Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

Tags: transmogrifier, late for dinner. Add Tags

Comments (73) Jump to Comments Form

cleokaya said, 2 months ago

A light particle isn’t big enough to have an ounce of sense.
Margueritem said, 2 months ago

A light particle….clever.
WoodEye said, 2 months ago

I wonder what’s for dinner. Probably stuffed monkey heads!
Superfrog said, 2 months ago

A photon, I guess.

So the transmogrifier is a quantum device.

That’s perfectly reasonable.
kpeiyin said, 2 months ago

Somewhere over the rainbow…
tbree said, 2 months ago

If it was stuffed monkey heads, Calvin would instantly eat it. Looks more like meatloaf to me.
sjoujke said, 2 months ago

Or maybe broccoli?
Ronshua said, 2 months ago

An ounce of sense or a pound of safe ?
LX013 said, 2 months ago

The safes safe is not always safe!!!

This night I dreamt, a very good friend visited me. And I wanted to bring him the best things to eat, I wanted to prepare best meel for him I cood do. I spoiled everything and did not find the tea. I ran seeking the tea until I awakened breathless.
LX013 said, 2 months ago

I meant the safest safe is not always safe!!
drwatson said, 2 months ago

The transmogrifier need not be be quantum to transmogrify into a photon.
Leonardeuler said, 2 months ago

Zipping back home instantaneously sounds like quantum teleportation.
glslightning said, 2 months ago

How did Calvin fire the transmogrifier when he was a safe? A safe has no hands to pull the trigger. A clock, maybe, but a safe, no!

Still, better safe than sorry, I suppose.
ben_david said, 2 months ago

Home, safe at last. All’s swell that ends well.
Yukoner said, 2 months ago

Let us not make light of his adventure and its electrifying ending. His experience has illuminated the possibilities of transmogrification. This is a shining example of what can be accomplished by the radiance of a six year old imagination.

ps: Mom needs to lighten up.
Johanan Rakkav said, 2 months ago

Uh, Mom, be careful what you wish for. When Calvin actually does that, you’ll be wondering what on earth happened. (Yes, Bill W. used that plot line.)
watcha said, 2 months ago

Calvin, just drink it down with a glass of milk. Starting to miss Hobbes.
unemandarine said, 2 months ago

Nice safe Calvin, a light particle!!!
anirvan.acharya said, 2 months ago

Hey… Did I miss something ? How did he re-transmogrify himself into a six-year old? Could he operate his t-gun or communicate to Hobbes for shoot, in the form of a light particle !!!
carpetinwater9 said, 2 months ago

Everything took place in a matter of a minute or 2.
Dino-1 said, 2 months ago

Willcar1 & Margueritem:
Glad you both enjoyed my falling dream and de ja vu at college. I’ve had a bug this week so I just got a chance to check in on your comments. Anyway I went to SUNY Delhi which is outside Oneonta, NY and the college overlooked the surrounding mountains and the village of Delhi. I’m not sure what the rivers and falls nearby were on and don’t have a map handy. We’d go to one area and climb through the trees and down the banks to the river below on the weekend. We’d cool off under the waterfall and then sit on the boulders and sunbath, eat, and party the day away. The water moved pretty fast some days and you had to be careful not to slip on the rocks to get to the waterfall. It was our own,”little piece of heaven”!
Puddleglum2 said, 2 months ago

Allow me to shed some light (at least a particle) on the subject! “You must remember this (from yesterday)…as time goes by.’
“Plunk your magic twanger Froggy!”
Plunk To strum or pluck (a stringed instrument).
To emit a hollow twanging sound.
Twang A sharp vibrating sound, as that of a plucked string
A twanger must be a device that twangs.
Now do you know how Calvin got back home? Is the light dawning?

