by Rose Calder

Created on: February 10, 2010

When describing the phenomenon known as Calvin and Hobbes to others, it's inevitable that the word "beautiful" will be used at least once or twice.  Which is fair, seeing as Bill Watterson - the creator of Calvin and Hobbes - was well-aware that comics are, at the heart of it, a visual medium, a standard he not only met but raised the bar on to visually stunning heights.  But to limit the beauty of Calvin and Hobbes simply to the strength of Watterson's artistry is to do the strip and Watterson a great disservice.  If all the strip had going for it was that it was pretty, it is highly doubtful it would have been so intensely followed and ardently missed.  The beauty of Calvin and Hobbes lies not only in the colors, the lines and the rendering; it is far more complex than that.

On the surface of it, the strip chronicles the misadventures of a six-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger.  Considering the sheer amount of comic strips that detail the lives of children - Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, Fox Trot, etc. - this is hardly groundbreaking stuff, but the difference between Calvin and Hobbes and these strips is the depth of the characters.   Calvin -the titular six-year-old - may have seemed like nothing more than a misbegotten little brat at first, but as the strip progressed, Watterson showed us that Calvin had a deeply introspective side, something he only revealed when riding in his wagon or sledding downhill with his tiger.  Even the secondary characters - Calvin's parents; his classmate, Susie Derkins; even his sadistic babysitter, Rosalyn - were shown to be more than just a bunch of one-dimensional one-note characters.  By having a main and supporting cast of characters who had more than one side to them, the strip became that much more realistic, more life-like.

Speaking of life-like, there's the issue of Hobbes, the stuffed tiger.  Again, on the surface, Hobbes is a toy that comes to life only when Calvin is around, but Watterson didn't settle for simplistic explanations like that.  Instead, he deliberately kept the lines between the real and the imaginary blurred where Hobbes was concerned.  Yes, when other characters interacted with Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes was shown as nothing more than an inanimate toy, but that rarely stopped Calvin from continuing to converse (or fight) with Hobbes.  Hobbes would be shown being put in the washer or dryer, but would ask Calvin to shut the lid because he liked

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