American cartoonist Bill Watterson concludes his comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” after 10 years.

Bill Watterson is an American cartoonist and the author of the popular comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.  He is known for his views on licensing, comic syndication, and reclusive nature.  Watterson has said that he works for personal fulfillment and in his art, he incorporated various elements of his life, interests, beliefs and values.  He spent most of his career trying to change the environment of newspaper comics.

On this day, December 31, in 1995, the last strip of Calvin and Hobbes was published after ten years because Watterson felt that he had achieved all he could in the medium.  Throughout the years, Watterson combated pressures from publishers to merchandise his work.  However, he always refused—stating that it would cheapen his comic and devalue the characters and their personalities.  Watterson himself will not sign autographs and there have been many unsuccessful attempts to find him in his home.

Watterson left a legacy of changing the format of the Sunday comic strip.  Before him, the strips were all a series of symmetrical rectangles for the artists to fill, but Bill Watterson gained an exception to these constraints and drew the panels of his comics exactly as he desired.