Superfrog,
You know about photons and quantum devices so couldn’t you have caught “light in a bottle” to get Calvin back home?
Dino-1 said, 2 months ago

I just love Calvin’s explanations. I heard my granddaughter who’s almost 3 years old talking to and moving around the stuffed turtle in her crib while I was laying out her play clothes. My husband got the turtle for her a couple days ago and it’s as big as she is now. I asked her if Franklin was dancing and she told me she was teaching him how to play hopscotch so he could play with her sometime. She told me that her aunt had taught her how to play that day and that she was passing it on to Franklin. She looked for my reaction. I just told her what a great thing it was for her to teach Franklin that and that I thought every turtle should know how to play hopscotch. She just hugged me and said, ” I love you Grandma”.
Lewreader said, 2 months ago

Mom lets him get away with this BS?
Puddleglum2 said, 2 months ago

Be careful how you word (letter) things, Lewreader!
Padre5 has a point (to a point).
I suppose those letters mean ‘Bad Stuff’!
Ronshua said, 2 months ago

This has been a happy medium sized safe story with a measure of regret and a lack of sense . Say goodnight Alice .
Puddleglum2 said, 2 months ago

Calvin “missed his calling” (from his mother).
Couldn’t his mother have gone to see why Calvin wasn’t responding (not that he ever does)?
Yesterday he ‘zapped’ (into a safe).
Today he ‘zipped’ (home).
Apparently Calvin thinks the dinner doesn’t make “an ounce of sense”, either.
Calvin tried to ‘wash his hands of the whole ‘matter’ before sitting down to dinner.
“When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Matthew 27:24
It didn’t work for Pilate, either.
Calvinator said, 2 months ago

Does the transmorgifier also transmorgify? It would have had to unless Calvin had another one back at the house. Otherwise he would still be a light particle. Gee! I learn so much about science from this strip.
Puddleglum2 said, 2 months ago

Ronshua,
You make a measure of sense, but I regret to say that you seem to be mixing apples and oranges in a sense.
Wasn’t it “Say goodnight Gracie” from Burns and Allen? Alice was Ralph Kramden’s wife on “The Honeymooners” (unless you have something else in mind).
Herocoder said, 2 months ago

If only mom had seen it happen ..
Puddleglum2 said, 2 months ago

Is Calvinator anything like Kelvinator? By the way, for you (mad) scientists, Kelvinator takes its name from William Thompson, !st Baron Kelvin, of Kelvin Scale (“absolute temperature scale”) fame? It was considered to be an appropriate name for a company that makes ice-boxes and refrigerators. But I digress; here is my real concern.
Is transmorgifier a typo? It sounds like a device that Calvin might have used to change himself into a corpse, but of course Calvin could have done that by allowing himself to crash to the ground. That might have been a bit more painful, however, but not for long. The impact would have left him “dead to rights” which was his usual lifestyle, anyway.
Puddleglum2 said, 2 months ago

There are some very enlightened and enlightening comments here.
Not to single anyone out (to the neglect of everyone else), which I’m about to do, but Yukoner distinguished himself with his punny remarks. “I couldn’t have said it better myself”, he said ingenuously (a Tom Swifty) as in:
Puddleglum2 said, 2 months ago

“I must have clicked POST COMMENT by mistake”, he said inadvertently.
“I might as well be dead,” Calvin (or Superfrog) croaked.
trenrut666 said, 2 months ago

I absolutely love Calvin’s little face in frame 4. I think I’ve seen that same look on my boys’ faces many times over the years.
Stede_Bonnet said, 2 months ago

Ever notice how “more words” is not necessarily “more interesting”? zzzzzzz
threlfallm said, 2 months ago

No quantum mechanics are necessary for a photon to travel from the atmosphere above anywhere on the continent to anywhere else on the continent in an instant. The smallest time slice a human can experience is about 1/28th of a second–individual frames meld together at that speed to simulate movement. Calvin as a photon would have covered the necessary distance at near the speed of light in less than 1/30th of a second–an instant by the definition above. If it was across the entire continent he would have required some refraction or reflection to compensate for the curvature of the earth. Maybe mom didn’t argue because the science was sound.
Macushlalondra said, 2 months ago

Mom might need to take cooking lessons. Calvin hates everything she makes. Doesn’t she ever make hamburgers or hot dogs which every kid loves?
bald 716 said, 2 months ago

hey mom, we will all vouch for where calvin has been, we’ve been watching him for several days now, just contact us through gocomics.com and we will be glad to tell you his story is real.
BC13 said, 2 months ago

Woodeye & Three
In one of the Indiana Jones movies, they served “chilled monkey brains” to Indiana and Short Round. I think if Short Round wouldn’t eat chilled monkey brains, Calvin wouldn’t eat stuffed monkey brains.

