First clue: creator Bill Watterson is a lifelong resident of Chagrin Falls, OH.

 

More clues are compiled at Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setting_of_Calvin_and_Hobbes

 

Including this one:

 

^Dude, that goes to Cincinnati! ;)

Well, Funky Winkerbean is for sure set in Ohio!

 

 

Well, Funky Winkerbean is for sure set in Ohio!

 

And the spinoff and my role model, Crankshaft.

Watterson is from Chagrin and went to Kenyon College.  He painted this huge mural of Calvin in his dorm room during his senior year. The school painted over it. Sure would have been cool if they had let it remain.

Mother Goose & Grimm is also Ohio-based.

You've all seen this, right?

 

Link doesn't work...can you link to the amazon page for us?

Oh well. That's what I get for trying to steal bandwidth from Amazon.

 

The back cover of The Essential Calvin and Hobbes shows a giant Calvin tromping around and creating chaos in Chagrin Falls while holding the Popcorn Shop in his hands.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0836218051/

Nice find Kevin!

I wonder if Watterson has a director's cut of the illustration wherein Calvin gobbles up President Bush and the First Lady.

there is story about somebody walking into some coffee shop in chagrin asking around for the reclusive sam watterson to interview him. watterson was sitting right there! the people protected him, said they had no idea and neither did the reporter -- who left and never got his story. pretty funny & yay for cool locals.

there is story about somebody walking into some coffee shop in chagrin asking around for the reclusive sam watterson to interview him. watterson was sitting right there! the people protected him, said they had no idea and neither did the reporter -- who left and never got his story. pretty funny & yay for cool locals.

 

SAM Watterson is ultra-reclusive; he'd never hang out in a coffee shop like that gadabout cartoonist BILL Watterson.

 

Just messin' witcha'; I always mix up simple names like that.

 

Bill Watterson is fast becoming my #1 hero, if for no other reason, his refusal to merchandise Calvin & Hobbes. He talks about this unsparingly in the intro to his 10th Anniversary Anthology (a between-the-lines broadside to Jim "Garfield" Davis, no doubt), but I came across a milder, more nuanced rationale published in the Feb. 1989 ish of Comics Journal:

 

"Basically, I've decided that licensing is inconsistent with what I'm trying to do with 'Calvin and Hobbes.' I take cartoons seriously as an art form, so I think with an issue like licensing, it's important to analyze what my strip is about, and what makes it work. It's easy to transfer the essence of a gag-oriented strip; especially a one-panel gag strip, from the newspaper page to a t-shirt, a mug, a greeting card, and so on. The joke reads the same no matter what it's printed on, and the joke is what the strip is about. Nothing is lost.

 

My strip works differently. 'Calvin and Hobbes' isn't a gag strip. It has a punchline, but the strip is about more than that. The humor is situational, and often episodic. It relies on conversation, and the development of personalities and relationships. These aren't concerns you can wrap up neatly in a clever little saying for people to send each other or to hang up on their walls. To explore character, you need lots of time and space. Note pads and coffee mugs just aren't appropriate vehicles for what I'm trying to do here.

 

I'm not interested in removing all the subtlety from my work to condense it for a product. The strip is about more than jokes. I think to license Calvin and Hobbes would ruin the most precious qualities of my strip and, once that happens, you can't buy those qualities back....

 

The idea of a Hobbes doll is especially noxious, because the whole intrigue of Hobbes is that he may or may not be a real tiger. The strip deliberately sets up two versions of reality without committing itself to either one. If I'm not going to answer the question of who or what Hobbes is, I'm certainly not going to let Dakin answer it. It makes no sense to allow someone to make Hobbes into a stuffed toy for real, and deprive the strip of an element of its magic.

 

I'm convinced that licensing would sell out the soul of 'Calvin and Hobbes.' The world of a comic strip is much for fragile than most people realize....I'm not condemning licensing across the board; I'm saying licensing doesn't work for 'Calvin and Hobbes'."

Watterson's intro to the Calvin & Hobbes 10th Anniversary Anthology:

 

Licensing Calvin & Hobbes By Bill Watterson

 

Comic strips have been licensed from the beginning, but today the merchandising of  popular cartoon characters is more profitable than ever. Derivative products - dolls,  T-shirts, TV specials, and so on - can turn the right strip into a gold mine. Everyone is  looking for the next Snoopy or Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes were imagined to be the perfect candidates. The more I thought about licensing, however, the less I liked it. I  spent nearly five years fighting my syndicate's pressure to merchandise my creation.

