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Early last year, I had the enjoyable task of spending several hours in the company of Scarlett Johansson. I held it together. I didn't request a photo together, or an autograph...or even a funny soundbite to use as my voicemail greeting. That being said, if I ever found myself in a room with Bill Watterson, I would probably start shrieking or sob uncontrollably or wrap the man—scared and bewildered—up in a hug so tight that security would forcibly remove me from the premises. I have every last Calvin & Hobbes book. Some date back nearly two decades and were purchased from elementary-school book fairs. I don't read them very often, but I will never dump them in the thrift-store pile. They're precious to me. When someone brings this much laughter into your life, this much delight, you show deference. So I will always keep my books close. Here are five of the things I love about Mr. Watterson's famous strip.***
1. The Expressions
I'm not just talking about Calvin's disgusted "blech!" face when he gets served something healthy and unidentifiable at the dinner table. I'm talking about Hobbes's mile-wide grin when he gets a kiss from Susie Derkins. I'm talking about the the sour grimace on the babysitter's face after enduring a night of Calvin's hijinx. Watterson barely needed to provide dialogue.2. Vocabulary
There's nothing better than a six-year-old kid who ruminates on life using pentasyllabic words. Here's to holding the funnies in one hand and a thesaurus in the other. Guess that's what you get when you have a comic strip named after a theologian and a British philosopher.3. Calvin's Imagination
Sure, there's the make-believe tiger friend. But what about the strip with the T-Rex flying the fighter jet? Or when Spaceman Spiff landed on some new alien planet that ended up being the mashed potatoes on Calvin's dinner plate? Or when a ratty cardboard box turned into a time machine or a cloning chamber or, best of all, a transmogrifying machine? (Trans-mog-ri-fy-ing. Five syllables. What'd I tell you?)4. G.R.O.S.S.
Whatever the prepubescent version of sexual tension is, you could cut
it with a knife when Susie Derkins came strolling by on her way to a
tea party with favorite doll Binky Betsy. Calvin "Supreme Dictator For
Life" and Hobbes up in the treehouse had me rolling on the floor
laughing when they convened the Get Rid Of Slimy girlS club. That incorrigible Ladies' Tiger, Hobbes, always forgetting the credo.5. Bill Watterson
Thankyouthankyouthankyou.
Email
I'd like inform you that Scarlett Johansson (actress)actually is a clone from original person,who has nothing with acting career.Clone was created illegally using stolen biomaterial.Original Scarlett Galabekian last name is nice, CHRISTIAN young lady.I'll tell more,those clones(it's not only 1)made in GERMANY-world leader manufacturer of humans clones,it's in Ludwigshafen am Rhein,Rhineland-Palatinate,Mr.Helmut Kohl home town.You can't even imaging the scale of the cloning activity.But warning,H.Kohl staff strictly controlling their clones spreading around the world,they're NAZI type disciplined and mind controlled,be careful get close with clones you will be controlled too.Original family didn't authorize any activity with stolen biomaterials,no matter what form it was created in,it's all need to be back to original family control in Cedars-Sinai MedicalCenter in LA.Controlling clones is US military operation.Original Scarlett never was engaged,by the way
Here's to celebrating big imaginations, be they Calvin's or Serge's.
I absolutely ADORE Bill Watterson. In 9th grade, I'm pretty sure I made a geocities website just for the guy. Why are all the geniuses recluses?
One of the toughest decisions I've ever had to face in life is whether to spend $100+ on a copy of Ansel Adams at 100 or the Complete Calvin and Hobbes.
Both are, frankly, masterpieces.
I've now indoctrinated my children who want to read Calvin and Hobbes every night before bed. I do admit needing to abbreviate the philosophy and pentasyllabic words for my real 6 year old to understand.
Even my wife, who hates comics, admits that some of them are "kinda funny".
6. The social/political commentary
7. Calvin's 'polls' on his dad
8. The delightful balance between Calvin and Hobbes, what a great straight man Hobbes made, and how their relationship went from a sincere and heartwearming, good old fashioned love for your best friend, to verbal assault, to physical fights, and back again.
I love people who love Calvin and Hobbes. Let's all be friends.
P.S. To Howard: my father taught me to read on Calvin and Hobbes when I was tiny (mainly because he got too bored reading me more traditional Dr. Seuss and such), and I think it has most if not everything to say about how I turned out: sarcastic, lovingly verbally abusive to my friends, mischievous and with an unusual fondness for vocabulary. Among other things, of course.
@Taylor:
Here, here.
