Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for January 25, 2012

Nice going, Hobbes…

really funny

When Hobbes tries to be mean it often falls flat. He just ain’t got what it takes to be hurtful.

Today’s strip reminds me of a monologue by Bill Cosby, which he delivered in front of 10,000 people at Cleveland Public Auditorium in 1968, only 25 miles from where the 9-year-old Bill Watterson was growing up.In this story, the young Bill Cosby is having a discussion with his younger brother, Russell.

Bill: …..You’re not really my brother…… You know, I’m older than you, and actually, you were not born here. You were brought here by the police.Russell: I wasn’t brought here by no police.Bill: Yes you were. The police brought you right in here, and said, “take care of this boy until he starts lying.” And, I’m going to tell the police that you have lied, and you are going back to jail.Russell: I didn’t…….. Ain’t no police brought nobody……. That’s my mother and father there…..Bill: Nooooooo they ain’t. The police are your mother and father.

Yesterday, grayleaf said, “@Hobbes… In one of his collections, Watterson spent more than a little time praising the luxuries of space that were afforded comic strips in the first half of the (20th) century… I got the sense that Watterson felt he may have been born fifty years too late. In our opinion, of course, he was born right on time…”Hi grayleafIf Bill Watterson had been born fifty years earlier, it’s hard to imagine how different his strips would have been from what we have today. He would have grown up reading Krazy Kat, but not Pogo or Peanuts. In that case, perhaps today we would all be marveling over a much more simplistic strip with lots of room for backgrounds on Sundays, but maybe containing mostly a lot of slapstick humor. Perhaps it would be called “The Zany Tiger,” or something like that. Who knows?What actually happened was that George Herriman’s Krazy Kat heavily influenced Charles Schulz, who broke the comic strip mold with Peanuts, which then, together with Walt Kelly’s Pogo, finally inspired Bill Watterson to take things a step further in Calvin and Hobbes, by adding his own brand of genius and more complexity.As an imperfect analogy, I like to think about the world of classical music. To me, Bach was the “George Herriman” (Krazy Kat) of the Baroque period. Mozart was the “Schulz” (Peanuts) who was influenced by Bach. Mozart broke the mold during the Classical period by creating music that was incredibly beautiful in its simplicity and yet touched deeper human feelings, like Schulz with Peanuts. Then Mozart inspired Beethoven (“Watterson” – Calvin and Hobbes) to take things a step further by adding his own brand of genius and more complexity.Even a genius does not live in a vacuum, but builds upon the past.

By the way, Bill Watterson finally got his wish in 1992, when the syndicate forced the newspapers to begin printing his Sunday strips in their entirety, no longer allowing the papers to throw away the first row of panels as many of them had done in the past. This finally gave Watterson the page space and flexibility that he had been longing for.So, for the last three years or so of Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson had the space and freedom that he had desired from fifty years earlier, plus the advantage of having grown up with Peanuts and Pogo (Haydn?……. No, not a good analogy to Walt Kelly…..) In the end, Watterson had the best of both worlds.

Atta way to go Hobbes. Now the little squit won’t get any sleep tonight. Neither will you.

Well… in another strip Calvin’s parents were actually bug-eyed aliens from Venus (or somewhere), and they were going to batter him to make pancakes…

Hobbes does have a point.

Hobbs knows how to push Calvin’s buttons all right. And he does it so well too!

I bet there are times when Mom is tempted to do any or all of the above….

I tell my kids that they came from the store (one is from Target and the other is from Costco). And when they misbehave, I threaten to return them and get a better behaved kid. ;-)

This is just a diversionary tactic by Hobbes to conceal the REAL plans Mom has for Calvin …. mwah-ha-ha….

I figured it was Calvin’s Dad who came up with that plan.

What is so cool is that … whatever Hobbes invents is something Calvin invented first. My mind is kind of bent right now, and not in any comfortable or grooving kind of way.

As we go down the nostalgia lane…“We has met the enemy and they is us!” – POGO

Of course she won’t tell you Calvin. Are those fork marks on your back?

are you lieved calvin?

All parents have a certain number of secrets from the kids.

Being a fan of Calvin & Hobbes means you are able to embrace creativity. Just sayin.

Gotta watch who you listen to…

Calvin’s questioning whether Mom and Dad are going to fatten him up and eat him is not funny to me (even though it’s a cartoon)!

Apparently Bill Watterson got a lot of upset letters for this strip, since it seems to associate adoption with child labor and cannibalism. You can read his thoughts on the subject in the 10th anniversary book. Interestingly, I believe the first panel was changed in “The Complete Calvin and Hobbes” though I don’t have it with me, so I’m not sure what it was changed to.

According to one source, the first panel has been changed to “Mom, was I genetically engineered or cloned?”I wonder how Mr. Watterson feels about that.

“Hobbes, stop pushing my buttons” “I cant help my self!”

Seems like a long time to spend in a little bird. I wasn’t aware the canaries had unionized.

The boys across the street told their little brother that they got him at a KMart blue light special………….

sounds like Hobbes was reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Your Mother loves you, Calvin! She only nags at you because she cares!

xxx

LOL!! On the bright side, Calvin will never turn seven in this strip. :-D

When I read this strip, I was expecting the culprit to be Calvin’s Dad.

Hi JohnnyDiego. Thanks for asking, but no, I’m not a comic strip artist or a comic professor. But I do remember having a couple of professors who were pretty comical. I also knew a really big guy who did his own tattoos. He had a very large body of his own work. OK, at least the comment about the professors was true.

Bizaker: There was a time (the orphan trains of the turn of the last century) when adoption and child labor was indistinguishable. Some candidates want to return to those days, except not waiting until parents are dead, but kidnapping poor kids for (less than minimum) wage-slaves.

I suspect Hobbes would like to visit the cannery rather frequently, and wants Calvin there to open the door for him at odd hours so he can get in to do some “product testing”…

wasn’t this the strip that got censored? because of child labor laws or something…

maybe he seen newt on the debats

For those of you to young to be aware, Walt Kelly (August 25, 1913 – October 18, 1973), was the creator of Pogo, a comic strip that ran from October 4, 1948 until 1975.

It was carried on after his death by his wife and various artists.

Pogo was a landmark comic strip noted for its combination of social and political satire.

Sorry I forgot about that local. My canary is a scab anyway. Still working for worms, and no benefits.

Makes you wonder what Calvin said to Hobbes to get Hobbes to say all this! How about, " Your father was a pussy cat."

Hi Wiseguy411. The reason that I rejected Haydn as a parallel to Walt Kelly (Pogo) was because I was trying too hard to make the analogy fit perfectly in terms of their work. My thinking was that Haydn’s music is simpler, more predictable, less interesting, and has less variety than Mozart’s. So I didn’t want to imply that Pogo is simpler, more predictable, less interesting, and has less variety than Peanuts. I do listen to Haydn’s music, but only occasionally. I also briefly considered Richard Wagner as a parallel to Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), but that one would require a whole lot more thought. Gustav Mahler might be another possibility. Then again, maybe there is no parallel for Stephan Pastis.

I suppose some kids don’t differentiate between fairy tales and reality, and Calvin is one of them to the extreme utmost, sometimes!

The cruel truth is still hiding

He confirms time to time that his Mom loves him… Poor little Calvin..too cute..