Yep you head me right. This weekend the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum and LIbrary in Columbus Ohio will open two incredible shows,

The Irresistible Force Meets The Immovable Object: A Richard Thompson Retrospective and Exploring Calvin And Hobbes and in advance of the show Jenny Robb has interviewed Bill Watterson and Caitlin McGurk has interviewed Richard Thompson. You’ll obviously want to read the whole thing. Watterson, in an extremely rare interview, revisits his greatest creation:

JR: It’s been almost 30 years since Calvin and Hobbes launched, and almost 20 since it ended. How did it feel to revisit the strip for this exhibition? BW: Oh, it’s fairly weird. There’s a sort of jet lag when you time-travel to your own past.



He also talks about the current state of cartooning, wondering if any can find an audience with so much competition but pointing out “The gatekeepers are gone, so the prospect for new and different voices is exciting. Or at least it will be if anyone reads them. And it will be even more exciting if anyone pays for them. It’s hard to charge admission without a gate.”

Richard Thompson calls the end of print “sad and confusing” but adds “Comics are, as they say, blowing up. The chance for invention is great but the chance for moneymaking is small. Right now creators are pretty much screwed.”

SO perhaps look at the dual show as the last celebration of an artistic and financial era era of comic strips now as lost as vaudeville and radio drama. OR to be more upbeat, a celebration of two amazing artists who have unforgettably touched our hearts.

The opening for the exhibits is tomorrow night. We’ll be awaiting the tweets and blogs posts eagerly.

This is a great weekend for comics in Columbus. There’s also a Lilli Carré exhibits at the Columbus Museum of Art.