Is the Tiger Real?

I hate it when people try to diagnose Calvin with some mental disorder like ADHD or schizophrenia to provide explanation for his actions. It's convenient for us to put him in a box and label him as something because he operates outside the bounds of what is considered to be normal. He doesn't pay attention in class, so Mrs. Wormwood assumes he has a poor attention span, and that sending him the principals office will somehow fix that. But as we can see, Calvin has an exceptional attention span, just not for learning from a chalkboard. Calvin constructs elaborate fantasies and narratives in his mind in order to cope with the tedium of the life adults are forcing upon him, and seems to be able to occupy himself for an indefinite period with these stories.  The hostility that the adults around him have for his imagination and his quirkiness informs Calvin's view of them as oppressors, as we can see exemplified in this strip. I also think it's very telling to note ...

Dad further establishes himself as Calvin's foil in this strip. However, Calvin always seems to have a way to keep pushing his buttons. I really think that Dad could have found a better way to deal with Calvin and the dinner table here. Dismissing him to his room is really a pretty lazy parenting tactic, however, I understand how frustrating it could be to have your kid insult the meal you've prepared and paid for after a long day at work. Still, Dad could have engaged Calvin, and tried to teach him better manners without sending him away. Even a few strips ago, when Dad just didn't give Calvin an answer about what was for dinner, that seemed better than this. I also totally relate to Calvin here, as a kid I was fascinated with the idea that you could just dial and number and pizza would show up at your door. Imagine if you would have told me then that in a few years I would have that same thing happen just by pressing a few buttons on a screen or a keyboard, without...

There is a certain pleasure in building things just to knock them down. I remember participating in these kinds of activities as a child with legos, blocks, sandcastles, you name it. I think that many could view this process as negative, and reinforcing all the wrong ideals, but I would like to argue otherwise. We're taught that building things is good and tearing them down in bad. That may be the case for certain important institutions, like the Constitution, or certain structures, like your house, but even in these cases cracks will eventually start to show, and the choice will need to be made whether to try to preserve, or to start over. Is it worth it to keep re-siding the house and amending the document, or would it be more productive to drown the sandcastle, and use the wet grains to form something new, and improved? Everything is ephemeral, even us. This assertion may seem depressing, or nihilistic, but it doesn't have to be seen this way. Is the point of life t...

Hey woah a new character! We finally get to meet Mom after more than a week of the strip, as she's driving in the car with Calvin. So far she seems pretty similar in tone and disposition to Dad, except perhaps having slightly more patience with Calvin. Once again, I absolutely relate to Calvin here; when I was a kid I thought it would be soooo cool to drive the car. Actually, I would have been thrilled just to sit in the passenger seat, and not resigned to the back. However, I also know how these desires and fascinations fade with age, and how by the time I turned 16, I was so disenchanted with driving that I opted not to get my license for another 3 years. I didn't mourn the loss of my desire to drive, I just had other things I was more worried about as a 16-year old boy. There were new activities that I wanted to explore, and new experiences that I wanted to have. Today, as a 23-year old man-boy, I look back on my 16-year old fascinations with a similar happy nostalgia and...

Intimidation is the highest form of flattery, right? I'm pretty sure that's what they say. I can relate to Calvin's immediate choice of a flamethrower for his weapon; something about being a young boy makes you fascinated with fire and enamored with the potential that it could be thrown. I also now can totally relate to Hobbes' apprehension about Calvin having a flamethrower. Obviously, the person who most wants a flamethrower should be the last person to ever actually possess a flamethrower. Other than that I don't really have a whole lot to say about this strip. It seems like a continuation of this theme of monsters under the bed that Watterson keeping threading through the strips. Many of these strips so far are set at the point when Calvin is going to bed. I wonder what the fascination is around bedtime for Watterson, or maybe it's just the first theme that he picked to create a conducive story...

Our first Sunday strip, and one of my favorite ones at that! I think Watterson knocks it out of the park with these first colored panels; the humor is on point, we get to see him display his artistry with the Dad-monster, and there are definitely some deeper themes we can pick up on.  First of all, I love that Calvin has Hobbes for solidarity and comfort in these moments of fear and uncertainty when the lights go out at bedtime. I also admire Calvin for his ability to craft a plan under a stressful situation, and to adapt it to a sudden change in the landscape (monster in the hallway instead of in the dresser). I think Watterson's choices in the last two panels of the strip are excellent. In the penultimate panel, drawing Dad as a corpulent green wide-mawed stalk-eyed creature totally encapsulates what Calvin was probably seeing in that instant when the door swung open unexpectedly. In moments of panic and terror, our perceptions change, and the way we view the world can b...

It's interesting that we haven't met Mom yet, its just Dad, even though they're around the dinner table. I don't know if Watterson simply wanted to try out a couple characters before throwing more at the reader, or if he just wasn't set on Mom being present. There's not a whole lot going on in this strip; it solely consists of an interaction between Calvin and Dad about dinner. Calvin is obviously dubious about the delectability of dinner, and Dad doesn't dissuade him decently. I can totally relate to Calvin in this strip; I wasn't the pickiest eater as a kid, but I certainly wasn't jumping at the opportunity to try new things.  I also feel that Dad's method here is all wrong. Obviously, Calvin is suspicious of the meal, as he's never had it before. His fear seems to lie in the unknown of how it is going to taste, as he tries to pin down the identity of the mush by asking his Dad. He wants an answer from Dad so that he feels a little...

