The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm a Calvin and Hobbes fan from way back so this set has been on my radar for quite a while. After a few years of having this on my wish list, my wife finally got it for me for Christmas. It was worth the wait.

As everyone knows, Calvin is a six year old boy whose best friend is his stuffed tiger Hobbes. This book collects every Calvin and Hobbes strip. The dailies are in black and white and the Sunday strips are in color, as nature and Bill Watterson intended. Dates accompany each strip noting when it was originally printed.

The presentation is great. The pages are heavy duty and slick, built to last. The colors are vibrant but not overdone, looking more like the Sunday strips would have originally looked if not printed on the cheapest newsprint imaginable. The Sunday strips are shuffled slightly so they don't interrupt the flow of longer arcs, like the propeller beanie or the many camping trips. The individual volumes lay flat for easy reading. The dimensions are slightly larger than the omnibuses for the 1990s. Honestly, six or eight volumes would probably make for easier reading but this set is pretty damn impressive.

As for the content, it's as magical as it ever was. On one level, it's a look back at the unbridled imagination and enthusiasm that goes with being six years old and having the world at your disposal. On another level, it's a realistic, sometimes cynical, look at the world through the eyes of a child.

I read a little more than half of this material before Bill Watterson went on the first of his two sabbaticals, which is a shame because the strip truly plateaued once he came back. The Sunday strips busted free of the usual shackles and Watterson had a lot more leeway to experiment. Watterson's art is simplistic at times, partly because of the Peanuts influence, but it's fun to watch the look of the strip evolve as he got more comfortable with it. The tweaks were so gradual that most people didn't notice but it's readily apparent when flipping through the first few strips and then the last few.

Watterson gets a lot of credit for going out on top and not milking the cash cow that was Calvin and Hobbes until the udders became infected and gangrenous. Calvin and Hobbes were never used to sell insurance, for instance, and Watterson never earned a dime on the sticker of Calvin peeing on various things that we see everywhere. The strip may have gotten a little more cynical toward the end, if anything, but was still the best thing in the funny pages.

It took a couple weeks for me to chew through this and it'll be a while before I pick it up again, what with an infant in the house and all. Still, I have to wonder what the strip would be like today, what with global warming, social media, and all the rest of the stuff that has transpired since Watterson called it quits in 1995.

The best comic strip of the modern era is still the best comic strip of the modern era. Five out of five stars.

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