I’m so sad that Watson has died. It never occurred to me that it would be hard to draw the strip, or that I wouldn’t want to, once he died, but it feels that way now. I never realized how having him in the world made “drawing him” easier or seem more true, but it did. Now, when I think about drawing the character of Watson for the comic it feels strange. In fact, I haven’t even tried. I’ve been drawing comics my whole life and am glad I finally hit upon a comic strip format where I felt like I could be myself and draw how I want to draw. I literally have no idea what’s going to happen. I suspect I’m still very shaken and very sad. Watson was my little boy, which is what I always called him. I’m so sad my little boy is gone. No one will ever take his place.
There’s been a lot of this going around on Facebook lately, so I thought it might be fun to put one of these together. This is actually a picture of Watson from 2006, but it’s an older image that I had on-hand. I fudged a little bit.
I’ve been TOTALLY WRONG about how long I’ve been drawing “WATSON”.
As it turns out, I’ve been drawing Watson for 13 years, not 9.
I just found a whole bunch of old stuff that totally jogged my memory. I just realized (remembered) that I came up with the idea for the strip (exactly) on June 26, 2006 after a visit to see Hilary Price, and then submitted different versions of the strip to the syndicates in 2006 and 2008.
I have no memory of this.
I remember submitting some strips once, but I thought it was much later.
As it turns out, I even started the Watson website in 2007, but thought it was much later, too.
All this time I’ve been telling people that Watson didn’t start until October 2010 when I first got my Facebook account, but that was totally wrong.
I’m the WORST cartooning parent ever.
Sorry Watson and Fudgey.
