| Calvin and Hobbes is a comic strip written and illustrated
by Bill Watterson, following the humorous antics of Calvin, an
imaginative six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his energetic and sardonic—albeit stuffed—tiger. Syndicated from November 18, 1985 until December 31, 1995, at its height Calvin and Hobbes was carried by over 2,400 newspapers worldwide. To date, almost 23 million copies of 17 Calvin and Hobbes books have been
printed.
The strip is set in the contemporary United States, in the outskirts
of unspecified suburbia. Calvin and Hobbes themselves appear in most of the strips,
though several have focused instead upon Calvin's family. The broad themes of the strip deal with Calvin's flights of fantasy,
his friendship with Hobbes, his misadventures, his views on a diverse range of political and cultural issues and his
relationships and interactions with his parents, classmates, educators, and other members of society. Unlike Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, the series does not mention specific political figures, but it does examine broad issues like
environmentalism and the flaws of opinion polls.
Due to Watterson's strong anti-merchandising sentiments and his
reluctance to return to the spotlight, almost no legitimate Calvin and Hobbes material exists outside of the published
collections of newspaper strips. However, the strip's immense popularity has led to the appearance of various "bootleg" items, including T-shirts, keychains, and bumper stickers, often including obscene
language or references wholly uncharacteristic of the whimsical spirit of Watterson's work.
History
Calvin and Hobbes was first conceived when Watterson, having worked in an advertising job he detested, began devoting
his spare time to cartooning, his true love. He explored various strip ideas
but all were rejected by the syndicates to which he sent them. However, he did receive a positive response on one strip, which
featured a side character (the main character's little brother) who had a stuffed tiger. Told that these characters were the
strongest, Watterson began a new strip centered around them. The syndicate (United Features
Syndicate) which gave him this advice actually rejected the new strip, and Watterson endured a few more rejections before
Universal
Press Syndicate decided to take it.
The first strip was published on November 18, 1985 and the series quickly became a hit. Within a year of syndication, the strip was published in roughly 250
newspapers. By April 1, 1987, only sixteen
months after the strip began, Watterson and his work were featured in an article by the Los Angeles Times, one of the nation's major newspapers. Calvin and Hobbes twice earned
Watterson the Outstanding
Cartoonist of the Year award from the National Cartoonists Society, in 1986 and 1988.
Watterson took two extended breaks from writing new strips – from May 1991 to February 1992, and from April through December of 1994.
In 1995 Watterson sent a letter via his syndicate to all editors whose newspapers carried his strip. It contained the following:
- I will be stopping Calvin and Hobbes at the end of the year. This was not a recent or an easy decision, and I leave
with some sadness. My interests have shifted however, and I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily
deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises. I have not yet decided
on future projects, but my relationship with Universal Press Syndicate will continue.
- That so many newspapers would carry Calvin and Hobbes is an honor I'll long be proud of, and I've greatly appreciated
your support and indulgence over the last decade. Drawing this comic strip has been a privilege and a pleasure, and I thank you
for giving me the opportunity.
The last strip ran on Sunday, December 31, 1995. It depicted Calvin and Hobbes outside in freshly-fallen snow, reveling in the wonder and excitement of the
winter scene. "It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy!" Calvin exclaims in the last panel. "Let's go exploring!"
Syndication and Watterson's artistic standards
From the outset, 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. To him, the integrity of the strip and
its artist would be undermined by commercialization, which he saw as the primary negative influence in the world of cartoon
art.
Watterson also grew increasingly frustrated by the gradual shrinking of available space for comics in the newspapers. He
lamented that without space for anything more than simple dialogue or spare artwork, comics as an art form were becoming dilute,
bland, and unoriginal. Watterson strove for a full-page version of his strip (as opposed to the few cells allocated for most
strips). He longed for the artistic freedom allotted classic strips such as Little Nemo and Krazy Kat, and he gave a sample of
what could be accomplished with such liberty in the opening pages of the Sunday strip compilation, The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy
Sunday Book.
During Watterson's first sabbatical from the strip, Universal Press
Syndicate continued to charge newspapers full price to re-run old Calvin and Hobbes strips. Few editors approved of the
move, but the strip was so popular that they had little choice but to continue to run it for fear that competing newspapers might
pick it up and draw its fans away. Then, upon Watterson's return, Universal Press announced that Watterson had demanded that his
Sunday strip be guaranteed half of a newspaper or tabloid page for its space allotment. Many editors and even a few cartoonists,
such as Bil Keane (The Family Circus), criticized him for what they perceived as arrogance and an unwillingness to abide
by the normal practices of the cartoon business—a charge that Watterson ignored. Watterson had negotiated the deal to allow
himself more creative freedom in the Sunday comics. Previous to the switch, he had to have a certain number of panels with little
freedom as to layout (due to the fact that in different newspapers the strip would appear at a different width); afterwards, he
was free to go with whatever graphic layout he wanted, however unorthodox. His frustration with the standard space division
requirements is evident in strips before the change; for example, a 1988 Sunday strip published before the deal is one large
panel, but with all the action and dialogue in the bottom part of the panel so editors could crop the top part if they wanted to
fit the strip into a smaller space. Watterson's explanation for the switch:
- I took a sabbatical after resolving a long and emotionally draining fight to prevent Calvin and Hobbes from being
merchandised. Looking for a way to rekindle my enthusiasm for the duration of a new contract term, I proposed a redesigned Sunday
format that would permit more panel flexibility. To my surprise and delight, Universal responded with an offer to market the
strip as an unbreakable half page (more space than I'd dared to ask for), despite the expected resistance of editors.
