Something I like about Calvin and Hobbes was how I was able to change from "reading it because its funny" to "reading it to make me think" without really noticing it.
My favorite "arc" is when Calvin finds the dying raccoon, takes him in to try and save him, the raccoon dying, and realizing that even though he's sad that the he died, he's still glad to have met him while he had the chance.
Calvin coming to terms with death, and realizing that even though fatalism is basically the only inevitable outcome in the long-term, it's important to enjoy life now and enjoy the current relationships we have is enough to get me teary-eyed (even to this day), and has greatly shaped my outlook on life, since I read it when I was really young.
It's a great comic, and despite centering on a child, it does a really good job at using that kind of innocence as a means to make a commentary. Watterson resisted the urge to talk about politics or pop-culture, and instead focus on people, and as a result the comic will always be timeless to me
I think that one spoke to a lot of people - it certainly speaks to me. I agree with your reading, but the last line also always said to me: it's okay to look at something awful and call it as such. We can acknowledge it and move on.
Watterson highlighted that arc in his 10th anniversary collection (which is a really wonderful collection of essays and explanations side by side with strips). It happened relatively early into the comic strip's life and IIRC he regarded it as a turning point in Calvin & Hobbes's ability to move beyond gags and handle weightier topics.
Thank you for sharing! I know this exact arc very well and have referenced it a few times in my life (sent to friends, talked about it, etc). Death is not usually an easy topic, so when this arc is relevant, but maybe not to death, I use it to discuss what is finite.
Personally, I found the the more I looked at concept of most/all things being finite, the more appreciation for those things, people, moments, food, jobs, projects, etc I have. I haven't become a mindful monk by any stretch, but it has both shaped and improved my outlook in many ways.
Even "The Simpsons" has this quality, at least the first 9 seasons or so. Even if you had no idea about the cultural references and the jabs at American culture, the situational comedy was still worth watching. Eventually you figure out all the references and jibes and the show becomes even more enjoyable.
Growing up, Calvin and Hobbes was my way of escaping and day-dreaming. I had every book. As a young adult I bought the complete collection. It became so popular among my children and their friends that I actually had to buy a second copy so everyone could read at the same time.
An awesome Friday evening: myself, kids, friends, all comfy in the living room with Calvin and Hobbes, snacks and laughter. How did it get to be 11pm and the kids are still up?
Note, I had the same experience with "That 70's show"
I watched it when it came out, and Red seemed like needlessly cranky, always angry single-dimensional antagonist.
I rewatched first few seasons on Netflix and... man, he's just always right, and those kids need to get into shape and SMARTEN UP...
(not claiming "That 70's show" is great literature, note; but the perspective shift is stunning, given our internal narrative tends to be that we are not changing radically as human beings most of the time)
That 70's show isn't great literature, it's great satire. I agree 100% on how watchable it (still) is, especially how well they did with the timeless aspects of it. When the show first came out, I watched it with my mother (who would have been their age when the show was set) and she couldn't believe how spot on they were the feel of the era. The music and drug use (and the older generation not really understanding it all), traditional jobs starting to disappear, the coming of age, women's lib, etc. Teenage me could still identify with the kids, and now I feel for the parents.
It also really helps that all the actors were obviously having a blast making the show.
Red (the angry/ grumpy father character) is the reason that show resonated with me.
I'm not much of a TV watcher but the "wise/understanding/caring adults" on TV were not my experience growing up in the 70s and early 80s. We feared the adults, and we knew they didn't get us but also they weren't completely stupid.
I watched as an adult a couple years ago and my eyes were opened. I use to love the kid Simba, but I can see him almost like a spoiled brat. I understood why adult Simba was so unsure of himself even though he was bigger and stronger. Why Mufasa was so forgiving of his son even though he starts so much trouble.
I may have to check out the C&H comics again. Yukon Ho was the best!
I always do appreciate attempts to deflate the Disney-esque romanticization of monarchy, though in this case The Lion King is just supposed to be a retelling of Hamlet.
I get that it's just a movie and should be enjoyed without overthinking since we're talking about singing animals and glossing over the whole prey-predator thing. The real crime being the inanely happy songs thrust upon parents everywhere.
