Calvin and Hobbes

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Calvin and Hobbes took many wagon rides over the years — this one showed up on the cover of the first collection of comic strips.

Calvin and Hobbes is a comic strip which was written and illustrated by Bill Watterson, following the humorous antics of Calvin, an imaginative six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his energetic and sardonic – albeit stuffed – tiger. Syndicated from November 18, 1985 until December 31, 1995, at its height Calvin and Hobbes was carried by over 2,400 newspapers worldwide. To date, almost 23 million copies of 17 Calvin and Hobbes books have been printed.

The strip is set in the contemporary United States, in the outskirts of suburbia. Most strips avoid giving specific clues to where Calvin's home may be located, allowing readers from many regions to feel that the action takes place somewhere nearby.

Nearly every strip features Calvin, and Hobbes appears together with him in the majority of them. The broad themes of the strip deal with Calvin's flights of fantasy, his friendship with Hobbes, his misadventures, and his relationships and interactions with his parents, classmates, educators, and other members of society. The series does not mention specific political figures or issues.

Due to Watterson's strong anti-merchandising sentiments and his reluctance to return to the spotlight, almost no legitimate Calvin and Hobbes material exists outside of the published collections of newspaper strips. However, the strip's immense popularity has led to the appearance of various "bootleg" items.

History

Calvin and Hobbes was first conceived when Watterson, having worked in an advertising job he detested, began devoting his spare time to cartooning, his true love. He explored various strip ideas but all were rejected by the syndicates he sent them to. However, he did receive a positive response on one strip, which featured a side character (the main character's little brother) who had a stuffed tiger. Told that these characters were the strongest, Watterson began a new strip centered around them. The syndicate (United Features Syndicate) which gave him this advice actually rejected the new strip, and Watterson endured a few more rejections before Universal Press Syndicate decided to take it.

The first strip was published on November 18, 1985 and the series quickly became a hit. Within a year of syndication, the strip was published in roughly 250 newspapers. By April 1, 1987, only sixteen months after the strip began, Watterson and his work were featured in an article by the Los Angeles Times, one of the nation's major newspapers. Calvin and Hobbes twice earned Watterson the Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year award from the National Cartoonists Society, in 1986 and 1988.

Watterson took two extended breaks from writing new strips – from May 1991 to February 1992, and from April through December of 1994.

In 1995 Watterson sent a letter via his syndicate to all editors whose newspapers carried his strip. It contained the following:

I will be stopping Calvin and Hobbes at the end of the year. This was not a recent or an easy decision, and I leave with some sadness. My interests have shifted however, and I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises. I have not yet decided on future projects, but my relationship with Universal Press Syndicate will continue.

That so many newspapers would carry Calvin and Hobbes is an honor I'll long be proud of, and I've greatly appreciated your support and indulgence over the last decade. Drawing this comic strip has been a privilege and a pleasure, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity.

The last strip ran on Sunday, December 31, 1995. It depicted Calvin and Hobbes outside in freshly-fallen snow, reveling in the wonder and excitement of the winter scene. "It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy!" Calvin exclaims in the last panel. "Let's go exploring!"

Syndication and Watterson's artistic standards

From the outset, Watterson found himself at odds with the syndicate, which urged him to begin merchandising the characters and touring the country to promote the first collections of comic strips. Watterson refused. To him, the integrity of the strip and its artist would be undermined by commercialization, which he saw as the primary negative influence in the world of comic art.

Watterson also grew increasingly frustrated by the gradual shrinking of available space for comics in the newspapers. He lamented that without space for anything more than simple dialogue or spare artwork, comics as an art form were becoming dilute, bland, and unoriginal. Watterson strove for a full-page version of his strip (as opposed to the few cells allocated for most strips). He longed for the artistic freedom allotted classic strips such as Little Nemo, and he gave a sample of what could be accomplished with such liberty in the opening pages of the Sunday strip compilation, The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book.

During Watterson's first sabbatical from the strip, Universal Press Syndicate continued to charge newspapers full price to re-run old Calvin and Hobbes strips. Few editors approved of the move, but the strip was so popular that they had little choice but to continue to run it for fear that competing newspapers might pick it up and draw its fans away. Then, upon Watterson's return, Universal Press announced that Watterson had demanded that his Sunday strip be guaranteed half of a newspaper or tabloid page for its space allotment. Many editors and even a few cartoonists, such as Bil Keane (The Family Circus), criticized him for what they perceived as arrogance and an unwillingness to abide by the normal practices of the cartoon business—a charge that Watterson ignored. Watterson had negotiated the deal to allow himself more creative freedom in the Sunday comics. Previous to the switch, he had to have a certain number of panels with little freedom as to layout (due to the fact that in different newspapers the strip would appear at a different width); afterwards, he was free to go with whatever graphic layout he wanted, however unorthodox. His frustration with the standard space division requirements is evident in strips before the change; for example, a 1988 Sunday strip published before the deal is one large panel, but with all the action and dialogue in the bottom part of the panel so editors could crop the top part if they wanted to fit the strip into a smaller space. Watterson's explanation for the switch:

