Calvin & Hobbes

The greatest comic strip ever! In case you have been living under a rock all your life, Calvin and Hobbes was a syndicated - meaning it appeared in newspapers, magazines and websites - daily comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Watterson from 1985 to 1995. Bill Watterson, an American cartoonist, was born in 1958 in Washington D.C and graduated from the George Washington University Law School to become a patent attorney in 1960. I suppose he later realised his life calling - to be a cartoonist.

I guess you could say that Bill Watterson was a one hit wonder, since Calvin and Hobbes was the only cartoon strip he was known for. But man, what a hit it was! Calvin and Hobbes follows the adventures of the hilariously  precocious six-year-old boy named Calvin and his cynical stuffed/real life tiger named Hobbes. To Calvin, Hobbes is a real life, living breathing tiger. To all of the other characters in the comic, Hobbes is just a stuffed animal.



After Harry Potter, Calvin and Hobbes has been my security blanket, my comforter for years. When I'm sad or mad, I read Calvin and Hobbes and the sarcasm and elegant humor calms me down. And what's so great about the comic is that while the main characters, Calvin and Hobbes, are very funny, the supporting characters, like Calvin's parents, the babysitter Rosalyn and little Suzie Derkins, are all just as enjoyable.

I first got into Calvin and Hobbes at school. They were all in french so I wasn't to interested but I read a few anyway. That got me curious because I new they were really an English comic, so I went to the library and took out a few of these very old, beat-up books full of Calvin and Hobbes comics. Then I really started to get into them. My sister and I started cherishing the books, reading them bit by bit, not all at once because we new that there weren't that many and we didn't want it to be over to soon. For Christmas we received this huge Calvin and Hobbes box set with three enormous volumes. They each weighed, like, three tons and were impossible to get up a flight of stairs. We actually had to separate them to get them into my room! 

What can I say - the Calvin and Hobbes comics are pretty darn amazing. They're sweet, simple, sarcastic and in a odd sort of humorous way, heartwarming. I'd recommend them to anyone who can appreciate sophisticated humor and a cartoon well done. They are a true treat.