Recurring themes in Calvin and Hobbes
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There are several repeating themes in Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, a few involving Calvin's real life, and many stemming from his incredible imagination. Some of the latter are clearly flights of fancy, while others, like Hobbes, are of an apparently dual nature and don't quite work when presumed real or unreal.
[edit] G.R.O.S.S.
G.R.O.S.S. is Calvin's anti-girl secret club. The name is an acronym that stands for Get Rid Of Slimy girlS (Calvin admits "slimy girls" is a bit redundant as—of course—all girls are slimy, "but otherwise it doesn't spell anything"). Based in a treehouse (with occasional emergency meetings inside a cardboard box), the main objective of G.R.O.S.S. is to exclude girls, chiefly Calvin's neighbor Susie Derkins. Calvin and Hobbes are its only members, and wear newspaper chapeaux during meetings. Since Hobbes can climb the tree to their fort without the rope, he gets to create the password, often a particularly long ode to tigers, which annoys Calvin to no end. Calvin and Hobbes spend most of their time in the club reworking its constitution and arguing about their bureaucratic roles and titles. Because the club exists specifically to harass girls, they sometimes plan missions to do so. After a mission they award themselves medals and promotions, regardless of their success. Calvin is G.R.O.S.S.'s "Supreme Dictator for Life", and Hobbes is "President and First Tiger." They also dub themselves different various ranks for the appropriate situation (and frequently switch roles between their respective ranks/characters in a situation), including Dictator-for-Life (Calvin), Field Scout (Calvin), and First Tiger (Hobbes). Their anthem is generally unknown, but begins: "Oh Grohoooss! Best Club in the Cosmos." Calvin will sing the soprano part until his voice changes.[1]
[edit] Cardboard boxes
Over the years Calvin has had quite a few adventures involving corrugated cardboard boxes, which he adapts for many different uses. His inventions include the Transmogrifier, a flying time machine, the Duplicator, and a "Cerebral Enhance-o-tron".
Building the Transmogrifier is accomplished by turning a cardboard box upside-down, attaching an arrow to the side and writing a list of choices on the box. (To turn into an animal not stated on the box, just write the name of the animal on the remaining space.) Upon turning the arrow to a particular choice and pushing a button, the transmogrifier instantaneously rearranges the subject's "chemical configuration" (accompanied by a loud zap). Calvin makes his first foray into the world of transmogrification when he temporarily turns himself into a tiger, but he finds the experience disappointing. Calvin re-uses some of this technology when he converts an ordinary water gun into a portable transmogrifier gun, a device which saves his life when he finds himself falling to earth after a balloon carries him high into the sky.
The Duplicator was also made from a cardboard box, except this time it was turned on its side. The "Zap" heard after a person was successfully transmogrified was replaced with a "Boink", coining the title of one of the collections after Hobbes remarks "Scientific progress goes 'boink'?" Calvin intended to clone himself and let the clone do his work for him. However, the clone, being just like Calvin, refuses to do any work. The clone then uses the Duplicator to make five more clones, which proceed to run off and get Calvin into even more trouble. To finally get rid of them, Calvin tricked them into hiding under the Duplicator box, which he then converted into the Transmogrifier and used to transmogrify the clones into worms. He dug a hole in the backyard and released them there.
Calvin tried this new technology again but this time using an ethicator. He made this copy 'good' resulting in Susie, his parents, and Miss Wormwood realizing something was different about him. Receiving negative comments about 'him' from Susie made the Calvin clone angry. The clone eventually started to fight him but couldn't throw a single punch. Since he had an evil thought, he instantaneously evaporated. This nice manifestation of him constantly got jokes about "If you are a duplicate of Calvin's good side, wouldn't you be a lot smaller?"
The Time Machine was made from the same box, this time right-side up. Passengers climb into the open top, and must be wearing protective goggles while in time-warp. Calvin first intends to travel to the future and obtain future technology which he could use to become rich in the present time. Unfortunately, he turns the time machine the wrong way and ends up in prehistoric times. Later on, he returns to prehistoric times to take photographs of the dinosaurs, but his parents only see them as pictures of plastic dinosaur figures in the backyard. Calvin used the time machine once more to attempt to avoid a creative writing assignment. He planned to travel to the near future, when the paper was already done (not realizing that this would still require him to write it), and return to the present with the finished paper. While he argued with his future selves about who would write the paper, Hobbes and his future self wrote a story ridiculing Calvin's efforts. Calvin turned it in without reading it first, and was infuriated upon learning of the subject matter, despite it earning an A+ grade.
A later story involved Calvin developing a "cerebral enhance-o-tron" to help him write a school paper. He again utilizes an upside-down cardboard box, but with three Tinkertoy rods attached to the top, which are connected to a colander by three strings. When the colander is placed on Calvin's head and the machine is activated, he becomes incredibly intelligent, and his brain and head grow to an enormous size. His parents, however, do not see a difference. Calvin finds that the cerebral enhancement is only temporary when his head shrinks back to normal size, shortly after he determines his paper's subject matter. Bedtime arrives soon after, and Calvin doesn't get the chance to write his paper.