I took a sabbatical after resolving a long and emotionally draining fight to prevent Calvin and Hobbes from being merchandised. Looking for a way to rekindle my enthusiasm for the duration of a new contract term, I proposed a redesigned Sunday format that would permit more panel flexibility. To my surprise and delight, Universal responded with an offer to market the strip as an unbreakable half page (more space than I'd dared to ask for), despite the expected resistance of editors.

To this day, my syndicate assures me that some editors liked the new format, appreciated the difference, and were happy to run the larger strip, but I think it's fair to say that this was not the most common reaction. The syndicate had warned me to prepare for numerous cancellations of the Sunday feature, but after a few weeks of dealing with howling, purple-faced editors, the syndicate suggested that papers could reduce the strip to the size tabloid newspapers used for their smaller sheets of paper. . . . I focused on the bright side: I had complete freedom of design and there were virtually no cancellations.

For all the yelling and screaming by outraged editors, I remain convinced that the larger Sunday strip gave newspapers a better product and made the comics section more fun for readers. Comics are a visual medium. A strip with a lot of drawing can be exciting and add some variety. Proud as I am that I was able to draw a larger strip, I don't expect to see it happen again any time soon. In the newspaper business, space is money, and I suspect most editors would still say that the difference is not worth the cost. Sadly, the situation is a vicious circle: because there's no room for better artwork, the comics are simply drawn; because they're simply drawn, why should they have more room?

(from Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995, 2001, Bill Watterson, p. 15)

Despite the change, Calvin and Hobbes remained extremely popular and thus Watterson was able to expand his style and technique for the more spacious Sunday strips without losing carriers.

Since ending the strip, Watterson has kept aloof from the public eye and has given no indication of resuming the strip or creating new works based on the characters. He refuses to sign autographs or license his characters, staying true to his stated principles. However, he has been known to sneak autographed copies of his books onto the shelves of a family-owned bookstore near his home.

Merchandising

Bill Watterson is notable for his insistence that cartoon strips should stand on their own as an art form, and he has resisted the use of Calvin and Hobbes in merchandising of any sort. This insistence stuck despite what was probably a cost of millions of dollars per year in additional personal income. This also explains why the strip has never been made into an animated series.

Except for the books (see below) and two extremely rare 18-month calendars (1988–1989 and 1989–1990), all Calvin and Hobbes merchandise, including T-shirts as well as the ubiquitous stickers for automobile rear windows which depict Calvin urinating on a company's or sports team's name or logo are unauthorized; after threat of a lawsuit, one of the sticker makers (Custom Vehicle Graphics) replaced Calvin with a different boy.

Style and influences

Calvin and Hobbes strips are characterized by sparse but careful draftsmanship, intelligent humor, poignant observations, witty social and political commentary, and well-developed characters that are full of personality. Precedents to Calvin's fantasy world can be found in Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts, Berke Breathed's Bloom County, and George Herriman's Krazy Kat, while Watterson's use of comics as sociopolitical commentary reaches back to Walt Kelly's Pogo. Schulz and Kelly in particular influenced Watterson's outlook on comics during his formative years.

Notable elements of Watterson's artistic style are his characters' diverse and often exaggerated expressions (particularly those of Calvin), elaborate and bizarre backgrounds for Calvin's flights of imagination, well-captured kinetics, and frequent visual jokes and metaphors. In the later years of the strip, with more space available for his use, Watterson experimented more freely with different panel layouts, stories without dialogue, and greater use of whitespace.

Watterson's technique started with minimal pencil sketches (though the larger Sunday strips often required more elaborate work); he then would use a small sable brush and India ink to complete most of the remaining drawing. He was careful in his use of color, often spending a great deal of time in choosing the right colors to employ for the weekly Sunday strip.

