How many days lie between November 18, 1985, the day Universal Features sneaked one of the newer daily strips on its roster into about three dozen newspapers, and, picking a date at random, June 10, 1990, by which time the aforementioned strip had surely stolen the minds and hearts of millions of readers while they had been reading the funnies?

There exist two schools of thought regarding the proper method of correctly elucidating the answer to such complex matters of temporalomathological phenomena. Not unsurprisingly, each method claims superiority over the other.

The Hobbsian Way distrusts human methods, and, shunning all mathematical constructs devised by humanity to date, attempts to solve the quandary at hand by asking an entirely novel question thusly: “How many days are left before another politician of any affiliation anywhere on this world speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or something smelling like that?” Hobbsian adherents then attempt to discern the answer through transcendental starvation, for Mankind is unable to think or pay anything any mind on a full stomach due to faulty genetic wiring, and this clearly is a matter of mind over matter, so a full mind is all that matters.

Followers of the Calvinist Principle, believing in the predetermination of our tracks through life, will simply lean over toward the girl on the next seat with studied nonchalance to reassure the educational surveillance unit at the front of the room that no impure thoughts of deceit and perfidy rest in their minds, and ask her for the answer. For they were predestined to do so, mind you. Due to Fate, that girl usually happens to be one Susannah Derkins, and the answer these devotees of Calvinism receive is: “A billion.”

This response presents two unusual aspects. Firstly, Susie claimed the same answer for 5+12. Secondly, this is the same answer reached by the advocates of the Hobbsian Way.

Therefore, having reached the same answer by two mutually exclusive methods, we conclude that it must be correct. But having ascertained the answer to the conundrum originally posed, one falls into the gravitational grasp of relativistic effects. For Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, those four and a half years, filled with detrimental daily deadlines and constant contractual quarrels, may have seemed like one billion days. But for me, those same four and a half years can pass by during the course of one long lazy afternoon spent lying on my tummy, for that’s how long it takes me to read the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips published during those years. It seems that a billion days is in the eyes of the beholder. . .

. . .and as the cold bandage goes, beauty is also in the eye of the beholder. And, recalling the immortelle words of Great Poet John Keats from Ode to a Grecian Sideburn (written in the mammary of his good friend Percival Abyss Sherry from the lambda-kappa-mu fraternity): Truth is Beauty, Beauty Truth. Therefore, if we can assume beauty to be case insensitive, we have the Truth. . .

. . . and the Truth, my feathered fine friends, is that I’m at the Electric Banana in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. I’ve had. . . let’s see. . . three, and then two more. . . and then two each from-oh! let’s just say I’ve had a billion drinks because that’s what my head feels like right now. The noise from the band on the stage, The Abdominal Pop, I believe, they probably have songs about slipped discs. . . not that I’m listening to the lyrics, and I’m not listening to the lyrics because I’m listening to Bill Watterson, have been listening to him for a while now¹. . .

