Calvin and Hobbes is a daily American comic strip created by cartoonist Bill Watterson that was syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995.
The strip features two titular characters, six-year-old Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, and a small recurring cast that also includes Calvin's unnamed parents, his classmate and neighbor Susie Derkins, his teacher Miss Wormwood, his school bully Moe, and his babysitter Rosalyn.[citation needed]
Commonly described as "the last great newspaper comic",[2][3][4]Calvin and Hobbes has enjoyed enduring popularity and influence while also attracting significant academic and philosophical interest.
At the height of its popularity, Calvin and Hobbes was featured in over 2,400 newspapers worldwide.[1] As of 2010, reruns of the strip appeared in more than 50 countries, and nearly 45 million copies of the Calvin and Hobbes books had been sold worldwide.[1]
History
Development
"I thought it was perhaps too 'adult,' too literate. When my then-8-year-old son remarked, 'This is the Doonesbury for kids!' I suspected we had something unusual on our hands."
—Lee Salem, Watterson's editor at Universal, recalling his reaction after seeing Watterson's first submission[1]
Calvin and Hobbes was conceived and developed by Bill Watterson, while working in advertising.[5]United Feature Syndicate agreed to publish one strip called The Doghouse, which featured a side character (the main character's little brother) who had a stuffed tiger. United identified these characters as the strongest and encouraged Watterson to develop them as the center of their own strip.[6] United Feature ultimately rejected the new strip as lacking in marketing potential, although Universal Press Syndicate took it up.[7][8]
Publication and syndication
The first Calvin and Hobbes strip was published on November 18, 1985[9] in 35 newspapers. Within a year of syndication, the strip was published in roughly 250 newspapers and proved to have international appeal with translation and wide circulation outside the United States.[10]
As his creation grew in popularity, there was strong interest from the syndicate to merchandise the characters and expand into other forms of media.[11][pageneeded] By 1991, Watterson secured a contract that granted him legal control over his creation and all future licensing arrangements.[12]
After gaining creative control over his creation, Watterson relocated to New Mexico, and largely disappeared from public engagements, refusing to attend the ceremonies of any of the cartooning awards he won.[4]
In 1994, Watterson announced that Calvin and Hobbes would be concluding at the end of 1995. Stating his belief that he had achieved everything that he wanted to within the medium, he announced his intention to work on future projects at a slower pace with fewer artistic compromises.[12]
The final strip ran on Sunday, December 31, 1995, depicting Calvin and Hobbes sledding down a snowy hill after a fresh snowfall, with Calvin saying his final lines, "It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy... Let's go exploring!"[13][14][9]
Speaking to NPR in 2005, animation critic Charles Solomon opined that the final strip "left behind a hole in the comics page that no strip has been able to fill."[15]
Comparison of Calvin and Hobbes's following layout changes
The comic strip on the left from 1987 illustrates the layout constraints that Bill Watterson was required to work within for the first six years of the comic's syndication. The comic strip on the right from 1993 demonstrates one of the more creative layouts that Watterson had the freedom to employ after 1991.
Conflicts
Merchandising
Calvin and Hobbes had almost no official product merchandising. Watterson held that comic strips should stand on their own as an art form and although he did not start out completely opposed to merchandising in all forms (or even for all comic strips), he did reject an early syndication deal that involved incorporating a more marketable, licensed character into his strip.[8]
When Calvin and Hobbes was accepted by Universal Syndicate, and began to grow in popularity, Watterson found himself at odds with the syndicate, which urged him to begin merchandising the characters and touring the country to promote the first collections of comic strips. Watterson refused, believing that the integrity of the strip and its artist would be undermined by commercialization, which he saw as a major negative influence in the world of cartoon art,[16] and that licensing his character would only violate the spirit of his work.[17] However, having initially signed away control over merchandising in his initial contract with the syndicate,[4] Watterson commenced a lengthy and emotionally draining battle with Universal to gain control over his work. Ultimately Universal did not approve any products against Watterson's wishes, understanding that, unlike other comic strips, it would be nearly impossible to separate the creator from the strip if Watterson chose to walk away.
