Listen to this article
(4 parts, 57 minutes)

1. Part 1

These audio files were created from a revision of this article dated

Error: no date provided

, and do not reflect subsequent edits.

(Audio help · More spoken articles)

Calvin and Hobbes was a daily comic strip 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, more than 30 million copies of 18 Calvin and Hobbes books have been printed.

The strip is vaguely set in the contemporary Midwestern United States, in the outskirts of suburbia, most likely in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where Watterson lived. On the back of the first Calvin and Hobbes treasury, Calvin is portrayed as a giant destroying downtown Chagrin Falls, holding the local popcorn shop in his hands. On another occasion, Hobbes recalls that Calvin's house is near the letter "E" in the word "STATES" on a map of the U.S. For more details, see setting of Calvin and Hobbes.

Calvin and Hobbes themselves appear in most of the strips, though several have focused instead upon Calvin's family. The broad themes of the strip deal with Calvin's flights of fantasy, his friendship with Hobbes, his misadventures, his views on a diverse range of political and cultural issues and his relationships and interactions with his parents, classmates, educators, and other members of society. The dual nature of Hobbes is also a recurring motif; Calvin sees Hobbes as alive, while other characters see him as a stuffed animal, a point discussed more fully at Hobbes' main article. Unlike political strips such as Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, the series doesn't mention specific political figures, but it does examine broad issues like environmentalism and the flaws of opinion polls.^[1]

Because of Watterson's strong anti-merchandising sentiments^[2] and his reluctance to return to the spotlight, almost no legitimate Calvin and Hobbes licensed material exists outside of the book collections, but collectors do collect items that were officially approved for marketing purposes.^[3] Two notable exceptions to the licensing embargo were the publication of two 16-month wall calendars and the textbook Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes.^[4]

However, the strip's immense popularity has led to the appearance of various "bootleg" items, including T-shirts, keychains, bumper stickers, and window decals, often including obscene language or references wholly uncharacteristic of the whimsical spirit of Watterson's work.

History

Calvin and Hobbes was first conceived when Watterson, having worked in an advertising job he detested^[5], began devoting his spare time to cartooning, his true love. He explored various strip ideas but all were rejected by the syndicates to which he sent them. 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.^[6][2]

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^[2]. Calvin and Hobbes twice earned Watterson the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society, in the Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year category, first in 1986 and again in 1988. (He was nominated again in 1992.) Also, the Society awarded him the Humor Comic Strip Award for 1988.^[7]

Before long, the strip was in wide circulation outside the United States; for more information on publication in various countries and languages, see Calvin and Hobbes in translation.

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 3150th and final 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!" ^[8]

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 a major negative influence in the world of cartoon art.^[9]

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.^[10][9] 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 to classic strips such as Little Nemo and Krazy Kat, 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.^[11]

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. Prior 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?^[12]

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. In previous years, he was known to sneak autographed copies of his books onto the shelves of a family-owned bookstore near his home in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. However, after discovering that some people were selling the autographed books on eBay for high prices, he ended this practice as well.

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.^[6] This insistence stuck despite what was probably a cost of millions of dollars per year in additional personal income. Watterson explains in a 2005 press release:

"Actually, I wasn't against all merchandising when I started the strip, but each product I considered seemed to violate the spirit of the strip, contradict its message, and take me away from the work I loved. If my syndicate had let it go at that, the decision would have taken maybe 30 seconds of my life."^[13]

Watterson did ponder animating Calvin and Hobbes, and has expressed admiration for the art form. In a 1989 interview in The Comics Journal, Watterson states:

"If you look at the old cartoons by Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, you’ll see that there are a lot of things single drawings just can’t do. Animators can get away with incredible distortion and exaggeration [...] because the animator can control the length of time you see something. The bizarre exaggeration barely has time to register, and the viewer doesn’t ponder the incredible license he's witnessed."