Setting

The strip is set in the contemporary United States, in the outskirts of suburbia. As in The Simpsons, the artist takes care not to disclose a specific region of the country where the strip is set; however, several clues are given throughout the strips:

• Hobbes once describes their home, when looking for it from space, as near the "E" in "States" (as in the United States) in an atlas.
• During the winter months, snow is a common feature in the strip, so the setting is almost certainly northern.
• In a caption in one of his books, Watterson mentions that "in November strips, I always tried to capture that austere, gray, brambly look that Ohio gets," Ohio being where he grew up and began writing the strip.
• Calvin's dad mentions that flying to California from their house would cause a three-hour loss, indicating that the setting is located somewhere observing Eastern Standard Time.
• Many of Calvin's "Spaceman Spiff" fantasies (see below) take place on alien worlds whose topographies resemble the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and southern Utah; believing that specific details are funnier than generalizations, Watterson drew these details from the localities with which he was most familiar. These references to the United States Southwest also allude to the Protean and ever-shifting Coconino County, Arizona, where Krazy Kat makes its home.
• Several storylines show that Calvin's home is not too far removed from a "downtown" area, complete with skyscrapers. He usually visits the city in his imagination, by growing to garguantuan size or by appropriating a flying carpet.
• When a helium balloon accidentally carries him to high altitude, he observes his town's local geography, indicating that even the suburb he inhabits has a sizeable population.
• Although Watterson portrays large expanses of unspoiled forest, he also addresses the problem of urban sprawl, showing a grove of trees that had been demolished to make way for "Shady Acres Condominiums."
• Hobbes observes that on a globe (drawn to average size in the strip), their house is six inches from the Yukon.

The main characters

Calvin is named for 16th-century theologian John Calvin, founder of Calvinism and a strong believer in predestination. Hobbes is named after 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who had what Watterson described as "a dim view of human nature.” According to Watterson, the two names are intended as a joke for people studying political science.

Calvin

Calvin is an impulsive, imaginative, energetic, curious, intelligent, and often selfish six-year-old. Watterson has described Calvin thus:

• "Calvin is pretty easy to do because he is outgoing and rambunctious and there's not much of a filter between his brain and his mouth."
• "I guess he's a little too intelligent for his age. The thing that I really enjoy about him is that he has no sense of restraint, he doesn't have the experience yet to know the things that you shouldn't do."
• "The socialization that we all go through to become adults teaches you not to say certain things because you later suffer the consequences. Calvin doesn't know that rule of thumb yet."

The strips do not disclose Calvin's last name.

Hobbes

Hobbes is Calvin's tiger who, from Calvin's perspective, is as alive and real as anyone else Calvin interacts with. Everyone else, however, just see him as a small, inanimate stuffed tiger. Hobbes is much more rational and aware of consequences than Calvin, but seldom interferes with Calvin's troublemaking beyond a few oblique warnings—after all, Calvin will be the one to get in trouble for it, not Hobbes.

For the most part, Calvin and Hobbes converse and play together, reveling in what is ultimately a deep friendship. They also frequently argue or even fight with each other, though their disagreements are generally short-lived. Often Hobbes ambushes Calvin with an energetic pounce-and-tackle attack, which leaves Calvin bruised and scraped up but not seriously harmed. Hobbes takes great pleasure in his demonstrations of feline prowess, while Calvin expresses keen frustration at his inability to stop the attacks or explain his injuries to his skeptical parents.

Watterson based some of Hobbes's characteristics, especially his playfulness and attack instinct, on his own pet cat, Sprite. Hobbes takes great pride in being a feline and frequently makes wry or even disparaging comments about human nature, declaring his good fortune to lead a tiger's life.

In the first strip, Calvin meets Hobbes when he catches him with a rope noose baited with a tuna fish sandwich. Watterson later wrote that this initial explanation of Hobbes's origins becomes unnecessary and moot as the series progresses. At one point, Calvin described him as, "On the quiet side. A bit peculiar. A good companion, in a weird sort of way."

Hobbes' reality

From the point of view of everyone but Calvin, Hobbes is a stuffed toy tiger. But when the panel's perspective is shifted to Calvin, in or out of the presence of other characters, Hobbes is seen as vividly alive. Watterson has stated:

When Hobbes is a stuffed toy in one panel and alive in the next, I'm juxtaposing the "grown-up" version of reality with Calvin's version, and inviting the reader to decide which is truer.

In Calvin's perspective, Hobbes' reality carries over even to recorded images. In one strip, Calvin has taken several photographs of Hobbes making funny faces; Calvin sees each photo as different, but Calvin's father sees each photo as the same, and asks frustratedly "Why did you take so many pictures of Hobbes?"

Many readers assume Hobbes is just a creation of Calvin's imagination, or that Hobbes only "comes alive" when Calvin is the only one around, but according to Watterson, no single theory is enough to cover all the facts. In the Tenth Anniversary Book, he says, "Hobbes is more about the subjective nature of reality than dolls coming to life"; thus, no single interpretation can be entirely satisfactory.