- To this day, my syndicate assures me that some editors liked the new format, appreciated the difference, and were happy to
run the larger strip, but I think it's fair to say that this was not the most common reaction. The syndicate had warned me to
prepare for numerous cancellations of the Sunday feature, but after a few weeks of dealing with howling, purple-faced editors,
the syndicate suggested that papers could reduce the strip to the size tabloid newspapers used for their smaller sheets of paper.
… I focused on the bright side: I had complete freedom of design and there were virtually no cancellations.
- For all the yelling and screaming by outraged editors, I remain convinced that the larger Sunday strip gave newspapers a
better product and made the comics section more fun for readers. Comics are a visual medium. A strip with a lot of drawing can be
exciting and add some variety. Proud as I am that I was able to draw a larger strip, I don't expect to see it happen again any
time soon. In the newspaper business, space is money, and I suspect most editors would still say that the difference is not worth
the cost. Sadly, the situation is a vicious circle: because there's no room for better artwork, the comics are simply drawn;
because they're simply drawn, why should they have more room?
- (from Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995, 2001, Bill Watterson, p.
15)
Despite the change, Calvin and Hobbes remained extremely popular and thus Watterson was able to expand his style and
technique for the more spacious Sunday strips without losing carriers.
Since ending the strip, Watterson has kept aloof from the public eye and has given no indication of resuming the strip or
creating new works based on the characters. He refuses to sign autographs or
license his characters, staying true to his stated principles. However, he has been known to sneak autographed copies of his
books onto the shelves of a family-owned bookstore near his home.
Merchandising
Bill Watterson is notable for his insistence that cartoon strips should stand on their own as an art form, and he has resisted
the use of Calvin and Hobbes in merchandising of any sort. This insistence stuck despite what was probably a cost of
millions of dollars per year in additional personal income. This also explains why the strip has never been made into an animated series.
Except for the books (see below) and two extremely rare 18-month calendars (1988–1989 and 1989–1990), all Calvin and Hobbes merchandise, including T-shirts as well as the ubiquitous
stickers for automobile rear windows which depict Calvin urinating on a
company's or sports team's name or logo are unauthorized; after threat of a lawsuit, one of the sticker makers (Custom Vehicle
Graphics) replaced Calvin with a different boy.
Style and influences
Calvin and Hobbes strips are characterized by sparse but careful draftsmanship, intelligent humor, poignant
observations, witty social and political commentary, and well-developed characters that are full of personality. Precedents to
Calvin's fantasy world can be found in Charles M. Schulz's
Peanuts, Percy Crosby's Skippy, Berke Breathed's
Bloom County, and George Herriman's Krazy Kat, while Watterson's use
of comics as sociopolitical commentary reaches back to Walt Kelly's Pogo. Schulz and Kelly in particular influenced Watterson's outlook on comics during his
formative years.
Notable elements of Watterson's artistic style are his characters' diverse and often exaggerated expressions (particularly
those of Calvin), elaborate and bizarre backgrounds for Calvin's flights of imagination, well-captured kinetics, and frequent
visual jokes and metaphors. In the later years of the strip, with more space available for his use, Watterson experimented more
freely with different panel layouts, stories without dialogue, and greater use of whitespace.
Watterson's technique started with minimal pencil sketches (though the larger Sunday
strips often required more elaborate work); he then would use a small sable brush and India ink to complete most of the remaining drawing. He 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.
Setting
Most strips avoid giving specific clues to where Calvin's home may be located, both not to be bound by pointlessly particular
local detail and keep the everyman appeal, and—as The Simpsons did later—to play with the readers' curiosity about such
trivia. (In one strip, Calvin's teacher asks him to name the state in which he lives,
but he replies "Denial".) However, Watterson gives rather more clues which aren't as self-contradictory as The
Simpsons:
- Hobbes once describes their home, when looking for it from space, as near the "E" in "States" (as in the United States) in an
atlas.
- During the winter months, snow is a common feature in the strip, so the setting is
almost certainly northern. Watterson's hometown of Chagrin
Falls, Ohio, near Cleveland, Ohio, is in the Lake Erie snowbelt and gets copious amounts
of snow.
- In one strip, Calvin references a stegosaurus in front of the local
natural history museum. The
Cleveland Museum of Natural
History has a metal stegosaurus in front of it.
- In a caption in one of his books, Watterson mentions that "in November strips,
I always tried to capture that austere, gray, brambly look that Ohio gets," Ohio being
where he grew up and began writing the strip.
- Calvin's dad mentions that flying to California from their house would cause a three-hour loss, indicating that the setting
is located somewhere observing Eastern Standard
Time.
