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I can still remember choosing between the morning or evening paper based on which included _Calvin and Hobbes_, so it certainly worked to sell papers.

The boxed collection is wonderful, and one of my favourites.

For folks who want a bit more, there have been a couple of homages:

"Hobbes and Bacon": https://imgur.com/gallery/all-hobbes-bacon-by-pants-are-over... --- a bit too on-the-nose for my taste, which doesn't really add anything

"Calvin and Company" by DomNX, wherein Calvin and Susie have twins named after Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir --- art not fully realized/up to the task, and again, all a bit too obvious

There was also one simply heart-breaking one, where Calvin has cancer, gets a decrepit Hobbes out of storage, and gifts him to a troubled grandchild, but not finding it on searching....

The thing is, laughing at problems, while cathartic, isn't actually inspiring folks to actually understand/solve problems/make the world a better place.... I'm reminded of a comic from childhood where a child sees duck hunters as part of the reason why a forest is clearcut for a development, instead of the reason why such land is preserved (the Pa. State Game Commission manages over 1.5 million acres) or, maybe I'm just overly pessimistic this morning because of intractable problems where people choose wrongly, mostly through not understanding the problem/ignorance/lack of sympathy for others --- classic example, drivers in cars who get upset because following a cyclist causes them slow down on their way to a red light --- rather a shame that the strips featuring Calvin's father as a cyclist weren't didactic so as to show/discuss that sort of thing, rather than going for the laugh.



> For folks who want a bit more, there have been a couple of homages:

I believe the Zen Pencils one is one of the better ones... it's not Calvin and Hobbes, but rather about Watterson himself.

http://www.zenpencils.com/comic/128-bill-watterson-a-cartoon...


Much, but not all, of 'Phoebe and Her Unicorn' has just-enough echoes of C&H while doing its own thing.

https://www.gocomics.com/phoebe-and-her-unicorn


Thank you for that!

Ordering the first boxed set for my daughter's birthday next year.


This is so cute!


> There was also one simply heart-breaking one, where Calvin has cancer, gets a decrepit Hobbes out of storage, and gifts him to a troubled grandchild, but not finding it on searching....

Are you sure this was a comic? It's a story someone wrote, available on Scribd.


Maybe that's what I'm recalling.

This one?

https://www.scribd.com/document/848787362/Calvin


Probably. Can't see the full thing without jumping through hoops but it looks like it.


The weird thing is, I distinctly remember art to go with it.... maybe I was conflating the other homages which I found. Drat that uncertain organic memory.


When I used to read fiction, I would visualise the story as a movie. I don't know if there's a name for this effect. Sometimes I can rewind the story in my head as a movie. Maybe that's whats going on? I don't know.

Found a non-scribd link:

https://www.coachmyrna.org/blog/in-the-final-moments-of-his-...


Gene Wolfe wrote a story titled Petting Zoo, and here is the introduction he wrote for it:

> Petting Zoo is a favorite story of David Hartwell's, the master editor who edited this book and most of my others. Do you like dinosaurs? I loved them when I was a kid, and I've noticed that Hobbes' buddy Calvin loves them at least as much. Perhaps David feels the same way.

Petting Zoo can be read here:

https://archive.org/details/yearsbestsf30000unse/page/n9/mod...

Bill Watterson also guest-drew a few precious strips for Pearls Before Swine.

https://slate.com/culture/2014/06/bill-watterson-does-pearls...


It wounds me that I missed that latter, and that the commentary on it at:

https://toostupidtotravel.org/2014/06/07/ever-wished-that-ca...

is 404.


> The boxed collection is wonderful, and one of my favourites.

And it still holds up for kids of today. My son is a second gen Calvin and Hobbes kid.


I think the comic achieves something deeper than a lecture. The humor might reconnect us with a sense of awe we often lose as adults.


A couple of other comics with their own distinct personalities but an unmistakable C&H vibe:

Cul de Sac (https://www.gocomics.com/culdesac)

Wallace the Brave (https://www.gocomics.com/wallace-the-brave)


The comic "Frazz" is also often compared to Calvin and Hobbes (as if Frazz the janitor is an adult Calvin), there's a long section on the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frazz




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