When Watterson returned from his second sabbatical, the first words of his Jan. 1, 1995, strip were, "The end of the Mesozoic Era …" At the end of that year, the last new Calvin and Hobbes strip would run. At the end of the Mesozoic Era, the dinosaurs went extinct. It's difficult not to think that Watterson knew at this point that soon his strip would be, too. He tried to reinvent the comic strip, to bring back the bold and colorful illustrations that filled newspapers before Schulz and Peanuts. But today, it is graphic novels that are filled with lively experiments, and the comic strip feels more moribund than ever.