- Many of Calvin's "Spaceman Spiff" fantasies (see below) take place on alien worlds whose topographies resemble the deserts of
Arizona, New Mexico and southern
Utah; believing that specific details are funnier than generalizations, Watterson drew
these details from the localities with which he was most familiar. These references to the United States Southwest also allude to
the Protean and ever-shifting Coconino County, Arizona, where Krazy Kat makes
its home.
- Several storylines show that Calvin's home is not too far removed from a "downtown" area, complete with skyscrapers. He
usually visits the city in his imagination, by growing to garguantuan size or by appropriating a flying carpet.
- When a helium balloon accidentally carries him to high altitude, he observes his town's local geography, indicating that even
the suburb he inhabits has a sizeable population.
- Although Watterson portrays large expanses of unspoiled forest, he also addresses the problem of urban sprawl, showing a grove of trees that had been demolished to make way for "Shady Acres
Condominiums."
- Hobbes observes that on a globe (drawn average size in the strip), their house is six inches from the Yukon.
- The back cover of the Essential Calvin and Hobbes collection shows Calvin as a giant, rampaging through and destroying
a suburban area (probably in homage to the Godzilla films). This area is
identifiably downtown Chagrin Falls, Ohio. This is seen in
the uncanny likeness of the street setup, the gazebo and clocktower, and finally, the building Calvin is holding, which is the
exact image of the Popcorn Shop, a local landmark.
The main characters
Calvin is named for 16th-century theologian John Calvin, founder of Calvinism and a strong believer in predestination. Hobbes is named after 17th-century
philosopher Thomas
Hobbes, who had what Watterson described as "a dim view of human nature." According to Watterson, the two names are intended
as a joke for people studying political science. Thomas Hobbes's
most famous phrase, from Leviathan, is that human life
in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short"—a description whose first and last adjectives, at least, can apply to Watterson's Calvin.
Calvin
Calvin is an impulsive, imaginative, energetic, curious, intelligent, and often selfish six-year-old. Watterson has described
Calvin thus:
- "Calvin is pretty easy to do because he is outgoing and rambunctious and there's not much of a filter between his brain and
his mouth."
- "I guess he's a little too intelligent for his age. The thing that I really enjoy about him is that he has no sense of
restraint, he doesn't have the experience yet to know the things that you shouldn't do."
- "The socialization that we all go through to become adults teaches you not to say certain things because you later suffer the
consequences. Calvin doesn't know that rule of thumb yet."
The strips do not disclose Calvin's last name.
Hobbes
Hobbes is Calvin's tiger who, from Calvin's perspective, is as alive and real as anyone else in the strip. Everyone else,
however, perceives him as a small, inanimate stuffed tiger. Hobbes is much more rational and aware of consequences than Calvin,
but seldom interferes with Calvin's troublemaking beyond a few oblique warnings—after all, Calvin will be the one to get in
trouble for it, not Hobbes.
For the most part, Calvin and Hobbes converse and play together, reveling in what is ultimately a deep friendship. They also
frequently argue or even fight with each other, though their disagreements are generally short-lived. Often Hobbes ambushes
Calvin with an energetic pounce-and-tackle attack, which leaves Calvin bruised and scraped up but not seriously harmed. Hobbes
takes great pleasure in his demonstrations of feline prowess, while Calvin expresses keen frustration at his inability to stop
the attacks or explain his injuries to his skeptical parents.
Watterson based some of Hobbes's characteristics, especially his playfulness and attack instinct, on his own pet cat, Sprite.
Hobbes takes great pride in being a feline and frequently makes wry or even disparaging comments about human nature, declaring
his good fortune to lead a tiger's life.
In the first strip, Calvin meets Hobbes when he catches him with a rope noose baited with a tuna fish sandwich. Watterson
later wrote that this initial explanation of Hobbes's origins becomes unnecessary and moot as the series progresses. At one
point, Calvin describes him as, "On the quiet side. A bit peculiar. A good companion, in a weird sort of way."
Hobbes' reality
From the point of view of everyone but Calvin, Hobbes is a stuffed toy tiger. But when the panel's perspective is shifted to
Calvin, in or out of the presence of other characters, Hobbes is seen as vividly alive. Watterson has stated:
- When Hobbes is a stuffed toy in one panel and alive in the next, I'm juxtaposing the "grown-up" version of reality with
Calvin's version, and inviting the reader to decide which is truer.
From Calvin's perspective, Hobbes' reality carries over even to recorded images. In one strip, Calvin has taken several
photographs of Hobbes making funny faces: Calvin sees each photo as he took it, but his father sees an ordinary stuffed tiger in
each picture.
Many readers assume that Hobbes is either a product of Calvin's imagination, or a doll that comes to life when Calvin is the
only one around. However, both of these theories are incorrect. As Watterson explains in the Tenth Anniversary Book,
"Hobbes is more about the subjective nature of reality than dolls coming to life": thus there is no concrete definition of
Hobbes' reality.
Sometimes Hobbes breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the reader,
such as when Calvin tries to parachute from his house's roof ("His mom's going to have a fit about those rose bushes"). On other
occasions, it is difficult to imagine how the "stuffed toy" interpretation of Hobbes is consistent with what the characters see.
