So what's Watterson been up to since ending "Calvin and Hobbes?" It's tough to say.

His parents will say only that he's happy, but they won't say where he lives, and the cartoonist could not be reached for an interview.

His former editor, Lee Salem, also remains mum, saying only that as a painter, Watterson started with watercolors and has evolved to oils.

"He's in a financial position where he doesn't need to meet the deadlines anymore," Salem says.

Salem, who edited thousands of "Calvin and Hobbes" strips at Universal Press Syndicate, says that Watterson is private and media-shy. Salem didn't want to see the strip end, but understood Watterson's decision.

"He came to a point where he thought he had no more to give to the characters," Salem says.

"Calvin and Hobbes" appeared in more than 2,400 newspapers during its run, one of the few strips to reach an audience that large.

Calvin was an imaginative 6-year-old with the immaturity of a child and the psychological complexity of a 40-year-old. As for Hobbes, the device of Calvin viewing him as alive and everybody else seeing him as a stuffed animal was simply brilliant, Salem says.

Their all-encompassing bond of friendship — being able to share joy and have fun together, yet get angry and frustrated with one another — may have been another reason for the strip's success.

Some call Watterson reclusive. Others say he just likes his privacy.

"He's an introspective person," says his mother, Kathryn, standing at the front door of her home, its yard covered by a tidy tangle of black-eyed susans and other wildflowers. It's where Watterson grew up. Calvin lived there too, so to speak. Watterson used the well-kept, beige Cape Cod-style house as the model for Calvin's home.

And the guy on the front porch kind of resembles Calvin's dad, the exasperated patent attorney who enjoyed gummy oatmeal and jogging in 20-degree weather. Sure enough, Watterson's father, Jim, has a sheen of sweat on his neck, not from a run but from the 73-year-old's three-mile morning walk.

After "Calvin and Hobbes" ended, Watterson and his father would paint landscapes together, setting up easels along the Chagrin River or other vistas. But they haven't painted together for years.

Watterson's extremely private nature doesn't run in the family. His mother Kathryn is a former village councilwoman and father Jim is seeking his fourth council term this fall.

There are few signs of Watterson or "Calvin and Hobbes" in Chagrin Falls, a town of 4,000.

A Godzilla-sized Calvin is depicted wreaking havoc on Chagrin Falls on the back cover of 1988's "The Essential Calvin and Hobbes," and carrying off the Popcorn Shop from the spot on the falls where it has sat for about 100 years.

Fireside Book Shop, located just out of earshot of the water's roar, carries 15 different "Calvin and Hobbes" books. Customers used to be able to find autographed copies. Store employee Lynn Mathews says Watterson's mother used to deliver the signed copies to raise money for charity or just to help the book shop. That ended when the cartoonist discovered that some ended up on eBay, she said.

Watterson and his wife, Melissa, moved earlier this year from their home in the village — a century-old house on a hill.

As a child, Watterson loved "Peanuts" and started drawing comics. He majored in political science at Kenyon and became a political cartoonist, but was fired from his first job, at the Cincinnati Post, after a few months. So he took a job designing car and grocery ads, but continued cartooning, even though several strip ideas were rejected.

But Universal liked "Calvin and Hobbes" and launched it in 1985, in 35 newspapers. Calvin caught Hobbes in a tiger trap with a tuna sandwich in the first strip. He spent the next 10 years driving his parents crazy, annoying his crush, Susie, and playing make-believe as Spaceman Spiff and Stupendous Man.

Many of the best moments, though, were time spent alone with his pal, Hobbes. "The end of summer is always hard on me, trying to cram in all the goofing off I've been meaning to do," Calvin tells Hobbes sitting beneath a tree in a 1987 strip.

Watterson ended the strip on Dec. 31, 1995, with a statement: "I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises."

The last strip shows Calvin and Hobbes sledding off after a new-fallen snow. "It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy ... let's go exploring!" Calvin says.