At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, youโll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, youโll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, youโll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.
Bill WattersonUnited Features had given me a development contract, which meant I was to work exclusively with them and rather than completing everything on my own and turning it in to them and having it rejected or accepted, I was working much more directly with the syndicate, turning in smaller batches much more frequently, and getting comments on them. The idea was that they would help me develop the strip and then, assuming that they liked it, it would flow into a normal contract for syndication.
Bill WattersonMs. Wormwood: Calvin, can you tell us what Lewis and Clark did? Calvin: No, but I can recite the secret superhero origin of each member of Captain Napalm's Thermonuclear League of Liberty. Ms. Wormwood: See me after class, Calvin. Calvin: [retrospectively] I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.
Bill Watterson