One estimate places the value of licensing revenue forgone by Watterson at $300–$400 million.[18] Almost no legitimate Calvin and Hobbes merchandise exists.[19]
Animation
In a 1989 interview in The Comics Journal, Watterson described the appeal of being able to do things with a moving image that cannot be done by a simple drawing: the distortion, the exaggeration and the control over the length of time an event is viewed.[20] However, although the visual possibilities of animation appealed to Watterson, the idea of finding a voice for Calvin made him uncomfortable, as did the idea of working with a team of animators.[16] Ultimately, Calvin and Hobbes was never made into an animated series. Watterson later stated in The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book that he liked the fact that his strip was a "low-tech, one-man operation," and that he took great pride in the fact that he drew every line and wrote every word on his own.[21] Calls from major Hollywood figures interested in an adaptation of his work, including Jim Henson, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, were never returned[4] and in a 2013 interview Watterson stated that he had "zero interest" in an animated adaptation as there was really no upside for him in doing so.[22]
Elements of Watterson's artistic style are his characters' diverse and often exaggerated expressions (particularly those of Calvin). Watterson experimented freely with different panel layouts, art styles, stories without dialogue and greater use of white space. He also experimented with his tools, once inking a strip with a stick from his yard in order to achieve a particular look.[24] Watterson makes a point of not showing certain things explicitly (where some things are left to the reader's imagination), stating they would be "more outrageous" than he could portray.[25]
Watterson's technique started with minimalist pencil sketches drawn with a light pencil (though the larger Sunday strips often required more elaborate work) on a piece of Bristol board, with his brand of choice being Strathmore because he felt it held the drawings better on the page as opposed to the cheaper brands (Watterson said he initially used any cheap pad of Bristol board his local supply store had but switched to Strathmore after he found himself growing more and more displeased with the results). [citation needed]
He would then use a small sable brush and India ink to fill in the rest of the drawing, saying that he did not want to simply trace over his penciling and thus make the inking more spontaneous.[26] Mistakes were covered with various forms of correction fluid, including the type used on typewriters.[26]
Watterson was careful in his use of color, often spending a great deal of time in choosing the right colors to employ for the weekly Sunday strip; his technique was to cut the color tabs the syndicate sent him into individual squares, lay out the colors, and then paint a watercolor approximation of the strip on tracing paper over the Bristol board and then mark the strip accordingly before sending it on.[27] When Calvin and Hobbes began there were 64 colors available for the Sunday strips. For the later Sunday strips Watterson had 125 colors as well as the ability to fade the colors into each other.[28]
The strip features two titular characters, six-year-old Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, and a small recurring cast that also includes Calvin's unnamed parents, his classmate and neighbor Susie Derkins, his teacher Miss Wormwood, his school bully Moe, and his babysitter Rosalyn.[citation needed]
Friendship and antics
The biggest recurring theme is the antics that Calvin and Hobbes (mostly Calvin) get into. This usually leads them (mostly Calvin) getting into trouble or one of them (usually Hobbes) foreshadowing that they (mostly Calvin) will get into trouble. [citation needed]
Another recurring theme is they argue and fight a lot. This happens because one of them tries to prove that they're superior than the other when they're outside, either playing together, in the treehouse, or discussing something and they have a disagreement. The fights usually end up in a truce. [citation needed]
Art and academia
Watterson used the strip to poke fun at the art world, principally through Calvin's unconventional creations of snowmen but also through other expressions of childhood art. For example, when Miss Wormwood complains that he is wasting class time drawing impossible things (a Stegosaurus in a rocket ship, for example), Calvin proclaims himself "on the cutting edge of the avant-garde."[29][30][31] Watterson explains that he adapted this jargon (and similar examples from several other strips) from an actual book of art criticism.[32]
Watterson also lampooned academia. Calvin indulges in what Watterson calls "pop psychobabble" to justify his destructive rampages and shift blame to his parents, citing "toxic codependency."[33]
Calvin's alter-egos
Calvin imagines himself as many great creatures and other people, including dinosaurs, elephants, jungle-farers and superheroes. Three of his alter egos are well-defined and recurrent:[34]
"Spaceman Spiff" is a heroic spacefarer who narrates his adventures in the third person. Watterson has stated the idea of Spaceman Spiff came from an earlier attempt as a cartoon,[35] and is meant as a parody of Flash Gordon.[36] The canyons and deserts that many of the Spaceman Spiff stories are set in are based on the landscapes of southern Utah.[37]
"Tracer Bullet" is a hardboiled private eye. He made his debut when Calvin donned a fedora in order to hide a terrible haircut Hobbes had given him. These strips are drawn in elaborate, shadowy black-and-white that evoke film noir. Watterson did not attempt Tracer Bullet stories often, due to the time-consuming way the strip needed to be drawn and inked.[38]
"Stupendous Man" is a superhero who wears a mask and a cape (made by Calvin's mother) and narrates his own adventures. Calvin often tries to pretend he and "Stupendous Man" are two different people, but it fails to work. Stupendous Man has multiple "superpowers", including, but not limited to, super strength, the ability to fly, various vision powers such as "high-speed vision", "muscles of magnitude" and a "stomach of steel". [citation needed]
Calvin duplicating himself using a cardboard box, as seen on the cover of Scientific Progress Goes "Boink"
Calvin also has several adventures involving corrugated cardboard boxes, which he adapts for many imaginative and elaborate uses. In one strip, when Calvin shows off his Transmogrifier, a device that transforms its user into any desired creature or item, Hobbes remarks, "It's amazing what they do with corrugated cardboard these days."[39]
Calvin and Hobbes playing Calvinball with an assortment of sporting equipment
Calvinball
Other kids' games are all such a bore! They've gotta have rules and they gotta keep score! Calvinball is better by far! It's never the same! It's always bizarre! You don't need a team or a referee! You know that it's great, 'cause it's named after me!
