william b. watterson ii (born july 5, 1958) is an american artist and cartoonist. he is most famous for his comic strip, "calvin and hobbes" which was published between 1985 and 1995. he is a very private person and not much is publicly known about him. he also did not want people to sell things with the pictures of his characters on them, and the only things he allowed to be made using his characters were books with collections of calvin and hobbes strips.