Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson rarely gives interviews, but this month he sat down with Mental Floss for a long interview about his work and his life after Calvin. As in previous interviews, Watterson maintains there are no new comics in the pipeline. He says Calvin's rush of success "created a level of attention and expectation that I don't know how to process," and he has no interest in repeating the experience. At the same time, Watterson sympathizes with the clamor for more Calvin. "You can’t really blame people for preferring more of what they already know and like," Watterson says. "The trade-off, of course, is that predictability is boring. Repetition is the death of magic."

But the beloved creator hasn't gone full curmudgeon. He says he's enthusiastic about the new rush of formal invention that's come with the web and that the art of comics in general has never gotten more respect. "I don’t think comics have ever been more widely accepted or taken as seriously as they are now," Watterson says. "On the other hand, the mass media is disintegrating, and audiences are atomizing."