The complete Calvin and Hobbes

Several years ago, one of my best friends in the entire world surprised me with a gift she knew I would love: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection. The three big hardbound books come in a nice slipcase and the whole shebang hefts in at about 22 pounds.

I already owned every C and H book in

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existence, but they were all very old and very ‘loved’ paperbacks, with bent and torn covers and missing pages. And most of them were buried somewhere under the clutter in my teenaged (at the time) daughter’s bedroom.

I saw on Amazon that 399 customers, as of the date of this blog post, have reviewed this C and H collection. Aside from a few knuckleheads complaining about the cost and the quality of the binding (they apparently expected it to be 24-carat gold embossed), the consensus is that the collection is fantastic, wonderful, pure Watterson bullion.

I concur.

I actually remember the day I first heard that Bill Watterson was retiring the strip. It’s indelibly stamped upon my usually poor memory. It was the mid-nineties, and I was devastated to learn that my favorite comic strip ever had just abruptly ended. Who was this monster, Bill Watterson, who had given us the marvelous world of Calvin, part childish impulsiveness, part adult word-usage and politics, with a generous pinch of wild imagination, and Hobbes, the steadfast friend, and the embodiment of Calvin’s conscience? Why was Watterson withdrawing from the comic strip universe—did he have an incurable disease?!

It took another decade for me to understand his motivation for quitting, and it only became clear to me after watching the sad decline of two of my favorite animated cartoons, The Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants. Each of them went through nearly the exact same metamorphosis. First the rough-hewn quality of the animation itself changed. Both Simpsons and Spongebob went from sketchy, quirky drawings with uneven outlines and home-made fills, to smooth, even, mass-produced textures (this can actually be seen in Watterson’s drawings, too, if you compare his earlier work with the later, but in Watterson’s case, it depicts his growth as an artist). Then the content changed, and not for the better. In order to keep their audiences entertained (or maybe they ran out of original ideas), the producers of Simpsons and Spongebob pushed the envelope—the shows got ruder—more and more outrageous with each episode. Simpsons was never intended for children, so its decline was sad, but shrug-offable. But suddenly Spongebob, who my young son adored, was no longer an innocent rube; he and his side-kick Patrick went from gross but lovable dopes to absolutely vile, violent, cross-dressing imbeciles.

Watterson saw the dismal future of his strip and he wasn’t going to let it happen. He also wouldn’t allow run-away merchandizing to “violate the spirit of the strip.” (I wanted to get one of those C and H vinyl decal stickers for the back window of my truck until I discovered they were unauthorized black-market products). For his dedication to the purity of his vision, I can only thank him.
If I haven’t made myself clear, Calvin and Hobbes is the best comic strip EVER. I can and do read it over and over again. The strip has been a huge influence on me from several standpoints, not the least of which was a not-so-subtle refinement of my sense of humor.

My almost seven-year-old son has just now absconded with volume one and is on the floor reading it avidly. I have for some years now considered him to be the embodiment of Calvin, but he’s asking me (every two and a half minutes) to clarify the big words and some of the less childish concepts for him. He’s laughing uproariously at the drawings, at the sassy things Calvin says, at the irony that he gets and even at the stuff he doesn’t understand. I believe I’ve just witnessed the birth of another Calvin and Hobbes fan.

(Review originally posted to Booksquawk)

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Truly a work of art. A gorgeous and hefty box set, beautifully presented. A must have for any Calvin and Hobbes fan.

For me, Calvin and Hobbes is the greatest comic strip ever. You may be sentimental about Peanuts but Calvin and Hobbes reaches hights, depths, humor, sadness and joy I never saw in another comic strip. It is as fresh today as it was when it first appeared as a daily strip.

I haven't had the time to go through the whole catalogue, but if your a fan of Calvin & Hobbes (C&H) you will love this. The foreword by Bill Watterson is incredibly insightful into how C&H became one of the most loveable, funny and honest comic strips. If you don't know C&H then your missing

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out.

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The dog gnawed on volume two and I thought, "will my husband miss the dog all that much?"

Watterson never drew a single C&H cartoon that I did not love. Not one in all those years. So naturally I had to own them all. After the dog episode they spent three years under my son's bed: one year at one

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residence and two in another. We tried softcovers, but they all disintegrated with constant wear from the children. And they were woefully incomplete.

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I mean. All the Calvin and Hobbes EVER in hard-bound, full-size spreads on beautiful paper. A bazillion stars.

Ok, the only reason I took off half a star is because of two reasons. Number one, the comics are split between three volumes. I'm an industrial mechanic who works in a factory lifting cast-iron pumps and wrenching on twelve inch flanges, and even I think these books are too heavy. They should've

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been split into five or six volumes. Secondly, I feel that some of Bill Watterson's "commentary track" should've been included. I'm not sure what the legality of this is, or maybe Bill didn't want it put in, but I suggest you get the C&H 10th Anniversary Book as an accompaniment to this box set. THAT ASIDE this is the end-all-be-all in terms of Calvin & Hobbes collections, so if you're a fan, you cannot do better than this.

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This is it. The definitive collection of Bill Watterson's genius. The ultimate time-waster, the end of all productivity, and the great addiction of addictions. A treasure to read and to own.

