Unlike the painting that Bill Watterson just did for the Team Cul de Sac project, these drawings are not new work; in fact, they were done early in his career, before Calvin and Hobbes became such a success. Artist Thom Buchanan posted them at his blog My Delineated Life, which is a treasure trove of interesting illustrations from times gone by.

Watterson did these as a freelance job for the Mark Twain Journal, and it's kind of interesting to see how consistent the public discourse is: These cartoons, done in 1983 and based on material that's about 100 years older, are about the same things that cartoons are about now: Cats and corruption in Congress.

At The Daily Cartoonist, where I first spotted this item, Nevin Martell contributed a few more Mark Twain cartoons, including one on another timeless topic, the irritations of modern technology—in this case, the telephone.