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On December 31, when Calvin and Hobbes strolled off into the final frame of their Sunday comic, it misted more eyes than any finale since Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains stepped off the tarmac in Casablanca. After 10 years and more than 3,000 strips, artist Bill Watterson was sending his alter egos--the prickly and highly original six-year-old Calvin and his cerebrally sardonic stuffed tiger--into "comic heaven."
But it doesn't have to be the end of a beautiful friendship. There's Treasure Everywhere: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection, the fifth collection of Calvin and Hobbes strips, and Watterson's own annotated The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book (Andrews and McMeel, $14.95, 0-8362-0438-7), which details the characters' origins and evolution as well as his own, are timely doses of Calvinism for the millions of bereft fans.
Calvin, a morally recalcitrant cross between Harold of the purple crayon and Dennis the Menace, and Hobbes, his devoted but independent-minded sidekick, take a dim view of adult conformity. They debate altruism and the nature of truth; wage guerrilla war on the tyrannical school system; water-bomb girls; transform themselves into Tyrannasauri, Spaceman Spiff and Stupendous Man; crash-sled down hills and battle killer bikes; invent secret codes and incomprehensible sports; ambush the babysitter, drive his parents to distraction and puzzle over the illogic of life. No wonder Calvin became the baby boomers' comic anti-hero.
The Tenth Anniversary Book (published last fall), There's Treasure Everywhere (due out this month), and the earlier collections (which include among others The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes, The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes, and The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book) are all published by Andrews and McMeel.
--Eve Zibart
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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