Why is Bill Watterson’s ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ still so great?

When I was seven or eight my babysitter asked me what my favorite book was. I ran into my parents’ study and found it — sci fi writer Isaac Asimov’s The Robots of Dawn. It had an otherworldly cover with a green metal man in a dramatic pose. It must’ve been five hundred pages.

The babysitter looked at me skeptically. “This is your favorite book?” she asked. I said it was. I’d never read it. It was simply the biggest book I could find.

Even at that early age I wanted to show off my intelligence. I would perch over an enormous philosophy tome in my room — door open, of course, in case anyone wanted to spy. The idea of reading these big books was wonderful. I would be the smartest, most well-read fourth grade you ever met. The actual reading of them was another matter. I could get through a paragraph, maybe even two. But they were so boring.

I was really reading Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have all the books. I didn’t just read them — I read them endlessly. I carried them around with me, took them to school, shredded the binding from overuse, and showed everyone my favorite pages.

I loved them. The absurdity of a six year old with an expansive vocabulary. The threat of Hobbes’ insuppressible animal nature. The thrill of Calvinball — a game where you make up convoluted rules as you go. Calvin’s deadpan parents — furious, frantic, sarcastic, and loving. They did their best. Watterson managed to reflect life itself in a series of surreal, over-the-top, hilarious vignettes.

Still when I was asked for my favorite book, I brought The Robots of Dawn. Novels felt higher-brow than comics. There’s a Calvin and Hobbes strip that addresses this very idea. Hobbes examines artwork on the wall as Calvin declares, “A painting. Moving. Spiritually enriching. Sublime. …‘High’ art!. Then they sit in front of a newspaper and Calvin goes on, “The comic strip. Vapid. Juvenile. Commercial hack work. …‘Low’ art.” At the time I would’ve agreed with Calvin.

Now I see Bill Watterson’s brilliance more clearly. C & H ran daily from 1985 to 1995 — over three thousand strips. Yet it was never tired or stale. Watterson said in a Mental Floss interview from 2013: “Repetition is the death of magic.” Somehow he conjured meaning from ink day after day. In its run, Calvin and his stuffed tiger friend addressed real issues: the environment, death, boredom, cruelty, denial, pettiness, and friendship. Watterson never shied away from darkness or negativity.

In a particularly poignant strip, Calvin and Hobbes wait for the school bus in the rain. Calvin describes a wonderful dream he had: flying over everyone, laughing as he made “huge loops across the sky!” Now it’s pouring, Calvin has to go to school, and he forgot his lunch. He says, “Tuesdays don’t start much worse than this.” This is a brutal moment, but relatable. Watterson doesn’t sugarcoat it: sometimes life sucks.

Calvin and Hobbes is not ‘high’ art, nor ‘low’ art. It reaches beyond both. Like no other comic I’ve read, Watterson’s characters feel alive. They are real people — messy, frustrating, clever, surprising, contradictory, spiritual, needy. To me, Watterson’s work is about shedding prejudices. In four panels, Watterson breaks open our mental boxes.

How did he do it? In our age of entrepreneurship, we have to ask. What was Watterson’s secret? In another interview (from 2015, originally in Exploring Calvin and Hobbes), Watterson answers this question.

As for why it continues to speak to people, I don’t really know. I always tried to make the strip entertaining on several levels, so one aspect might appeal even if others don’t. But really, I was writing to amuse Melissa (my wife) and myself. That’s as far as I understand.

Watterson wrote to amuse himself and his wife. The whole thing was one big game of Calvinball. May we all be so lucky: to entertain ourselves, and the people we love. We can follow our hearts, instead of trying to impress other people.

I still haven’t read The Robots of Dawn.

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