Well, well, well. Another scene in Calvin's bedroom with just Calvin, Hobbes, and Dad. One thing that I immediately noticed about this strip is that the pattern of Hobbes only appearing as a stuffed animal when he's out of Calvin's eye-line is broken. In both the first and third panels we see that while Calvin may not be looking directly at Hobbes, he is at least in his field of view. In addition, in the third panel, we see Calvin is looking directly away from Hobbes, yet Hobbes still appears as a real tiger. It addition, we see Hobbes interacting with someone other than Calvin for the first time, as he calls to Dad after he says goodnight. The line between the two worlds of Calvin's Hobbes and Dad's Hobbes seems to be blurring more. That being said, Dad obviously remains unconvinced, as his facial expression in panel three suggests his tone is probably sarcastic. We also see here the first glimpse of Hobbes becoming a more developed character, apart from just ...

Alright, scrap the formula used in the last post, I think I like the freeform paragraphs better. Maybe I'll go back to it at some point. In this strip we get to see Calvin's teacher (Mrs. Wormwood) for the first time, who is actually very reasonable in this instance. She seems to understand that it's important to let Calvin keep imagining that Hobbes is real, despite her inability to see him as anything more than a stuffed animal. We also see Hobbes appearing as a stuffed animal only when Calvin is looking away from him, which is a pattern that was developed in yesterdays strip. I don't really have much to say about the last two panels, as I think they basically just consist of the joke that Hobbes is advising Calvin on math problems incorrectly. On the other hand, I'm fascinated by the first panel. Calvin has apparently just finished displaying the tiger that he caught with a tuna-fish-sandwich-trap for show and tell. I wonder how the class saw Hobbes? Perhaps...

I'm going to try to follow a format today that I may end up using for the long-haul, or that I may discard on the wayside. First I'm going to go through a description of the events in the strip. Then I'm going to talk through some of the metaphors and deconstruct any deeper meaning that I can find. Finally, I'm going to try to relate this particular strip to my day somehow. Okay, sounds good. Description: 1st Panel: Dad enters Calvin's bedroom and questions him about the excessive noise. This is the first panel in the entire anthology where we see Hobbes drawn as a stuffed animal, and not a real tiger.  2nd Panel: Calvin blames Hobbes for the noise, insisting that it was Hobbes and not him that was jumping on the bed. Hobbes is again drawn as a stuffed animal. 3rd Panel: Just Dad in this one. Dad is mad. Dad points his finger (presumably at Hobbes) and tells Calvin that it was not Hobbes that is jumping on the bed, because Hobbes is a stuffed tiger to him,...

Well, we don't really get the resolution about Hobbes' "realness" that I was hoping for yesterday in this strip, I guess we'll just have to keep waiting. Once again, in this strip we see the dichotomy between Calvin's world and his Dad's world. *Quick side note, from now on I'm just going to refer to Calvin's father as Dad, because writing Calvin's Dad would get old very fast, and I don't feel like using the possessive perspective is always going to lend itself to the interpretation I aspire to do. Okay, resume*. Dad obviously has important things to be doing and doesn't want to be repeatedly bothered by Calvin's antics. However, after a few times looking over this strip, I wonder if the "Sheesh" in the third panel isn't a bit sarcastic. Maybe Dad isn't actually annoyed with Calvin, he's just basically doing a bit, pretending to be frustrated by Calvin's interruptions. Judging by Dad's attire, the ...

So beginnings I guess is the theme of today. This is the first strip of Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson on November 18th, 1985. Today was also the first day of a new semester of graduate school for me, as I continue my candidacy as a Masters student in Civil Engineering. This is also the first semester that I'm exclusively a graduate student, as I finished my last undergraduate courses in December and officially graduated with a Bachelors of Environmental Engineering. I've read this strip many, many times, and honestly its usually one I cruise past, not giving it a second glance. It's certainly not very visually evocative like some of Watterson's later Sunday panels, and it's really just an introduction to characters that I already know intimately. Looking at this now, though, I'm struck by how effective of an introduction it is to three of the main characters in the series. Calvin's Dad is willing to entertain Calvin's game, but is overtly cynic...

Well, this is something that I've thought of doing for a while. Calvin and Hobbes was one of the first pieces of art that I really connected to as a kid. I mean, I liked  Harry Potter and I enjoyed Star Wars, but I never derived very much meaning from them. They were entertaining, had intriguing stories, taught some lessons, and maybe even contained a modicum of commentary on the human condition . I had been exposed to capital-a Art  before, and knew enough about the world to understand that adults thought that Art  was important and valuable. I didn't really get it, but there was also a lot I didn't get about the adult-world, like why they liked just sitting around talking so much, and why they drank things that smelled like something I would find under the sink. I knew that they put Art in museums so that adults could go look at it and...well supposedly they would get something out of it?  At school, I learned how the world worked by teachers telling me how it wo...