Calvin and Hobbes

Slate ^ | 07 November 2005 | Chris Suellentrop

[Lorianne]

Ten years ago Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, left newspaper cartooning for painting. Since then, no new comic strip has matched the quality, longevity, or cultural dominance of Watterson's daily drawings about a boy and his tiger. There remain good strips, such as Jef Mallett's Frazz; acclaimed strips, such as Aaron McGruder's Boondocks; and venerable strips, such as Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury. But these days, the best-selling comics books tend to be either graphic novels or hardbound anthologies of the greats, such as Fantagraphics Books' The Complete Peanuts.

[Lorianne]

My favorite

[weegee]

Patrick McDonnell's Mutts is about the best "art" of comic strip today. It is deceptively simple.

He authored a book on Krazy Kat/George Herriman before he ever launched his strip.

Boondocks is a complete waste of the form and insulting to America. Nothing but racist hate under the guise of "political satire".

I believe that Bill Griffith's Zippy The Pinhead has been at the top of its run thes past 4 years as well.

[MilesVeritatis]

"Ten years ago Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, left newspaper cartooning for painting."

...and Calvin and Hobbes went touring America on the back of pickup trucks, relieving their bladders as they pleased. I do miss that comic stip.

[fat city]

When asked why he never licensed C & H commercially, Watterson said, "I greatly underestimated the market for Calvin pissing on a Ford logo".

[fat city]

Oh yeah- all that "pickup truck art" is black-marketed- Waterson has nothing to do with it.

[prisoner6]

C&H was OK...My fav though was....Gasoline Alley. IN fact I'm going to the comics website right now to catch up since my local paper hasn't carried the strip since the '90's.

Hey, what can I say, I'm old and just don't get a lot of these "new" comics.

prisoner6

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Peanuts invented the newspaper comic strip as we know it:....

I imagine that you agree with me that the author is way off base with that remark.

[fella]

I'm old enough to remember truly great daily comics like Pogo, Lil' Abner, Dick Tracy, Dondi and many more that I read in the old Washington Star when they kept the post honest.

[carumba]

And Larson's Far Side tickled my funny bone more than once.

[raynearhood]

Outland and Bloom County still make me laugh. I think I own the entire Calvin and Hobbes collection and just about everything with Opus and Bill the Cat in it.

[Tench_Coxe]

bump

[prisoner6]

COMPLETELY!

prisoner6

[truemiester]

C&H; the best

[Skooz]

Ditto.

My favorite, also.

[Keith in Iowa]

Prickly City & Mallard Fillmore are prety good...with a right-leaning slant too.

[Lokibob]

One of the C&H throw away lines refers to "the spaghetti incident" with no elaboration on what the incident was.

I have used that line in my life with great results. For Example:

Just before you introduce 2 people, say to the first "if he mentions "The Spaghetti Incident", remember, I had nothing to do with it." Then drop the subject and refuse to elaborate on it. It drives them crazy.

I hate to admit that C&H plays any role in my life, however.

[SJSAMPLE]

Somewhere out there (here) on the net, there is a large thesis that supposes that C&H is really a metaphor for another culturally significant twosome, but I can't remember who.

Does anybody recall this?

[TN4Liberty]

Oh, and "Apartment 3G"

Four panel soap operas.

The one I never understood was Nancy and Sluggo. Neither funny nor insightful, just... a dumb comic.