Weirdos from Another Planet!
I picked up the Complete Calvin & Hobbes today. It’s a mammoth, three volume tome, and probably the heaviest book I now own. A beautiful collection. Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes was the first newspaper strip that really made me stand up and notice it as a valid artform. (There are other strips that were running simultaneously that I now regard similarly, but not at the time.) The strip ran through the better part of my childhood, from `85-95. I related to Calvin. He was an outcast from normal society. Watterson showed that it was OK to be different, and to just be yourself. The strip also strengthened my bonds with friends. I remember phone calls that started with discussion of the latest strip, like we were talking about something on TV around the watercooler at an office. Watterson ended Calvin & Hobbes at the height of its popularity. My friends and I were in high school and all becoming our own individual selves then. We were saddened at the loss, but helped each other cope. It’s odd to say, but I felt like less of an outsider. It was hardly the only catalyst, but it helped bridge borders. It’s unique in that way among the sea of crappy strips of my generation. I look forward to rereading it and remembering those times. (Nostalgia?! I’m officially old!)