Calvinball is an improvisational sport/game introduced in a 1990 storyline that involved Calvin's negative experience of joining the school baseball team. Calvinball is a nomic or self-modifying game, a contest of wits, skill and creativity rather than stamina or athletic skill. The game is portrayed as a rebellion against conventional team sports[41] and became a staple of the final five years of the comic. The only consistent rules of the game are that Calvinball may never be played with the same rules twice[42] and that each participant must wear a mask.[43]
When asked how to play, Watterson stated: "It's pretty simple: you make up the rules as you go."[44]
Wagon and sled rides
Calvin and Hobbes frequently ride downhill in a wagon or sled (depending on the season), as a device to add some physical comedy to the strip and because, according to Watterson, "it's a lot more interesting ... than talking heads."[45] While the ride is sometimes the focus of the strip,[46] it also frequently serves as a counterpoint or visual metaphor while Calvin ponders the meaning of life, death, God, philosophy or a variety of other weighty subjects.[45][47] Calvin and Hobbes' sled has been described as the most famous sled in American arts since Citizen Kane.[48]
G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid of Slimy GirlS)
G.R.O.S.S. (which is a backronym for Get Rid Of Slimy GirlS, "otherwise it doesn't spell anything") is a club in which Calvin and Hobbes are the only members. Calvin gave himself and Hobbes important positions in the club, Calvin being "Dictator-for-Life" and Hobbes being "President-and-First-Tiger". They go into Calvin's treehouse for their club meetings and often get into fights during them. [citation needed]
There are 18 Calvin and Hobbes books, published from 1987 to 1997. These include 11 collections, which form a complete archive of the newspaper strips, except for a single daily strip from November 28, 1985. (The collections do contain a strip for this date, but it is not the same strip that appeared in some newspapers.)
Treasuries usually combine the two preceding collections with bonus material and include color reprints of Sunday comics. Watterson included some new material in the treasuries.
A complete collection of Calvin and Hobbes strips, in three hardcover volumes totaling 1440 pages, was released on October 4, 2005, by Andrews McMeel Publishing. It includes color prints of the art used on paperback covers, the treasuries' extra illustrated stories and poems and a new introduction by Bill Watterson in which he talks about his inspirations and his story leading up to the publication of the strip. The alternate 1985 strip is still omitted, and three other strips (January 7 and November 24, 1987, and November 25, 1988) have altered dialogue.[49][50][51] A four-volume paperback version was released November 13, 2012.
An officially licensed children's textbook entitled Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes was published in a single print run in Fargo, North Dakota, in 1993.[52] The book is composed of Calvin and Hobbes strips that form story arcs, including "The Binoculars" and "The Bug Collection", followed by lessons based on the stories.[52]
What do you think the principal meant when he said they had "quite a file" on Calvin?
