to build (all of the pages are marked for easy reference) and every Halloween we go through all of the Bob comics to figure out which Bob we are going to carve into a pumpkin (and I really do think next year needs to be an all Bob pumpkin year…..I want to see if they squirrel will leave them all alone). The original art which I got for them last christmas is the most memorable gift for them and the one that they still talk about the most (as I’m sure the art which I bought for them this year is going to be the same). They both absolutely love that they have a piece of Bob in their rooms (and I can’t count how many times my son says “I know Squirrel-Fu”).
One of the strips that really effected me on a personal level would be the “moving out” one. At the time, “The sumtotal of a man’s life contained in a few car loads worth of stuff…” very accurately described my life as this was not too long after my divorce and what Bob had to say still is so appropriate and moving to this day “….You are more than this…..Let’s go find you….”. These words are still very powerful for me even to this day and I reference back to that strip any time I need to.
Just wanted you to know how much you and Bob really mean to the world. I know that Calvin & Hobbes is one of the things that all cartoonists measure them selves against but as far as I am concerned, you and Bob are right there on that level with the great mixture of humor and insight fulness and impact on people’s lives. It is funny how many times I can reference Bob in certain situations with life/work and it just ends up being so appropriate.
I had thought about posting this along with the latest “Watterson” drawings which you did but I didn’t want to bogart the comments section with a really large comment but I did want you to know this. I can always repost this in the comments if you don’t care (or you can feel free to share also) as I am sure there are plenty of other people in this world who feel the same way that I do about what you do on a daily basis.
Drew Browne
