Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for May 15, 2012

I don’t think this is funny.

I guess the advice columnist went to a different school than Calvin and I did. I recommend the “runner” strategy over the “doormat” one.

Hate moe ’s alway bully boy.. getaway him…!!!!

The “playground” of adult life isn’t all that different from Calvin’s experience, except that the bullying is often verbal rather than physical, with some adults trying to knock others down and walk all over them using words.Calvin’s advice columnist may have been addressing adult verbal abuse, in which case there is some validity to the advice. But when there is physical bullying involving kids, it is very bad advice for a six-year-old who weighs half as much as the bully.When there is physical abuse involving adults, it can also be bad advice for the victim in some cases, or at least overly-simplistic advice.Today’s Calvin and Hobbes strip does contain some humor, because the figurative expression becomes literal as Calvin literally becomes a doormat. But the humor is outweighed by the poignancy of the situation — especially for readers in whom it evokes highly painful memories.This is an excellent example of how Bill Watterson never intended his comic strip to be simply a shallow entertainment device that readers would glance at each day to get a little chuckle. It is much deeper than that, which is a major reason that it has stood the test of time so well.

Click here: Peanuts (1960)Click here: Peanuts (1956)

Stand your Ground Calvin. Get a people killing tool.

capitulation of violence!

No matter what age you are….use your common sense.

@Comics Lover: The best comic strips are drawn from life, and they draw the reader into thinking about life. Humor is a very important aspect of life, but life consists of more important things than simply humor. At times, humor can play an important role by providing escapism, but I don’t recommend Calvin and Hobbes for that — especially today’s strip.

A side note. In the current comic “Lost Side of Suburbia”, Calvin and Hobbes auther Bill Watterson has just had a leading role as a char in the comic. It was done in a very cool way.

…and this is how gangs are started.

I once read an advice column that said the only way to discourage a bully was to beat him up. The column didn’t elaborate on how you were supposed to do that.

Seriously, guys? This proves that people cannot take aa joke these days.

I read Heavenly Nostrils, and I gotta admit, it’s pretty good. I don’t know if anything can dethrone Calvin and Hobbes, but I bet it can establish a throne of its own.

“C’mere, Moe. I wanna show you my new baseball bat!”Problem solved. Sure worked for my nephew when he was about 6. The 10 yr. old didn’t seem to wanna bother him any more. His parents couldn’t figure out why his knees were so bruised and he wouldn’t tell ’em why he was limping.

When I was bullied in junior high, my favorite advice from adults was, “just ignore them, they’ll stop.” Yea right. Always worked for me.

I don’t like bullies, either. They usually don’t have friends, they have cowards who toady up to them to avoid the bully’s wrath. As you can see, Moe never has any pals.

How can Calvin ‘stand up to Moe’ with his arms folded? He’s only standing up in front of Moe …briefly!

It looks as if Calvin should have ‘cowed’ before Moe, and ’moo’ved out of his way!

It’s only a comic strip, but for some viewers it’s personal. In this instance, quite painful. The good news is; the overgrown bullies of yesteryear usually end up in jail, bullied by other bullies (birds of a feather) or just become a bad memory that don’t have to be dealt with anymore. FYI: I grew up in inner-city Chicago. Most of the bullies of my youth became Chicago Police (talk about birds of a feather).

Awwwwwww. That’s horrible.

How long has the bully been picking on Calvin now?

One day, Calvin will get revenge!

xxx

Cheer up Calvin – you will probably outlive him. Been working for me.

Hi Lingee Whiz. Lucy is a complex mix of personalities, but I don’t think of her as a true bully. Bullies usually have no sympathy for their victims, but occasionally Lucy feels bad about her behavior — for example, trying not to be mean to Linus, or discovering that she is a very crabby person and regretting it.Lucy’s personality also changed quite a bit during the 50 years of Peanuts. Charles Schulz’s first wife inspired some of Lucy’s negative behavior, but Lucy became less crabby in the later years when Schulz was happily married to his second wife.For a time, the real bullies toward Charlie Brown were the taller girls, Patty and Violet. They represented the taller kids who had bullied Charles Schulz in school, after he skipped a grade and became the shortest one in his class. But at that time, Lucy was younger and shorter than Charlie Brown, so she wasn’t very effective as a bully toward him.Charlie Brown was usually better at standing up to Lucy verbally, especially on the baseball diamond, where he was on the pitcher’s mound and she was the worst player on the team, in right field. But she did manage to get Charlie Brown to be discouraged and depressed at times, for example, when her psychiatric treatment of him involved recording all of his faults on slides and projecting them onto a screen.

Note that when this strip ran, twenty years ago today, bullying was just a fact of life and had to be accepted. At least today it’s on the radar.

In some cases standingup to the bullies works. I did it when I was in Jr High. Had one of the bullies who had been picking on me since the 1st grade one day decide to depants me in front of his 5 friends. I was alone. I pull;ed my pants back up shoved the bully to the ground and put my hands up in fits waiting for the attack. His 5 buddies all looked around, looked at him and the 6 of them took off running. They never bothered me again.

Hard to take advice Calvin,but I tried to put up the best I could I would not do it that way again ,the little ____ grow up to be police ,guards,politicians,when I got older I found these people to be on the most part crap.

Calvin’s next trip should be to go to the principal’s office and report Moe. Going with a bunch of other kids to reify his story might produce some action on the principal’s part….

Mmmmmm creamy filling goodness

Dear Ann Landers, Moe says shove it.

bullying is worse today because we won’t allow them to fight it out. There has to be a pecking order – that is nature. Kids soon realize that they get hurt doing this (no one wins) and they stop. Now, the frustration gets so bad that the kid that never learned to fight finally picks up a gun. The kids have to sort out many of their differences themselves. All kids get a bloody nose and/or a black eye when they are young.

Look at it as a learning experience.

“Theocracy”? Why stop there? The best dictatorships in terms of sheer ruthlessness have been called (classically by the late creator of SHOE) “The Democratic, Free, Easygoing, Nice People’s Republic of Dungeon”.Folks, some of you really need to stop blaming religion, or for that matter mere ideology, for the problems of the world. The problem is unrestrained human nature, as Hobbes the tiger himself has pointed out. And that’s something we all have and can overwhelm any of us if we’re not careful. And nothing fosters that overwhelming faster or better than atheism, not if it’s thought through self-consistently. Few atheists have the guts to try; they have to know what it would lead to.

Your remarks to King Shark seem a little harsh. He’s entitled to think Moe isn’t funny. Granted he was a bit sarcastic in his portrayal of Luann fans, but I don’t see how his comment should elicit such a hostile response.

Ow.

Oh, yes, bullies always have their friends.

But none the size of the bully himself. Knock him down and the rest will run.

That’s why they make their living giving OTHER people advice…

This bully seems to be a leftover Neanderthal man……..so what happened to martial arts? Calvin could’ve grasped one of Ugwar’s extended hands, pulled with Ug’s forward momentum, stepped neatly outta the way, let gravity (and a ’lil push on the back with his other hand) do its thing, and retorted: Your wish was my command, Ugwar!!