Calvin & Hobbes Appreciation Thread
 

So, certainly I'm not the only fan here, right? I've been a fan of the comic strip for as long as I can remember. Much like the TMNT, it was (& at times continues to be) something that eased my mind. I was usually very sick (up until my mid/late teens) with a case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome often times so severe I could not leave my home, & my condition kept me in the bathroom for extensive periods of time. Of course when that's what you're dealing with, you've got to take your mind off of it as best you can. My gameboy came in handy, but nothing brought me more joy than the collected volumes of Calvin & Hobbes that I owned. My mom picked up one or two for me figuring it would be something I'd enjoy, and given my situation & fancy for the strips, over time I owned them all. Those comics were the only thing that really did the trick. They were funny, heartwarming, relatable (being a kid & all), wonderfully illustrated, frequently philosophical & they brought you into many different places as Calvin's imagination held no limits.

Generally speaking, newspaper funnies don't have a time-line. You can read them in any order, and not miss anything as they were simple gags that played out between three to six panels. Though that was the case with C&H on occasion, usually there was a storyline to follow with each new day that sometimes spanned over several weeks. So reading them in collected volumes was much like reading a standard comic book, which to my knowledge is uncommon for strips (though not unheard of). Stories with pictures, gotta love 'em.

I was a Calvin as a kid, so I felt right at home reading it. I latched on to my stuffed animals, giving them personalities & having imaginary adventures & conversations with them, the breadth of my imagination was unmatched, I was an only child terror with a big heart who drove his parents crazy, anything gross was right up my alley, & much like Calvin I didn't have many real friends. It felt like the book was made just for me. Being someone who didn't get out all too frequently and didn't get to enjoy the standard TV pilot childhood, it was wonderful to still feel on par with another kid, even if he was made of ink. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to look like orphan Annie or anything, but when you're a little kid it's much harder to deal with a crummy deck than it is as an adult. You feel like you're the only one in that position, you have the whole "why me" mentality 'cause you don't understand that "sh*t happens". Calvin & Hobbes always cheered me up.

Anyways, who else loves this strip?! Things that stick out the most for me are Calvin's dinosaur daydreams (that have an uncanny resemblance to Jim Lawson's "Paleo", now that I think of it!), the time he made a "transmogrifier" & turned himself & Hobbes into various critters, when clones of Calvin were wreaking havoc in the neighborhood, & the many train-wreck vacations their family had.

The Sunday strips were the ones I really anticipated every weekend. If I remember, the Sunday paper was the only one my family ever bought regularly (to get the coupons), so I didn't have much immediate exposure to the daily strips. However, since my dad owned just about all of the collected books back in the day, I did get to read the dailies sequentially in that format. Calvin really did have some great adventures with the Transmogrifier. All his plots to try and get out of doing his homework made me envious, although I also realized he could have saved himself a lot of worry by just doing it as early as possible and then enjoying the rest of his day. :-)

Love Calvin and Hobbes. I have all the compilation books, and while I haven't read them in a few years, I am sure there are comics in there that will still make me laugh out loud as they did then.

Probably more, as I'm sure there are a few more I can appreciate now.

My brother has a Hobbes tattoo. We're both big fans.

Wow, you should really pressure him to a Calvin on the other arm (assuming the Hobbes is on an arm, that is!).:)

I've thought about getting one myself (of both characters), that's neat!

Loved Calvin and Hobbes growing up. :) I used to hang out at the library after school and look through the collected books..

Enjoyed Calvin and Hobbs, but I really need to reread a lot of the strips to get a real feel for them again.

As far as I can remember, I think I started reading C&H as soon as I was able to read. My sister had some of the collected books, and I remember reading her's, and then getting obsessed with them enough to ask for my own.

I loved Calvin's alternate personalities, like Spaceman Spiff, Spencer Bullet, and my favorite, Stupendous Man. My grandmother even made me a Stupendous Man cape and cowl for Halloween. I would wear it even when it wasn't Halloween, it was pretty sweet.

Let's all go play Calvinball. The only rule is that there's no rules.

Now that i think about it i never really did read Calvin and Hobbes except for the ones that where in the newspaper's.

Calvinball was the best game ever, because you didn't have to be any good at it to play it well! It was even better than The Far Side's "Tethercat!":lol:

I remember the run where Calvin got to Rosalyn (sp) the babysitter to play Calvinball so he could stay up later and then it backfired on him... The snowmen that Calvin made were my favorite though. I remember making some of them in my front lawn one time. The buried alive snowman and the hanging snowman..

The snowmen that Calvin made were awesome, the Snow Goons was one of my favorite C&H story arcs, I must've re-read that arc half a dozen times.

Ah... here we go:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...ball_dance.gif

Calvin, Charlie Brown, Bart Simpson. Why do little boys make the best cartoon characters?

:tgrin:

My all-time favorite Calvin comic was when he peed on the Chevy logo.

Joking aside, it was a brilliant strip and I admired the artistic integrity of it's creator, Bill Watterson, inasmuch as he fought for more newspaper space on Sundays, as well as his resistance to license his work.

I'm sorry, but this all together made me chuckle.

I thought about that too, but I'm pretty sure DB intended that as a joke:
Anyway, Watterson only licensed C&H for the collected books and for a special educational book, Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes.

I would soooo love to find that thing in somebody's yardsale. $$$

I'm not with Watterson all the way regarding licensing. I think most of us can agree a plush Hobbes would have been cool to have.

How so...like he appears in "real life" or in Calvin's imagination?

Yeah, that's the problem. Part of the beauty of the strip is that the reader is never sure which version of Hobbes is the most "real." Is it Calvin's point-of-view or the perspective of the rest of the more "mature" world?