I know that Disney had moved toward reaching out to groups that had not been represented in movies and this is a good thing. Then they trot out a movie of inclusion with a theme of being born to your station and any attempt to rise will be squashed. I get that everyone is suppose to empathize with being the special child, but if he's special and locked into his role, what about everyone else?
I never fully realized it until you said it just now but as a father of a two year old I often find myself thinking back to Calvin's parents, after spending my childhood identifying with Calvin.
I had an interesting experience when I was in high school, watching this happen to my parents with a comic they enjoyed. I forget the name of the series...but the story went like this:
In the 80s, it was just a daily life comic, Parents with young kids, more from the parents perspective. As their kids [comic] grew older, so did I and my siblings [real world]. The comic progressed to show when their kids had kids [comic ]--in the 90s. My parents were also grandparents at the time, and they would smile and giggle as they shared the Sunday comics.
Being old enough to witness those moments were really touching to me. Made me have an even deeper appreciation for a story that evolved, but also watching my parents grow and change --not just "grow older".
For all that it is traditional to bemoan the state of "kids these days" or how the world has gotten worse, there are only two things I truly miss being added to my existence: C&H and The Far Side.
I revisit both every few years to revel in what we do have, and feel lucky to have been in the lifetime when both were at least weekly gifts.
I sometimes wonder where the equivalent items for other generations are, and if I'm simply unable to grok them (I've never understood tintin nor askterix, for example)
> I sometimes wonder where the equivalent items for other generations are…
My kids watch shows like Steven Universe and Adventure Time, and those often remind me of C&H in that they can be enjoyed on multiple levels. and often mix some pretty deep insight in with the entertainment.
...and lived in a society with far more racism and sexism. The world had high odds of being more violent, health was probably worse. (even recent downturns for some groups are small compared to the improvements over generations). We complain about anti-vaxxers today, but we're talking about the struggle to eradicate diseases that were just a fact of life in the past - and a BAD fact.
Wealth inequality and climate change are definitely growing issues, but have not yet overwhelmed the rest.
It's easy to glorify the past if you only look at the healthy and successful people.
I think it's easy to ignore all the kids dead/suffering while talking about how nice it was for those that weren't. Kids today are SAFER than in the past - and we do things to bring that about. I loved riding in my grandparents car without seatbelts - I remember cheering them to slam on the brakes so we could fly forward. As fun as that was, giving that up is directly tied to saved lives.
Of course not everything is connected - such as the outside vs racism example you cite. But when people talk about "kids these days", they don't restrict their scope, so I didn't either.
I find it hard to keep following comic strips. For many years in my childhood, the local paper would have a full page of black and white strips each weekday, then 3-4 pages of full colour strips on Saturday (there was no paper on Sunday). It was great for getting a wide spread of what's out there. But then that was cut down to four strips twice a week, then the paper was shuttered.
I have memories of laying on the living room floor with the Saturday comics spread out in front of me and the sun streaming through the window on a winter's morning, and that doesn't compare to reading them on my phone or computer. I want it on paper, and delivered daily, or a weeks-worth once a week. But no such service exists anymore.
It is not to the level of c&h, but the only comic I regularly check is questionable content. I have loved seeing the authors style develop over the years and enjoy the story.
Between Failures is my modern holdout. Its where I went in life just after I was Calvin. Its not high art by any stretch but Wohlenhaus' genuineness just bleeds off every page.
I bought the complete set of Calvin and Hobbes for my (then) 7 year old. He loves it, and it helped develop his wonderful sense of humor. It's still as relevant now as it was 20-30 years ago.
Calvin and Hobbes is great: it scales well with the reader's age, progressively disclosing more and more thematic elements with each rereading. While it contains a couple of era-specific elements, the majority of the topics discussed are still relevant today (and still will be–they're timeless). And of course, they're funny in their own right, so you can read them for enjoyment without dwelling on the underlying message; you can appreciate the little watercolor or pen drawing that each panel is, how Watterson suggests ambiance with a monochrome palette or captures an alien landscape just as well as Calvin's backyard in the Sunday strips. Truly my favorite comics.
And he did a good thing with that. Calvin and Hobbes never wanted for quality. We wouldn’t still consider it great literature if it had gone the way of Peanuts or, God forbid, Garfield.
