Calvin And Hobbes

A boy and his tiger: A great ComicStrip? by Bill Watterson

The setting: A 1985-95 ComicStrip? by Bill Watterson about an elementary school boy, Calvin, his live tiger friend (or stuffed toy tiger; it's purposefully ambiguous), Hobbes, and his anonymous & long-suffering parents. The supporting roles are his elderly teacher Mrs. Wormwood, hardcore disciplinarian baby-sitter Rosalyn, and his girl-friend-and/or-enemy Susie Derkins.

Online: Every day, Ucomics shows the strip that appeared eleven years ago: http://www.CalvinAndHobbes.com/ So there are still some years of pleasure until 2007.

Uniqueness: The strip was inimitable among other cartoons (we can think of clones for BloomCounty and TheFarSide?, but not CnH), and widely influential among the rest of society. Those naughty stickers you see on the backs of Ford trucks of a wild-haired boy peeing on a Chevy logo are Calvin bootlegs.

Licensing: After the strip took off Bill W. refused to license anything, not a single Hobbes plush doll or Calvin keyring. He believed that to do otherwise would be to negate the art. This was one of his many disputes with the syndicate that published the strip; he was able to win most of the time, because of the strip's popularity. For example, his became the first and for a while the only Sunday strip allowed to use a fixed rectangle, rather than several rearrangeable subrectangles; this gave him much greater freedom with the art.

Hobbes' nature: Hobbes is a real tiger when no one else is looking (which is most of the time) and a plush tiger the rest of time. Bill Watterson explains that he neither sees Hobbes coming to life by some miracle, nor is this just a thing Calvin imagines. There is no strip clearing this up on purpose: Calvin views Hobbes in his way and everyone else sees him differently. These are two versions of reality and each is perfectly logical for the viewer. No two people see the world the same way and the strip shows this. So Hobbes nature is not about a toy coming to life but that BeliefsCreateReality. (explained by Bill in "The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book")

Calvins and Hobbes characteristics: Calvin is a firebrand with a wicked boyish imagination, infantile motivations, and considerable guile. Hobbes is both a slinky sneaky big cat and a wise, gentle & mature philosopher (with a healthy philosophy completely opposing the misery concocted by his namesake, ThomasHobbes?, just as Calvin's philosophy opposes his namesake's).

Calvin's childish & self-centered transgressions get tempered by Hobbes' aloof role as an exteriorized conscience. A cartoon about a boy throwing slush balls at a neighbor girl would be trite and sad without Hobbes there to tease him back, "You think she's cute, right?" This pattern is as old as the hills (it's a comic variation on the "foil character" pattern). It can be seen today in SinFest?, where the author has admitted the influence, and in BrunoTheBandit, where the author had to be reminded of it.

Despite occasionally philosophizing, Hobbes remains very much a cat.

Must read: If you like CalvinAndHobbes you should definitely get "The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book" ISBN 0836204387 . Besides containing some of the best strips, Bill Watterson comments on several of them. He also gives some insight on how several aspects around CalvinAndHobbes: Licensing, Inspiration etc.

Termination: Bill Watterson stopped CalvinAndHobbes on January 1, 1996. Maximum respect for KnowingWhenToStop.

A big shame really. I run into people all the time that miss this strip.

Panel one: Calvin is happily hammering nails into the surface of the living room coffee table, WAP WAP WAP.

Panel two: Mom runs in screaming, "CALVIN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

Panel three: Calvin, still holding the hammer, looks at the forest of nails sticking out of the coffee table.

Panel four: Calvin asks, "Is this some sort of trick question?"

My absolute favorite cartoon ever. Brilliant in so many ways: simple verbal humor, complex verbal humor ("brunkle"), physical comedy, psychological comedy (father to son re: world was black and white), and on and on.

Actually, it's about the two main characters in FightClub.

See http://web.archive.org/web/20020806195703/http://www.whatever-dude.com/posts/145.shtml for details.

Since CalvinAndHobbes pre-dates FightClub, I see no reason to follow that link.

CategoryComicStrip, CategoryWhimsy