There should be. 
Or a reality where Calvin and Hobbes are the only ones who are real.
Here is Robot Chicken’s take on that opinion.
Indeed.
I no longer remember clearly the original incident. But I remember very clearly going to my father one summer day and asking him how, the previous summer, the older kids (who weren’t any longer there to ask) had made the sawhorses actually move around like horses.
He said ‘they didn’t, you were all only pretending.’ I said ‘no! they really walked!’ And I remember being certain of it. – whether I was certain it was real at the time it was happening, or had only made it so in my memory, is another question. But I certainly believed it was something that could happen.
I read Calvin and Hobbes with a childlike mind, for the most part. And, as a child, (and often still, except that now I notice it) I routinely put myself in the place of male characters in stories. In retrospect, this probably had a good deal to do with them having all, or nearly all, the good parts; but I think many girls learn to do it. Boys, or at least white boys, don’t seem to be expected to learn this trick.
I would have been annoyed, especially as I noticed such things by the time the strip was running, if Susie had never come out on top. But she often did.
You may be bored by Susie, but I’m not.
Perhaps they had some Powder of Life.
Nope, boys also learn the trick of putting themselves in the place of the male characters. 
But yeah, give them the opportunity, and they’ll do the same thing. My mom was a 2nd-grade teacher for many years, and kept all manner of books in her classroom to try to get the kids engaged in reading. The most popular books, for both genders, were from the American Girls series.
Yes, I didn’t mean that I think boys are incapable of it – sorry if it looked like that! But there was, and to some extent still is, an impression among a lot of people that boys can only be interested in books with male protagonists; and boys are therefore often only given such books, instead of being expected to learn to identify with female characters. If this has become much less true, I’m in favor of the change.
Hobbes was great! I mean, he needs to be graded on a scale that is closer to “tiger” than to “human”, so he actually showed great restraint in not causing more injury and destruction than he does.
Well, it changed in Mom’s classroom. I don’t know if it’s changing in society as a whole.
And ref @Chronos just above.
My niece is a young Kindergarten teacher. And fiercely forward on all things racial and gender equality. I’ve been amazed to see how many books for young readers now are available with all characters non-white, telling culturally relevant tales of other people and other places than whitebread suburbia.
I’m a progressive forward-thinking egalitarian guy. I’m also 60+, so my idea of “forward” may be more retro than I give it credit for. I like to think I wear my privilege lightly and mindfully.
I’ve been impressed, and not in a good way, to my own unconscious reaction to reading a stack of these books to her kids and noticing how few white male characters are in them. “What about meeee??!?” wails up from my subconscious.
It’s a harsh lesson, but one worth experiencing.
And I suspect this is exactly the point. By exposing everybody, including (white) boys, to stories about all sorts of people, the (white) boys learn to imagine themselves in those other roles and not to simply assume they’re the default.
You’d think that on the surface but actually only sub-standard, china-made cardboard will work. Sturdy American-made cardboard produces wildly erratic results.
.
And, yes, I’m aware there is plenty of well made Study Chinese cardboard. ;~)
I’ve been impressed, and not in a good way, by my own realization of the extent to which I tend to automatically visualize everyone in books that I read as white – sometimes even when the book describes them otherwise, in cases in which racial issues aren’t a major plot point in the book.
While that may well be part of the point of giving such books to white boys, I would very much hope that the point of having them in the classroom isn’t only or primarily considered a matter of how it affects the perceptions of white boys. Having them not always be at the center includes having them not always be the primary reason for such decisions.
Touché!
Heh. My White second-grade daughter was disappointed in the Fellowship of the Rings movie. “None of the characters were how I imagined them!” she said. “Sam is supposed to be skinny and Black!”
It’s kind of cool how she doesn’t default to white characters in her imagination, and is something I try to emulate.
Thanks for this thread. Reminded me I need to re-read our collection!
Oh that is neat!
I even imagined the Orcs and Southrons as white. “Swarthy” to me just meant “about my color”; and the US Census forms tell me very clearly that I’m white, and I’ve only run into a couple of people who didn’t seem to think so when they saw me (in late summer.)
Sam is the gardener. She’s white and her default is that the servants are black? I read that as saying something about America.
Yep, Danae. She’s a tween with attitude to spare.
Hmm, maybe. I don’t think that’s the connection she’s making, but you might be right.