[edit] Wagon and sled
Calvin and Hobbes frequently ride downhill in a wagon, sled, or toboggan (depending on the season) and ponder the meaning of life, death, God, and a variety of other weighty subjects as they hurtle downhill. The wagon and sled were conceived because of Bill Watterson's aversion to "talking heads" comic strips, as a way of making them visually exciting. The course of the vehicle and the obstacles that the characters negotiate as they travel also frequently serve as metaphors for and parallel to the subject of conversation (life becomes a blur, Calvin says as he speeds along), and the rides almost always end in a spectacular crash.
The wagon temporarily served as a spacecraft when Calvin and Hobbes realized that the human race was laying waste to Earth by polluting it. They decided to go live on Mars, but returned soon after when they realized that the native Martians were terrified of Earthlings. This may have been a case of rumor preceding them; the prospect of terrestrial life polluting Mars as well as Earth was a bleak one. Although this particular wagon ride did not end in a crash, it once again served as an outlet for a subject matter of importance.
[edit] Snowballs and snowmen
During winter, Calvin often engages in snowball fights (which he almost always loses), usually throwing them at Susie but always resulting in Calvin getting buried in the snow as retaliation. He sometimes teams up with Hobbes for snowball fights, but Calvin can't seem to resist also sneaking up on Hobbes, who always seems to get the drop on him instead.
Calvin also builds snowmen; but these are usually grotesque, monstrous deformed creatures. In a notable storyline, Calvin builds a snowman and brings it to life using the power "invested in him by the mighty and awful snow demons". The snowman immediately proves to be evil (reminiscent of Frankenstein) and becomes what Calvin calls a "deranged mutant killer monster snow goon". This storyline gave the title to the Calvin and Hobbes book Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons.
Calvin, unlike Hobbes, thinks of snowmen as a fine art. Bill Watterson has said that this is a parody of art's “pretentious blowhards.”[2] Once, out of ideas, Calvin signed the snow-covered landscape with a stick and declared all the world's snow as his own work of art, offering to sell it to Hobbes for a million dollars. Hobbes mellowly responds, "Sorry, it doesn't match my furniture," and walks away, leaving Calvin to contemplate, "The problem with being avant-garde is knowing who's putting on who."
[edit] Dinosaurs
Calvin has great interest in dinosaurs; they are perhaps the only subject which he regularly studies out of his own free will. Carnivorous dinosaurs frequently serve as Calvin's alter-egos; for instance, he will often imagine himself as a Tyrannosaurus rex or an Allosaurus on the hunt, usually with Susie Derkins as the "peaceful" herbivore. A notable strip features Tyrannosaurus rexes flying F-14 jets pursuing peaceful herbivores (Chasmosaurus) (Calvin: "This is so cool!" Hobbes: "This is so stupid.").
When the film Jurassic Park came out in 1993, Bill Watterson stopped writing about dinosaurs in his strips for about 6 months, because he did not want Calvin's imagination to seem "less vivid" in comparison to the movie.[2]
[edit] Calvinball
Calvinball is a game played almost exclusively by Calvin and Hobbes as a rebellion against organized team sports (like baseball), although the babysitter Rosalyn plays on one occasion. Calvinball is played with whatever implements are available, often a volleyball (called the "Calvinball" itself) and a pair of wickets, and the rules are invented as the game goes along. The three consistent rules are:
- that the set of rules on play can never be the same twice
- that everyone who plays Calvinball must wear a mask
- no one is allowed to question the masks.
Either player may change any rule at any time (with the exception of those rules stated above). Scoring is also entirely arbitrary: Hobbes has reported scores of "Q to 12" and "oogy to boogy." Calvinball is essentially a game of wits and creativity, rather than purely physical feats, and in this Hobbes is typically more successful than Calvin himself. It is often regarded as an example of nomic.
The reader first encounters the game after Calvin's horrible experience with school baseball. He exits the school for recess to find, to his surprise, all of the swings were empty. For once, he's in ecstasy...until Susie asks why he wasn't playing baseball with the rest of the boys, whom he didn't know signed up for it. He ends up talking to her about his distaste for "organized" activities that require one to do this, follow that, to be here or there, etc., and says when he's ready for that, he'll join the military and at least get paid for it. After recess, he is harassed by Moe for not playing, being called a "sissy" and being asked to see his Barbie doll. To stop any further ridicule, he decides to sign on. While daydreaming in the outfield, he misses the switch and ends up catching a fly ball against his own team. His classmates mock him and threaten him, and when he decides to walk away, his coach calls him a "quitter." That Saturday, Calvin and Hobbes play Calvinball for apparently the first time, a game far removed from any organized sport. Even Calvin and Hobbes's own attempts to play organized sports between themselves usually deteriorate into Calvinball, as they end up inventing increasingly bizarre rules that cause whatever sport they were initially playing to spiral out of control.