In a comic strip, you just show the highlights of action - you can’t show the buildup and release... or at least not without slowing down the pace of everything to the point where it’s like looking at individual frames of a movie, in which case you’ve probably lost the effect you were trying to achieve. In a comic strip, you can suggest motion and time, but it’s very crude compared to what an animator can do. I have a real awe for good animation.^[9]

After this he was asked if it was "a little scary to think of hearing Calvin's voice." He responded that it was "very scary," and although he loved the visual possibilities animation had, the thought of casting voice actors to play his characters was something he felt uncomfortable doing. Plus, he wasn't sure he wanted to work with an animation team, as he'd done all previous work by himself. Ultimately, Calvin and Hobbes was never made into an animated series.

Except for the books, two 16-month calendars (1988–1989 and 1989–1990), and a children's textbook, virtually 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 alleging infringement of copyright and trademark, some of the sticker makers replaced Calvin with a different boy, while other makers ignored the issue. Watterson wryly commented "I clearly miscalculated how popular it would be to show Calvin urinating on a Ford logo."^[13] Some legitimate special items were produced, such as promotional packages to sell the strip to newspapers, but these were never sold outright.

Popular culture

Comedian David Spade has a tattoo of Calvin on his left bicep. It was given to him by actor Sean Penn during an interview on Saturday Night Live.^[14]

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, Percy Crosby's Skippy, Berkeley 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.^[6]

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.

Art and academia

Watterson has used the strip to criticize the artistic world, principally through Calvin's unconventional creations of snowmen. When Miss Wormwood complains that he is wasting class time drawing incomprehensible things (a stegosaurus in a rocket ship, in fact), Calvin proclaims himself "on the cutting edge of the avant-garde". He begins exploring the medium of snow when a warm day melts his snowman. His next sculpture "speaks to the horror of our own mortality", inviting the viewer to contemplate the fleeting nature of life, much in the vein of Ecclesiastes. Over the years, Calvin's creative instincts diversify into sidewalk drawings ("suburban postmodernism").

Watterson also directed criticism toward the academic world. Calvin writes a "revisionist autobiography", giving himself a flame thrower; he carefully crafts an "artist's statement", knowing that such essays convey more messages than artworks themselves ever do. ("You misspelled Weltanschauung," Hobbes notes.) He indulges in what Watterson calls "pop psychobabble" to justify his destructive rampages and shift blame to his parents, citing "toxic codependency." Once, he pens a book report entitled, "The dynamics of interbeing and monological imperatives in Dick and Jane: a study in psychic transrelational gender modes." Displaying his creation to Hobbes, he remarks, "Academia, here I come!" Watterson explains that he adapted this jargon (and similar examples from several other strips) from an actual book of art criticism.^[15]

Overall, Watterson's satirical essays serve to attack both sides, criticizing both the commercial mainstream and the artists who are supposed to be "outside" it. Walking contemplatively through the woods, not long after he began drawing his "Dinosaurs in Rocket Ships Series", Calvin tells Hobbes,

The hard part for us avant-garde post-modern artists is deciding whether or not to embrace commercialism. Do we allow our work to be hyped and exploited by a market that's simply hungry for the next new thing? Do we participate in a system that turns high art into low art so it's better suited for mass consumption?

Of course, when an artist goes commercial, he makes a mockery of his status as an outsider and free thinker. He buys into the crass and shallow values art should transcend. He trades the integrity of his art for riches and fame.

Oh, what the heck. I'll do it.

Such sentiments echo Watterson's own struggles with his Syndicate over merchandising issues.

Distorted reality

Upon several occasions, Watterson began a strip with a distorted view of reality: inverted colors, all objects turning "neo-Cubist", or the world turning to black-and-white without outlines, for example. Only Calvin is able to perceive these changes, which the reader can interpret as Calvin's way of seeing certain situations, issues and subjects which he has difficulty understanding or accepting.

In the Tenth Anniversary Book, Watterson indicates that some of these strips were metaphors for his own conflicts, typically against his Syndicate's desire to produce Calvin and Hobbes merchandise. Accused of only seeing issues in "black and white"(Calvin's reply of "Sometimes thats the way things are!" was directly taken from his response to this accusation)—e.g., crass commercialism versus artistic integrity, with nothing in between—Watterson chose to illustrate the situation literally, dropping Calvin into a world where everything had lost shades of grey. Conversely, the "neo-Cubist" strip emerged from the way Watterson found himself "paralyzed by being able to see all sides of an issue".

