A Calvin and Hobbes Collection
by Bill Watterson
I lingered over this one because it\’s the last of my Calvin and Hobbes books until I find a few more volumes. More nostalgic stuff of childhood: decoding secret messages, imagining grand schemes. First half is a lot of christmas glory and social commentary (or criticism of his parents) presented in snowman artwork. Calvin\’s dad shows himself to be an avid cyclist and takes the family camping- which both Calvin and his mom resent. The kid for his part gets regular thrills careening down slopes on a sled in winter, in a red wagon during the warm months. I cracked a smile at how Susie the girl-next-door calmly thwarts his plans to clobber her with snowballs, water balloons or some other kind of ambush. Their attempts to \”play house\” together, shown in a different comic art style, are hilarious. The larger horizontal format does make this book awkward to handle in softcover and I don\’t know if it adds much to appreciating the artwork as there are rather wide page margins.
Rating: 3/5 175 pages, 1994
2 Responses
I gotta get off my butt and read all of Calvin & Hobbes already. My sister and BIL have a really nice box set of the complete series, and I've been meaning to borrow it from them for ages. I feel like this is a whole universe of pop culture references I have been missing out on!
Oh you must. It was among the best waaay back when I used to regularly read funnies in the newspaper. Even when they started to pall on me, just weren't amusing any more, I'd skip over the other strips to read Calvin and Hobbes.