Macushlalondra
What kind of good parenting is that? Dogs and burgers have little nutritional value should be had as occasional treats I rarely got burgers as a kid except on certain designated barbecue Sundays and for occasional winter Friday night dinners. I may not have understood it then, but now I’m glad that my mother didn’t serve be the traditional MacDonalds menu.
SQUIDBREAKER said, 2 months ago

It may be rumagrout. Some Norwegian paste. Its edible Calvin. You can also use leftovers to caulk windows.

Ask your mom if its monkey brains or rumagrout - pass on the monkey brains.

A.
♠Lonewolf♠ said, 2 months ago

Use your transmogrifier and zap yourself an extra cheese pizza!
EarlWash said, 2 months ago

Wow, Calvin, with a vocabulary like yours, this should be your senior year in college with a double major in science and liberal arts. Considering your vast skills in debate, you may even have a strong future as a court room defense attorney, or maybe even as an investment counselor. But then, who will be YOUR defense attorney?
Well, maybe Hobbs.

And by the way, mom, as a kid I didn’t care all that much for cooked food either. Before my mother had a chance to cook any of it, I would sneek into the kitchen and grab a few pea pods and a carrot off the table. Now, that tasted much better than that soaked in water sloppy stuff with the flavor of ???…and very little nutrition. No wonder we kids had 3 or so colds and sore throats a year.

Please don’t get me wrong, we had a FANTASTIC mother, but they didn’t have the knowledge over 60 years ago as we have presently.
Calvinhobbes24 said, 2 months ago

How can he tell where he’s going if he’s a light particle?! Like cleokaya said, light particles aren’t big enough to make sense. They don’t even have brains!
calvindino said, 2 months ago

What happened to all those regular commentators on this forum ? Attyush, tabylyn, prasrinivara, helmethead, to name a few. All I can read is puddleglum2 and more of puddleglum2. Of course, I can recognise Cleokaya, Marg, Yukoner, Calvinator from the earlier group, but I do miss those one line, crisp, humourous and interesting comments which made this forum lively. Do come back, guys and gals. You too Grammahotshot !!
Joe Allen Doty said, 2 months ago

If “Calvin and Hobbes” were still being drawn by Bill Watterson and the story line had him age according to the dates, Calvin could 29 years old with a PhD in something scientific or he could be a science fiction writer.

He was 6 years old for a little more than 9 years.The last strip was on December 31, 1995.
Susan001 said, 2 months ago

I agree with Yukoner. Calvin’s parents have NO imagination and NO sense of humor. From years of reading this strip, it’s plain that they don’t even like their son and he was probably an “accident”.
They don’t give a bleeep that Calvin has no playmates and is constantly beaten up by that bully Moe.
Thank goodness for Hobbes; a stuffed tiger is that kid’s only friend!
jelzap said, 2 months ago

per haps he should…..but wheres the fun in that?
marvee said, 2 months ago

I thought surely he had fallen out of bed, but that wouldn’t go on as long as this did. This ending seemed anti-climatic.
I certainly would have been looking for my children before their dinner got cold, at least at 6 years old.
bandz said, 2 months ago

Calvin is like the just-married husband who’ s sitting down to the first meal prepared by his new bride. She say’s, “I hope you like your dinner. My mother taught me how to cook. My best dishes are meatloaf and apple pie.” The new husband looks down at his plate and says, “Which one is this?”
Nick V said, 2 months ago

Some people believe that Edwin Frazier (Frazz) is actually a grown-up version of Calvin. The author of that strip denies it, but there are similarities in attitude and appearance. Either way, Watterson has stated repeatedly that Calvin is portrayed as precocious to make up for the fact that he is incredibly lazy.