Passage of time

When the strips were originally published, Calvin's settings were seasonally appropriate for the Northern hemisphere. Calvin would be seen building snowmen or sledding during the wintertime, and outside activities such as water balloon fights would replace school during the summer. Christmas and Halloween strips were run during those approximate times of year.

Although Watterson depicts several years' worth of holidays, school years, summer vacations, and camping trips, Calvin is never shown to age nor have any birthday celebrations (the only shown birthday was that of Susie Derkins). This is fairly common among comic strips; consider the children in Charles Schulz's Peanuts, most of whom existed without aging for decades. Likewise, the characters in George Herriman's Krazy Kat celebrate the New Year but never grow old, and young characters like Ignatz Mouse's offspring never seem to grow up. Since this is such a common phenomenon, readers are likely to suspend disbelief, as most of them do about Calvin's precocious vocabulary, accepting that he "was never a literal six-year-old".^[15].

Social criticisms

In addition to his criticisms of art and academia, Watterson often used the strip to comment on American culture and society. As the strip avoids reference to actual people or events, Watterson's commentary is necessarily generalized. He expresses frustration with public decadence and apathy, with commercialism, and the pandering nature of the mass media. Calvin is often seen "glued" to the television, while his father speaks with the voice of the author, struggling to impart his values on Calvin.

Hobbes also speaks on Calvin's unwholesome habits, but from a more cynical perspective; he is more likely to make a wry observation than actually intervene. Sometimes he merely looks on as Calvin inadvertently makes the point himself. In one instance, Calvin tells Hobbes about a story in which machines turn humans into zombie slaves. He then exclaims "Hey! What time is it?? My TV show is on!"

Calvin's taste in films is another way in which Watterson criticizes American culture. Films which Calvin has attempted to watch include Attack of the Coed Cannibals, Cannibal Stewardess Vixens Unchained, Killer Prom Queen, Vampire Sorority Babes, and Venusian Vampire Vixens.

Calvin, as a whole, often appears to be obsessed with the less desirable aspects of pop culture, whereas Hobbes seems to serve as a mouth piece for the author.

The main characters

Calvin

Named after 16th century theologian John Calvin (founder of Calvinism and a strong believer in predestination), Calvin is an impulsive, imaginative, energetic, curious, intelligent, self-centered, and often selfish six-year-old, whose last name the strip never gives. Despite his low grades, Calvin has a wide vocabulary range that rivals that of an adult as well as an emerging philosophical mind. He commonly wears his distinctive striped shirt. 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".^[16]

• "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".^[2]
• "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".^[9]

Calvinistic predestination as a philosophical position basically entails the idea that human action plays no part in affecting a person's ultimate salvation or damnation. Calvin's consistent gripe is that the troublesome acts he commits are outside of his control: he is simply a product of his environment, a victim of circumstances.

Hobbes

Main article: Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes character)

Hobbes is Calvin's stuffed tiger who, from Calvin's perspective, is as alive and real as anyone in the strip. He is named after 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who had what Watterson described as "a dim view of human nature." 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.

Hobbes' reality

From Calvin's point of view, Hobbes is an anthropomorphic tiger, much larger than Calvin and full of his own attitudes and ideas. But when the perspective shifts to any other character, readers see merely a little stuffed tiger. This is, of course, an odd dichotomy, and Watterson explains it thus:

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.^[6]

For details, see the main Hobbes article.

Calvin's family

Calvin's mother and father are for the most part typical Middle American middle-class parents; like many other characters in the strip, their relatively down-to-earth and sensible attitudes serve primarily as a foil for Calvin's outlandish behavior. Both parents go through the entire strip unnamed, except as "Mom" and "Dad", or such pet names as "hon" and "dear." Watterson has never given Calvin's parents names "because as far as the strip is concerned, they are important only as Calvin's mom and dad." This ended up being somewhat problematic when Calvin's Uncle Max was in the strip for a week and couldn't refer to the parents by name, and was one of the main reasons that Max never again appeared.

Susie Derkins

Susie Derkins, the only character with both first and last names, is a classmate of Calvin who lives in his neighborhood. She first appeared early in the strip as a new student in Calvin's class. In contrast with Calvin, she is polite and diligent in her studies, and her imagination usually seems mild-mannered and civilized, consisting of stereotypical young girl games such as playing house or having tea parties with her stuffed animals. "Derkins" was the nickname of Watterson's wife's childhood pet, and he liked the name so much he named this character after it.