The book is rare and highly sought.[53][54] It has been called the "Holy Grail" for Calvin and Hobbes collectors.[55]
Reception
Reviewing Calvin and Hobbes in 1990, Entertainment Weekly'sKen Tucker gave the strip an A+ rating, writing "Watterson summons up the pain and confusion of childhood as much as he does its innocence and fun."[56]
Academic response
In her 1994 book When Toys Come Alive, Lois Rostow Kuznets theorizes that Hobbes serves both as a figure of Calvin's childish fantasy life and as an outlet for the expression of libidinous desires more associated with adults. Kuznets also analyzes Calvin's other fantasies, suggesting that they are a second tier of fantasies utilized in places like school where transitional objects such as Hobbes would not be socially acceptable.[57]
In a 2009 evaluation of the entire body of Calvin and Hobbes strips using grounded theory methodology, Christijan D. Draper found that: "Overall, Calvin and Hobbes suggests that meaningful time use is a key attribute of a life well lived," and that "the strip suggests one way to assess the meaning associated with time use is through preemptive retrospection by which a person looks at current experiences through the lens of an anticipated future..."[58]
Related exhibitions
A collection of original Sunday strips was exhibited at Ohio State University's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in 2001. Watterson himself selected the strips and provided his own commentary for the exhibition catalog, which was later published by Andrews McMeel as Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985–1995.[27]
Calvin and Hobbes strips were again exhibited at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at The Ohio State University in 2014, in an exhibition entitled Exploring Calvin and Hobbes.[59] An exhibition catalog by the same title, which also contained an interview with Watterson conducted by Jenny Robb, the curator of the museum, was published by Andrews McMeel in 2015.[60][61]
The American documentary film Dear Mr. Watterson, released in 2013, explores the impact and legacy of Calvin and Hobbes through interviews with authors, curators, historians, and numerous professional cartoonists.[69][70] The comic strip referenced the book Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip by Nevin Martell.[71][72][73]
Several artists published comics that were identified as being inspired by Calvin and Hobbes. Some of them were the 2002 comic strip Macuando, by Liniers,[76] and 2005 Marvel comic book Fantastic Four Presents: Franklin Richards - Son of A Genius, by Chris Eliopoulos and Marc Sumerak.[77]
Portraying Calvin as a teenager/adult has inspired writers.[80][81]
In 2011, a comic strip appeared by cartoonists Dan and Tom Heyerman called Hobbes and Bacon.[82] The strip depicts Calvin as an adult, married to Susie Derkins with a young daughter named after philosopher Francis Bacon, to whom Calvin gives Hobbes.[83] Though consisting of only four strips originally, Hobbes and Bacon received considerable attention when it appeared and was continued by other cartoonists and artists.[84][85]
A novel titled Calvin by CLA Young Adult Book Award–winning[86] author Martine Leavitt was published in 2015.[80] The story tells of seventeen-year-old Calvin—who was born on the day that Calvin and Hobbes ended, and who has now been diagnosed with schizophrenia—and his hallucination of Hobbes, his childhood stuffed tiger. With his friend Susie, who might also be a hallucination, Calvin sets off to find Bill Watterson in the hope that the cartoonist can provide aid for Calvin's condition.[87]
The titular character of the comic strip Frazz has been noted for his similar appearance and personality to a grown-up Calvin. Creator Jef Mallett has stated that although Watterson is an inspiration to him, the similarities are unintentional.[88]
12O'Hehir, Andrew (November 13, 2013). "'Dear Mr. Watterson': Remembering the last great newspaper comic". Salon. San Francisco, California: Salon Media Group. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved November 21, 2015. 'Calvin and Hobbes' has been immensely influential – but mostly in TV animation, in stand-up and sketch comedy, and in graphic novels and in Internet culture. The newspaper comic, like the newspaper itself, has lost its social meaning.
1234Hingston, Michael (2018). Let's Go Exploring: Calvin and Hobbes. ECW Press. ISBN9781773051796.
12Nevin., Martell (2009). Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: the unconventional story of Bill Watterson and his revolutionary comic strip. New York: Continuum. ISBN9781441193667. OCLC682891953.
↑Watterson (2005). vol. 3, p. 481. Comic originally published December 31, 1995.
↑Charles Solomon (October 21, 2005). "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes". Day to Day. 3:28.50 minutes in. NPR. Archived from the original on November 13, 2019. In the final strip, Calvin and Hobbes put aside their conflicts and rode their sled into a snowy forest. They left behind a hole in the comics page that no strip has been able to fill.
12West, Richard Samuel & Watterson, Bill (February 1989). Boyd, Robert (ed.). "Interview: Bill Watterson". The Comics Journal (TCJ.com). pp.56ff. Archived from the original on January 19, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Alternatively, the article has apparently been reproduced by Tim Hulsizer, here.
↑The Comics Journal (December 6, 2013). "The Bill Watterson Interview". The Comics Journal. Archived from the original on December 8, 2013. Retrieved January 18, 2022.
↑Martell (2010), p.58: "A sarcastic send-up of classic Sci-Fi strips, Spiff paid backhand homage to flashy space heroes like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon while tapping into the Star Wars craze."
