Per a listing by distributor Simon & Schuster, Andrews McMeel will publish “The Mysteries,” a new graphic novel by “Calvin and Hobbes” creator Bill Watterson, crafted in collaboration with caricature artist John Kascht.
Described as a mysterious, adult-aimed “fable about what lies beyond human understanding,” the book takes place in a kingdom long ago, which has been “afflicted with unexplainable calamities. Hoping to end the torment, the king dispatches his knights to discover the source of the mysterious events. Years later, a single battered knight returns.”
“The Mysteries” marks Watterson’s first major project since the end of “Calvin and Hobbes” in 1995. The reclusive cartoonist, 64, rarely gives interviews, and did not publish another cartoon until 2014, when he contributed three guest strips for Stephan Pastis’s “Pearls Before Swine.” In the interim, he has also collaborated with Berkeley Breathed on “Bloom County,” and co-wrote The Art of Richard Thompson (about the late “Cul de Sac” creator) with Nick Galifianakis and David Apatoff.
John Kascht‘s work has appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines; he lives in rural Pennsylvania, opposite Watterson’s home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. According to the publisher, Watterson and Kascht “worked together for several years in unusually close collaboration. Both artists abandoned their past ways of working, inventing images together that neither could anticipate — a mysterious process in its own right.”
The end product, which will retail at about 72 pages for $19.99, will be released in hardcover on October 10, 2023. You can check out an interior preview in the meantime at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