Watterson admits that Calvin and Susie have a bit of a nascent crush on each other, and that Susie is inspired by the type of women he himself finds attractive (which has led to speculation that Susie is based on Watterson's wife). Her relationship with Calvin, though, is frequently conflicted, and never really becomes sorted out.

On occasion, Hobbes takes action to attract Susie's romantic attention, often with success, and much to Calvin's chagrin. Although on the surface these scenarios take the form of Hobbes teasing Calvin and showing off his charms, they may be Calvin's way to disguise his own crush on Susie, by pretending that it is Hobbes' crush instead.

Miss Wormwood

Miss Wormwood is Calvin's world-weary teacher, named after the apprentice devil in C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. She perpetually wears polka-dotted dresses, and is another character who serves as a foil to Calvin's mischief. Calvin, when in his Spaceman Spiff persona, sees Miss Wormwood as a slimy, often dictatorial alien. She is waiting to retire, takes a lot of medication, and is apparently a heavy smoker.

Although there is a definite progression of time in the Calvin and Hobbes universe, mainly exhibited by the changing seasons, Calvin (and Susie) return to Ms. Wormwood's first-grade class every fall.

Rosalyn

Rosalyn is a high school student and Calvin's official babysitter whenever Calvin's parents need a night out. She is the only babysitter able to tolerate Calvin's antics, which she uses to demand raises and advances from Calvin's desperate parents. She is also, according to Watterson, the only person Calvin truly fears—certainly she is his equal in cunning, and doesn't hesitate to play as dirty as he does. Originally created as a nameless, one-shot character with no plans to appear again, Watterson decided he wanted to retain her unique ability to intimidate Calvin, which, ultimately, led to many more appearances.

Moe

Moe is the prototypical bully character in Calvin & Hobbes, "a six-year-old who shaves" who is always shoving Calvin against walls, demanding his lunch money and calling him "Twinky". Moe is the only regular character who speaks in an unusual font: his (frequently monosyllabic) dialogue is shown in crude, lower-case letters. Watterson describes Moe as "every jerk I've ever known".

See also Secondary characters in Calvin and Hobbes.

Supporting characters

Recurring subject matter

There are several repeating themes in the work, a few involving Calvin's real life, and many stemming from his incredible imagination. Some of the latter are clearly flights of fancy, while others, like Hobbes, are of an apparently dual nature and don't quite work when presumed real or unreal.

Monsters under the bed

At night, Calvin is constantly terrorized by nightmarish creatures apparently living under his bed. Only Calvin and Hobbes are aware of them (there are occasions on which they attempt to bribe Hobbes into handing Calvin over, often with food). There appears to be no continuing theme to their appearance except that they are very intimidating, but none too bright, and they probably want to eat Calvin. Two of the monsters are named Maurice and Winslow, but it's unexplained whether it's the same monsters throughout the series.

G.R.O.S.S.

G.R.O.S.S. is Calvin's anti-girl club, somewhat reminiscent of a South American-style banana republic. The name is an acronym that stands for Get Rid Of Slimy girlS (Calvin admits "slimy girls" is a bit redundant, "but otherwise it doesn't spell anything"). Based in a treehouse (with occasional meetings inside a cardboard box), the main objective of G.R.O.S.S. is to exclude girls, mostly Calvin's neighbor Susie. Calvin and Hobbes are its only members, and wear newspaper chapeaux during meetings. Calvin and Hobbes spend most of their time in the club reworking its constitution and arguing about their bureaucratic roles and titles. Because the club exists specifically to harass girls, they sometimes plan missions to do so. After a mission they award themselves medals and promotions, regardless of their success. Calvin is G.R.O.S.S.'s "Supreme Dictator for Life", and Hobbes is "President and First Tiger". According to Calvin, their finest moment was when they locked Susie inside a closet when she had to stay at his house.