For example, he "assists" Calvin's attempt to become a Houdini-style escape artist by
tying Calvin to a chair. Calvin, however, cannot escape, and his irritated father must undo the knots, all the while asking
Calvin how he could do this to himself. In a rare interview, Watterson explained his approach to this situation:
- Calvin's dad finds him tied up and the question remains, really, how did he get that way? His dad assumes that Calvin tied
himself up somehow, so well that he couldn't get out. Calvin explains that Hobbes did this to him and he tries to place the blame
on Hobbes entirely, and it's never resolved in the strip. Again I don't think that's just a cheap way out of the story. I like
the tension that that creates, where you've got two versions of reality that do not mix. Something odd has happened and neither
makes complete sense, so you're left to make out of it what you want.
Similarly, Hobbes once cuts Calvin's hair, creating a "look" so remarkable that Watterson laughed aloud while drawing it.
("Would that I could write like this more often," he lamented.)
In addition, Hobbes can walk out and keep Calvin company as he waits for the bus. When another character such as Susie stands
at the bus stop, Hobbes appears as the stuffed toy. What happens to Hobbes when the bus arrives is seldom shown, although a
Sunday strip did portray Calvin's mother running out into the rain to retrieve him.
One strange strip, given Calvin's view of Hobbes being "real", is during a story where Calvin enters a poster in a school road
safety contest. (His slogan: "Be careful, or be roadkill!") Presuming he's going to win, Calvin imagines the front-page headlines
which newspapers will carry: "Town Hall demolished, statue of Calvin commissioned for site", and so forth. One of the pictures on
the front page of one of the newspapers shows Calvin and Hobbes together, but Hobbes is shown in his "normal stuffed toy"
way—even though the newspaper front pages are products of Calvin's imagination.
Many people feel that the blurred reality between the two of Hobbes' forms is both amusing and philosophical. Hobbes is
occasionally the voice of reason, contrasting Calvin's manic impulsiveness, but is this rationality in Hobbes a distinct
personality, or Calvin as a kind of conscience?
Supporting characters
Recurring characters
- Calvin's Dad
Calvin's dad is a middle-aged patent attorney who is portrayed as
an upstanding middle class father as his son might see him. When Calvin asks him questions, he often makes up outlandish
answers:
- Calvin: "Why does [the sun] move from east to west?"
- Calvin's Dad: "Solar wind."
An outdoor man, he enjoys bike rides and camping trips, and insists that they, like Calvin's chores, "build character."
Calvin, in turn, regularly updates his father with "polls" showing his unpopularity among the six-year-old demographic of the
household, and suggests ways that his father might improve his chances of re-election as Dad. Like Calvin's mom, he goes through
the entire strip unnamed.
The character is closely based on Watterson's own father, who was also a patent attorney, and the actual caricature is rumored
to be a self-portrait of Watterson himself. Watterson has said that he identifies more with this character than with Calvin.
- Calvin's Mom
Stay-at-home mother who is frequently exasperated by Calvin's antics and frowns upon her husband's occasional tom-foolery when
dealing with their son. She seems to enjoy quiet activities (gardening, reading) but the reader rarely sees her engaging in them
without violent interruption from Calvin. Both she and her husband often seem frustrated and unable to deal with the dynamo that
is their son, although it's hinted in one strip that she was as big a hellion as Calvin when she was his age. She is much more
likely to agree with Calvin than his father, especially on issues like camping.
Sometimes when Calvin is disguised as Stupendous Man (see below), he sees her as arch-villain Mom-Lady. Calvin's mom
created the hood and cape Calvin uses during his "Stupendous man" fantasies.
There have been instances in the strip where Watterson takes the time to flesh out the two parental characters. One example is
a series of weekday strips following the time that the family returns from a wedding to find their house broken into. Over the
next couple of strips, Calvin's mom and dad reflect on the impact of the event, and all other characters are absent from the
strip. These examples are rare, however.
- Susie Derkins
Calvin's classmate who lives in his neighborhood. She is Calvin's principal rival, and their relationship is a constant source
of tension. In contrast to Calvin, she is polite and diligent in her studies, and her personal reality (or imagination) is always
mild-mannered and civilized. She is also one of the few characters besides Calvin to consistently treat Hobbes as a living being,
although strips drawn from her point of view still show him in stuffed-animal form. An early strip shows her discovering the
"toy" Hobbes in a field, after he had been stolen by a dog, and later giving a tea party for him and her own stuffed animal, a
rabbit named "Mr. Bun." Unlike Hobbes, Mr. Bun seldom appears in a life-like form, probably because these strips are seen from
Calvin's perspective, and he chooses not to include a live rabbit in his reality. The one instance in which Calvin sees Mr. Bun
as a live rabbit occurs when Susie and Calvin play "house" (a full-color Sunday strip drawn in "soap opera" style).
Interestingly, Susie indicates that in her reality, (in that strip) Mr. Bun is a human infant.
Susie is one of only a few characters to hold their own in a strip in which Calvin does not personally appear. (Calvin's
parents, as well as Hobbes, have had a few strips to themselves.)
Despite her good nature, she can be just as plotting and mischievous as Calvin if sufficiently provoked, which generally
happens when Calvin invokes his and Hobbes' secret club, G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid of Slimy
Girls). Hobbes, who does not share Calvin's six-year-old mentality towards the opposite sex, participates in the club's
activities rather skeptically, and between his frequent "defections to the enemy" and Susie's innate craftiness, Calvin
frequently finds himself defeated and disgraced—though, of course, only temporarily.
