That’s funny, Guap. Personally, I always felt like the names of Calvin and Hobbes didn’t relate to the characters much more than being philosophers (one, a theologian, really) and sounding good together.
Christien, yours isn’t the only family that chews through these books. I know I’ve bought one or two multiple times, and several of the ones we have are falling apart.
not only that, you need these as spare for the kids and visitors to page around. The collector’s edition is too sacred for their grimy hands!
Ha. Even I felt weird taking them out and cracking their spines and putting my grimy hands on their pages. I love them, but they don’t feel like paper enough to my fingers. Too glossy or something.
-xtien
“So if they drink your blood, you don’t turn into one?”
You’re from Chagrin Falls, Dan? I grew up in Novelty! I went home for my high school reunion a couple years ago and got some soft serve at the Popcorn Shop and ate it by the falls. Fireside Books smelled the same. I miss Taggarts toy shop!
I love Calvin & Hobbes and I loved reading it with my first daughter. She’s 12 now and goes back to it every couple of years. I haven’t read it with my 2nd daughter yet but I think she’s read plenty of it with her sister.
In my screenwriting class, I like to spend some early weeks on comic strips. I always use this strip to talk about structure…
All the school day images are boxed in at right angles, while the last panel of after-school freedom has no borders and just fades on all sides. And how that last line re-contextualizes all the previous images. OF COURSE it’s great literature!
This thread takes me back to those glorious days in the 80’s when New York Newsday would arrive at my door with a new Doonesbury (still at its peak), Far Side, Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes all on the same page every day.
I’m with you.
Over summers, when home from college I’d sit in Atticus Book Store & Cafe in New Haven,CT and just read collected digests of Far Side and Bloom County over coffee a few nights a month.
I honestly didn’t get into Calvin & Hobbes until the series was almost over. so it was a joy to learn what I had in store awaiting me. Feeling the same way reading with my kids now.
I didn’t realize that Calvin and Hobbes started in 1985, I was born in 1985. Huh.
I remember reading Calvin and Hobbes as a kid all throughout my childhood, there are softcover versions of the various collected volumes sitting on a shelf in my old bedroom. I loved it, as a kid who had a very deep imagination, and who, as a kid prior to reading C&H, dragged around a stuffed teddy bear everywhere, I really connected with the character. I loved those books, and probably read them through 10 times or more.
I think one of the best parts of those books, were, as I started reading them around 8-10 years old, immediately prior to the strip ending, (I cut the final strip out of the newspaper and saved it somewhere) I loved them for what they were. An adventurous kid with a big imagination. I would pretend to make my own time machine, or transmogrifier. It was great. I even would play “calvinball” with my younger brother. And… as in the comics, it would always end in argument.
As I got older, in high school and college, I would continue to re-read these comics and begin to understand some of the deep context and meaning behind the comic strips. Stuff that flew over my head as a kid. I love that Bill W’s writing was so good that a kid of Calvin’s age, and people the age of Calvin’s parents could enjoy the same comic strip. My parents bought those first compilations, and I saved up my allowance to complete the collection.
Far side as well.
My family moved there when I was young - it’s a fantastic place! I’ve since moved all around, but it’s certainly a small, small world, lol. For those who aren’t aware, the populations of these (awesome!) neighboring towns couldn’t collectively even come close to filling a sports stadium.
[quote=“Nightgaunt, post:8, topic:120545, full:true”]
No argument here. Calvin and Hobbes is up there with Looney Tunes as one of the great cultural artifacts of the 20th Century that won’t get enough credit because the medium is young.[/quote]
I second this! Although I’d put Calvin & Hobbes on an even higher pedestal than Looney Tunes. It’s the pinnacle of the medium, and it’s more profound, especially that one about frozen boogers.
To me it’s just never been a question that Calvin & Hobbes is high art. It’s self-evident.
My first tattoo was my two favorite philosophers, Hypatia & Bertrand Russell, doing the Calvin and Hobbes dance.
I think this thread should just be people pasting their favorite strips now.
Isn’t this stuff copyrighted though? You know, like games are and such?
edit: DAMMIT, sorry for replying to a 2 year old post!
Neat. Is this Bill Waterson or someone that can really pull off the art?
A tiny bit off topic, but the article linked in the first post reminds me of Umberto Eco’s essay on Peanuts as poetry. Is that essay well known in the US? In Europe it’s something that pops up a lot in many different university courses on media, literature, etc… (at the time, 1985, it was a big deal than a highbrow lit critic and author validated such a pop culture artifact). I found it very strange the author of the article didn’t make reference to it, and it was originally published in English and on an American newspaper.
Hard to say. That image is on Breathed’s facebook page, and I can’t imagine he’d slap Watterson’s signature on it if it weren’t legit. However, on the Bloom County store page, his signature is missing.
It looks great, and Watterson has been known to dabble on webcomics and the like, for charity.
LOL, awesome.
Though, I don’t think it makes a difference if there isn’t any profit to be had from posting the comics. They seem to be freely available in a few locations that seem legit, but IANAL or anything.
The dinosaurs aren’t up to Watterson’s usual caliber. The Calvin is pretty good. This is likely just continuing the gag from a few years ago where Berke mentioned he bought C&H.
[EDIT] Man, I miss Calvin & Hobbes. I really respect Watterson fo just walking away from… everything.
Watterson and Breathed are friends, so I would guess this was drawn by both of them.
