Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Some tigers don't require immortal eyes to frame them. Some tigers are best viewed through the eyes of a six-year-old boy, especially if that six-year-old boy is a precociously incorrigible little guy like Calvin, and most especially if that imp and his tiger are given cartoon life by a man named Bill Watterson. Watterson created the popular comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes" in 1985 and drew days in the life of Calvin, Hobbes the tiger, and their compatriots and enemies, until retiring in 1996. The comic spawned twelve collections, including Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons (AotDMKMSG), published in 1992.

In what distant deeps or skies / Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire? / What the hand dare seize the fire?

Calvin, for the uninitiated, is named after the sixteenth-century theologian John Calvin who believed in predestination and who rather disdained (religious) conformity (to Rome) for conformity's sake. Hobbes, the stuffed tiger who Calvin sees as real, is named for Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth-century philosopher who was a rather pessimistic kind of guy and wrote a book (Leviathan) about a rather pessimistic kind of world. All of this is, of course, drastically oversimplified for the sake of conciseness. If you really want more information on Calvin and Hobbes, the dead guys, then try plugging their names and occupations into www.google.com - that search engine turns up tons of results.

Historical background addressed. Now, on to the fun stuff…

And what shoulder, and what art, / Could twist the sinews of thy heart,
And when thy heart began to beat, / What dread hand? and what dread feet?

As noted earlier, Calvin is a precocious six-year-old boy, and Hobbes is his stuffed tiger and best friend in the whole wide world. The two of them have lots of adventures together, some imaginary and some real, but all of them with a strange mix of the literal and the incredible - making for an almost Lucy and Ethel-esque series of events. The friends' foils are Calvin's parents, neighbor Susie Derkins, teacher Miss Wormwood, babysitter Rosalyn, and general nemesis-on-the-premises and bully-about-town, Moe. AotDMKMSG includes both Sunday and daily strips, all in glorious black and white, following the pair from summer, through space and the cretaceous period, and into a winter of film noir and superhero-dom. Each episode depicts the dauntless duo in yet another delightful dilemma of Calvin's own devising. Hijinks and hilarity ensue:

What the hammer? what the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp / Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

Calvin: (he and Hobbes perched precariously on a toboggan atop a hill of unknown dimension) If we go fast enough and pull up just as we hit those rocks, we might, if we're lucky, clear the ravine and have the ride of our lives!

Calvin: (still perched) On the other hand, if we miss, we'll probably spend our few remaining days hooked up to machines and intravenous fluids!

Calvin: (perching) It's either spectacular , unbelievable success, or crushing, hopeless defeat. There is no middle ground!

Calvin: (preaching to Hobbes, who is stretched feline style in front of the fire) Ok. There is a middle ground, but it's for sissy weasels.

When the stars threw down their spears, / And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Or sometimes it's just the sheer mundanity of the situation that is so amusing:

Calvin: looking at a paddle-ball (you know, one of those oval-shaped pieces of plywood with a handle, shaped something like a Ping-Pong paddle, only not quite so ergonomic, and with a hard rubber ball attached by a thin piece of elastic which has been stapled by an Imp of Ingenuity to the middle of the plywood paddle) with wide eyes.

Calvin: bok bok (smacking the paddle against the ball, or the ball against the paddle, perspective highly dependent, I suppose, upon whether one is a Cromwellian reformer or a Jacobite traditionalist) bok bok.

Calvin: paddle still (ball dangling silently, suspended from the limp and tired elastic thread which holds it, all too ephemerally, to the plywood) and looking with blank expression at the audience.

Calvin: I kind of resent the manufacturer's implicit assumption that this would amuse me.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye, / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

In Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons, Hobbes is often, as usual, the ego to Calvin's id, and the two of them together offer a wry commentary on life and the tribulations of childhood (and adulthood). Bill Watterson created in the pair a sort of deadpan doorway to what is, and a vivacious love affair with what could be. The comic was one of the most popular of its time, and this particular collection is well worth the investment. The often skewed view of the world is the perfect cure for those who are feeling a little too darkly symmetrical.




Note: Headers are William Blake's poem "Tyger, Tyger."


Recommended: Yes