# Death Of Calvin And Hobbes **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 22, 2011, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224 "2011-09-22T18:17:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/81 "2011-09-24T02:29:39Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > Aaaaand here another [Calvin and Susie](http://i470.photobucket.com/albums/rr65/NorthcoastSurfer/CalvinSuzieGrownUp.jpg) comic (NSFW in a comic way!). And eventually, things got hot enough to melt all those snowmen, too… ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/82 "2011-09-24T03:32:31Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > The sad part is that if Calvin went to school today, they would diagnose him with ADD and dose him with Ritalin. Psst. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > [No love for Ritalin?](http://snarkmarket.com/blog/snarkives/chob.gif) ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/83 "2011-09-24T04:07:29Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I’m expecting a baby boy any day now, and just got the three volume set in the mail: I’ve wanted it for years, but the baby cinched it: if we have a child, it’s essential that it be lying around the house so that he has a chance to stumble on it when he’s the right age. I didn’t want to wait and buy it when it’s appropriate because I don’t want him to think it’s for him: I want it to be something he discovers, organically. Yeah, right. Your kid shows up in your bedroom, Saturday morning, 5:00 AM with a transmogrifier gun. The hell are you going to do then, Mr. Organic? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/84 "2011-09-24T07:32:32Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > It’s improbable, but it does happen that childhood friends grow up and get married. Lynn’s problem was that she had to set up contrivances and excuses to get the two characters together when natural unfolding of events in the story would have prevented it. Watterson said absolutely nothing about Calvin’s or Susie’s future life. > > Calvin and Susie were definitely friends, too. They tormented each other, but hung out way too often to be anything but. I think it’s a sweet resolution; I’m personally still a fan of teasing as a form of affection, which maybe means I haven’t quite grown up yet. 😛 Yes, there was a Valentine’s episode where Calvin sent Susan an I-hate-you poem and a bunch of dead flowers, which she came around to yell about, but in the last frame she was thinking “A card and flowers! He likes me!” and he was thinking “She noticed! She likes me!”. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/85 "2011-09-24T08:06:43Z")
That was [very early](http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/02/14) in the run, as their disliking each other became more pronounced soon after. ---
**Author:** ![Kilvert\_s\_Pagan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@Kilvert\_s\_Pagan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kilvert_s_Pagan)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/86 "2011-09-24T17:10:59Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Back in the 80s. I concluded that he kept detailed notes as he was growing up. Nah. He was pretty much a normal kid, although pretty quiet. This has been said before, but he is more like Hobbes. ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/87 "2011-09-24T17:30:11Z")
We can have serious discussions in this thread, right? _Calvin and Hobbes_ was that rare comic strip with a child protagonist to avoid sentimentality — so why is almost every “continuing the story” comic so twee? The cool thing about _C&H_ is, it centres around all these dichotomies —imagination vs. knowledge, wildness vs. socialization, child vs. adult, Calvin’s perceptions vs. everyone else’s, etc. — without really presuming that Calvin’s side is better and everyone else’s is worse. But I feel like continuation comics always mix the dichotomies together and then call Calvin’s side superior. Also, there’s a lot Watterson pointedly _didn’t_ write: Hobbes’s nature is unspecified/indeterminate, some of the characters have no reality outside Calvin’s perception of them, and Calvin’s actual age (six) is never taken seriously. When you expand the story to his adulthood, the omissions get filled by default. And that bothers me. I read _Calvin and Hobbes_ when I was a child, so I wasn’t exactly likely to get sentimental about childhood when I read the strip. Is it partly just a matter of perspective? ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/88 "2011-09-24T17:41:14Z")
Missed the edit function: I didn’t mean to imply that people here haven’t been discussing or posting serious things —hopefully you get what I meant. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/89 "2011-09-24T19:17:25Z")
Never sentimental? I think it had its fair share of thoughtful and sad strips, like the [raccoon story](http://www.progressiveboink.com/archive/calvinhobbes.htm) (bottom of the page). Another one that stuck with me was when Calvin broke his dad’s binoculars and the guilt tore him apart before his dad even found out. C&H certainly wasn’t a _shallow_ strip by any means. C&H was formative to a lot of people who did read it as children. Those people are now young adults, many of whom have already begun their own families, and are otherwise beginning to be a significant adult demographic. In general we’re going to start seeing a lot of stuff that revisits the 80s and early 90s, which includes C&H. More specifically, I’m armchair-analyzing here, but I think a lot of the “what happened after” strips, like those with Bacon, are a desire for those of us who grew up with C&H to find some reassurance in our own lives. If a crazy, troublesome, overly-imaginative kid can grow up into a decent adult who can handle his own child, maybe there’s some hope for the rest of us. It’s also good to point out on occasion that imagination doesn’t have to die just because we’re now responsible adults. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/90 "2011-09-24T19:31:09Z")