Sometimes Hobbes breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the reader, such as when Calvin tries to parachute from his house's roof ("His mom's going to have a fit about those rose bushes"). On other occasions, it is difficult to imagine how the "stuffed toy" interpretation of Hobbes is consistent with what the characters see. For example, he "assists" Calvin's attempt to become a Houdini-style escape artist by tying Calvin to a chair. Calvin, however, cannot escape, and his irritated father must undo the knots, all the while asking Calvin how he could do this to himself. In a rare interview, Watterson explained his approach to this situation:

Calvin's dad finds him tied up and the question remains, really, how did he get that way? His dad assumes that Calvin tied himself up somehow, so well that he couldn't get out. Calvin explains that Hobbes did this to him and he tries to place the blame on Hobbes entirely, and it's never resolved in the strip. Again I don't think that's just a cheap way out of the story. I like the tension that that creates, where you've got two versions of reality that do not mix. Something odd has happened and neither makes complete sense, so you're left to make out of it what you want.

Similarly, Hobbes once cuts Calvin's hair, creating a "look" so remarkable that Watterson laughed aloud while drawing it. ("Would that I could write like this more often," he lamented.)

In addition, Hobbes can walk out and keep Calvin company as he waits for the bus. When another character such as Susie stands at the bus stop, Hobbes appears as the stuffed toy. What happens to Hobbes when the bus arrives is seldom shown, although a Sunday strip did portray Calvin's mother running out into the rain to retrieve him.

Many people feel that the blurred reality between the two of Hobbes' forms is both amusing and philosophical. Hobbes is occasionally the voice of reason, contrasting Calvin's manic impulsiveness, but is this rationality in Hobbes as a distinct personality, or Calvin as a kind of conscience?

Supporting characters

Recurring characters

Calvin's Dad

Calvin's dad is a middle-aged patent attorney who is portrayed as a typical upstanding middle class father as his son might see him. When Calvin asks him a question on the nature of things, he often makes up an outlandish answer:

Calvin: "Why does the sun move across the sky?"

Calvin's Dad: "Solar wind."

An outdoor man, he enjoys bike rides and camping trips, and insists that they, like Calvin's chores, "build character.” Calvin, in turn, regularly updates his father with "polls" showing his unpopularity among the six-year-old demographic of the household, and suggests ways that his father might improve his chances of re-election as Dad. Like Calvin's mom, he goes through the entire strip unnamed.

The character is closely based on Watterson's own father, who was also a patent attorney. Watterson has said that he identifies more with this character than with Calvin.

Calvin's Mom

Stay-at-home mother who is frequently exasperated by Calvin's antics and frowns upon her husband's occasional tom-foolery when dealing with their son. She seems to enjoy quiet activities (gardening, reading) but the reader rarely sees her engaging in them without violent interruption from Calvin. Both she and her husband often seem frustrated and unable to deal with the dynamo that is their son, although it's hinted in one strip that she was as big a hellion as Calvin when she was his age. She is much more likely to agree with Calvin than his father, especially on issues like camping.

Sometimes when Calvin is disguised as Stupendous Man (see below), he sees her as arch-villain Mom-Lady.

Susie Derkins

Calvin's classmate who lives in his neighborhood. She is Calvin's principal rival and their relationship is a constant source of tension. In contrast to Calvin, she is polite and diligent in her studies. Her fantasy world involving her stuffed toys, including a rabbit called "Mr. Bun" (and occasionally Hobbes as well), appears to be mild-mannered and civilized. Unlike Hobbes, Mr. Bun seldom appears in a life-like form, perhaps because these strips are seen from Calvin's perspective (and he chooses not to imagine Mr. Bun as being alive) or perhaps because Mr. Bun is not actually capable of "coming alive" (see the Hobbes' reality section above). The one instance in which Mr. Bun appears to be a live rabbit occurs when Susie and Calvin play "house" (a full-color Sunday strip drawn in "soap opera" style). This may indicate that Calvin's imagination is necessary to provide Mr. Bun a lifelike form.

Susie is one of only a few characters to hold their own in a strip in which Calvin does not personally appear. (Hobbes, as well as Calvin's parents, have had a few strips to themselves.)

Despite her good intentions, she can be just as plotting and mischievous as Calvin if he sufficiently provokes her. Though neither would ever admit it, she is probably Calvin's only friend other than Hobbes, and Watterson admits that Calvin might have a bit of a crush on her. Their attitudes towards each other are frequently conflicted and are never really sorted out. The closest it gets is a Valentine's Day strip in which Susie seems to appreciate the (rather juvenile and insulting) gifts Calvin gives her, and he rejoices in her noticing them.

Miss Wormwood

Calvin's teacher (named after the apprentice devil in C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters). Never sympathetic to Calvin's difficulties in remaining in the classroom for even one class period at a time (whether physically or mentally), she is quick to send him on his way to the principal's office at the first sign of deviant behaviour. In Calvin's Science-Fiction fantasies, she often appears as an alien holding Calvin hostage.

