Fairly self-explanatory. I ended up writing the reviews as a sort of series, so it made more sense to split them off into their own thing rather than stuff them all into my Year in Review post. They are presented here in the order I read the books, which was basically random. Also it goes without saying that these are all by Bill Watterson.
- The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book (1995)
I love Calvin and Hobbes wholeheartedly and without reservation, and everytime I revisit them I find the experience no less enjoyable than I did as a child.
That being said, I couldn’t help but notice this time around that Bill Watterson is a bit of a snob.
Not, like, asshole levels of snobbery. But definitely “if you like a comic I don’t like or any TV show we’re probably not going to be friends” levels.
In some ways it’s a bit of a relief, because now I know where I got it from and the next time people complain about my complaining I can say, “Blame Bill Watterson,” and that should shut them right up because who’s going to say anything bad about Bill Watterson? On the other hand it was a bit like looking in a mirror that you don’t think is a mirror at first and then when you realize it’s a mirror you’re a little worried.
And then of course I’m slightly worried about him coming out with a new book, as I can’t imagine he’ll have gotten less curmudgeonly in the last 30 years and I keep thinking of T.H. White’s Book of Merlin or, perhaps more aptly, George Carlin’s It’s Bad For Ya. At least it’s not Calvin and Hobbes, they’ll stay untarnished (well, mostly, and I won’t begrudge Breathed his fun).
I am interested in seeing what he does when he’s not limited to a comic—not that he didn’t push those limits, to be sure. And even within them he made some brilliant stuff, that first panel on the 2nd Tracer Bullet strip does so much with so little, it’s great. And he’s got a co-illustrator on the new thing, so that’s intriguing, especially given Watterson’s famous reclusiveness.
Anyway, probably gonna end up re-reading all my C&H books now, then maybe throw in JTHM just to shake things up.
p.s. I almost went to Watterson’s alma mater, Kenyon, and while there’s no concrete evidence that anything would be better if I had, it does sort of feel like I shunned fate. - It’s a Magical World (1996)
I enjoyed revisiting the 10th Anniversary collection so much that I figured I’d read all the collections I have, in pretty much random order. I’ve been reading them before bed, and I started to just read until I got to a strip about bedtime and then go to sleep after that one, and it works surprisingly well, as you’ll get one every 10 pages or so.
There’s a punchline in here that I always remember as “It’s not learning if no one makes you do it,” but it turns out the phrasing is actually more complicated. Calvin and Hobbes, having stumbled on a snake and realizing they don’t know anything about snakes, race off to get a book on snakes—and to be clear while I didn’t remember the set-up exactly (I thought it was a weird bug) I remembered the gist—when Calvin stops and says, “Hey, wait a minute! It’s summer! I’m on vacation! I don’t want to learn anything!” To which Hobbes replies, “If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.”
My remembered version loses the logic here, saying not that learning by choice is fun learning but rather that it’s not learning at all but some secret third thing. But it does still get the specificity of the idea across better than “If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun” would do on its own. It’s the way with all commonly misremembered lines, I think, that the misremembered version is serving some purpose rather than just being a mistake. “Luke, I am your father” works better out of context than “No, I am your father” because it more clearly evokes the source material. And “Do you feel lucky, punk?” is less clunky than “Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya? Punk?” (especially how Eastwood delivers it). The lines that become iconic aren’t necessarily designed to be, so people subconsciously adapt them to function better outside of their original context.
That being said, I think I’ll try using “If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun” just to see how it feels. - Something Under the Bed is Drooling (1988)
You can definitely tell it’s an earlier collection. The art is a little rougher around the edges, and there’s just a generally more cartoony (e.g. Loony Tunes) feel to it. Also you really see how the compressed layout affects the Sunday comics, with their two-panel cold open jokes now being split up by the line break and mushed into the rest of the strip. Blegh.
Still though, plenty of good stuff in here. - The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes (1992)
As I read more of these (and re-read more of the comics that appear in multiple collections) I’m starting to notice a lot more little details. One of the most interesting is how Watterson uses panel frames. In a basic four-panel strip, he’ll often have three panels with frames and one without. While this may seem like an arbitrary aesthetic choice, I think they’re actually functioning a lot like paragraph breaks, or punctuation. The frameless panel is often on either the third panel or the fourth, meaning it’s either right before the punchline or right on the punchline. This serves to set the punchline off from the rest of the strip, in the same way if you were writing prose you might use a line break or an emdash to set off a line you want to really hit.
Oh, and there’s been a development in my mis-remembered punchline story. As previously recounted in my review of It’s a Magical World, I discovered that a punchline that I’d always remembered as “It’s not learning if no one makes you do it” was actually Calvin saying “I don’t want to learn anything!” To which Hobbes replies, “If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.”
