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Calvin's dad was quite a character, wasn't he?
I think they still believe what I told them about how they determine weight limits for bridges though.
IMO, Watterson stopped at just the right time to preserve his legacy and keep the strip associated with childlike wonder and innocence. In the last years of C&H there was a certain curmudgeonliness creeping in, as Waterson started to mock modern commerce and art. I think the cartoonist was naturally growing older and more disillusioned, and his strip faintly started to sound like Calvin’s dad instead of Calvin.
curmudgeonliness: The state or condition of being curmudgeonly.
okay, let's look up curmudgeonly:
curmudgeonly: Characteristic of a curmudgeon; churlish
nearly there:
curmudgeon: An ill-tempered person full of stubborn ideas or opinions, often an older man.
IMO, Watterson stopped at just the right time to preserve his legacy and keep the strip associated with childlike wonder and innocence. In the last years of C&H there was a certain curmudgeonliness creeping in, as Waterson started to mock modern commerce and art. I think the cartoonist was naturally growing older and more disillusioned, and his strip faintly started to sound like Calvin’s dad instead of Calvin.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
smbc-comics has done a whole slew of C+H inspired strips with two kids out having a deep but strage philosophical conversation. It's very difficult to actually find anything you're looking for in the SMBC archives though... E.g. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/qualia
Zach Weinersmith’s Beawolf graphic novel is basically an ode to Calvin. He has a new book coming out soon, too.
1985, I thought they were around a lot longer. I remember people at work talking about that comic and loving it. But the my City Newspaper did not carry it :( I can see it now in gocomics and it is great.
Calvin and Hobbes was a major part of my childhood - I loved it. For something casually consumed on the daily at the breakfast table, it was so earnestly, so obviously, smarter than the median cultural offering. Smarter also then the local nightly news broadcasts. Smarter also than the median educational intervention I experienced through elementary and middle school. It had finished by the time I was in high school.
I still love it, but my feelings now are mixed as well.
Calvin wasn't exactly a pro-social role model for me. He was the hero of the smartest media I was acquainted with - the sharpest mouthpiece for what was going on around me and how to be alive. It was vitally important for me to live up to his disdain for schooling, his aloofness, his contrarianism. Nothing horrified eight or ten or fifteen or twenty-two year old me so much as conforming (gross) to a Susie Perkins mode of existence - smart, but seemingly oblivious or indifferent to life's contradictions and hypocrisies.
Some thirty years later I understand that a person can move pragmatically, without self-harm or self-righteousness, through life's contradictions and hypocrisies without being oblivious or indifferent. Who knew?
I can still remember choosing between the morning or evening paper based on which included _Calvin and Hobbes_, so it certainly worked to sell papers. The boxed collection is wonderful, and one of my favourites. For folks who want a bit more, there have been a couple of homages: "Hobbes and Bacon": https://imgur.com/gallery/all-hobbes-bacon-by-pants-are-over... --- a bit too on-the-nose for my taste, which doesn't re…
I believe the Zen Pencils one is one of the better ones... it's not Calvin and Hobbes, but rather about Watterson himself.
http://www.zenpencils.com/comic/128-bill-watterson-a-cartoon...
I can still remember choosing between the morning or evening paper based on which included _Calvin and Hobbes_, so it certainly worked to sell papers. The boxed collection is wonderful, and one of my favourites. For folks who want a bit more, there have been a couple of homages: "Hobbes and Bacon": https://imgur.com/gallery/all-hobbes-bacon-by-pants-are-over... --- a bit too on-the-nose for my taste, which doesn't re…
Growing up, we had collected volumes of Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, and The Boondocks. Surprisingly good bedfellows. Covered the bases, so to speak.
Watterson, famously, never sold out. He is sort of an idealized, godlike figure, to many cartoonists.
Reminds me of this Onion story: https://theonion.com/peeing-calvin-decals-now-recognized-as-...