t-þoo (t): So tell me, what happened here? I consider this period to be the start of your golden period, where ideas just seemed to flow neatly, many ideas! You’ve got brilliant character balance, hilarious conversations, your drawings would continue to get better but they were already astounding. . . all of a sudden you became a lean mean cartooning machine! Did you get a mistress down in where was it, New Meshico, scuse me, New Mehisco?
Bill Watterson (B): Hrm, I think you’ve probably had a bit too much to drink.
First of all, I don’t know if your assessment is entirely correct. Some may say that my so-called ‘golden age’ started later, some say it started earlier, some say all of my Calvin and Hobbes career was a ‘golden age,’ and the rest say I never should have been allowed to cartoon.
t: They oughta be shot!
B: Put down that bottle. . . thank you.
Maybe the idea of critical mass applies to cartoonists. If a moderately successful strip hangs around for a certain amount of time in the industry, perhaps its creator has learned a thing or two. Maybe the relentless pressure of working under constant short deadlines makes them better at generating and sorting through ideas for the best.
t: You’ve got two brilliant storylines within the first forty pages here! They each run for three weeks. In one of them, a Get Rid Of Slimy GirlS plan to attack Susie turns tragic when Susie kidnaps Hobbes in retaliation for Calvin kidnapping her doll Binky Betsy. It’s wonderful how the upper hand switches back and forth between characters. And Calvin and Hobbes get into another fight— I love the banter in those strips!
B: Yes, I like the strips where their personalities rub on each other.
t: And the other story features Calvin, homework, the mythical noodle incident, his parents trying to teach him the value of money, a bet with Susie, and Spaceman Spiff! Spaceman Spiff! O o o! I like how you never tell the readers what in the world the noodle incident’s all about—letting our imaginations work overtime to probably blow it all out of proportion in our minds. Kind of like Tom Wolfe and his couple doing ‘that thing with the cup.’
B: Thing with the cup?
t: Go read your Wolfe! Spaceman Spiff! He’s probably my favorite of all of Calvin’s alter egos! Discuss please!
B: Spiff is sort of a parody of overblown space dramas like Flash Gordon. He actually started as a small strip I drew for a high school German class, Raumfahrer Rolf. During my college years, he showed up as Spaceman Mort, but I discontinued the project, deciding I had better ways to burn my college sentence.
Spaceman Spiff was actually my first strip submission to the syndicates. A loudmouth like Calvin, he trawled through space with a feeble-minded assistant named Fragile, cigar clamped firmly to mouth. This idea was mercifully axed!
I’ve always enjoyed drawing Spiff panels, because they allowed me to often escape the constraints of the strip, specially in the early days. I put in a lot of detail in coloring the Spiff Sunday stories, but even in the daily strips, I use strange background evoking the strange southern Utah landscape, so reminiscent of Krazy Kat. . .

t: Aha! Let’s talk influences. Peanuts, Pogo, & Krazy Kat. When I look at your work, I can see influences from the first two, but since I’ve yet to view the last. . .
B: Do pick up a George Herriman collection as soon as you can.
t: Well, tell me if I’ve figured out what you extracted from the first two. Yea, I’m sober again.
From Peanuts, I think you took its unique perspective, a comic that looks at life from the eyes of its tiny characters. Outsiders were only hinted at—they never entered the Peanuts world. I see you struggling slightly to reach this level in your earliest books. . . you showed some external characters for a few strips and then they disappeared, like the barber or the substitute teacher. It seemed like you were casting about for balance.
B: Yeah, I eventually realized that the appeal of the strip lies in Calvin’s unique perception of this world and eliminated storylines told from the perspective of characters unfamiliar to Calvin’s milieu. In a limited attempt at a defense, I would say that those were early days, and I experimented with ideas, and there have always been ideas that just didn’t work out in the long run.
But, you know, Peanuts does offer more than a unique perspective. It shows that comics can be so much more than talking heads or men in tights saving women in tighter tights. Schulz showed that comics could touch our lives—remember the security blanket? And Snoopy! With his frequent flights of fancy, he could’ve been a partial blueprint, the understudy, for Calvin.
t: Okayyyy, right. . . then we have Pogo. You’ve talked about the amazing dynamism of the strip, the use of exciting visual enhancements and the dense word play. But one item I find Calvin & Hobbes taking from Kelly is the idea that the daily comics can comment on issues on the real world. I mean, yea, we’ve got Trudeau with Doonesbury, but most of the comic strips when you started out tended to stay in safe territory, never running the risk of offending sensibilities.
B: Walt Kelly often took on the political tomfoolery that played out during his time with the surgeonly skill of a satirist. His skewering of McCarthy still remains an uproariously satisfying trip.
t: And though I can’t recall any running commentaries from you on the events going on around you during your time, you did draw some sharp criticisms of, say, the Cold War. In an early Sunday strip, where Calvin and Hobbes play at being the ‘American defender of liberty and democracy’ and the ‘godless communist oppressor,’ we see you in a preachy mode. But the story, simple as it was, revealed the absurdity of the situation by shining the light of logic on the conflict.
B: Sometimes I felt that as a cartoonist, I had to comment. We, as a group, don’t necessarily have to shun events surrounding us. But Kelly didn’t have a monopoly on cartoon statements of societal relevance. If you look through Schulz’s Peanuts Jubilee, you’ll find that Peanuts also induced readers to think about current events and issues being discussed during its day.
Pogo also contains an infectious sense of play, of exploration for its own sake. Kelly shunned the strait and narrow path when he could get from Point A to B while passing through all sorts of tangents. I find play vitally important to the creative process—you need to keep searching for fresh perspectives, or you run the risk of stagnation.
This sense of play also permeates Herriman’s beautifully austere worlds. You said you haven’t seen much of his work. Oh you don’t know then what you’re still missing! I believe Krazy Kat contains the essence of cartoon art.

