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Calvin and Hobbes
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Calvin and Hobbes strips are characterized by sparse but careful craftsmanship, intelligent humor, poignant observations, witty social and political commentary, and well-developed characters. 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.[9]
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John Calvin is an ecclesiastical reformist and psychic detective who can see into the future because everything is "predestined by God." He nominally attempts to solve mysteries, but usually ends up being sidetracked by getting into fights with Catholics or Arminians, whom he always eventually challenges to a game of Calvinball. His strict adherence to predestination means that he gives up pretty easily in everything he was doing, and simply says that God predestined him to give up and it was out of his control. This allows Calvin to generally be a lazy douche. While typically a devout Christian, when he is angry Calvin occasionally threatens God that he may become an atheist (see right). God usually has no comment but allows the parent in Hobbes to speak.
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Named after 16th-century theologian John Calvin (founder of Calvinism and a strong believer in predestination), Calvin is an impulsive, sometimes overly creative, imaginative, energetic, curious, intelligent, 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, implying that he comes from a naturally literate family, as seen in this anecdote:
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Calvin & Hobbes is a cult comic with the privilege of having been kept well clear of the harms of mass merchandising. It is a comic that only belongs to the page.
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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.
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In each episode, individuals would get into some sort of trouble, and having nowhere else to turn would call for the assistance of Calvin (and Hobbes) to help them. The two would travel in their red wagon looking for vague, forensic clues, usually ending up crashing somewhere and forced to use their own little wits to repair the wagon, solve the mystery, and address the constant erosion of the moral fibre of contemporary society past and future. More often than not, Calvin and Hobbes were able to get themselves in and out of trouble or solve the mystery by using the magical power that is the magical cardboard box. Notable usages include:
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Calvin and Hobbes