This graphic novel comes with a huge weight of expectations. Except for 3 strips he partly drew for Stephan Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine, Bill Watterson hasn’t done ANYTHING for the public since Calvin and Hobbes rode their toboggan down the hill one final time on December 31, 1995.
It was jaw-dropping when this was announced. Watterson is legendarily reclusive - I would have been only slightly more shocked if they’d announced that the late JRR Tolkien was going to finish A Song of Ice and Fire. As Calvin & Hobbes was formative for me as a kid - I’m far from the only one - of course I jumped on it and preordered.
So, to get this out of the way: this isn’t Calvin & Hobbes. This isn’t anything like Calvin & Hobbes, except for a few minor quirks that I recognize as Watterson’s style.
But I could imagine this as a sequence in Calvin’s ever-hyperactive imagination.
This is called “a fable for grown-ups,” and that works. It definitely has a fable-ish tone, and tells a simple, straightforward story. It’s about how the fear of the unknown can hold us back, and, simultaneously, about how a lack of respect for the limits of our understanding can bring catastrophe. The analogies to real world issues are not subtle.
There’s very little text - one sentence per page, in large print and usually short. If one were to just pick up this book to read it, it would take fewer than 5 minutes to complete. But that’s not how one should read a graphic novel, of course. You need to take the time to appreciate the art.
Which is stellar. It’s all black and white, and very atmospheric, and very creepy. The general theme of the art is that people are rendered in very sharp, almost photorealistic, detail, while everything else is blurred and vague and obscured. And the people are mostly drawn lumpy, scarred, and generally unattractive.
This isn’t going to be for everyone. Graphic novels usually aren’t, and this isn’t even what I would think of as a graphic novel, really. It’s a picture book, but one much more mature than the stuff I read my nephews. The art was gorgeous. The story was disturbing. It’s a book to experience, rather than read, and I’m glad I did.