Rosalyn

Rosalyn is a high school senior who occasionally finds herself babysitting Calvin. Rosalyn is the only babysitter capable of tolerating Calvin's antics more than once, and Calvin's parents most often end up paying her extra in order to ensure that she will continue accepting the job subsequently. She has a boyfriend, Charlie, who is never shown in the comic but to whom Rosalyn (and sometimes Calvin) speaks over the phone.

Rosalyn's idea of babysitting Calvin is to put him to bed at 6:30. Calvin is highly phobic of her, and as such babysitting sessions tend to degenerate into war zones as Calvin short-sightedly attempts to cause trouble for her. Watterson said he thinks she is the only person Calvin ever truly feared, and, like Susie, she is certainly Calvin's equal in deviousness, frequently able to turn his plots against him—assuming brute force doesn't do the job.

Near the end of the strip's run relations showed signs of improving as Rosalyn became the only person other than Calvin and Hobbes to play (and, more importantly, figure out how to play) 'Calvinball' in a trouble-free evening—leniently assuming that a game of Calvinball doesn't count as trouble.

Moe

The six-year-old class bully who shaves, Moe is the only character to speak in crude, lower-case letters. Watterson described him as "every jerk I've ever known.” Moe seems to be the only character capable of frustrating Calvin to the point of resignation.

In contrast to Hobbes' playfighting and Rosalyn's (never-fulfilled) threats, Moe is the only character to physically hurt Calvin on purpose.

Infrequent or background characters

• Aliens: Calvin encounters many extra-terrestrial life forms, usually through the adventures of Spaceman Spiff. Most aliens are non-humanoid, in contrast to the species portrayed in Star Trek. Initially, aliens spoke in garbled, somewhat onomatopoeic language: "Ugga muk bug Spiff," and so on. Later, aliens' speech balloons contained geometric symbols whose phonetic values are unclear. Two aliens, Galaxoid and Nebular, were recurring characters in the strip's final year. Posing as the "supreme Earth potentate," Calvin traded Earth in exchange for fifty alien tree leaves so that he could complete a leaf collection for school.

• Doctor: Calvin occasionally visits his pediatrician, who appears to be a mild-mannered physician with a friendly demeanor. Calvin, however, frequently sees him as a vicious, sadistic interrogator, sometimes visualizing him as an alien. When he goes to the doctor, he asks what the purposes of all the medical equipment are. On some occasions Calvin accuses the doctor of being a quack and has also asked if the doctor paid his malpractice insurance, and if he passed his medical exams. Calvin's misbehavior at the doctor's office so exasperates the doctor that on one occasion he vents: "Kid, don't make me recant the Hippocratic Oath, OK?"

• Principal Spittle: Calvin's school principal, Mr. Spittle, usually makes his appearance when Calvin has gone too far in testing Miss Wormwood's limits. He is portrayed as the same stale academic type as Miss Wormwood.

• Schoolmates: The reader sees various classmates of Calvin, but other than Susie and Moe they are almost entirely anonymous. Calvin seems only vaguely aware of them, but when he does pay attention to them they are always antagonists as they see Calvin as the misbehaving minority who makes things difficult for the conforming majority.

• Uncle Max: Calvin has an uncle, his father's brother, who resembles his father with a bushy mustache. Max visits on one occasion. Watterson found it difficult to write Max's dialogue without his referring to Calvin's parents by name, and also felt that Max just didn't fit in the universe of Calvin and Hobbes, so his existence was limited to a few strips.

• Mr. Lockjaw: The school baseball team is coached by a squat, burly man named Mr. Lockjaw. When Calvin leaves the team, Lockjaw calls him a "quitter"; this emotional trauma leads to the reader's first encounter with Calvinball (described below).

Recurring themes

Calvin's Alter-Egos

Calvin's hyperactive imagination leads him to imagine himself as other characters with different powers and goals. It is important to note that Hobbes is not seen taking part in the fantasies involving Calvin's alter-egos, other than criticizing his choice of alter-egos.

• Safari Al - a pith-helmeted explorer reminiscent of British colonialists such as David Livingstone, Safari Al is only rarely portrayed in Calvin and Hobbes. Never a well-developed character, he seems to not have been to Watterson's liking and quietly faded into oblivion.

• Stupendous Man - a superhero Calvin often turns into with the help of a mask and cape his mom created for him. This character defends against such terrifying prospects as Rosalyn or, once, Miss Wormwood and the school principal.

• Tracer Bullet - a private eye constructed from stereotypes of the film noir genre. Tracer Bullet strips used a striking heavy-contrast art style. Because they were so time-consuming, Watterson didn't draw very many of them.