It shows he was smart on another level than being just a great cartoonist.
...and worth one hundred million while turning down somewhere in the ballpark of three to five hundred million dollars in potential merchandising deals. Watterson is a class act like no other.
This also exemplifies what I love about the strip: for a strip that often centers around imagination, it holds itself to that same standard and leaves much to the imagination of the reader.
A worse strip would have started with the last panel.
Well, the phrasing sure leans towards the intellectual side, however Calvin adopting the artistic attitude (and lingo) before even making a name for himself or adopting any skill whatsoever is not just funny but in a simple way encouraging. Even an 11-year-old might realize that one doesn't just bullshit one's way through life like that.
The joke somewhat even reminds me of Tarantino's "Desperado" joke, because said artistic attitude resembles the guy looking for gratitude in the barman on whose bar he's urinating...
Funny how one can interpret things so differently. I see a lot of art just like this, like the clothes of the emperor: All nice and well until someone says: Wtf you speak a lot of hefty language but in the end my 4 y/o can do the same thing, but for the hefty language.
Sure, Art can make you think and the way you interpret it may teach you something about yourself (that is how I find value in art), but so can the painting of a 4 y/o and a nice river flowing in the distance.
Call me barbaric but I appreciate art when it took skill to make it. A nicely constructed, elegant, functional Python class with minimal but readable code, that is (also) art to me.
The thing is, I'm often getting away with this opinion because I have a PhD so somehow my intellectualism isn't easily dismissed, it's insane.
Criticizing the art because it’s not technically advanced is like criticizing a Python class because it’s just text on a screen and any four-year-old can put text on a screen. What makes the Python class meaningful to you is the context you bring with you. The world of art is a lot bigger than technically proficient realism.
A 4yo isn’t going to accidentally stumble onto a masterpiece on composition either.
In any case, the utility of the code is not in question here. Ugly code can have the same utility as beautiful code. Utility is not completely separated from beauty but it is neither necessary nor sufficient. If it were, only applied math would be considered beautiful, but plenty of other math is beautiful too.
After typing out my response I don’t know if I totally agree with what I’m saying here. And I don’t know if it even makes much sense but here it is anyway:
I think what I’m getting at is you wouldn’t call a proof with an error in it beautiful. Just like you wouldn’t call a useless python class beautiful. The purpose of pure math is finding truths. The purpose a python class is to do something useful. For something to be beautiful it has to complete its purpose (I don’t think I would go so far as utility) as well as be of a beautiful form. Relating this back to traditional art the question becomes what is the purpose of traditional art? Here by traditional art I mean making things with the intention of it being “art” and for people to look at/ hear/feel and doesn’t have other utility.
I've been reading Calvin and Hobbes to my 6 year old, which has made it very clear how "adult" Calvin sounds sometimes. Like, my 6 year old never harasses me about how my polls are down as dad, or expounds at length about philosophical issues (even while riding a wagon). So, while I think Watterson did frequently capture the manic spirit of childhood sometimes, he also did his fair share of speaking through his characters with an adult voice.
When we first started, I thought, "wait, maybe this was a bad idea." Calvin is not exactly a good role model and kids love to imitate things they think are funny. But it turns out my kid is pretty good at separating entertainment from reality. So, there haven't been any real buckets balanced on doors, or trying to sell the car, or emptying the entire bathtub in one huge splash--at least not yet.
I own every copy plus the collectors editions. They have been an inspiration for both my children. An inspiration that has resulted in me being the target of well aimed dart guns while delivering glasses of water. I can't tell you how many times our upstairs bathroom has been flooded. It has been a pleasure to see how much joy those books have brought to my kids. We are a book loving family. Our basement is wall to wall bookshelves. I am sure that Calvin and Hobbes have been read more times then any other book.
The racoon story was a bit hard. It reminded me of the death of Farley in For Better Or Worse[1]. Cartoons and animation can do hard death scenes, look at the first segment of Up!.
I grew up on Peanuts and am a prime candidate to be a lifelong fan. However, later in life I realized that much of it just isn't very funny to me anymore. I think C&H played a big part in adding to my disappointment in Peanuts, as C&H was for me consistently, brilliantly funny. YMMV.
