The first time we met presidential candidate Donald Trump it was funny, because he was a six-year-old cartoon character with an imaginary tiger for a best friend. I’m now convinced Bill Watterson woke up in 1985 having dreamed the future nominee for the Republican Party and spent the next 10 years using him as inspiration for the greatest comic strip of all time.
The subreddit DonaldandHobbes consists entirely of Calvin and Hobbes strips with Donald’s face on Calvin’s body, and the result is kind of uncanny. It began with this strip from user NeonDisease (Ian Battles from central Connecticut) seven months ago:
He’d seen the strip below and loved “how uncannily well Trump fit as Calvin,” Battles says.
“A lot of people think this is ‘tarnishing the Calvin and Hobbes image,’ but I’ve been a fan of Bill Watterson’s work since I was a little kid and have nothing but respect for his art and morals. A lot of his strips have political messages, and he even used to do strictly political stuff in college, so I’d like to think he would get a kick out of it too.”
There are now more than 80 entries on the subreddit, which boasts more than 5,000 subscribers. Here’s one of our favorites:
The main rule is that “The strip you paste Trump’s head over has to contain dialogue that Trump might actually say,” so most of the posts are extremely topical, like this one from today:
We loved Calvin because he was six, and we could hope he’d eventually grow out of his horrible nature. Donald Trump is 70. That changes things, just a bit.