Mealtimes

Lunchtime and dinnertime find Calvin eager to share his thoughts about the food he (or anyone else) is eating. Calvin's meals at home are generally depicted as a pile of unidentifiable green goop. Those eating with him are generally repulsed by his colorful descriptions of the cuisine, which is one of the reasons his parents seldom take him to restaurants. He also gives interesting commentary on his food during lunchtime at school, infuriating Susie (he once referred to his dish of beans 'n' franks as "cigar butts in a gallstone sauce"). In one case these descriptions — specifically referring to the contents of Calvin's school lunch as "a Thermos full of phlegm" — were ghastly enough that a newspaper cancelled the strip. Calvin's mother occasionally coaxes him to eat his dinner by informing him that they are serving some outlandish or stomach-turning dish — e.g. toxic waste (which Calvin's father informs him will "turn you into a mutant if you eat it"), monkey heads, spider pie, soup with maggots in it — which Calvin then eats with relish, though his father usually no longer has an appetite (in the first such comic, however, the parents' roles are reversed). On occasion, his meals are also animate, usually resulting in a fight with said food and leaving a large mess that strains his mother's patience.

Cardboard boxes

Over the years Calvin has had quite a few adventures involving corrugated cardboard boxes, which he adapts for many different uses. His inventions include a Transmogrifier, a flying time machine and a duplicator.

Building a transmogrifier is accomplished by turning a cardboard box upside-down, attaching an arrow to the side and writing a list of choices on the box. Upon turning the arrow to a particular choice and pushing a button, the transmogrifier instantaneously rearranges the subject's "chemical configuration" (accompanied by a loud zap, or a boink). Calvin makes his first foray into the world of transmogrification when he temporarily turns himself into a tiger, but he finds the experience disappointing. Calvin re-uses some of this technology when he cleverly converts an ordinary water gun into a portable transmogrifier gun, a device which saves his life when he finds himself falling from high altitude.

The time machine is built by flipping the transmogrifier back so that the opening faced upwards again. One uses it by donning a pair of goggles (in order to "contend with vortexes and light speeds") and climbing into the vehicle. Facing the front makes the machine go forward in time, and facing backwards makes it travel into the past. Calvin and Hobbes discover these time travel mechanics when they attempt to go into the future in order to bring back a few futuristic inventions and patent them in the present, securing a fortune for themselves. However, they face the wrong way and end up in the Jurassic period, bringing them face-to-face with a very large dinosaur. In another storyline Calvin tries to solve his homework by traveling to the future (around 6pm), planning to pick up the done work up from his future self, "the Calvin of 7pm". The obvious faults of logic unsurprisingly cause the plan to fail and instead the Hobbes of two different times do Calvin's homework, writing a story making fun of "Calvin, the timetravelling chowderhead" while the Calvins of three(!) different times blame each other for failing to complete the homework.

A Duplicator is crafted by turning the box on its side. Whatever is put in the box will be duplicated with a boink sound (hence the book title, Scientific Progress Goes Boink). Calvin envisions having a small team of duplicate Calvins whom he could send off to school, so he could go about his own business during school days. However, the new Calvins prove to be exact replicas, with the same reluctance to go to school, and thus become difficult to control. Calvin later adds an "Ethicator" switch to his duplicator, allowing a duplicate to be designated "good" or "evil," since he believes that a duplicate of his well-buried "good side" could cause no harm. This experiment is successful at first, with the "good" duplicate willingly doing Calvin's homework and going to school, but soon this adventure too leads to disaster when the duplicate starts being nice to Susie Derkins (whom Calvin "hates"). This leads to a physical confrontation between Calvin and the duplicate, prompting Hobbes to remark, "You're the only person I know whose 'good' side is prone to badness."

Briefly, the cardboard box is used for Calvin's costume of "The World's Most Powerful Computer," in which Calvin walks around with the box over his head and a mechanical face sketched onto the surface of the box. This is only used two or three time throughout the entire strip.

Calvin's last cardboard box invention is the Cerebral Brain Enhance-o-tron, which combined with a colander creates a "thinking cap," a garment which enhances his mental prowess (inadvertently causing his head to swell in addition). Upon activation, this machine goes brzap. Like his other inventions, the Cerebral Enhance-o-tron fails to change his life; even with his "cerebral augmentation," he is unable to write a school report up to Miss Wormwood's standards.