I think the saddest thing with the decline of newspapers is that great comics are harder to discover now. It would be nice if there was something like blogs linking a favorite comic strip somewhere.
I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes nearly everyday from when I first was able to read to now. It was amazing how it scaled with my age, and each re-reading brought something different to me.
Also, in my opinion it’s actually fairly complex writing as well, with lots of excellent vocabulary - really benificial for young readers!
I love this article, but it fails to highlight one of the most important things about Calvin and Hobbes. The art is brilliant, and I'm pretty sure there is no explanation or description that I can give that will do it justice. I don't think any other comic has ever come close to the level of dynamism, variety, expressiveness, and quality that C&H achieved.
It's surprising like so many of us developers, his original ideas, even for Calvin and Hobbes we're rejected by numerous publications. He even got fired from his first job as a cartoonist.
Personally, I like paper and ink better than glowing pixels, but to each his own. Obviously the role of comics is changing very fast. On the one hand, I don't think comics have ever been more widely accepted or taken as seriously as they are now. On the other hand, the mass media is disintegrating, and audiences are atomizing. I suspect comics will have less widespread cultural impact and make a lot less money. I'm old enough to find all this unsettling, but the world moves on. All the new media will inevitably change the look, function, and maybe even the purpose of comics, but comics are vibrant and versatile, so I think they'll continue to find relevance one way or another. But they definitely won't be the same as what I grew up with.
No, Calvin and Hobbes is not Great Literature. After reading the other comments, I know how out of tone I am, but I do want to respect the meanings of the words. Over the past centuries, "Literature" evolved from "written words" to "artistic written text". Most of C&H strips would be complete failures if we removed the drawings. I love C&H, and I think it's great comics, cartoons, art, à la rigueur bande dessinée… but not literature.
There should be some word or phrase for the fact that our culture can't seem to actually produce great literature, and modern people can't seem to muster the attention to read great literature, and so kids stuff like Calvin and Hobbes and Harry Potter is touted as being "great literature" somehow. It's not; it's insipid kids stuff. Enjoy it for what it is worth; if you call it "great literature" you're just revealing the fact you don't read much in the way of literature or greatness. Go read some Dostoevsky or Melville, or for heaven's sake, even some Kipling or Tolkien if you can only read kids stuff.
Next week we'll have something on the high literary qualities of bazooka bubble gum cartoons, and asterisk and obelisk comics; how Winnie the Poo was the 8th incarnation of the Buddha.
I don't think that Calvin and Hobbes can be put in the same category as Harry Potter. Adults may reminisce about Harry Potter but I don't think they go back to it and find new things the way they do Calvin and Hobbes (as evidenced by this thread). It is far from "insipid kids [sic] stuff."
The interpretation and application of the word varies.
Growing up in Canada in the 80s, all of Margaret Atwood's books were always considered Canadian Literature (aka CanLit).
Since the Handmaid's Tale TV series thrust her into the pop culture consciousness, I always find it interesting when someone in the American media refers to her work as science fiction.
It would be both... I've read Atwood's claims to be "speculative fiction" rather than "science fiction" because - "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen."
I read the Maddadam Trilogy (the books that quote was specifically about) and the fact that she can claim it's not sci-fi because it "could really happen" is ridiculous and insulting to actual "hard sci-fi" which do a better job of working out new science could impact the real world.
Also, the books literally have monsters in the form of human-intelligent, genetically-mutated pigs.
My favorite "arc" is when Calvin finds the dying raccoon, takes him in to try and save him, the raccoon dying, and realizing that even though he's sad that the he died, he's still glad to have met him while he had the chance.
Calvin coming to terms with death, and realizing that even though fatalism is basically the only inevitable outcome in the long-term, it's important to enjoy life now and enjoy the current relationships we have is enough to get me teary-eyed (even to this day), and has greatly shaped my outlook on life, since I read it when I was really young.
It's a great comic, and despite centering on a child, it does a really good job at using that kind of innocence as a means to make a commentary. Watterson resisted the urge to talk about politics or pop-culture, and instead focus on people, and as a result the comic will always be timeless to me