As Stupendous Man, Calvin calls her Annoying-girl.
Watterson admits that Calvin and Susie might have a bit of a nascent crush on each other, and that Susie is inspired by the
type of women he finds attractive. Her relationship with Calvin, though, is frequently conflicted and never really sorted out.
The closest it gets is an early Valentine's Day strip in which Susie seems to appreciate the (rather juvenile and insulting)
gifts Calvin gives her, and he rejoices in her noticing them. In the Tenth Anniversary Book, Watterson commented that he'd
overplayed the love-hate relationship between them and resolved to simply let the characters bounce off each other in the
future.
- Miss Wormwood
Calvin's teacher (named after the apprentice devil in C.S. Lewis's
The Screwtape Letters). Never sympathetic to
Calvin's difficulties in remaining in the classroom for even one class period at a time (whether physically or mentally), she is
quick to send him to the principal's office at the first sign of trouble. In the Spaceman Spiff strips, she usually
appears as an alien holding Calvin hostage.
- Rosalyn
Rosalyn is a high school senior who occasionally finds herself babysitting
Calvin. Rosalyn is the only babysitter capable of tolerating Calvin's antics more than once, and Calvin's parents most often end
up paying her extra in order to ensure that she will continue accepting the job subsequently. She has a boyfriend, Charlie, who
is never shown in the comic but to whom Rosalyn (and sometimes Calvin) speaks over the phone.
Rosalyn's idea of babysitting Calvin is to put him to bed at 6:30. Calvin is highly phobic of her, and as such babysitting sessions tend to degenerate into war zones as Calvin short-sightedly attempts
to cause trouble for her. Watterson said he thinks she is the only person Calvin truly fears, and, like Susie, she is certainly
Calvin's equal in deviousness, frequently able to turn his plots against him—assuming brute force doesn't do the job.
Near the end of the strip's run relations showed signs of improving as Rosalyn became the only person other than Calvin and
Hobbes to play 'Calvinball' (and, more importantly, figure out how to play Calvinball) in a trouble-free
evening—leniently assuming that a game of Calvinball doesn't count as trouble.
- Moe
The six-year-old class bully who shaves, Moe is the only character to speak in crude, lower-case letters. Watterson described
him as "every jerk I've ever known." Moe seems to be the only character capable of frustrating Calvin to the point of
resignation.
Rosalyn threatens Calvin with early bedtimes, Hobbes often engages in rough-and-tumble play, and Susie retaliates after being
hit by slushballs—but Moe is the only character to hurt Calvin physically out of a love for cruelty.
Infrequent or background characters
- Aliens: Calvin encounters many extra-terrestrial life forms, usually through the adventures of Spaceman Spiff. Most
aliens are non-humanoid, in contrast to the species portrayed in Star
Trek. Initially, aliens spoke in garbled, somewhat onomatopoeic
language: "Ugga muk bug Spiff," and so on. Later, aliens' speech balloons contained geometric symbols whose phonetic
values are unclear. Two aliens, Galaxoid and Nebular, were recurring characters in the strip's final year. Posing
as the "supreme Earth potentate," Calvin traded Earth in exchange for fifty alien
tree leaves so that he could complete a leaf collection for a school project.
- Doctor: Calvin occasionally visits his pediatrician, who appears
to be a mild-mannered physician with a friendly demeanor. Calvin, however, frequently sees him as a vicious, sadistic
interrogator, sometimes visualizing him as an alien. When he goes to the doctor, he asks what the purposes of all the medical
equipment are. On some occasions Calvin accuses the doctor of being a quack and has also asked if the doctor paid his malpractice
insurance, and if he passed his medical exams. Calvin's misbehavior at the doctor's office so exasperates the doctor that on one
occasion he vents: "Kid, don't make me recant the Hippocratic Oath,
OK?"
- Principal Spittle: Calvin's school principal, Mr. Spittle, usually makes his appearance when Calvin has gone too far
in testing Miss Wormwood's limits. He is portrayed as the same stale academic type as Miss Wormwood.
- Schoolmates: The reader sees various classmates of Calvin, but other than Susie and Moe they are almost entirely
anonymous. Calvin seems only vaguely aware of them, but when he does pay attention to them they are always antagonists as they
see Calvin as the misbehaving minority who makes things difficult for the conforming majority.
- Uncle Max: Calvin has an uncle, his father's brother, who resembles his father with a bushy mustache. Max visits on
one occasion. Watterson found it difficult to write Max's dialogue without his referring to Calvin's parents by name, and also
felt that Max just didn't fit in the universe of Calvin and Hobbes, so his existence was limited to a few strips. A webcomic
called Melonpool played off this fact, using it to describe what caused
the character's disapperence and where he is now. Of course, this allusion is not part of Watterson's continuity.
- Mr. Lockjaw: The school baseball team is coached by a squat, burly man named Mr. Lockjaw. When Calvin leaves the team,
Lockjaw calls him a "quitter"; this emotional trauma leads to the reader's first encounter with Calvinball (described
below).
