Shots From The Studio #17

 Welcome to another Shots from the Studio segment. Today I’m going to write about a subject that is very near and dear to my heart, that has been with me since my teenage years and has never once in its existence disappointed me (unless you count when it ended). I’m talking about the charming and hilarious comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.

   Calvin and Hobbes was a weekly comic strip created by Bill Watterson that ran in most major newspapers from November 1985 to December 1995. It’s run consisted of daily black and white strips Monday through Friday followed by a full color Sunday strip.
  The strip followed Calvin, a precocious, imaginative boy who was around six years old, and his (mis)adventures with his best ,and possibly imaginary, friend an anthropomorphic tiger named Hobbes who everyone else saw as a stuffed animal.

   The strip centered largely on the title characters interacting with the world around them often seen through the eyes of Calvin’s wild imagination. Sometimes he was a space explorer, sometimes a dinosaur and sometimes he was just sculpting snowmen in various disturbing scenes. But behind it all was his wit, dark sense of humor and always his best friend Hobbes who at times would encourage his antics and other times attempt to remind Calvin of the impending consequences of his actions and then usually proceeding to egg him on.

   During its ten year run there were several collections published but Watterson refused all other offers to start merchandising his creations after seeing contemporaries like Garfield’s Jim Davis and Peanuts Charles Shultz sell their characters off to whoever was willing to pay. In 2005 a three volume hardcover, slipcase edition entitled The Complete Calvin and Hobbes was published collecting every black & white and color strip.

  Over the years I’ve done a few tributes to my favorite comic strip some for fun and some for commissions and they’ve been some of my favorite projects. If nothing else it always gives me an excuse to delve back into Bill Watterson’s amazing creation.