Free Republic

This marks the 15th year since "Calvin and Hobbes" said goodbye to the comics pages. Creator Bill Watterson, who grew up in Chagrin Falls and still makes Greater Cleveland his home, recently answered some questions via e-mail from Plain Dealer reporter John Campanelli. It's believed to be the first interview with the reclusive artist since 1989.

<p>Ten years ago Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, left newspaper cartooning for painting. Since then, no new comic strip has matched the quality, longevity, or cultural dominance of Watterson's daily drawings about a boy and his tiger. There remain good strips, such as Jef Mallett's Frazz; acclaimed strips, such as Aaron McGruder's Boondocks; and venerable strips, such as Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury. But these days, the best-selling comics books tend to be either graphic novels or hardbound anthologies of the greats, such as Fantagraphics Books' The Complete Peanuts.</p>

NEW HAVEN -- Standing at the front of an auditorium that looked like a castle dining hall, cartoonist Aaron McGruder, of "The Boondocks," leaned into the microphone and said, "All right. Yale." And the packed house applauded, just like that. Through the rest of his nearly two-hour talk on Saturday, McGruder, a 28-year old who looks no older than his college audience, drew guffaws, groans, and loud applause at Yale University's eighth annual Black Solidarity Conference.