 

In  an age of shameless commercialism, my objections to licensing are not widely shared. Many  cartoonists view the comic strip as a commercial product itself, so they regard licensing  as a natural extension of their work. As most people ask, what's wrong with the comic  strip characters appearing on calendars and coffee mugs? If people want to buy the stuff,  why not give it to them?

 

I have several problems with licensing. First of all, I believe licensing usually  cheapens the original creation. When cartoon characters appear on countless products, the  public inevitably grows bored and irritated with them, and the appeal and value of the  original work are diminished. Nothing dulls the edge of a new and clever cartoon like  saturing the market with it.

 

Second, commercial products rarely respect how a comic strip works. A wordy,  multiple-panel strip with extended conversation and developed personalities does not  condense to a coffee mug illustration without great violation to the strip's spirit. The  subtleties of a multi-dimensional strip are sacrificed for the one-dimensional needs of  the product. The world of a comic strip ought to be a special place with its own logic and  life. I don't want some animation studio giving Hobbes an actor's voice, and I don't want  some greeting card company using Calvin to wish people a happy anniversary, and I don't  want the issue of Hobbes's reality settled by a doll manufacturer. When everything fun and magical is turned into something for sale, the strip's world is diminished. 'Calvin and  Hobbes' was designed to be a comic strip and that's all I want it to be. It's the one  place where everything works the way I intend it to.

 

Third, as a practical matter,  licensing requires a staff of assistants to do the work. The cartoonist must become a factory foreman, delegating responsibilities and overseeing the production of things he  does not create. Some cartoonists don't mind this, but I went into cartooning to draw  cartoons, not to run a corporate empire. I take great pride in the fact that I write every  word, draw every line, color every Sunday strip, and paint every book illustration myself.  My strip is a low-tech, one-man operation, and I like it that way. I believe it's the only  way to preserve the craft and to keep the strip personal. Despite what some cartoonists  say, approving someone else's work is not the same as doing it yourself.

 

Beyond all this, however, lies a deeper issue: the corruption of a strip's integrity.  All strips are supposed to be entertaining, but some strips have a point of view and a  serious purpose behind the jokes. When the cartoonist is trying to talk honestly and  seriously about life, then I believe he has a responsibility to think beyond satisfying  the market's every whim and desire. Cartoonists who think they can be taken seriously as  artists while using the strip's protagonists to sell boxer shorts are deluding themselves.

 

The world of a comic strip is much more fragile than most people realize or will admit.  Believable characters are hard to develop and easy to destroy. When a cartoonist licenses  his characters, his voice is co-opted by the business concerns of toy makers, television  producers, and advertisers. The cartoonist's job is no longer to be an original thinker;  his job is to keep his characters profitable. The characters become  "celebrities", endorsing companies and products, avoiding controversy, and  saying whatever someone will pay them to say. At that point, the strip has no soul. With  its integrity gone, a strip loses its deeper significance.

 

My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of  certain friendships. Who would believe in the innocence of a little kid and his tiger if  they cashed in on their popularity to sell overpriced knickknacks that nobody needs? Who  would trust the honesty of the strip's observations when the characters are hired out as advertising hucksters? If I were to undermine my own characters like this, I would have  taken the rare privilege of being paid to express my own ideas and given it up to be an  ordinary salesman and a hired illustrator. I would have sold out my own creation. I have  no use for that kind of cartooning.

 

Unfortunately, the more popular 'Calvin and Hobbes' became, the less control I had  over its fate. I was presented with licensing possibilities before the strip was even a  year old, and the pressure to capitalize on its success mounted from then on. Succeeding  beyond anyone's wildest expectations had only inspired wilder expectations.

 

To put the  problem simply, trainloads of money were at stake - millions and millions of dollars could  be made with a few signatures. Syndicates are businesses, and no business passes up that  kind of opportunity without an argument.