> [@straight\_man](#): > > _Calvin and Hobbes_ was that rare comic strip with a child protagonist to avoid sentimentality — so why is almost every “continuing the story” comic so twee? Almost every? I saw two linked (2 Hobbes & Bacon strips; portrait of teen/young adult Calvin giving Suzie a piggy back ride) that might fit that. Oh, and one thumbnail of an adult Calvin having given his Hobbes to his little girl. One involved Hobbes scowling as Suzie and Calvin tried to screw. The others weren’t even close - Calvin hit a tree after the ending strip and died alone in the woods, Calvin losing his imagination to Ritalin, Calvin locked in a rubber room after murdering his parents. ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/91 "2011-09-24T19:34:50Z")
I agree that _Calvin and Hobbes_ had emotional depth. I couldn’t find quite the right word to explain that feeling that adults sometimes get when they think about their childhoods and forget what it was actually like to be a child. “Sentimentality” is the closest I could get. And actually, I agree about imagination, too — if anything, I suspect adults are more creative than children! But again, Calvin is kind of ageless from the start, so making a strip that emphasizes his age sort of messes with things. ETA: to **Ferret Herder** , sorry — you’re quite right. There are indeed stories that use _C&H_ for the sake of a cultural gag, and I didn’t mean to include them. I meant only the ones that make a serious attempt to continue the story — which is actually a pretty big genre: it arguably includes the Ritalin one, definitely includes the first three, and of course includes every single _Frazz_ comic ever. Heck, even _Sinfest_ started out kinda-sorta suggesting its protagonist was an older _Calvin_ (fortunately, it gave up on that quickly.) ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/92 "2011-09-24T20:28:41Z")
You know something? Rereading just a few C&H’s – the ones linked to along with the Raccoon story\* – it’s pretty clear to me that even late-strip Calvin is in love\*\* with Suzie. Hobbes adores her, after all, and Hobbes is an extension of Calvin’s imagination; he expresses Calvin’s doubts, his better sense, sometimes his fears.\*\*\* Hobbes’s counterbalancing words of praise for Suzie, whenever Calvin denigrates her, to me indicates that he’s expressing the emotions Calvin is not yet ready for.\*\*\*\* \*I’m not crying! I am not! There’s something in my eye, is all. \*\* In the sense that six-year-old boy is in love with anyone other than his mother. \*\*\*Not only do I not intend to use the words id, ego, or superego, I deny ever having heard any of them or knowing what they mean. \*\*\*\*Pickles. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/93 "2011-09-24T20:33:47Z")
Heh, my six-year-old kid loves Calvin & Hobbes. 😃 He doesn’t always understand the strips (obviously!), but he loves the characters and the artwork. He also, to an extent, resembles Calvin, with the notable difference that he likes girls his age just fine - he’s offered to marry a couple already! ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/94 "2011-09-24T20:44:00Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > He doesn’t always understand the strips (obviously!) When I found the page I linked to above, I read the snow sculpture strips for the first time in at least a decade. Last time I’d seen it, I’d had no _clue_ what “I notice your oeuvre is monochromatic” meant, and I was a pretty bright kid (though on reflection, not bright enough to go find a dictionary), but Calvin’s reaction was still amusing. “Arty art art, pretentious arty talk. …Well, c’mon, it’s just snow.” Now that I do know what they’re saying…well, the joke is still the same, but at least I can understand it better. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/95 "2011-09-24T21:08:52Z")
Ok. So, someone explain to me how Frazz isn’t blatant stealing. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/96 "2011-09-24T21:15:57Z")
> [@Nzinga](#): > > Ok. So, someone explain to me how Frazz isn’t blatant stealing. Er, because it’s a different strip with different characters. Yes, some aspects of _Frazz_ (like the title character’s spiky blond hair, and the wisecracking elementary schoolers) are clearly paying tribute to _C&H_. But imitation isn’t theft. Jef Mallett isn’t using Watterson’s characters or artwork or dialogue: he’s simply imitating Watterson’s style. Ain’t no crime. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/97 "2011-09-24T21:36:04Z")
Concur. It’s clearly a spiritual successor, and does it pretty well. Now, if he ever shows Frazz holding a stuffed tiger doll, then sure, he’s claiming that Frazz = Calvin. I suppose you could argue that the kids being far more intelligent than their age would allow is a direct lift from Watterson, but Schulz did much of the same. Tropes aren’t a protected facet of a work. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/98 "2011-09-24T21:36:51Z")
I never heard of Frazz until this thread. Looking at some strips online, I’m seeing strong similarities. In style, artwork, and other particular touches. I’m definitely seeing more in common of the two title character’s look than just spiky blond hair. So, I am incorrect in saying the strip is stolen, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable “imitating” someone else’s style that much. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/99 "2011-09-24T21:59:25Z")
Probably the worst you can say about Frazz is that the creator is undoubtedly trying to fill the void in the comics C&H left, to a debatable degree of success. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2011, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224/100 "2011-09-24T22:04:08Z")
I think Frazz and Calvin both have spiky hair not because Frazz is imitating Calvin, but simply because spiky hair is convenient for a comic strip. It allows a major character to have a distinctive look, while still being really easy to draw. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-of-calvin-and-hobbes/597224.md?page=6)