According to evolutionary psychologists, people tend to seek out mates with features similar to their own. Likewise, cartoonists often seem compelled — without any explicit self-awareness — towards drawing characters who resemble themselves, as if their own face and body were humankind’s de facto template. The range of human features becomes a series of small deviations from the same starting point, which, when averaged, regress to self-portraiture.

Then again, this is only a theory, as suspicious as any theory emerging from the academic cess pool of evolutionary psychology. All the same, I recently found a rare picture of reclusive Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson on a photo gallery of famous cartoonists, and, well, look-what-we-have-here: Watterson’s an exact composite of Calvin’s Uncle Max and Calvin’s dad, down to the folds of their clothing’s fabric and the angles of their elbows:

[Have other examples of artists resembling their creations? Share them with me at cupofchicha at aol dot com.]

Related Reading: “And Then I Realized Why She Looked Familiar”