I miss them more than Charlie and Snoopy. I'll never forget Calvin's devious smile. He always reminded me of myself when I was his age, but with a superior vocabulary. "They lie. I lie." I love it!
C&H has been my personal inspiration since they first began. I too own all the books and the recent "Complete Calvin and Hobbes." Your writing nearly brought a tear to my eye. I grew up as a little blonde kid blowing up GI Joes with firecrackers and making fire rings around lego men with WD40. Calvin was my idol, and Mr. Watterson is the greatest writer and artist who ever lived.
My absolute favorites were the snowmen. I can't wait for my son to get old enough to enjoy C&H.
Thank you so much for this article.
@Josh Jackson HAHAHA!! Thank you, Bill Watterson, for helping me get through elementary, middle and high school, and for providing great material for study breaks in college. I wish, oh, how I wish you had never retired!
I'm not so sure that the fact that Casey grew up with psychotic tendencies is the best endorsement of Calvin and Hobbes....
I love Calvin & Hobbes! I still read the repeats on http://www.gocomics.com/ every day. The strips are as fresh as the days they originally came out. I'm gonna read them till they day I die. If you ever feel bad a dip into a Calvin & Hobbes adventure will make you laugh out loud.
I wish I had been younger when I started reading C&H. I don't know how many times I said "Darn, I wish I'd thought to do that".
Calvin Ball! Goofy masks, a volleyball and a few flags. Whoever makes up the best rules wins!
And don't forget the wagon/sled kamikaze runs. Everyone of them ended in pain...but not before a thoughtful reflection of life on the way down.
I love Calvin, too. I wish the comics would still go on; and I dearly wish to know what kind of a person Calvin turns out to when he grows up.
I had a little epoxy clay at my hand, and when my girlfriend bought me the collected Calvin comics, I made her one of the snowmen...
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/560980663oUdeML?start=12
I love Calvin and Hobbes so much I have a tattoo on my left shoulder w/ one of the comic strips. Plus, a portrait of Calvin doing one of his mirror expressions right on my shoulder.
Many people have said it was a silly idea but I've had it for 5+ years and I don't regret it to this day.
:)
After Calvin & Hobbes and the late, great Far Side went into retirement, the comic pages have been unreadable.
I've never laughed harder than seeing Hobbes roll his eyes at something Calvin was pontificating about. A wonderful comic.
Calvin & Hobbes are always great
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=763vmCrRBDg
Calvin & Hobbes is by far the best comic of all time. I don't think Watterson's genius will ever be surpassed.
I saw a website a couple of years ago proposing that the lead character(s) in the movie "Fight Club" (played by Ed Norton Jr. and Brad Pitt), were actually the grown-up incarnation of Calvin and Hobbes. The correlations were incredible. Even Susie was there (her character was played by Helena Bonham I think). True or not; I got a lot of pleasure comparing the two. Both are works of art.
Name a better example of American literature and characterization from the late 20th century. Yes, I really mean it and I think it's true. The best realized child character since Huckleberry Finn. And one of the best representations of a child's mind, emotions and imagination ever. Thanks for the post.
I wiped back a tear reading the final Calvin and Hobbes strip in the morning paper.
Brian Stoffers: This? Fight Club: The Return of Hobbes.
http://www.xkcd.com/529/
:D
There are few things I remember as vividly or as bittersweetly as that final strip - the perfect end to Watterson's perfect art.
you so nailed it, Jason. Bravo.
Another two reasons to adore C+H: Watterson quit at the top and he refused to sell out/cash in. As you all know, he did no merchandising of C+H - no coffee mugs, bumper stickers, T-shirts and sweatshirts, caps, etc - and all those idiotic stickers of Calvin pissing on whatever or kneeling and praying before the Xian cross, are all unauthorized ripoffs.
Quick, to the Bat-fax!
Best line ever.
@angryrat
> I dearly wish to know what kind of a
> person Calvin turns out to when he
> grows up.
With very little effort, you could imagine he grew up to become a brilliant, underachieving, school janitor. :-)
http://comics.com/frazz/
Yes.....yes. Another of my biggest reasons I love C&H: the touching moments where Calvin realizes some greater truth about family or love or life, or is genuinely saddened by something, and it makes you choke up a little. Poor kid.....
"Calvin and Hobbes" was always my favorite in my pre-teen and teenage years, followed closely by "The Far Side." Why do all the great strips disappear? Thank God "Foxtrot" and "Doonesbury" are still around.
The thing I always loved was the Spaceman Spiff adventures, the trips downhill conversations while on sled/in the wagon, and his adventures (too few) as the Private Investigator. Stupendous Man was great too, especially the one where he became Stupendous Man at school to take a test. I always wanted to do something crazy like that.