Recurring themes
Calvin's alter-egos
Calvin's hyperactive imagination leads him to imagine himself as other characters with different powers and goals. It is
important to note that Hobbes is not seen taking part in the fantasies involving Calvin's alter-egos, other than criticizing his
choice of alter-egos.
- Safari Al - a pith-helmeted explorer reminiscent of British colonialists such as David Livingstone, Safari Al is only rarely portrayed in Calvin and Hobbes. Never a well-developed
character, he seems to not have been to Watterson's liking and quietly faded into oblivion.
- Stupendous Man - a superhero Calvin often turns into with the help of a mask
and cape his mom created for him. This character defends against such terrifying prospects as Rosalyn or, once, Miss Wormwood and
the school principal.
- Tracer Bullet - a private eye constructed from stereotypes of the film noir genre.
Tracer Bullet strips used a striking heavy-contrast art style. Because they were so time-consuming, Watterson didn't draw very
many of them.
- Spaceman Spiff - a space traveller who fights alien monsters on
far-away planets, based upon Watterson's earlier attempts at syndicated comics and a parody of Flash Gordon.
- Adult Calvin - occasionally Calvin will appear as an adult, usually when playing 'House' with Susie. These strips are drawn
in the style of the soap opera-style comic strips, such as Rex Morgan, M.D. and Mary Worth.
- Dinosaurs - Calvin loves dinosaurs; they are almost the only subject he studies
of his own free will. This, of course, means that Calvin imagines himself as a dinosaur in many of the strips. Whenever Calvin is
pretending to be a dinosaur, he is always a predator (such as a tyrannosaurus rex, a deinonychus or an allosaurus) and he is always hunting a plant-eater, which is usually Susie Derkins. In
one Sunday strip, Calvin is seen as a ferocious tyrannosaurus, and it turns out that he is making a bunch of snorting sounds in
the middle of class. "Heh heh, sorry, a little sinus congestion," he says to avoid embarrasment.
- Animals - Calvin sees himself in a variety of animal bodies as well, from large
mammals to insects.
- Captain Napalm - a superhero who protects "truth, justice and the American Way.” Only seen on one or two occasions and
is a satirical Captain America of sorts. Calvin draws this character
from a comic book hero, leader of the "Thermonuclear League of Liberty," whose
exploits he diligently reads, though he is rarely seen with a new issue of it.
- God - Calvin has also seen himself as God. He has done this in several ways; in one strip
he sees himself as an underworld deity in the manner of Norse
mythology: "The puny inhabitants of Earth displease him, and the doomed writhe in agony!"
G.R.O.S.S.
G.R.O.S.S. is the acronym for a club that stands for Get Rid
Of Slimy GirlS (which Calvin admits is a bit redundant). Based in a treehouse, the main objective of
G.R.O.S.S. is to exclude girls, mostly Calvin's neighbour Susie. Calvin and Hobbes spend most of their time in the club reworking
its constitution and arguing about their excessively bureaucratic roles. As Calvin is too short to climb up to the treehouse when
the rope ladder is pulled up, Hobbes often takes advantage of the situation and requires Calvin to sing a long ode on the
greatness of tigers for the password. (This aspect was dropped in later years.)
Officers of the club wear newspaper hats. Calvin and Hobbes are its only members and all of its officers; their missions
frequently involve the invention of new positions, such as cartographer and
cryptographer. Its bylaws are supposed to be fixed in the club charter, but
they are actually quite arbitrary. Hobbes often uses them to outwit Calvin, much as he invents new rules in
Calvinball.
Mealtimes
Lunchtime and dinnertime find Calvin eager to share his thoughts about the food he or others are eating. Those eating with
him—Mom and Dad at dinnertime, Susie at lunch in the school cafeteria—are generally repulsed by his colorful
descriptions of the meal, which usually make reference to vomit, nasal secretions, eyeballs, bugs, worms, rodents, or anything
else guaranteed to make anyone other than a six-year-old boy lose their appetite. Calvin's mother occasionally coaxes him to eat
his dinner by informing him that they are serving some outlandish or stomach-turning dish, which he then eats with relish. This
has the unfortunate side effect of putting Calvin's Dad off of his food. (One notable occasion involved Calvin complaining that
his soup contained rice, and Calvin's mother explaining that the rice grains were actually maggots.)
Calvin's meals at home are generally depicted as a pile of unidentifiable green goop, which will occasionally come to life and
sing, recite Shakespeare, attempt to escape, or attack
Calvin. At other times, Calvin tries to find a way to surreptitiously deposit the food on the carpet or on someone else's plate
so he doesn't have to eat it. His favorite meal is probably the Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs cereal, which turns the milk brown
and exceeds the FDA recommended daily sugar
intake.
When his parents aren't supervising him, Calvin occasionally tries his hand at cooking. With Hobbes, he makes pancakes (in lieu of making individual pancakes, he pours all of the batter into the pan:
"Let's make one big pancake and cut it in half"). When his mother was ill, he prepared breakfast for her (he burns the eggs, but
suggests that she could chip them out with a chisel). Another egg misadventure involved
Calvin cracking eggs high above a frying pan with one eye closed (to eliminate his depth perception, making the exercise more of
a challenge). Calvin's active fantasy life enters into the simplest of meals: while fancying himself a zombie, Calvin observes that the living dead feast upon the living, but "in a pinch, PB&J will do, if you eat it messily enough", and proceeds to do so. Hobbes occasionally disrupts a
peaceful meal: the tiger's passion for tuna is such that whenever Calvin opens a can, he
runs in and tackles him, even if the can contained something else. (When Calvin protests that he was opening a can of pineapple, Hobbes observes that "all cans sound the same.")