• Spaceman Spiff - a space traveller who fights alien monsters on far-away planets, based upon Watterson's earlier attempts at syndicated comics and a parody of Flash Gordon.

• Adult Calvin - occasionally Calvin will appear as an adult, usually when playing 'House' with Susie. These strips are drawn in the style of the soap opera-style comic strips, such as Rex Morgan, M.D. and Mary Worth.

• Dinosaurs - Calvin loves dinosaurs; they are almost the only subject he studies of his own free will. This, of course, means that Calvin imagines himself as a dinosaur in many of the strips.

• Animals - Calvin sees himself in a variety of animal bodies as well, from large mammals to insects.

• Captain Napalm - a superhero who protects "truth, justice and the American Way.” Only seen on one or two occasions and is a satirical Captain America of sorts. Calvin draws this character from a comic book hero, leader of the "Thermonuclear League of Liberty," whose exploits he diligently reads, though he is rarely seen with a new issue of it.

G.R.O.S.S.

G.R.O.S.S. is the acronym for a club that stands for Get Rid Of Slimy girlS. Based in a treehouse, the main objective of G.R.O.S.S. is to exclude girls, mostly Calvin's neighbour Susie. Calvin and Hobbes spend most of their time in the club reworking its constitution and arguing about their excessively bureaucratic roles. As Calvin is too short to climb up to the treehouse when the rope ladder is pulled up, Hobbes often takes advantage of the situation and requires Calvin to sing a long ode on the greatness of tigers for the password. (This aspect was dropped in later years.)

Officers of the club wear newspaper hats. Calvin and Hobbes are its only members and all of its officers; their missions frequently involve the invention of new positions, such as cartographer and cryptographer. Its bylaws are supposed to be fixed in the club charter, but they are actually quite arbitrary. Hobbes often uses them to outwit Calvin, much as he invents new rules in Calvinball.

Mealtimes

Lunchtime and dinnertime find Calvin eager to share his thoughts about the food he or others are eating. Those eating with him—Mom and Dad at dinnertime, Susie at lunch in the school cafeteria—are generally repulsed by his colorful descriptions of the meal, which usually make reference to vomit, nasal secretions, eyeballs, bugs, worms, rodents, or anything else guaranteed to make anyone other than a six-year-old boy lose their appetite. Calvin's mother occasionally coaxes him to eat his dinner by informing him that they are serving some outlandish or stomach-turning dish, which he then eats with relish. This has the unfortunate side effect of putting Calvin's Dad off of his food.

Calvin's meals at home are generally depicted as a pile of unidentifiable green goop, which will occasionally come to life and sing, recite Shakespeare, attempt to escape, or attack Calvin. At other times, Calvin tries to find a way to surreptitiously deposit the food on the carpet or on someone else's plate so he doesn't have to eat it.

The Cardboard Box

Calvin has a corrugated cardboard box which he adapts for many fantastic uses, usually by simply turning it on its side or upside-down and relabeling it.

The Transmogrifier is a device designed by Calvin that can transmogrify any object into another object. He even transmogrifies himself into various animal forms, including a tiger (like Hobbes) and an elephant. He later develops an improved, portable transmogrifier, incorporated into his water pistol.

Calvin makes improvements upon the transmogrifier "technology," turning the box into a duplicator which he uses to duplicate himself to spread the stockpile of chores awaiting him. Naturally, his duplicates are as ill-natured as he is, and the plot backfires on him. Later he adds an "ethicator" to produce an all-good duplicate of himself, who promptly launches an embarrassing, unrequited love affair with Susie Derkins.

Calvin's box has yet another purpose: as a time machine. Fortunately the box can also fly when engaging in this role. He usually uses it to travel backwards in time and interact with dinosaurs, although in a few strips he is also seen travelling a few hours forward and meeting himself.

In a few strips Calvin combines his box with a colander and creates the "Atomic Cerebral Enhance-o-tron". Calvin uses this to make his brain more powerful so that he can finish a school project on time. Despite the fact that Calvin amplifies his intelligence, his project still manages to fail Mrs. Wormwood's standards.

Occasionally Calvin uses a cardboard box as a disguise, with the necessary features artfully depicted on the side with felt tip pen. These endeavours, however, do not seem to capture Calvin's imagination in the same way as his scientific inventions and don't last more than a couple of strips. He makes a convincing robot, except that the red shoes peeking from under the flaps give him away. He also uses it to make himself appear to be a Jovian probe and "the world's most powerful computer".

Snowmen

A recurring feature in winter strips is Calvin's snowmen, whose grotesque nature often gets him into trouble. Watterson often uses Calvin's snowmen as a vehicle for Calvin's artistic theories, and to ridicule less-than-rigorous ideas about art. The title of the Snow Goons volume comes from a story in which Calvin calls upon the "snow demons" to animate a snowman he has built. True to the Frankenstein tradition, the snowman turns against its creator, building an army of snow goons against which Calvin must fight for his life. (His parents, of course, believe none of it.) The story is notable for its depiction of exponential growth.

