Calvin & Hobbes

I am a serious reader. I have Dickens, Tolstoy and Austen on my bookshelves. Okay,I've only read Dickens but I'm planning to read Austen soon. I have a complete encyclopedia set of Shakespeare and I've even read a couple of his plays. I admire Mark Twain, C.S. Lewis and the Bronte Sisters. But its Calvin and Hobbes who show us the world as it really is.

I've always loved comic strips, and Calvin and Hobbes is probably the funniest and most poignant of them all.

To the rest of the world Calvin is a difficult unintelligent strange child who carries around a stuffed tiger everywhere. In short, he's weird and he should be seeing a psychiatrist.

But the reality is that Calvin has an active imagination, a genius IQ,(with an extremely large vocabulary and a talent for rhyming) and Hobbes is not an ordinary stuffed tiger. He's real and Calvin's best friend.

Certain themes are continuous. Hobbes attacks Calvin at regular intervals, they sled down dangerous hills while Calvin philosophizes (he philosophizes a lot), Calvin frequently becomes dangerous dinosaurs and is at turns Spaceman Spiff, Stupendous Man, and Tracer Bullet a private investigator styled after the 40's detective stories. They are always on the lookout for Susie (because all girls are slimy and gross) and Calvin just can't focus long enough in school to have a clue what's going on.


The Indispensable Calvin And Hobbes by Bill Watterson

In Indispensable we see him kidnap Susie's doll and demand a ransom only to have the tables turned on him (Susie can handle herself). We see his war with his babysitter (she can't handle Calvin), and we watch his struggle with reluctantly trying to please everyone in the story line of signing up to play lunch time baseball and not really wanting to but doing it anyway because he's the only boy that hasn't. The results are not pleasant and nicely illustrates how society likes to stick people in neat little boxes and doesn't know what to do with a child who doesn't fit.

And boy Calvin doesn't fit. If you tried to stick him in a box he'll thrash around and scream - unless you just give him the box and then it becomes a time travel ship, or a duplicator which makes (gasp) dozens of Calvins.

Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons
by Bill Watterson

In the Snow Goons, Calvin has built a snowman who in turn becomes a monster who creates an army of snow goons. Other story lines include replicating himself, creating his own TV show, and the war with his bike which is really hiding in wait to attack.

As always Hobbes is there, counselling, fighting, playing and listening to Calvin's philosophies on life and his struggles to be good for Santa Claus.

It's this kind of kid who grows up to be the Stephen Spielbergs and the Tolkiens of the world. Either that or a blight on society.

Either way, Calvin and Hobbes is hysterical. I suspect that the creator was Calvin once upon a time.

There's a little bit of Calvin in the father too as he explains why older pictures are in black in white. Funny thing is, it's the same explanation I gave my children. "Didn't you know, the world was black and white until the mid 60's when God turned the world into color."