The cardboard box and Calvin's inventions
Calvin has a corrugated cardboard box which he adapts for many fantastic uses, usually by simply turning it on its side or
upside-down and relabeling it.
The Transmogrifier is a device designed by Calvin that can
transmogrify any object into another object. He even transmogrifies himself into various animal forms, including a tiger
(like Hobbes) and an elephant. He later develops an improved, portable transmogrifier, incorporated into his water pistol.
Calvin makes improvements upon the transmogrifier "technology," turning the box into a duplicator which he uses to
duplicate himself to spread the stockpile of chores awaiting him. Naturally, his duplicates are as ill-natured as he is, and the
plot backfires on him. Later he adds an "ethicator" to produce an all-good duplicate of himself, who promptly launches an
embarrassing, unrequited love affair with Susie Derkins. The "good" duplicate vanishes when he has an evil thought when Calvin
provokes him into a fight.
Calvin's box also serves as a flying time machine. He usually
uses it to travel backwards in time and interact with dinosaurs, although in a few strips he is also seen travelling a few hours
forward and meeting himself.
In a few strips Calvin combines his box with a colander and creates the "Atomic
Cerebral Enhance-o-tron". Calvin uses this to make his brain more powerful so that he can finish a school project on time.
Despite the fact that Calvin amplifies his intelligence, his project still manages to fail Mrs. Wormwood's standards.
Occasionally Calvin uses a cardboard box as a disguise, with the necessary features artfully depicted on the side with felt
tip pen. These endeavours, however, do not seem to capture Calvin's imagination in the same way as his scientific inventions and
don't last more than a couple of strips. He makes a convincing robot, except that the red shoes peeking from under the flaps give
him away. He also uses it to make himself appear to be a Jovian
probe (sent to the kitchen to prospect for chocolate) and "the world's most powerful computer".
It is important to notice that, with the exception of times when Calvin is physically hiding in the box (such as the "World's
most powerful computer" strip), that most of the other characters do not see his inventions as "real". This is a similar dilemma
to that of Hobbes' existence (see above). For example, when Calvin transmogrifies himself into an owl or a tiger, his parents do
not observe the transformation; only he and Hobbes see the change. Additionally, when he and Hobbes travel to the Mesozoic and photograph dinosaurs, his father perceives the pictures as depicting plastic
toys.
However, it is equally important to note that Calvin's inventions do sometimes affect characters other than Calvin and Hobbes.
For example, in the aforementioned time when Calvin adds an ethicator to his duplicator to produce a physical manifestation of
his good side, the duplicate interacts with Calvin's parents, with Mrs. Wormwood, with Susie, and all of the other persons that
normally are in Calvin's life. Similarly, when Calvin duplicates himself six times, the duplicates interact and his parents
perceive them as existing—they perceive each duplicate simply as Calvin.
The whole question of the existence of Calvin's technological advancements can be explained much like that of Hobbes's dual
nature. Bill Watterson has intentionally avoided resolving the situation so that the reader might take one position or the other;
the fullest enjoyment comes from appreciating all the characters' viewpoints.
Snowmen
A recurring feature in winter strips is Calvin's snowmen, whose grotesque nature
often gets him into trouble --- for instance, when Calvin disgusts his mother with a "Snowman House of Horror", featuring snowmen
decapitated, run over with sleds, and so forth. Another tableau features a pair of snowmen, one enjoying an ice-cream cone, and
the other prone, with an ice-cream scoop in its back ("It's a sordid story," Calvin explains to Hobbes). On other occasions,
Calvin uses the snowmen to ridicule his parents: Calvin's father finds snowman parts splattered over the hood of his car (as if
it had struck a snowman); on another occasion, two columns of militaristic snowman salute him as he walks down the path in front
of the house ("He knows I hate this," mutters the father). Some of Calvin's snow art is much grander in scope: he builds an
enormous mound snaking around his house in the shape of a dinosaur's head, with the house trapped between the jaws. Calvin's
ambition often outstrips his means, however: when he schemes to build a giant snowman with Hobbes, the latter gives up after
rolling the ball for one of his toes (itself several times Calvin's height).
The theme of hideous snowmen is taken to its natural conclusion in the Snow Goons volume, in which Calvin calls upon
the "snow demons" to animate a snowman he has built. True to the Frankenstein tradition, the snowman turns against its creator, building an army of snow goons against
which Calvin must fight for his life. (His parents, of course believe none of it.) The story is notable for its depiction of
exponential growth.
Watterson also uses Calvin's snowmen as a vehicle for Calvin's artistic theories (when he builds "generic snowmen"), and to
ridicule less-than-rigorous ideas about art (when he builds abstract snow sculptures).