EXCEPT, in The Indispensable there’s a strip in which Calvin decided to build a robot to make his bed for him. When Hobbes asks, “Won’t inventing a robot be more work than making the bed?” Calvin replies, *drumroll please*, “It’s only work if somebody makes you do it.” You’ll notice that this construction is very similar to my misremembered version of the aforementioned punchline about learning. Did I subconsciously combine the two? Who knows.
The Indispensable also contains I think the only instance of Calvin’s dad actually showing that he cares in a way that isn’t really begrudging/patriarchal, but it only comes after several panels of him complaining so I’m not sure if it counts. I’m not saying Calvin’s dad is a bad guy or even a bad dad, but it’s been really noticeable how much he just does not respect any of Calvin’s interests or proclivities, even (or especially) when he’s trying to connect to him.
Also this one has one of my favorite Tracer Bullet strips, the one that includes a panel of him just walking forlornly through the rain. It’s such a great juxtaposition between the super dramatic framing and art style and the fact that he is so obviously a child. But also I would legitimately read a Bill Watterson-penned noir comic, he’s so good at that style. - The Essential Calvin and Hobbes (1988)
Ok so there’s a strip that starts out with Spaceman Spiff in a dogfight, then cuts to Susie asking Calvin for “the capital of Poland until 1600,” to which Calvin replies “Krakow,” then we see him going “Krakow! Krakow!” because lazers. Now, the punchline here is a little forced but charming enough to get away with. But then there’s absurdity of the set-up, which presents us with two possibilities.
The first, and seemingly obvious (if inexplicable), possibility is that these 6-year-olds are, for some reason, taking a test for which they need to know what the capital of Poland was until 1600, a very funny premise that I honestly kind of wish had been explored more in other strips. Like, Calvin is presented as such a poor student but what if we slowly realize he’s like a genius and is in a super advanced gifted program (and just hates school). I mean, that’s not in any way the direction Watterson would’ve gone, but still, fun to think about.
The second possibility, though, I kind of like even more, which is that Susie is actually the genius, but they’re not in a super advanced gifted program, they’re just in a normal kindergarten class, it’s just that Susie is such an overachiever that she’s turned whatever simple question was on the test into this convoluted historical essay for which she needs to know the capital of Poland until 1600 and just can’t quite remember it. I just find that thought so delightful. It is, granted, not particularly consistent with anything else in the comic, but then again, neither is them being asked what the capital of Poland until 1600 was. All the other test questions we see throughout the comic are fairly typical (there are a few that seem a little bit above Calvin’s ostensible grade level, but still plausibly within the range of elementary school), so as long as we’re being inconsistent this is the headcanon I’m going with. - Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons (1992)
Two of my favorite strips from this collection:
1. A single full-length panel with Calvin’s bleary-eyed parents standing in the doorway to his room, and Calvin in his bed with a set of drums and a horn, saying, “Geez, I gotta have a reason for everything?!” Beautiful composition, impeccable joke, no notes.
2. Calvin’s parents are watching through the window as Calvin packs snow in the yard. “Calvin’s been outside building something since early this morning.” “I can’t tell what it is. Can you?” “It doesn’t look like anything from here.” From a bird’s-eye view we see a ginormous monster about to chomp down on the house. There’s just something so sublime about this one, about how much effort Calvin is putting into something that no one will ever see, not even him. Truly, it is Art.
Following on from my observation about the frameless panels (see my review of The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes), I noticed in this one that a lot of those frameless panels are also low on environmental detail, usually just having a plain white background. It’s a similar effect to cutting to a close-up, though he doesn’t necessarily change the actual composition of the “shot” at all. I guess you could he’s changing the depth of field rather than than the zoom? - Weirdos from Another Planet! (1990)
I remembered the title story being pretty explicitly about environmental issues, but I forgot just how explicit. It’s the most openly didactic Watterson ever got, and from the first panel it reads like an after-school special (albeit with more jokes about food). It’s not terrible, but it is notable (and depressingly relevant).
Also, the way it’s presented here is in 18 weekday strips, with no Sundays. And come to think of it, the same is true of the “Calvin is a tiger now” arc. And probably more of them that I didn’t even notice. So were the Sunday strips during these arcs just one-offs that weren’t part of the story? Or did he run three or four regular strips instead of a Sunday? If anyone out there happens to know please tell me, I’m really curious.
This brings me to the end of my Calvin and Hobbes re-read. It’s been fun. Calvin’s slightly more of a jerk than I remember, which is a little distressing given that he’s basically me. But maybe not surprising. I was wondering what to read once I finished and I realized that there’s only one option. It’s another hugely influential comic from my youth, one that also, coincidentally, features a protagonist with ambiguously imaginary friends who are also stuffed animals. He’s also a bit of a jerk who has a lot to say about the state of society. Or is he a lot of jerk with only a bit to say about the state of society? I guess I’ll find out.
Z?
[This cliffhanger only works if you forget that I spoiled it in the first review. Also I don’t think styrofoam mascots or dead bunnies count as stuff animals.]
Certain of Eventual Failure 