My father used to read the paper and the comics and save them for me. Sometimes it would be a few days before I got to them, so I would have a stack to get to read. Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side were our favorites.

Even though a few of the strips have aged and might not make sense to someone

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who is as old as I was when I first read them (phones with cords??? answering machines???) others were eerily prophetic with discussion of the environment, humanity's inhumanity, the grind of the work day and more. That and the sweet nostalgia of a nice memory I had shared with my father along with the hilarity and thoughtfulness of the strip make this one of my all-time favorites and something I'll go back and read again in a few years. I think I remember both my father and I almost getting choked up when we found out we were reading the last strip. But looking at this collection, I'm glad Watterson made that choice. He went out on a high note and kept to his ideals and really preserved the magic that was Calvin and Hobbes.

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An excellent compilation, although its sheer size makes it a bit unwieldy if you're just looking for something to hold onto your lap. The books are so long that the bindings on them are already starting to crack, as well. Worth buying for its authoritativeness, and it looks awful nice on the shelf,

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but don't throw out your older paperbacks, in other words.

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While we're all the poorer for the lack of Calvin and Hobbes in our newspapers, after reading the entire strip in a few gulps it becomes clearer why Watterson decided to end his masterpiece. He clearly had said what he intended, and towards the end the strip was on the verge of becoming, if not

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exactly predictable or a rehash of earlier themes, at least something short of his earlier work. It is often said that a true artist knows when to stop, and that certainly applies in this instance.

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Calvin and Hobbes, it's so great to have them all in one place in a nice leatherbound collection.

The mischivous little kid who drove his parents nuts with his best friend a stuffed tiger. Hobbes was usually the voice of reason and caution (though not always) and Calvin was generally 'do whatever

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comes to mind and worry about the consequences later. One of the best comic strips of all time.

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awesome complete collection of a great newspaper cartoon series. I love Calvin & Hobbes and the reproductions and artwork are terrific!

I can't say enough about this collection. Every strip Watterson did of Calvin and Hobbes... it's an awesome collection weighing in at about 25 pounds....

Ok, so you have to be a power lifter to hold these books up, but well worth the effort! I've been boycotting the daily comic strips since Calvin and Hobbes retired. So, I get my fix with this complete collection.

As true to human nature as anything ever created in any medium - literature, film, music, or art.

Bill Watterson. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. Andrews McMeel, 2005. 1440 pp. $150.00.

Arranged in chronological order and beautifully bound! Read again and again as though for the first time! Of my library of over one thousand volumes this is truly one of my favorites.

Bill Watterston's Calvin and Hobbes have become somewhat legendary. It always raises the question how right such a classification is. Browsing through this hefty 3 volume package you'll meet some lesser funny or stale jokes every now and then, but these are sparse moments. Watterston's C&H is

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something special; how can someone without any kids paint such a devastating real picture of a hyperactive six year old? It's great to see that the moral of all these tiny stories is often somewhat different than you expect, and always funny. At the end you'd wish you could be Stupendous Man, with a stomach of steel to endure the cookings of mom. How a totally dysfunctional family stays together and makes you laugh all the time. Legendary for a good reason.

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The first thing I ever really read, and in my opinion one of the smartest contributions to the literary cannon, even if it is a newspaper comic. Calvin's thoughts are just as poignant as anything by the likes of Shakespeare or Mark Twain, and he would probably have something to say as to whether or

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not that claim is an exaggeration.

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Calvin and Hobbes are just awesome characters. They make you laugh, cry and think. They are a testament to their creator Bill Watterson. His creations are timeless and reach both children and adults alike.

Whew...3150 strips, plus all the extras Watterson drew for the Complete collection. I enjoyed many of them when they were first published (didn't always have a paper subscription), and despite having this collection since it was published in 2005 - had it shipped to Korea, and nearly lost it due to

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a fire - I'm only now finally reading it in its entirety. There are a great many strips that made me laugh (and even think), and I'll say his final year after his second sabbatical was more brilliant than perfunctory.

Good stuff. Recommended for nostalgic fans and those who don't mind spending a bit of time enjoying the irreverence of Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes.

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My favorite comic strip of all time. I think the philisophical 6 year old and his stuffed tiger are hilarious.

OMG, I received this a few Christmas' ago and it made me super happy.

Hard-backed, probably a thousand pages each, and weighing about the same as the largest dictionary in a middle school library. This is every single strip in chronological order printed on excellent paper and including comments

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from Bill Watterson.

A simply beautiful collection of three volumes that come in a cardboard case. A bit awkward for any kind of regular reading, this is still a positively excellent collection.

Created for the true Calvin & Hobbes fan.

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Probably the greatest artist of newspaper cartoon strips ever. Ever. I know some folks will say that the best is Peanuts-creator Charles M. Schultz, but nobody has been able to match the decade of pure quality that Bill Watterson has created. The universe Calvin lives in (both in his mind and

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outside of his mind) is wide with possibilities and rich characters. The artwork is lush and beautiful, and the humor is both incisive and gut-laughter-inducing. I laughed at these comics when I was a kid and I laugh at them to this day. That is how wide of an age range can be affected by these tales of imagination and wonder. Genius.

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