"Calvin & Hobbs" cartoonist BILL WATTERSON comes out of retirement and nails it!

The mad scientist behind Calvin and Hobbes returns to the comic scene after secretly working with Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis, for a series of brand new newspaper comics.

Bill Watterson has been retired for the better part of 20 years and this surprising resurgence is sure to delight hard-core fans everywhere. In the comic he is a smart-ass second grader called "Libby" (kinda like "Bill", backwards) and engages in some side-splitting banter. Share & Enjoy.

According to The Washington Post, the idea of collaborating with Pastis has been brewing for some time. 

"Several years ago," Watterson told the Post, "when Stephan did one of his strips that mocked his own drawing ability and mentioned my strip in comparison, I thought it might be funny for me to ghost ‘Pearls’ sometime, just to flip it all on its head."

 However, when the opportunity to raise funds for Team Cul de Sac, a charity co-founded by fellow cartoonist Richard Thompson to fight Parkinson's Disease, arose, Watterson reached out to Pastis to do a team-up. 

For Pastis' part, Watterson reaching out to him "is like getting a call from Bigfoot."

Earlier this year, the author contributed the poster for Stripped, a documentary about cartoonists struggling with the death of newspapers.

 Hopefully, this isn't his last foray back into comics either.

(Re-posted from THE VERGE.com - By Kwame Opam on June 7, 2014 11:02 am Email @kwameopam )