Hardcore Calvin & Hobbes fans: start saving your money

Cafe Society
21

Actually…

Some time ago I spent a few hours checking the books against the official C&H Web site. There are a handful of daily strips that didn’t make it into the books. But they weren’t very good. I made a copy of one (Jan. 1, 1985): it has Calvin putting ice cubes in a glass, then dropping a tea bag on top of the cubes. He looks at it for a second and says “My iced tea is a failure.” Not exactly one of Watterson’s triumphs.

I don’t recall if I found any others that were left out of the books. At the time they didn’t let you see all of the strips at the Web site. But if they were anything like the one I found, having them restored is no great boon.

However, being as I’m a complete fanatic over C&H (I have all the books, too), and since Watterson will probably write some new stuff for the new collection (and maybe new drawings, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that), I’ll probably buy it.

BTW, has anyone heard what he’s been doing since the finished the strip? Supposedly he was going to work on some other art projects, but I haven’t heard a thing.

22

I have that one in one of my books.

23

Which book?

24

Hmmm…I can’t remember off the top of my head and all my books are 3000 miles away. I think Essential.

25

Re: EC Comics Reprints

I like the annuals myself – they’re in color (important for the later issues once Marie Severin came on board, because she was good), they’ve got great hand, and there’s a certain casual quality to them that IMO probably comes closer to capturing what it was like to read these in the '50’s. All of this stuff (annauls and HC’s) is available from Diamond except one or two of the annuals which are OOP.

–Cliffy

26

Neurotik: You’re absolutely right: it’s the very last daily strip in The Essential. I stand corrected, but only because I’ve been cruelly deceived by Watterson and his publishers, Andrews and McMeel. Both said that the big compilation books were reprints of the earlier, smaller books. So I have always assumed that everything in them also appeared in the original books. But apparently that isn’t entirely true.

The strip I described (which was published on May 23, 1987, not Jan. 1, 1985, as I wrote above), fell right between the first two books: Calvin and Hobbes and Yukon Ho!, but doesn’t appear in either of them.

This is bad news and good news for me. I periodically re-read the whole C&H canon from beginning to end, but I have always used the original books, not the big compilations. The bad news is that I haven’t been reading all the strips, as I thought I had. The good news is that I haven’t been reading all the strips, so now I can go through the big compilations more carefully, and maybe find a few strips I have never seen, or at least that aren’t as familiar as the rest. And I now realize that I’ve missed the color of the Sunday strips and haven’t paid as much attention as I should have to the original drawings Watterson did for the big books. Thanks!

The question still remains: are there perhaps some C&H strips that didn’t make it into any collection that will appear in The Complete? Probably not, but if so, they are probably not very good. I think the iced tea one was justifiably cut.

I’ve been reading through The Complete Peanuts Vols 1 & 2, and have been pleasantly surprised to see for the first time many strips that were left out of the paperback collections that I read throughout my childhood. (But even at his best, Schulz never rose to the heights of C&H, IMHO.)

It’s interesting to note how long it took Schulz to find the personalities of his characters. Unlike C&H, who pretty much sprung fully formed from Watterson’s brow, the Peanuts characters were, in the beginning, almost interchangeable. In the first year or two, Shermy, Violet, and Patty (not Peppermint Patty) were major characters, on a par with Charlie Brown, who didn’t take on his sad-sack, loser personality for quite a while.

27

I just got The Complete Far Side Collection for Christmas. I’ve already added the C&H Collection to my wish list.

28

That’s because it’s probably in Something Under the Bed is Drooling, which is the book that comes between Calvin & Hobbes and Yukon Ho.

29

No, I just mis-spoke. :smack: I meant between C&H and SUTBID.

(Have you memorized the order of the books?)

30

Haha, not remotely. I just know that Essential is C&H and SUTBID combined. And I only know that because I had a scarring experience when I was excited to get the Essential and SUTBID for Christmas several years back, only to be crushed to discover that the second half of Essential was the same as SUTBID.

31

Apparently still living the recluse life in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, the town triangle of which is painstakingly reproduced on the back cover of Essential. Calvin has just ripped Chagrin’s other major landmark, The Popcorn Shoppe, off of its precarious setting next to the falls. My old scoutmaster owned that business for about thirty years.

Bill’s parents are still very active in Chagrin’s civic activities - she was a councilwoman at one point, and I think has held other positions. Mrs. Watterson still (as of a year ago anyway) brings autographed copies of Bill’s books to The Fireside Bookstore, which is on the lower right of the Triangle as it’s drawn on the back of Essential. It is to my knowledge the only place in the world where one may purchase autographed Watterson stuff.

Bill and I were classmates for 8 years as kids, touched base a few times when C&H got famous, and then haven’t communicated since. One of his old best friends from childhood (and one of mine), is depicted as Calvin’s pediatrician, and does in fact have a medical practice there.

32

tpayne: Thanks for that info. It’s cool you knew him.

On a trip to Cleveland a few years ago, I made a detour to visit Chagrin Falls and see the town triangle, just because of its connection to C&H. I had a soda from the Popcorn Shoppe and looked around the bookstore (it’s on the left side of the triangle, as seen in the drawing, isn’t it?). They told me they didn’t have any autographed books, that he had stopped providing them when some were sold on eBay for great sums. (Of course, that may have just been an excuse for being temporarily sold out.)

I am not overly impressed with celebrities. I’ve met quite a few, and I wouldn’t cross the street to spit on most TV or film stars. But while in Chagrin Falls I kept looking around, hoping to see Watterson. (From the few rare photos of him that are available, I thought it would probably be easy to spot him: he looks exactly like Calvin’s dad.) I paid special attention to people on bikes, since I gather he bikes a lot.

I have no idea what I would have said to him, perhaps just gushed like a star-struck teenager. Maybe I would have maintained a discreet distance out of respect for his privacy. But I would have liked to convey to him in person how much joy and happiness C&H has given me, and what a brilliant talent I think he is.

But I didn’t see him, or anyone like him.

33

Actually, IIRC from a self-portrait Watterson did in Comics Interview, I believe he looks like Calvin’s dad with a bushy moustache.

34

Yeah. It’s on North Franklin Street. Given that I lived on South Franklin Street:smack:, you’d think I’d know my right from my left.

35

Early on, there was a sequence in which Calvin’s Uncle Max (dad’s brother) visited. Watterson never said, but I think that was as close to a self-portrait as he ever got.

36

Wasn’t there some huge conspiracy raving about some huge animated project that people claimed Waterson was a part of?

Given the nature of the guy, I bet he’s just been taking a long breather, painting and enjoying his time on the planet.