The complete Calvin and Hobbes (edition 2005)

While we're all the poorer for the lack of Calvin and Hobbes in our newspapers, after reading the entire strip in a few gulps it becomes clearer why Watterson decided to end his masterpiece. He clearly had said what he intended, and towards the end the strip was on the verge of becoming, if not exactly predictable or a rehash of earlier themes, at least something short of his earlier work. It is often said that a true artist knows when to stop, and that certainly applies in this instance. ( )

What a fantastic box set to own. Calvin & Hobbes are my favourite strip, my son and I have laughed and cried together whilst reading this.
Life is as it is written by Bill Watterson, the insight and philosophy of these two charactors are true to life (how much am I like calvins' father ?) my son quotes him all the time as I go on with life, only now realising that I am his Father!!
Every family should have at least one strip book in their collection. We have at least two of each edition, all tattered and torn, well used. ( )

Probably the greatest artist of newspaper cartoon strips ever. Ever. I know some folks will say that the best is Peanuts-creator Charles M. Schultz, but nobody has been able to match the decade of pure quality that Bill Watterson has created. The universe Calvin lives in (both in his mind and outside of his mind) is wide with possibilities and rich characters. The artwork is lush and beautiful, and the humor is both incisive and gut-laughter-inducing. I laughed at these comics when I was a kid and I laugh at them to this day. That is how wide of an age range can be affected by these tales of imagination and wonder. Genius. ( )

Several years ago, one of my best friends in the entire world surprised me with a gift she knew I would love: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection. The three big hardbound books come in a nice slipcase and the whole shebang hefts in at about 22 pounds.

I already owned every C and H book in existence, but they were all very old and very ‘loved’ paperbacks, with bent and torn covers and missing pages. And most of them were buried somewhere under the clutter in my teenaged (at the time) daughter’s bedroom.

I saw on Amazon that 399 customers, as of the date of this blog post, have reviewed this C and H collection. Aside from a few knuckleheads complaining about the cost and the quality of the binding (they apparently expected it to be 24-carat gold embossed), the consensus is that the collection is fantastic, wonderful, pure Watterson bullion.

I concur.

I actually remember the day I first heard that Bill Watterson was retiring the strip. It’s indelibly stamped upon my usually poor memory. It was the mid-nineties, and I was devastated to learn that my favorite comic strip ever had just abruptly ended. Who was this monster, Bill Watterson, who had given us the marvelous world of Calvin, part childish impulsiveness, part adult word-usage and politics, with a generous pinch of wild imagination, and Hobbes, the steadfast friend, and the embodiment of Calvin’s conscience? Why was Watterson withdrawing from the comic strip universe—did he have an incurable disease?!

It took another decade for me to understand his motivation for quitting, and it only became clear to me after watching the sad decline of two of my favorite animated cartoons, The Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants. Each of them went through nearly the exact same metamorphosis. First the rough-hewn quality of the animation itself changed. Both Simpsons and Spongebob went from sketchy, quirky drawings with uneven outlines and home-made fills, to smooth, even, mass-produced textures (this can actually be seen in Watterson’s drawings, too, if you compare his earlier work with the later, but in Watterson’s case, it depicts his growth as an artist). Then the content changed, and not for the better. In order to keep their audiences entertained (or maybe they ran out of original ideas), the producers of Simpsons and Spongebob pushed the envelope—the shows got ruder—more and more outrageous with each episode. Simpsons was never intended for children, so its decline was sad, but shrug-offable. But suddenly Spongebob, who my young son adored, was no longer an innocent rube; he and his side-kick Patrick went from gross but lovable dopes to absolutely vile, violent, cross-dressing imbeciles.

Watterson saw the dismal future of his strip and he wasn’t going to let it happen. He also wouldn’t allow run-away merchandizing to “violate the spirit of the strip.” (I wanted to get one of those C and H vinyl decal stickers for the back window of my truck until I discovered they were unauthorized black-market products). For his dedication to the purity of his vision, I can only thank him.
If I haven’t made myself clear, Calvin and Hobbes is the best comic strip EVER. I can and do read it over and over again. The strip has been a huge influence on me from several standpoints, not the least of which was a not-so-subtle refinement of my sense of humor.

My almost seven-year-old son has just now absconded with volume one and is on the floor reading it avidly. I have for some years now considered him to be the embodiment of Calvin, but he’s asking me (every two and a half minutes) to clarify the big words and some of the less childish concepts for him. He’s laughing uproariously at the drawings, at the sassy things Calvin says, at the irony that he gets and even at the stuff he doesn’t understand. I believe I’ve just witnessed the birth of another Calvin and Hobbes fan.

(Review originally posted to Booksquawk) ( )

Calvin & Hobbes are two of the 5 greatest cartoon characters of all time. And it hardly matters how old you are or when you last read them, these books can be read over and over and over ( )