Bill Watterson, the man responsible for a decade of Calvin & Hobbes comics, is coming out of retirement for a new illustrated storybook, The Mysteries, that is set to release this October. Just in time for spooky season.

Starting in 1985, Watterson wrote and drew Calvin and Hobbes, a comedic and sometimes heartwarming newspaper comic series about a young boy and his imaginary tiger, until abruptly ending the strip in 1995. At the time, the series was hugely popular, so it came as a shock to many that he was done with it. In 2010, he explained in a rare interview that after a decade of writing and drawing the strip he had said “pretty much everything” he wanted to and that it was “always better to leave the party early.” Since then he’s mostly stayed out of the public eye and has done very few projects—the most notable and most recent was a three-day guest run on the comic Pearls Before Swine in 2014.

However, the reclusive and legendary comic creator is coming out of retirement for a big and surprising new project, an illustrated storybook aimed at adults. To help him create this book, officially titled The Mysteries, Watterson has partnered with caricaturist John Kascht. Here’s the publisher-provided synopsis for the book:

In a fable for grown-ups by cartoonist Bill Watterson, a long-ago kingdom is afflicted with unexplainable calamities. Hoping to end the torment, the king dispatches his knights to discover the source of the mysterious events. Years later, a single battered knight returns.

According to the book’s publisher, Simon and Schuster, the two artists have been working on the book for years in “unusually close collaboration” with them trying out new ways to work and create images, calling the whole process “mysterious…in its own right.”

That's right, Bill Watterson, who pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth ever since Calvin and Hobbes ended in 1995, is coming back with a new graphic novel.

I can't even begin to describe how world-changing this news is, guys.

NEW BOOK FROM BILL WATTERSON!

"From Bill Watterson, bestselling creator of the beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, and John Kascht, one of America’s most renowned caricaturists, comes a mysterious and beautifully illustrated fable about what lies beyond human understanding. 

In a fable for grown-ups by cartoonist Bill Watterson, a long-ago kingdom is afflicted with unexplainable calamities. Hoping to end the torment, the king dispatches his knights to discover the source of the mysterious events. Years later, a single battered knight returns.

For the book's illustrations, Watterson and caricaturist John Kascht worked together for several years in unusually close collaboration. Both artists abandoned their past ways of working, inventing images together that neither could anticipate—a mysterious process in its own right."

If you're pre-ordering it, here's the Indie Bound link. Buy it local!

THIS IS NOT A DRIL, I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRIL

BILL WATTERSON HAS TEAMED UP WITH JOHN KASCHT TO MAKE A HORROR GRAPHIC NOVEL JUST IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN

CALL YOUR LOCAL COMIC BOOKS SHOPS OR LOCAL INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES AND RESERVE A COPY NOW

Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes and John Kascht have a graphic novel coming out later this year called The Mysteries

Preview pages from (I can’t believe I get to type his name here) Bill Watterson and John Kascht’s The Mysteries, coming October 2023.

Ooo... something new coming from the Calvin and Hobbes guy. I want it, sight unseen.

Bill Watterson Returns to Comics with "Grown Up" Graphic Novel

Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes series is one of the most well known comic strips around. Even though it went out of publication in 1995 and Watterson retired (mostly), the strip has managed to live on thanks to being frequently reprinted consistently over the decades. For the first time in nearly 30 years, Watterson is coming back to the graphic novel space with his new book, The Mysteries.…

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Bill Watterson (yes, that Bill Watterson) has a book coming out this coming October. Color me intrigued.

🚨 Bill Watterson has a new book! 🚨 It’s not a comic book for children, though; it’s a graphic novel for grown-ups. Check out its landing page at Simon & Schuster. The book is due out in October.

Bill Watterson! His new book, The Mysteries— a collaboration with his friend and fellow artist John Kascht— is out now. The video narrates their process for creating a book that fuses their nearly-irreconcilably different styles and approaches to creative work.

BW's Daily Video> Comic Strip Critic Reviews The Mysteries

BW's Daily Video> Comic Strip Critic Reviews The Mysteries

Catch more from The Comic Strip Critic on YouTube He’s got a good backlog, and those of you who were around for my Reviewers Unknown days may even remember he followed one of my suggestions. Oh, apparently I never posted that even though I did other postings about The Punchline in the past. So I’ll just link to the episode since this is a daily quickpost and I want to post the video John…

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Calvin and Hobbes creator speaks! (On his first published work in 28 years)

BILL WATTERSON and John Kascht's New Book, The MYSTERIES! WTF Is It?

The Mysteries - Bill Watterson and John Kascht

So, like many people within a pretty large range of my age, I was, and am, a huge fan of Calvin and Hobbes. I am sure Peanuts and Garfield would try to make the claim, and there is a good argument to be made for The Far Side, but Calvin and Hobbes may be the best newspaper comic there ever was. And that’s not really hyperbole. It perfectly road that line between, “appealing to younger folks”…

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Three decades later, Bill Watterson returns with a fable for grown-ups

The creator of ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ teams with caricaturist John Kascht for a new book that’s due out in October.