Wagon and sled
Calvin and Hobbes often take rides in a wagon or a sled or toboggan (depending on the season) and talk about philosophy or politics as they hurtle
downhill. The course of the vehicle and the obstacles that the characters negotiate as they travel frequently parallel the
subject of their conversation, and the rides almost always end in a spectacular crash. Calvin's wagon has a lot of mileage on it,
as it has made the trip to the planet Mars and back. The wagon has
also been used as a time-travel vehicle, with less success than the cardboard box (although Calvin correctly describes the
phenomenon of time dilation: "The faster we go, the slower time
goes").
Calvinball
Calvinball is a game played almost exclusively by Calvin and Hobbes as a rebellion against organized team sports (like
baseball), although the babysitter Rosalyn plays on at least one occasion. On other occasions participants of Calvinball must
wear raccoon-like masks. When asked why, Calvin replies that "no one is allowed to
question the masks". The rules of the game, besides the soccer ball and wickets almost always used, are made up as they go along,
but the one consistent rule is that the rules can never be the same twice. Either player may change any rule at any time, so the
only way to break the rules is by using one rule twice. Scoring is also entirely arbitrary: Hobbes has reported scores of "Q to
12" and "oogy to boogy".
The reader first encounters the game after Calvin's horrible experience with school baseball. He registers to play baseball in
order to avoid being teased by the other boys. While daydreaming in the outfield, he misses the switch and ends up making an out
against his own team. His classmates mock him and, when he decides to walk away, his coach calls him a "quitter". That Saturday,
Calvin and Hobbes play Calvinball, a game far removed from any organized sport.
Watterson has stated that the greatest number of questions he receives concern Calvinball and how to play it.
Snowball and water balloon fights
Calvin often engages in elaborate and malicious snowball or water balloon fights, depending on the season. Hostilities typically take place
with Hobbes or Susie, or both. Calvin hatches intricate plots to trick Susie into an ideal ambush, but these usually fail and
Hobbes often betrays him and switches sides. Calvin and Hobbes can often be found planning the construction of a huge snow fort
from which they can invulnerably terrorise the neighborhood, but these rarely make it past the architectural stage. Calvin often
imagines himself as a dinosaur when he is about to smack someone with a snowball, as seen in one Sunday strip where he is a
tyrannosaurus attempting to attack a duck-billed dinosaur (Susie Derkins). As soon as he throws the snowball, Susie chases after
him, which is seen by Calvin as the herbivore chasing the carnivore.
Lemonade stand
Calvin finds yet another use for his cardboard box; this one admittedly more mundane. He often operates something like a
lemonade stand, but in
addition to lemonade he attempts to market a variety of other things as well. He
once sold "suicide sludge" for a quarter; another time he offered "insurance" (actually a protection racket) for the same price. He has also tried selling "ideas" through this venue. His
main idea, however, seems to be simply "buy some more!"
In one strip, he offered "a swift kick in the butt" for 5 dollars; to his genuine surprise, he had no takers.
One strip pessimistically, if accurately, described the Logic of Capital as being one based upon a substandard final product
being sold at an exorbitantly high price in order to support the bureaucracy surrounding its production. Charging fifteen dollars
for what Susie recognizes as a lemon thrown into drainage-ditch water, Calvin patiently explains that in order to stay
competitive, corners have to be cut in order to support his own position as CEO, sole shareholder, marketing and advertising
director, and so forth.
Camping trips
Calvin's dad sometimes takes the family on long camping trips in the summer, excursions which both Calvin and his mom revile.
The trips highlight deep personality differences between Calvin and his dad, particularly their differing attitudes toward
"building character" and toward modern conveniences—television, air conditioning and so forth. Watterson has said that his
own father often used a character-building excuse to explain why the family was so miserable on camping trips.
School and homework
Calvin hates school and its attendant early-morning risings, irate teachers, homework, and fellow students. Often his mother
has to force the unwilling Calvin to go up to the school bus. Occasionally he
manages to avoid the bus and his mother has to chase him down to force him on, or drive him to school. He often waits for the bus
with Hobbes and explains why an intelligent boy like himself does not need school. While at school, he visualizes the building as
a hostile planet and his teacher and principal as vicious aliens. He is known to have run away from school enacting one of his
fantasies. He is a loner at school and only communicates with two other students --- Susie, whom he teases and pesters for
answers to test or homework problems, and Moe, who bullies him. Also he lacks the company of Hobbes at school. Sometimes Hobbes
does his homework and reading while Calvin watches TV or reads comic books. On one occasion, Hobbes went with Calvin to school
and managed to make Moe (see Recurring characters) leave Calvin alone (though it was
because of Moe's fear of getting in trouble with the teachers, rather than what Hobbes could have said or done to him). Among
other means that Calvin devises to handle his homework or avoid going to school are using Stupendous Man to reverse the rotation
of the earth so he gets an extra day, reducing his school to ashes using a telescope lens, and attempting to create a robot or a
Calvin duplicate who will do all his homework.
Calvin and Hobbes books
Books with a "Yes" in the "Collection?" column comprise all of the regular strips that appeared in newspapers. The column
shows which books are needed to form a complete collection of the newspaper strips, for those not interested in waiting for the
forthcoming complete collection in hardcover, due September 2005.
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