There are very few things that I was reading in grade school that I’ve found myself sitting at party during college with three or four other people reading over each other’s shoulders and loving just as much now as I did then. Calvin and Hobbs is one of them.
There are many things that I love about Calvin and Hobbs. I love Calvin’s snowmen, Stupendous Man’s battles against Roselyn, Calvin pretending to be dinosaurs, cardboard box inventions, Calvin Ball, and practically everything else. If you are one of the poor deprived souls who hasn’t read any Calvin and Hobbs, get yourself to a bookstore and remedy that.
I’m sure that Calvin and Hobbs has helped shape my sense of humor. I’ve discovered that when I’m hungry and nothing looks edible I can still get myself to eat by filling a bowl with salad and pretending to be a dinosaur chomping on plants (forks are not required for this exercise), and the only song I’ve written that I’m almost always willing to share is about pretending to be a dinosaur. Calvin and I share a love of the Mesozoic and a healthy imagination. When it comes down to it, Calvin and Hobbs is everything I think a comic strip should be.
What I really love most are the characters and how full they seem. While it’s largely a humorous strip, it isn’t all laughs and no substance. There are sad moments, like the story arc with the baby raccoon, and introspective moments where Calvin slips into philosophy mode and then dismisses it and goes back to watching cartoons. I feel that Bill Waterson has really captured some of the elements of childhood in an honest and loving way. Too often children are portrayed as miniature grown ups (Disney Channel is the worst. I hate what they do with child characters). But Calvin and Hobbs–they capture the magic. And that’s really an integral part of what I want to be able to do with my writing and drawing: Capture the magic I see all around me and share it.
On a side note, I desperately want to make a short film of Calvin and Hobbs staring one of my friends who’s eight years old and would make an awesome Calvin, but I don’t think Bill Waterson wouldn’t want to see his comic recreated that way, even though it would be a sweet, respectful, amateur film which would never be marketed. So I sigh and picture how pretty it would all be in my head instead.