Calvin and Hobbes Forever
Posted by SugarRay on October 18, 2005

When was the last time you actually enjoyed reading the comics page? For me it was when Bill Watterson threw in the towel with Calvin and Hobbes, Gary Larson retired The Far Side, and anyone reading Peanuts realized that Charles M. Schulz was slowly losing his mind. All that was ten years ago, and partly attributed to me slowly moving away from my dream of being a syndicated newspaper cartoonist. When I was a kid that's all I wanted to do, but it was when the comics page began filling with unfunny garbage like Dilbert that I realized that cartoonists with nothing to say are tools and I didn't want to turn into one of them. I respected my art too much to do that.

That's one of the reasons Calvin and Hobbes was so great; Bill Watterson refused to sell out C&H to merchandising. He respected his work too much.

"My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships. Who would believe in the innocence of a little kid and his tiger if they cashed in on their popularity to sell overpriced knickknacks that nobody needs?" - Bill Watterson: Non-sell out non-tool American Cartoonist Hero!

Watterson also took long sabbaticals to refresh his juicy brain in order to keep his comics fresh instead of churning out strips that are about as funny as reprocessed pork and beans. Sure it was SUPREMELY ANNOYING back in the day, but in retrospect it seems like the right thing to have done.

I still remember the day the Ogden Standard-Examiner published the story of Watterson retiring C&H from the daily strips.

I was crushed! It was all I could think about at school for like a week. "Man, what am I gonna do without new Calvin and Hobbes? I don't know if I'll ever get over this. This is horrible, etc!"

I wish I was making that up, but Calvin and Hobbes was that big of a part of my life when I was fourteen years old. I had been reading them since I was a kid, owned Israeli comic books translated into Hebrew from when I lived in Jerusalem, my twin brother and I played a "joke" at a Cub Scout invention fair when we took a giant cardboard box and pretended it was the duplicator machine (I had to sit in that thing for like an hour for the joke to work,) Revenge of the Baby-Sat was the first book I ever purchased with my own hard earned money. Calvin and Hobbes was a huge influence on my life, and I was very sad to see it go.

Thank goodness for books! In 2003 Gary Larson released The Complete Far Side, and this month Bill Watterson released The Complete Calvin and Hobbes!

**shudder-drool***

I'll be getting my copy soon, but first I thought it appropriate to mark this momentous occasion with a tribute to some of the best C&H strips. Or, at least, some of the best in my opinion. I know there are better ones out there that everybody loves or drive home some deep philosophical point. I know all about the greatness of Stupendous Man, Spaceman Spiff, Cardboard Boxes, Wagons, Sleds, Front Door Pouncing, and so forth. These are the ones I chose to comment on, so get over it and don't email me like I'm crazy or I don't know what I'm talking about!

Also, I would like to take this opportunity to let you all know that the following images are the property of Bill Watterson and Universal Press Syndicate used without permission. I'm not sure if this falls under fair usage because I am commenting on them and making no money doing so. On top of all that, I am saying very nice things about Calvin and Hobbes and helping them plug a book that is priced at over a hundred dollars. I acquired all images via My Comics Page.com at which I am a premium subscriber.

Alrighty, on with the strips!

I still crack up when I read this one. I swear, I wish I could send this message and a bouquet of dead roses to every girl who has dumped me flat on my butt or treated me like garbage. Trust me, that's a lot of dead flowers!

This was published on December 30th, 1989. Here we are, almost 16 years later and we're still waiting for all that stuff.

This is usually how board games went down when me, my sister, my twin brother, and my little brother would play them. We would make up rules, get mad at each other, get into fights and we very rarely played an entire game through to it's intended conclusion. Aaah, those were the days.

For those of you who don't know (shame on you,) Calvin usually acts up when his parents leave him in Rosalyn's care. Here his Dad is subtly threatening him in hopes it will get him to behave.

This reminds me a lot of how my Dad would threaten/punish us. When he would threaten us, we knew he meant it. I remember sitting in Church when we were kids and we would start to fall asleep or get out of hand, my Dad would put his thumb behind his knuckle and smack us hard right on the back of our heads. That made us behave. Today parents are too afraid to threaten/punish their kids properly and it is leading to the downfall of our society. What a shame.

I'm still not sure if I understand all this.

I have this same attitude towards TV these days. Sure I watch a few shows, but I don't rearrange my life in order to be constantly watching TV. I would rather be outside or doing something and living my own life rather than what someone has scripted. TV is good and all, but I think everyone would be better off to get out and live their own lives once in a while.

I want this strip tattooed across my chest!

This is one of my favorite C&H strips of all time. I don't know what it is about Calvin's runaway imagination interrupting his reality without him even knowing it that makes me laugh for like twenty minutes.

We have a guy who acts just like this at work. He is complaining ALL THE TIME! ABOUT EVERYTHING! And it isn't just the normal complaining about things to make jokes with everybody, which is all fine and dandy because that's how most of us interact. This guy is seriously whining about anything and everything he can think of. He complains about stuff that isn't even a problem, but he'll find a way to make it a problem. I'm not sure if he's a bitter old man or what, but I'd like to smack him one time in the mouth with a baseball bat to get him to shut up once in a while! Moral of the story: try to be more positive, you jerk!

This is how I feel every time someone tries to make me study for the promotion board or take some stupid correspondence courses, and then when I express my views I am reprimanded for not thinking like everybody else. I hate that. I hate when people feel everybody has to have the same goals and the same view on life. That's groupthink and it hampers my individualism. I'm not trying to make excuses for not wanting to do the work, because I am a firm believer in working hard for something you want. I just don't want the same things as everybody else around me. Just because my goals are different from theirs doesn't mean I am not learning, progressing, and constantly making myself better.

If you look through the funny pages today, you won't find deep thought like this. You'll just find a bunch of hacks trying to make middle aged women giggle. The fact that most of them can't draw to save their lives doesn't help their case, either. What the world needs today is Calvin and Hobbes or something as thought provoking and funny as it was.

Even after all these years we still miss you, Bill!

Calvin and Hobbes Forever!

Relevant Links:
Buy The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
Official Calvin and Hobbes Website
Wikipedia Entry on Bill Watterson