Serge, your comment is brilliant.
"AIEEE!! THEY GOT FRANK!!" is the best ever. I was 16, living in a very pro hunting NRA stronghold when I read this strip, so the 'thinning out the herd is acutally more humane' argument quite alot. So this strip remained a personal favorite for a very long time!
A few years ago I came across a great page on the site Progressive Boink that featured 25 favorite Calvin & Hobbes strips. Here is the link to the page, http://progressiveboink.com/archive/calvinhobbes.htm.
My favorites were the snowman ones -- suiciding snowman ... don't look at me, he's your son, lol!
> the touching moments where Calvin realizes some greater
> truth about family or love
Indeed.
This is the same thing that /made/ the Simpsons great. Epitomized by the Michael Jackson episode, at heart there was always the reality that Bart & Lisa loved each other, no matter what else.
This has been lost in the last 7 seasons or so. That show has lost its core message, and it shows.
When my sons were pre-teens, they began scarfing up my Calvin & Hobbes books and soon it was a favorite pastime spent as a family when no other communication was happening....
Long live Calvin & Hobbes!
The end of Calvin and Hobbes is still very bittersweet for me. I love them and always will, so I still mourn the end of the strip. Yet I am glad that it ended on a high note and that I was never subjected to their slow sad decline, a la Peanuts and so very many other comics I used to love.
I loved the snowmen - all of them.
I love the comic where Calvin's dad explains that the whole world used to be black and white. And the one where Calvin's mom is losing it while he's pounding nails into a coffee table, and Calvin calmly asks "Is that a trick question?"
who else can make you laugh and smile for the rest of the day when someone says "remember the snowmen"?
Oh, I thought I was the only one who absolutely adores C & H to this day. I thought everyone else forgot.
The best thing? Bill's perspective. He worried about things in the eighties that are still HUGE issue today. In fact, they are now on everyone's mind...things like global instability and the environment. Hobbes never could understand humans and their stupid short sighted ways.
You've captured the delight of the Calvin and Hobbes strip, but I must say that my appreciation goes a level deeper. Calvin and Hobbes saved my relationship with my son. He, the ultimate smart, intuitive, but ADHD boy, was forever getting himself into trouble by doing some over-the-top thing. And he had a, ha-hem, rich inner life. For example, he didn't want me to buy a new mattress for his bed because it would "hurt the feelings of the old one" when I got rid of it. He thought I was always mad at him and he didn't know why. Reading Calvin and Hobbes together, and showing how I "got it" but was also like the mom in the comic strip - I had a job to do, and that was to protect him from himself - brought us together in a way I could never have anticipated. I bought every new C&H I could get my hands on, and still have a few of them; my son took the rest when he went off on his own.
Oh my how I adore Calvin and Hobbes. Has always been my favorite comic strip. Though, to be fair, The Far Side was never far behind.
I got the complete collection of C&H - that massive 3 volume behemoth. It's a joy and a wonder to page through with a coffee in the morning.
Of all the cleverness and wonder of C&H, I think the snowmen were my favoritest.
Crisco hair!
i love Calvin and Hobbes so much. i am sorta young so i had the chance to see it in the papers when new ones were coming out, but i have just about every book.mi love how it goes from nonsensical and silly to serious and philosophical in an instant.
here's to you, Bill
For me, Christmas day, 1995 (or was it 12/26?) will be one of the most bittersweet days of my life. My son was 6. Every Sunday, he'd be on my lap as we read C&H together. He, laughing at the pictures. Me, laughing at the whole thing, with an internal voice saying, "he just nailed the human condition...again". My personal fave is Dad's explanation of the world going from black and white to color. (sigh)...
When we were dating in college I gave my husband a book of C&H each year for Christmas. We used to say that some day we would have a little "Calvin" of our own. When I was pregnant with our first child we could not agree on a name. Until the day I found those books and we realized that we were about to have a "Calvin" for real. The name stuck. Now our Calvin is about to turn 11 and he enjoys the comic as much as we do. And he is surprisingly like some of the strips. I have to get those out again and start re-reading them. Thanks for the reminder of days gone by....
Our house burned down in January 2005. Our kids were in kindergarten and 4th grade at the time. The first thing we did was replace their books. The first book I bought for myself?: The Complete Calvin & Hobbes 3 volume set. Was a no-brainer as far as I was concerned. God I miss that comic strip.
I always thought it would be cool to tap Calvin's mom. She looked like a sassy girl to me.