The strip, which ran in papers from 1985 to 1995, is just about childhood. Now, the obvious thing is to say, yeah, no, Bill Watterson didn’t write Calvin and Hobbes in response to a pandemic. Image: Bill Watterson/Andrews McMeel Publishing And his imagination gave him a way not to feel that anymore. A tiger who listened to him, who challenged him, and who ultimately loved him.īecause that’s the thing, isn’t it? Calvin went to school, had a loving family, but even still, he felt alone. He escaped the corporeal form of a kid’s (arguably limited) body with the Transmogrifier, and most importantly of all, escaped loneliness by befriending a stuffed tiger who Calvin knew was actually real. Bathtime, a nightmare for small children, saw Calvin turning into a tub shark or being attacked by a bubble-bath elemental. He didn’t like school, so he fled it as Spaceman Spiff. His was an external life born explicitly of the internal: distant planets, bed monsters, mutant snowscapes, gravity-defying wagon rides, crass Transmogrifications, and of course, one tuna-loving tiger BFF.īut the second thing I remember was exactly why the kid had such a big imagination to begin with: Calvin was looking for a way out. When I think of Calvin, that glorious little menace, I first remember the depth of his imagination.
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