On the last day of 1995, Watterson published his final Calvin and Hobbes strip. His two characters toboggan away to forever "go exploring." At the same time, Watterson seems glad to be liberated from the burdens of daily cartooning. In the Complete introduction, Watterson writes of the collected Calvin and Hobbes strips, "Together, they're pretty much a transcript of my mental diary … I meant to disguise that better." On his last day, Watterson didn't disguise much of his delight in abandoning the "familiar" for "a fresh, clean start." Or his desire to start painting full-time: "It's like a big white sheet of paper to draw on." With this strip, the last great newspaper comic strip ended after only a decade in print. "There will always be mediocre comic strips," Watterson said in a 1989 speech titled "The Cheapening of the Comics," "but we have lost much of the potential for anything else."