Many fairs and carnivals that I went to as a kid had bootleg Hobbes plushies. I ended up winning one, I still have it.
It's pink though, not orange. Neat nonetheless. Totally agree that we coulda used some stuff, even just a statue or snowglobe would be nice.

*Tries to sneak in the house,....(gets pounced)*

Sorry to jump in so late, on one of my annual drop-ins. Best comics strip ever and the collections are some of the best sources of pure joy that exists on this Earth. That's all.

A snowglobe would've been fantastic, especially one of Calvin and Hobbes on their sled, or one of Calvin's snowmonsters.

Love Calvin & Hobbes. There was always collected books in my household when I was growing up, thanks to my Mum who was also a fan. I've got three or four collected books lying around, they never get old.

I've been consdering getting the two tattooed. Hmm...

Oh man, I consider Calvin and Hobbes to be one of the greatest artistic achievments of all time in any media, and probably the best comic strip of the las 50 years (exceeded only by Peanuts). Watterson's resistance to license the strip makes a lot of sense to me, considering how mass media and capitalism often was one of the main subjects of the strip.

That would be about as cool as a tattoo can get. Just saying.

Has anyone seen this?
http://www.dearmrwatterson.com/store/

I am currently on the hunt for any Watterson or Calvin and Hobbes OA..

Probably my favorite comic strip alongside Garfield and Foxtrot. It never gets old. I own every strip in book format.

I don't mind Watterson's views on licensing. Imagine if Calvin & Hobbes ever got a live action movie like Garfield did? Sounds scary :o

Hands down one of my absolute favorite comic strips of all time. I have such fond memories of shared reading time with my dad growing up. He has all the books and I've read them countless times, great stuff!

I also loved his made up reports for school- Bats are birds, etc. When he decided to start collecting his snot in a jar for those that didn't have enough snot... And of course all his alter-egos.

Nostalgic side note- I also remember reading the old 1950s & 60s Disney Uncle Scrooge comics with my dad- I love those too!

I own plenty of Disney comics, from Donald and Scrooge to Mickey and Goofy. They're pretty popular in several European countries. In fact, most people here grow up reading those character's comics than watching their cartoons.

"Calvin and Hobbes" was a brilliant comic. I loved it as a kid, and understood the depths of Watterson's satire later in life. The art was great, the characters were fun, and it changed the way Sunday comics were done, as Watterson fought for flexibility of panel space to showcase his artistic plans.

As you grow up, you realize how Calvin is incredibly articulate and smart, but uses most of that for just being the same brat that young kids normally are. It's great.

As a dinosaur geek, it's also fascinating to watch his artwork of the creatures evolve as he learned more (something he notes in the 10th Anniversary Collection), and the contrast between the highly realistic art and the cartoony style of the rest of the comic.

I respect Watterson's desire for privacy and the lack of licensed merchandise on his part--he's outlined solidly why he believes in the latter in several places, and I agree with him.

(I don't have a problem with "selling out" if it's voluntary on the part of the artist, and in Watterson's case, it obviously would not be.)

While Watterson is a very private sort, the book "Looking for Calvin and Hobbes" manages to piece together a lot about the comic's history through interviews with people who knew Watterson. I'd recommend checking it out:

http://www.amazon.ca/Looking-Calvin-.../dp/1441106855

I still own one of those carnival plush tigers, and mine actually is orange. I called it "Hobbes", but I never thought of it as an actual Hobbes bootleg likeness. I might post a picture later.

Oh how I would love to have a copy of the rare Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes book....

-ms

https://24.media.tumblr.com/c2bda78e...fffpo1_500.png

As I suggested, here is my "Hobbes" that I won at a carnival in the 1990s.

Heard about it when the trailer dropped but I've still not seen it. Forgot to, actually. & as for the OA, HA! No chance.

Mhm, that's the same one I have! The only difference, as I said earlier, is that mine is like a magenta color. :trazz:

They also made some calendars way back when...but other than those and the textbook, there's nothing else I know of. The creator stated a reason why he didn't want any merchandise, I think...can't remember what he said.

I used to love Clavin and Hobbes! Totally forget about it until I saw this thread..gotta hunt down some of the books now.

You know, I had never heard of Calvin and Hobbes until the internet; It was never published in my local newspaper. I guess they felt the B.C. Comic Strip was more important.

Basically, Watterson felt that merchandising would cheapen his characters, by taking them out of their comic context and making them things to sell mugs and plushies, instead of just being standalone comic characters.

At other times, he's said he doesn't think animation could measure up to the potential of a comic strip, and that it'd be unnerving to hear someone give a voice to Calvin.

Watterson got into huge fights with the syndicates over this very thing, and it was pretty rough on him.

This article here goes into it: http://web.archive.org/web/200602101...du/comics.html , but the Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary book also did.

Here's one quote from the article:

"Some very good strips have been cheapened by licensing. Licensed products, of course, are incapable of capturing the subtleties of the original strip, and the merchandise can alter the public perception of the strip, especially when the merchandise is aimed at a younger audience than the strip is. The deeper concerns of some strips are ignored or condensed to fit the simple gag requirements of mugs and T-shirts."

Of course, Calvin and Hobbes was popular, so a lot of people made bootleg products. Everyone knows about the peeing Calvin decals, but some more innocent stuff was out there. My cousin used to have a bootleg Calvin and Hobbes t-shirt with artwork from one of the Boy Scout strips printed on it.

Calvin and Hobbes is my favorite strip. My grandfather gave me his old copy of The Essential Calvin & Hobbes, when I was a kid, and over time, I just kept buying books until there weren't any left.

I do think it could make a great cartoon, especially with the 11-minute format that's caught on. But we'll always have the comics.

There's apparently going to be a show of Watterson's work in Ohio at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stor...ks-to-OSU.html