calvin and hobbes 1985-1995
100 years of american comics
Marice HornFollowing a stint at political cartooning and advertising layout in the early 1980s, Bill Watterson was able, after several unsuccessful submissions, to sell Calvin and Hobbes to Universal Press Syndicate. The daily and Sunday feature appeared on November 18, 1985, much to the delight of readers, who found in this humor comic strip a highly original creation.
It was with some irony that Watterson named Calvin, a hyperactive six-year-old first-grader, and Hobbes, a stuffed toy tiger who came alive in Calvin's presence only, after the two humorless philosophers. These two best friends (they seemed to need no others)loved to play pranks on one another and fight as they called each other names for cheating or for simply reinventing the rules of familiar childhood games to fit their purposes of the moment. Knowing no obstacle, no restraint, endowed with limitless imagination and sophisticated vocabulary, as well as with vast knowledge of prehistory and science fiction technology, Calvin could transform a wagon, a sled, or a box into all manner of airships that allowed both him and Hobbes to fly over wide precipices, down snow-covered slopes, or through time.
When Calvin was by himself-at school, for example, which he hated and where, like Einstein, he earned mostly C's, or at the dinner table, where food was rarely to his demanding standards- he alternated between assuming the guises of Spaceman Spiff and Safari Al, as he conquered enemy planets or tamed uncharted jungles. However, he was always rudely brought back to reality by teacher or parent, sometimes themselves metamorphosed into disgusting creatures. In the same way, as Stupendous Man, the caped superhero, Champion of Liberty and Defender of Free Will, he could be vanquished only by his "evil archenemy- Mom-Lady." Although " childhood is short and maturity is forever," a more thoughtful Calvin was also concerned over pollution and endangered species (especially tigers), the purpose of life, the incomprehensibility of death, the passing of time, and the meaning of friendship.
To counteract his young companion's pursuit of instant gratification, after he had indulged him for a while, a better educated and sometimes more mature Hobbes deflated the boy's imprudent or self-centered behavior by showing him the error of his thinking, much to Calvin's belated chagrin. When, for instance, the self-appointed dictator-for-life Calvin was singing their club anthem, Hobbes reminded him that he has the soprano voice of a sissy; or he would wish Calvin luck in getting the world handed to him on a silver platter. Besides having an exuberant nature of his own, Hobbes had a gentle, sentimental side, too, being very pleased not to be a human being, choosing starvation over spam, or simply enjoying nature. Above all, he had poetry and panache.
Calvin's parents, while loving, were not Dr.Spock disciples, as they tried to cope with their son's conduct. Dad, a lawyer, was an ineffectual man around the house whose enjoyment of camping and the great outdoors was unmatched by anybody else's. He often preferred working at the office to being in manic Calvin's company, and he wondered whether a DNA test might explain his negative popularity-poll results, as tabulated by Calvin. Mom on the other hand, was a homemaker who was willing to tolerate or ignore Calvin's shenanigans up to a point, beyond which she would blow up in anger and frustration. This is why a precious Calvin believed that "some women just weren't meant to be mothers."
Susie, Calvin's dark-haired classmate ("a babe!" in Hobbes's eyes) and a very good pupil, often the butt of this juvenile male chauvinist's jokes. Yet she was more than able to give back in kind. Rosalyn, the strict and understandably well-paid baby-sitter; Miss Wormwood the old no-nonsense schoolteacher; and Moe, the nasty bully, completed the cast of recurring characters. To balance slapstick, fantasy, and human emotions, Watterson, influenced to some extent by Charles Schulz's Peanuts and Walt Kelly's Pogo, drew the pictures and wrote the entire script with aesthetic energy and a well-tuned ear that reinforced each other and brought the strip to life. It is no wonder then that, in addition to various deserved awards (including the creator's receipt of Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year [twice], several of Watterson's paperback reprints have been long-term New York Times bestsellers, and that Calvin & Hobbes went from some 130 newspapers in 1986 to close to two thousand when Watterson decided to retire his strip; the last page appeared on December 31, 1995.BACK TO TOP
