Bill Watterson - The Complete Calvin And Hobbes

Next to The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes was my favorite comic strip that lead me to the newspaper every morning before school or work. Written by Bill Watterson from the 1985 to the 1995, this strip ended after 10 years and was sorely missed (for the reason why, read the very interesting 13 page introduction by Bill Watterson!).

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is a wonderful 1,440 page three volume hardcover (with slipcase!) set collecting all of these strips in chronological order. The thick paper wonderfully represents the source material with each of the pages having either 3 daily strips or one Sunday strip in full color. The strips cover the range from social musings, to time machines, dinosaurs, school, dinner, and everything else that could strike the fancy of a young child and his imaginary pal. Mixing trouble, imagination, social commentary, and most importantly fun and funny moments, Calvin and Hobbes is one of the best comic strips ever produced.

Calvin and Hobbes is kind of like a mix of the child-like point of view and social commentary of the Peanuts, with a dash of the bizarreness of The Farside. Stir that up with a small dose of parenting skills, school, and a vocabulary that a Harvard graduate may be jealous of and you start to begin to understand the genius that is Calvin and Hobbes. This strip takes the mundane and ordinary life of a young child and filters home, school, snowmen, boredom, sleep, and more through the lens of an imagination that only a child could have, but filters it through the mind of an intellectual adult for translation. Pure genius! The narrative then slips back and forth between the "real world" where Hobbes is just a stuffed toy tiger, and Calvin's world, where Hobbes is his best friend, partner-in-crime, and often the wiser of the two. It is pure joy to read!

To understand the pure child-like behaviors of Calvin, you need go no further then the game he and Hobbes play called "Calvinball". Calvinball is a game of imaginative skill where you make up the rules as you go and you never repeat a rule. For people like me who were never good at sports, but loved making up their own games, Calvinball is pure genius!

Characters:

Calvin: the protagonist is a young child old with an over-active imagination and a reflection of an adult's view of childhood and modern life.

Hobbes: Calvin's imaginary friend…a stuffed tiger that is as real to Calvin as any adult or situation in his life…a friend that joins him in space, in science experiments, and in trouble!

Dad: probably my favorite character when interacting with Calvin…teaching him the ways of the world through a twisted fun view through massive lies that a child could believe, and in return, often coming home from a hard day of work to a driveway filled with the corpses of snowmen and other bizarre sights.

Mom: The straight person…she fixes many problems and occasionally sees the true wisdom behind Calvin's points of view and knows what kinds of mental games that dad likes to play with Calvin.

Susie Derkins: The next-door neighbor kid of Calvin…friend and antagonist.

Roslyn the Babysitter: a true nemesis of which great epics are written!

Final Thoughts

For any fan and collector of Calvin and Hobbes you cannot go wrong with this set. Beautifully set with three hardcover books that fit inside the handsome slipcase, this set looks fantastic on most any (sturdy) bookshelf! These are large, heavy books, much like the Complete Far Side collection and are best for table reading. Sitting in a chair with this book can become uncomfortable, and forget about reading it in bed! Instead, get your hot cocoa or coffee, put on some classical music, sit at the dinner table, and immerse yourself in Calvin's imagination for many, many hours! You will not be disappointed!


Title: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
Author: Bill Watterson

Publisher: Andrew McNeels Publishing
Original Publication Date: October 2005

Format: Hardbound with slipcase
Pages: 1440