Most of the other characters do not see his inventions as "real." For example, when Calvin transmogrifies himself into an owl or a tiger, his parents do not observe the transformation; only he and Hobbes see the change. This is a similar dilemma to that of Hobbes' existence (see above).

Wagon and sled

Calvin and Hobbes frequently ride downhill in a wagon, sled, or toboggan (depending on the season) and ponder the meaning of life, death, God, and a variety of other weighty subjects as they hurtle downhill. The course of the vehicle and the obstacles that the characters negotiate as they travel frequently serve as metaphors for and parallel the subject of conversation, and the rides almost always end in a spectacular crash.

The wagon temporarily served as a spacecraft when Calvin and Hobbes realized that the human race was laying waste to Earth by polluting it. They decided to go live on Mars, but returned soon after when they realized that the native Martians (or, "weirdos from another planet") were terrified of Earthlings. This may have been a case of rumor preceding them; the prospect of terrestrial life polluting Mars as well as Earth was a bleak one. Although this particular wagon ride did not end in a crash, it once again served as an outlet for a subject matter of importance.

Snowballs and snowmen

During winter, Calvin often engages in snowball fights (which he almost always loses), usually throwing them at Susie but always resulting in Calvin getting buried in the snow as retaliation. Calvin also builds snowmen; but these are usually grotesque, monstrous deformed creatures (i.e., two-headed snowmen, snow monster with tentacles devouring a bunch of snowmen) or snowmen getting hanged, buried giant snow monster destroying other snow men or holding their heads in their hands, or one particular example of a prostrate snowman seemingly beneath the parked family car, surrounded by a host of worried 'snow-onlookers'. Once while walking down the street during winter looking at the snowmen in front of the neighbors' houses, Calvin's father exclaims to his wife, "You can always tell when you get to our house", due to Calvin's being the only one on the block who builds deformed snowmen. In one storyline, Calvin builds a snowman and brings it to life using the power "invested in him by the mighty and awful snow demons", which turns evil (reminiscent of Frankenstein.) The snowman turns itself into a "deranged mutant killer monster snow goon" by giving itself two heads and three arms, and makes copies of itself that are eventually defeated by Calvin. Once, out of ideas, Calvin signed the snow-covered landscape with a stick and declared all the world's snow as his own work of art. Calvin, unlike Hobbes, thinks of snowmen as a fine art. Bill Watterson has said that this is to parody art's "pretentious blowhards".^[15]

Dinosaurs

Calvin enjoys dinosaurs very much; they are perhaps the only subject which he studies of his own free will. Carnivorous dinosaurs also frequently serve as Calvin's alter-egos; for instance, he will often imagine himself as a tyrannosaurus rex on the hunt, usually with Susie Derkins as the "peaceful" planteater. Once Calvin was an allosaur, and Moe was a Ultrasaurus. Moe was at the drinking fountain and Calvin wanted to push him off, but the allosaurus was of course no match for the Ultrasaurus; when he tried to attack it, he quickly shied off. Another Sunday strip involved Calvin, a tyrannosaurus, attacking Susie, a hadrosaurus, with a snowball. The tyrannosaurus was quickly chased away, prompting Calvin to throw away his dinosaur books. Calvin once claimed he had discovered a new species of therapod, a Calvinosaurus, a predator so large that it "could devour a whole sauropod with one bite."

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 one occasion. Participants of Calvinball wear masks; when asked why, Calvin replies that "no one is allowed to question the masks." The rules of the game, besides that a soccer ball and wickets are almost always used, are invented as they go along, but one consistent rule is that the rules can never be the same twice (which in itself is a self-denying paradox). 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: Hobbes has reported scores of "Q to 12" and "oogy to boogy." Calvinball is essentially a game of wits and creativity, rather than purely physical feats. However, it's a running joke that Hobbes is typically more successful at the game than Calvin himself. Calvinball could be described as a Nomic game, and thus bears a similarity to others such as Mornington Crescent and Stanley Random Chess.

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 any organized sport. Even Calvin and Hobbes's own attempts to play organized sports between themselves usually deteriorate into Calvinball, as they end up inventing increasingly bizarre rules that cause whatever sport they were initially playing to spiral out of control.