123Holmen, Linda; Santella-Johnson, Mary; Watterson, Bill (1993). Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes. Cover and supplementary art by Jan Roebken. Fargo, North Dakota: Playground Publishing. ISBN1-878849-15-8.
↑Adkins, Nickolai (July 13, 2012). "Weighing the Light and Dark of Calvin and Hobbes". 1UP.com. IGN. Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved November 21, 2015. Bill Watterson's work is undoubtedly art, but what is more important is what this means for dissonant media like that of video games. Calvin and Hobbes is proof that mass perception does not make a truth -- that a preconception of elitists or the uninitiated about what is and isn't art doesn't make it so.... Calvin and Hobbes proves that any artistic form can wear multiple hats.
↑Antunes, Paulo Gabriel (November 30, 2010). "Calvin and Hobbes Collection". Abduzeedo. Brazil. Archived from the original on January 22, 2015. Retrieved November 21, 2015. Bill Watterson's creation gotta be the reason why I love illustration.... And also, there's tons of fan art around the web, really good ones, and even sculptures.
↑Daniel (June 7, 2012). "'The Days Are Just Packed' - A Calvin and Hobbes Inspired Art Print". JazJaz. Archived from the original on March 22, 2015. Retrieved November 21, 2015. Casey Weldon's latest art print, inspired by his childhood favorites – Calvin and Hobbes, will be released in conjunction with the opening of his solo show at Spoke Art.
↑Olmstead, Gracy (July 20, 2013). "Imagination and the Artistic Value of Calvin & Hobbes". The American Conservative. Washington, D.C.: The American Ideas Institute. Archived from the original on September 9, 2015. Retrieved November 21, 2015. Bill Watterson's comic series Calvin and Hobbes has inspired a religious following since its publication. Even after its retirement in 1995, millions of readers remained devoted to the series.
↑Hawking, Tom (November 14, 2013). "10 Things You Didn't Know About 'Calvin and Hobbes'". Flavorwire. New York, New York: Flavorpill Media. Archived from the original on May 4, 2015. Retrieved November 21, 2015. Calvin & Hobbes has always inspired a special brand of obsessive geekdom...
↑Goldstein, Gary (November 14, 2013). "Review: A love letter to 'Dear Mr. Watterson'". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, California. Archived from the original on January 1, 2015. Retrieved November 21, 2015. Schroeder interviews a starry array of cartoonists, including Berkeley Breathed ("Bloom County"), Stephan Pastis ("Pearls Before Swine") and Jan Eliot ("Stone Soup"), plus authors, curators, historians and the toon's syndicators, all of whom wax poetic about Watterson's creation and its enduring influence.
↑Matos, Michaelangelo (October 8, 2009). "Nevin Martell: Looking For Calvin And Hobbes". The A.V. Club. Chicago, Illinois: Onion, Inc.Archived from the original on February 2, 2015. Retrieved November 21, 2015. It's surprising that until now, no one has attempted a book-length study of Bill Watterson's Calvin And Hobbes.
↑Heyerman, Dan; Heyerman, Tom (May 10, 2011). "Hobbes and Bacon". Pants are Overrated. Archived from the original on November 3, 2015. Retrieved December 5, 2015.
↑Krulwich, Robert (May 31, 2011). "Calvin, Hobbes And Comic Book Biology". Krulwich Wonders... Washington, D.C.: NPR. Archived from the original on September 12, 2015. Retrieved December 5, 2015. Dan and Tom Heyerman...to the delight of many Calvin and Hobbes fans...brought Calvin back...as an adult!... Not only that, he has a kid, a daughter named 'Bacon' (named for the Enlightenment philosopher, Francis Bacon.)
↑Robinson, Tasha (March 14, 2013). "Check out the web cartoonists continuing Calvin And Hobbes". The A.V. Club. Chicago, Illinois: Onion, Inc.Archived from the original on May 26, 2015. Retrieved December 5, 2015. The strips got a lot of attention when they first posted, and Watterson fans often point back to them.... Terra Snover picked it up with...strips continuing the Hobbes And Bacon idea... In February 2013, Phil Berry at DeviantArt started posting his own, more elaborate Hobbes And Bacon strips... Meanwhile, a fourth artist, DeviantArt's DomNX, has spent the past year churning out his own still-ongoing Calvin And Company strip...
Martell, Nevin (2010). Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip (Reviseded.). Continuum Books. ISBN978-1-4411-0685-8.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
