And eventually, things got hot enough to melt all those snowmen, too…
Psst.
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?
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!”. 
That was very early in the run, as their disliking each other became more pronounced soon after.
Nah. He was pretty much a normal kid, although pretty quiet. This has been said before, but he is more like Hobbes.
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?
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.
Never sentimental? I think it had its fair share of thoughtful and sad strips, like the raccoon story (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.
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.
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.)
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.