 

Undermining my position, I had signed a contract giving my syndicate all exploitation  rights to 'Calvin and Hobbes' into the next century. Because it is virtually impossible to  get into daily newspapers without a syndicate, it is standard practice for syndicates to  use their superior bargaining position to demand rights they neither need nor deserve when contracting with unknown cartoonists. The cartoonist has few alternatives to the  syndicate's terms: he can take his work elsewhere on the unlikely chance that a different  syndicate would be more inclined to offer concessions, he can self-syndicate and attempt  to attract the interest of newspapers without the benefit of reputation or contacts, or he  can go back home and find some other job. Universal would not sell my strip to newspapers  unless I gave the syndicate the right to merchandise the strip in other media. At the  time, I had not thought much about licensing and the issue was not among my top concerns.  Two syndicates had already rejected 'Calvin and Hobbes', and I worried more about the  contractual consequences if the strip failed than the contractual consequences if the  strip succeeded. Eager for the opportunity to publish my work, I signed the contract, and  it was not until later, when the pressure to commercialize focused my opinions on the  matter, that I understood the trouble I'd gotten myself into.

 

I had no legal recourse to stop the sundicate from licensing. The syndicate preferred  to have my cooperation, but my approval was by no means necessary. Our arguments with each  other grew more bitter as the stakes got higher, and we had an ugly relationship for  several years.

 

The debate had its ridiculous aspects. I am probably the only cartoonist who resented  the popularity of his own strip. Most cartoonists are more than eager for the exposure,  wealth, and prestige that licensing offers. When cartoonists fight their syndicates, it's  usually to make more money, not less. And making the whole issue even more absurd, when I  didn't license, bootleg 'Calvin and Hobbes' merchandise sprung up to feed the demand. Mall  stores openly sold T-shirts with drawings illegally lifted from my books, and obscene or  drug-related shirts were rife on college campuses. Only thieves and vandals have made  money on 'Calvin and Hobbes' merchandise.

 

For years, Universal pressured me to compromise on a "limited" licensing  program. The syndicate would agree to rule out the most offensive products if I would  agree to go along with the rest. This would be, in essence, my only shot at controlling  what happened to my work. The idea of bartering principles was offensive to me and I  refused to compromise. For that matter, the syndicate and I had nothing to trade anyway:  It didn't care about my notions of artistic integrity. With neither of us valuing what the  other had to offer, compromise was impossible. One of us was going to trample the  interests of the other.

 

By the strip's fifth year, the debate had gone as far as it  could possibly go, and I prepared to quit. If I could not control what 'Calvin and Hobbes'  stood for, the strip was worthless to me. My contract was so one-sided that quitting would have allowed Universal to replace me with hired writers and artists and license my  creation anyway, but at this point, the syndicate agreed to renegotiate my contract. The  exploitation rights to the strip were returned to me, and I will not license 'Calvin and  Hobbes'.

lol -- oh yeah! sam? isn't sam the actor? oh wait imdb says thats sam waterston (killing fields, law&order). heh. yeah the other one. bill.

 

Oh well. That's what I get for trying to steal bandwidth from Amazon.

 

The back cover of The Essential Calvin and Hobbes shows a giant Calvin tromping around and creating chaos in Chagrin Falls while holding the Popcorn Shop in his hands.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0836218051/

 

you beat me to it, now if only we could get calvin to take a few more steps left and destroy that horrible shopping plaza back there.

Well, Funky Winkerbean is for sure set in Ohio!

 

Isn't it set in like Elyria or Grafton or something?

Well, Funky Winkerbean is for sure set in Ohio!

 

Isn't it set in like Elyria or Grafton or something?

 

yes, midview hs (aka the middies) is in grafton in lorain county.

 

here is some fun info i found on a fan website:

 

From Karla P. of North Olmsted, OH: "Just found your site: I'm surprised there isn't an "official" site (note: this letter arrived before the official site launched), so good for you for doing it for the rest of us. Tom Batuik was a teacher at Midview High School. (Midview is in Lorain County, but I forget the name of the city.) He also got his braces from a Dr. Herberger, who has lived (possibly had, it has been a long time) in Elyria, OH which is where I grew up. Tom gave him a couple large blowups of a cartoon strip where Les is under the chair of his orthodontist, who not surprisingly, looks like Dr. Herberger. Thought you'd like to know."

 

From Mark R. Bradbourne: "Hey, I'm not sure if you have this tid bit or not, but [batiuk] saved Kent State University's Marching Band program. He lent Dinkle's images the the Beta Psi chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi for promational purposes when they where attepting to get the band back. I am a brother of the Zeta Omicron chapter at the near by University of Akron, and to my understanding he was made an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi in 1994 or so... All band folk everywhere should be thankful to him, because it's a shame to see band programs fall by the wayside."