The concept of "playing Calvinball" continues to appear in popular culture, usually when describing a situation in which the rules are changed according to someone's whims. For example: "...it doesn't really deal with the Congressional incentive to play Calvinball with the budget".[1]

Watterson has stated that the greatest number of questions he receives concern Calvinball and how to play it.^[15]

School and homework

Calvin hates school and its attendant early-morning risings, irate teachers, homework, and fellow students. Often his mother has to force the unwilling Calvin to go up to the school bus. Occasionally he manages to avoid the bus, and his mother has to chase him down and force him to board or drive him to school. Calvin often waits for the bus with Hobbes and explains why an intelligent boy like himself does not need school. While at school, he commonly visualizes the building as a hostile planet and his teacher and principal as vicious aliens. Calvin usually lacks the company of Hobbes at school. Sometimes Hobbes does his homework and reading while Calvin watches TV or reads comic books. In general, Calvin is depicted as a poor student who is unable to concentrate in class, has difficulty interacting with other students, and struggles with homework. On occasion, he gets good marks and positive feedback for work, but these are usually short-lived victories.

Also on occasion, Calvin's inability to concentrate in class is compromised by inserting the class subject into his daydream, causing him to get the right answer. This includes spelling "disaster" while crash-landing on an alien world and blurting out the right answer at (from his point of view) a completely random moment or mistakenly giving Susie the right answer to "the capital of Poland before 1600" while making noises for his guns-'Krakow'. On some occasions his teacher, Ms. Wormwood, accepts an eccentric answer. Such as on one occasion when asked what [US] state he lived in, Calvin curtly replied "Denial." Ms. Wormwood is seen walking away from his desk in the next frame muttering, "I don't suppose I can argue with that."

It should be noted that his dislike of school does not necessarily mean that Calvin is unintelligent; the strip often depicts him as being very smart, in fact, with unusual knowledge of philosophy and unusual vocabulary. Rather, Calvin seems to dislike school because of its rules and forced learning of things which he is not necessarily interested in. In one strip, Calvin's father asks why he doesn't try harder at school, considering how much he loves to learn about subjects like dinosaurs; Calvin simply replies that they don't learn about dinosaurs in school.

Calvin and Hobbes books

For the complete list of books, see List of Calvin and Hobbes books.

There are eighteen Calvin and Hobbes books, published from 1987 to 2005. These include eleven collections, which form a complete archive of the newspaper strips, except for a single daily strip from November 28, 1985. (The collections do contain a strip for this date, but it is not the same strip that appeared in some newspapers. The alternate strip, a joke about Hobbes taking a bath in the washing machine, has circulated around the Internet.) "Treasuries" usually combine the two preceding collections with bonus material, and include color reprints of Sunday comics.

A complete collection of Calvin and Hobbes strips, in three hardcover volumes, with a total 1440 pages, was released on October 4, 2005, by Andrews McMeel Publishing. It also includes color prints of the art used on paperback covers, the Treasuries' extra illustrated stories and poems, and a new introduction by Bill Watterson, who is now happily teaching himself to paint. It is noteable, however, that the alternate 1985 strip is still omitted, and two other strips (January 7, 1987, and November 25, 1988) have altered dialogue.

To celebrate the release, Calvin and Hobbes reruns were made available to newspapers from Sunday, September 4, 2005, through Saturday, December 31, 2005, and Bill Watterson answered a select dozen questions submitted by readers.^[17][18] Like current contemporary strips, weekday Calvin and Hobbes strips now appear in color print when available, instead of black and white as in their first run.

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. Those Sunday strips were never reprinted in color until the Complete collection was finally published in 2005. Every book since Snow Goons has been printed in a larger format with Sundays in color and weekday and Saturday strips larger than they 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 until Complete, and The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book contains much original commentary from Watterson. Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995 contains 36 Sunday strips in color alongside Watterson's original sketches, prepared for an exhibition at The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library.

An officially licensed children's textbook entitled Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes was published as part of a limited single print-run in 1993.^[4] The book includes various Calvin and Hobbes strips together with lessons and questions to follow, such as "What do you think the principal meant when he said they had quite a file on Calvin?" (p108).