Wagon and Sled

Calvin and Hobbes often take rides in a wagon or a sled or toboggan (depending on the season) and talk about philosophy or politics as they hurtle downhill. The course of the vehicle and the obstacles that the characters negotiate as they travel frequently parallel the subject of their conversation, and the rides almost always end in a spectacular crash. Calvin's wagon has a lot of mileage on it, as it has made the trip to the planet Mars and back. The wagon has also been used as a time-travel vehicle, with less success than the cardboard box (although Calvin correctly describes the phenomenon of time dilation: "The faster we go, the slower time goes").

Calvinball

Calvinball is a game played almost exclusively by Calvin and Hobbes as a rebellion against organized team sports (like baseball), although the babysitter Rosalyn plays on at least one occasion. On other occasions participants of Calvinball must wear raccoon-like masks. When asked why, Calvin replies that "no one is allowed to question the masks". The rules of the game, besides the soccer ball and wickets almost always used, are made up as they go along, but the one consistent rule is that the rules can never be the same twice. Either player may change any rule at any time, so the only way to break the rules is by using one rule twice. Scoring is also entirely arbitrary, as the point of the game is to have fun playing it: Hobbes has reported scores of "Q to 12" and "oogy to boogy".

The reader first encounters the game after Calvin's horrible experience with school baseball. He registers to play baseball in order to avoid being teased by the other boys. While daydreaming in the outfield, he misses the switch and ends up making an out against his own team. His classmates mock him and, when he decides to walk away, his coach calls him a "quitter". That Saturday, Calvin and Hobbes play Calvinball, a game far removed from an organized sport.

Watterson has stated that the greatest number of questions he receives concern Calvinball and how to play it.

Snowball and Water Balloon Fights

Calvin often engages in elaborate and malicious snowball or water balloon fights, depending on the season. Hostilities typically take place with Hobbes or Susie, or both. Calvin hatches intricate plots to trick Susie into an ideal ambush, but these usually fail and Hobbes often betrays him and switches sides. Calvin and Hobbes can often be found planning the construction of a huge snow fort from which they can invulnerably terrorise the neighborhood, but these rarely make it past the architectural stage.

Lemonade Stand

Calvin finds yet another use for his cardboard box; this one is admittedly more mundane. He often operates something like a lemonade stand, but instead of selling lemonade he attempts to sell "suicide sludge" or whatever stomach-turning concoction he can come up with. He also tries simply selling ideas through this venue.

Calvin has an unhealthy lust for money, but he shares the average six-year-old's lack of understanding of the value of it when he charges exorbitant rates at his stall. Needless to say, sales are rare if they ever occur at all.

Camping Trips

Calvin's dad sometimes takes the family on long camping trips in the summer, excursions which both Calvin and his mom revile. The trips highlight deep personality differences between Calvin and his dad, particularly their differing attitudes toward "building character" and toward modern conveniences—television, air conditioning and so forth. Watterson has said that his own father often used a character-building excuse to explain why the family was so miserable on camping trips.

School and Homework

Calvin hates school and homework. Often his mother has to force the unwilling Calvin to go up to the schoolbus. Occasionally he manages to avoid climbing on the bus and hence one of his parents has to drop him off at school. He often waits for the bus with Hobbes and explains why an intelligent boy like himself does not need school. He often visualises school as a distant planet and his teacher and principal as antagonist aliens. He is known to have run away from school enacting one of his fantasies. He is a loner at school and does not appear to share a bond with any of his classmates other than Susie. Also he lacks the company of Hobbes at school. Sometimes Hobbes does his homework and reading while Calvin watches TV or reads comic books. On one occasion, Hobbes went with Calvin to school and managed to make Moe (see Recurring characters) leave Calvin alone (though it was because of Moe's fear of getting in trouble with the teachers, rather than what Hobbes could have said or done to him). Among other means that Calvin devises to handle his homework or avoid going to school are using Stupendous Man to reverse the rotation of the earth so he gets an extra day, reducing his school to ashes using a telescope lens, and attempting to create a robot or a Calvin duplicate who will do all his homework.

Calvin and Hobbes books

Books with a "Yes" in the "Collection?" column comprise all of the regular strips that appeared in newspapers. The column shows which books are needed to form a complete collection of the newspaper strips, for those not interested in waiting for the forthcoming complete collection in hardcover, due September 2005.

