If you ever read the Sunday funnies growing up, you’re probably familiar with Calvin and Hobbes. Bill Watterson’s long-running comic strip depicting the hijinks of a boy and his stuffed tiger is ingrained in the childhood of millions of children from all over. What’s even better is that Calvin and Hobbes is a comic strip in a class by itself. Unlike other popular strips like Peanuts or Garfield, Watterson maintains a high level of integrity with his art. There’s a reason you’ve never seen a Calvin and Hobbes TV show or movie: it lives in the world of the comic strip.
As a brilliant illustrator and writer, Watterson understood what made his content valuable: it was accessible, easy to follow, and brief. Consequently, he played to his strengths: he kept his comic strip a comic strip.
But staying within the medium of the comic strip didn’t stop Watterson from exercising his creativity. Calvin and Hobbes attempted to break nearly every rule the comic strip was expected to follow. With every new strip, Watterson would try something new. The older he got, the more experimental he would be. There’s a very iconic piece where Calvin comes home from school and Hobbes bursts through the door, tackling him. While this is expectedly a simple premise, Watterson achieves this without using any panels. All movement and progression of time is achieved through negative space and abstract shapes superimposed into the background. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen Foxtrot try anything like that.
Probably one of the most influential things Calvin and Hobbes was responsible for was it’s ability to relate to its audience. We all have been able to relate at one time or another when we watched the boy and his pet precariously walk across a log over the creek. Furthermore, adults can relate to Calvin’s parents because they’re real people with motivations and actual character traits. That’s special: this comic strip promotes family and communication. Calvin’s parents aren’t portrayed as evil; it’s easy to justify their responses to Calvin’s crazy antics. On top of all that, the strip is timeless; while thoughtful, the strip is relatable for people young and old.
In the strips that revolved around “Spaceman Spiff,” Calvin’s galaxy-faring alter ego, we see spectacular artwork of aliens and spacecraft, far exceeding the expected shorthand cartoons and splotched background of Calvin’s real world. On the surface, this is cool: we get to see Watterson stretch his creative muscles a little more. But if you dig deeper, you see that Calvin is seeing his imaginative world of adventure in greater detail than he sees reality. As a six year-old, this is not only reasonable, but expected. This only furthers the relatability of Calvin’s character.
Calvin and Hobbes reminds us of our fond memories of childhood. By masterfully manipulating our nostalgia, Bill Watterson is able to pull us into Calvin’s world, and we don’t want to leave. As kids and as adults, Calvin is a vehicle for us to relive our youth, and you can’t put a price on that.