t: Okay. . . back to the book. Individual strips now. There’s the penultimate Sunday strip in the book, which shows Calvin going up to Susie with a bucket full of water as part of a Calvinball punishment. I find Calvin’s expression as he asks Susie to soak him absolutely priceless! It plays on the twisted relationship between Calvin and Susie, and demonstrates the extent to which Calvinball will go. The strip brings back bittersweet memories since I used it during a semi-public apology. . . but I don’t want to go there. Explain Calvinball.
B: It evolved as I better understood my main characters. In the early days, I showed Calvin trying to play normal games, but with him, things never went as they normally do in sports, and I realized that Calvinball is the essence of Calvin’s world. He just cannot play anything else.
t: He must be wired that way.
This book also contains what’s probably my favorite Sunday strip, the one where Calvin and Hobbes are getting ready for bed, and Calvin wonders why people dream. I can’t express why I like it so much, but I do.
B: Ahh, yes . . . I remember that one. Hobbes says that maybe it’s so friends meet each other in their dreams.
t: Right! And then they go to sleep with the promise to meet each other in a few minutes, and the last panel shows them smiling in their sleep. It evokes a nostalgic, cozy, oh I don’t know, secure feeling. . . and I think you really set that up with the colors you used. It’s beautiful. . .
B: Thank you. I got the idea for that strip after Stripe died. . .

t: Oh, I didn’t realize. . .
B: It’s been a while. I’m over it.
t: Okay. There’s the daily strip that shows Calvin’s parents in the first panel, dad standing. She’s sitting reading a book. He asks her if she has seen his glasses. Calvin walks in with his hair slicked down, neatly combed, wearing the glasses. He addresses his dad in the third panel: “Calvin, go do something you hate! Being miserable builds character!” In the final panel his dad comments: “Okay, the voice was a little funny, but that’s still one darn sarcastic kid we’re raising.” His mother is rolling around on the floor laughing her butt off. I like to think that his parents find tiny moments like that somewhat makes up for the reality of dealing with Calvin. Was that a family memory?
B: Well, I can’t quite rec-

At this point the band launched into another ambitious project, this time featuring the band members emerging from pods in the middle of the stage. The bassist’s pod got stuck, and the crew tried everything while he kept playing inside his pod—hammers, oxyacetylene torches. Finding it slightly humorous, we watched through the entire song. His pod opened right at the end of the song, he exited, but ten couldn’t re-enter it at the end of the song.

t: Hilarious! I wonder if they rehearsed it that way. . . ah well, time marches on. Let’s move on to the exciting time of the Sunday format change. . .

part 3 of 5
¹ Continued from
http://www.epinions.com/content_47052066436

Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons
Collects daily strips from 6/11/90 – 6/16/90, 6/18/90 – 6/23/90, 7/1/90, 7/8/90 – 7/14/90, 7/16/90 – 4/10/91

trivia: Up until this period, the book collections had been black and white. The treasuries collected successive pairs of books and printed the Sundays in color. Around this time, Watterson successfully negotiated a larger Sunday format. Future books appeared in oversize format with color Sundays. Since ADMKMSG would’ve been the first collection used for a new treasury collection, the Sunday strips from the book haven’t yet appeared in color—though some of the strips show up in the tenth anniversary book.

Resources

Watterson, Bill       The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book
Watterson, Bill       Calvin and Hobbes Sunday Pages 1985-1995
Calvin and Hobbes Resurrection
http://www.alloftheabove.net/cahr/index.html
Calvin and Hobbes Bibliography
http://members.tripod.com/~cabbresson/ch_bibliography.htm

t-edication

There have been many, many positive moments throughout my son's life. . . in purely selfish terms, I have gained so much through having known him for the last ten years. We were relaxing last night after a hectic Christmas vacation and he was telling me how much he had enjoyed our time off from school and the chance to reconnect as a family. He told me, "Mom, I'll bet all the babies in Heaven were fighting over who would get you for a mom. And I got you!!"
For DLC, a.k.a. Momlady.

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jaxmom28
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11.08.01, 11.16-9
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