Title	Cover	Date	ISBN	Original content	Collection?
Calvin and Hobbes		April 1987	ISBN 0836220889	Foreword by Garry Trudeau	No
Something Under the Bed is Drooling		April 1988	ISBN 0836218256	Foreword by Pat Oliphant	No
The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury		September 1988	ISBN 0836218051	Foreword by Charles M. Schulz	Yes
Yukon Ho!		March 1989	ISBN 0836218353	The "Yukon Song"	No
The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book: A Collection of Sunday Calvin and Hobbes Cartoons		September 1989	ISBN 0836218523	Ten-page story "Spaceman Spiff: Interplanetary Explorer Extraordinaire!"	No
Weirdos From Another Planet!		March 1990	ISBN 0836218620		No
The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury		October 1990	ISBN 0836218221	Seven-page story in which Calvin becomes an elephant	Yes
The Revenge of the Baby-Sat		April 1991	ISBN 0836218663		No
Scientific Progress Goes "Boink"		October 1991	ISBN 0836218787		No
Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons		April 1992	ISBN 0836218833		Yes
The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes		October 1992	ISBN 0836218981	Several illustrated poems	Yes
The Days are Just Packed		October 1993	ISBN 0836217357		Yes
Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat		October 1994	ISBN 0836217691		Yes
The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book		October 1995	ISBN 0836204387	Commentary by Watterson and annotations on individual strips	No
There's Treasure Everywhere		March 1996	ISBN 0836213122		Yes
It's A Magical World		October 1996	ISBN 0836221362		Yes
Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995		September 2001	ISBN 0740721356	Original sketches and commentary	No

A complete collection, in three hardcover volumes of a total 1440 pages, is planned for release in 2005 by the Andrews McMeel publishing house. [1] [2]

Early books were printed in smaller format in black and white that were later reproduced in twos in color in the "Treasuries" ("Essential", "Authoritative", and "Indispensable"), except for the contents of Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons whose Sunday strips have never been reprinted in color [3]. Every book since then has been printed in a larger format with Sundays in color and weekday and Saturday strips larger than appeared in most newspapers. Remaining books do contain some additional content; for instance, The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book contains a long watercolor Spaceman Spiff epic not seen elsewhere and The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book contains much original commentary from Watterson. Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995 released in 2001 contains 36 Sunday strips in color alongside Watterson's original sketches, prepared for an exhibition at The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library.

Around the world

Calvin and Hobbes was translated into many different languages, and a substantial portion of the newspapers that carried it ran outside of the United States.

In some languages Calvin and Hobbes were given different names. One of the reasons is that Calvin is also the name of the founder of Calvinism, John Calvin. (Thomas Hobbes, of course, was a 17th-century philosopher; Watterson's wordplay is deliberate.)

Calvin and Hobbes strips are usually distributed in a different format in different countries. For example, in many areas it is distributed in a more "traditional" comic book format, that is, in a magazine-like paper book with fewer comics per publication.

• Belarusian: Kalfin i Gopsya
• Danish: Steen & Stoffer
• Chinese: Kaiwen yu Hubuo
• Dutch: Casper en Hobbes
• Finnish: Lassi ja Leevi
  • Also, 'Paavo ja Elvis'
• French: Calvin et Hobbes
• German: Calvin & Hobbes
  • Some Swiss German papers use the name 'Max und Mauli', while others use 'Calvin & Hobbes'.
• Hebrew: Calvin veh Hobbes
• Hungarian: Kázmér és Huba
• Icelandic: Kalli og Hobbi
• Italian: Calvin & Hobbes
• Korean: Calbin gwaah hobs
• Malaysian: Khalvinne dan Hobbes
• Norwegian: Tommy og Tigern
• Polish: Kelvin & Celsjusz
• Portuguese: Calvin e Hobbes in Portugal and Calvin e Haroldo in Brazil
• Russian: Kolya i Hobbie
• Serbian: Kalvin i Hobs
• Slovenian: Gasper in Hops
• Spanish: Calvin y Hobbes
• Swedish: Kalle och Hobbe
• Turkish: Calvın and Hobbes

Related articles

• Comic and cartoon characters named after people

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about Calvin and Hobbes.

• Official Calvin and Hobbes site
• The Calvin and Hobbes Jumpstation, for many more links
• Toonopedia
• Article in the Cleveland Scene about Watterson, post-Calvin and Hobbes
• Calvin and Hobbes: Magic on Paper (fan site with a lot of source material, article reprints, etc.)
• A Metaphilm article with an amusing comparison of Hobbes and Tyler Durden
• Calvin and Hobbes Resurrected- A Calvin and Hobbes fan site where you can create your own comic.

de:Calvin & Hobbes es:Calvin y Hobbes no:Tommy og Tigern pt:Calvin e Hobbes sv:Kalle och Hobbe fi:Lassi ja Leevi