In the final Calvinball comic, Calvin plays with Rosalyn. In an unexpected turn of events, Rosalyn utilizes Calvinball's unique rules to get Calvin to bed. Calvin complies with the 'rule', resulting in perhaps the most peaceful Calvin/Rosalyn resolution throughout the strip.
In the Tenth Anniversary Book, Watterson states that the greatest number of questions he receives concern Calvinball and how to play it. He then answers the question once and for all: "People have asked how to play Calvinball. It's pretty simple: you make up the rules as you go."
[edit] School and homework
Calvin hates school and its attendant early-morning risings, irate teachers, homework, and fellow students. Often his mother has to force the unwilling Calvin to catch the school bus. Occasionally he manages to avoid the bus, and his mother has to chase him down and force him to board or drive him to school. Calvin often waits for the bus with Hobbes and explains why an intelligent boy like himself does not need school. While at school, he commonly visualizes the building as a hostile planet and his teacher and principal as vicious aliens. Calvin usually lacks the company of Hobbes at school. Sometimes Hobbes does his homework and reading while Calvin watches TV or reads comic books. In general, Calvin is depicted as a student who is unable to concentrate in class, has difficulty interacting with other students, and struggles with homework. On occasion, he gets good marks and positive feedback for work, but these are usually short-lived victories.
Also on occasion, Calvin's inability to concentrate in class is compromised by inserting the class subject into his daydream, causing him to get the right answer. This includes spelling "disaster" while crash-landing on an alien world and blurting out the right answer at a completely random moment (from his point of view). On another occasion, Calvin was counting down to a crash-landing, and reached 7 right when he was asked what 10 - 3 was. Once, Calvin inadvertently gave Susie an answer to a test at school. When he was imagining firing upon an alien spaceship, as Spaceman Spiff, Susie asked him what the capital of Poland was until 1600. "Krakow", said Calvin, supplying his sound effects for the direct hit. This is also the only time that Susie attempted to cheat on a test from Calvin, instead of the other way around. Calvin also attempts to escape his classroom rather often; these endeavors are sometimes successful, but most often futile.
His dislike of school does not necessarily mean that Calvin is unintelligent; the strip often depicts him as being very smart, in fact, with unusual knowledge of philosophy and odd vocabulary. Rather, Calvin seems to dislike school because of its rules and forced learning of things which he is not necessarily interested in. In one strip, Calvin's father asks why he doesn't try harder at school, considering how much he loves to learn about subjects like dinosaurs; Calvin simply replies that they don't learn about dinosaurs in school. His inability to concentrate is portrayed as more due to his active imagination than to any mental handicap. In one Sunday edition, he is called to the board to do an addition problem, but instead delivers an epic poem in several stanzas describing his being abducted by aliens, who have "mechanic'ly removed" all his mathematical knowledge via a "brain-draining operation." One stanza:
- Even then I tried to fight:
- And though they numbered many
- I poked them in their compound eyes
- And pulled on their antennae.
[edit] Return from school
Calvin has a secret fear of Hobbes - a tiger and carnivore - who could violently attack him at times. This manifests during bedtime, when Hobbes sometimes talks in his sleep about eating Calvin. However the most consistent recurrence of "violent Hobbes" is when Calvin returns from school and announces his arrival. Several strips show Hobbes jumping Calvin in a surprise ambush just as the door opens (according to Bill Watterson, this behavior was based on his own cat).
On occasion, Calvin would try to fake out Hobbes. Once, he climbed through an open window, then opened the door from the inside, yelled "I'm home!", and watched as Hobbes dove out the door, then he slammed the door and locked it. When there was a knock on the door, Calvin just assumed it was Hobbes and told him he wasn't letting him in and he could rot out there for all he cares. It actually was his mother knocking, who mutters "Oh, I can't wait to hear this one explained." Another time, he built a decoy version of him (Using a broom and his jacket), placed it on the doorstep, then pushed the door open from out of view and said "I'm home!" However, Hobbes simply picked up the stuffed Calvin, talking nicely to it, closed the door on the real Calvin, locked it so he couldn't get in, then proceeded to ruin some of Calvin's things to the "delight" of Calvin. Another notable time is when Calvin shouted "I'm home!" without opening the door, resulting in Hobbes crashing into the door and Calvin saying "You'll notice I didn't say I was inside." Another time, Calvin considered his options and went through the back door. He then crept up on the ready-to-pounce Hobbes and screamed, "I'M HOOOME!" The next panel showed Calvin beat up with scratches and bruises, saying, "I've got to start listening to those little nagging doubts."
On one occasion, Calvin takes a picture of air-bound Hobbes to prove it to his dad, but Dad thinks that Calvin tossed the stuffed tiger in the air to prove his absurd point (deeply offending Hobbes in the process). In all reality, though, it is doubtful that Hobbes would ever try to do Calvin any real harm. He's just being a tiger, and in fact may be pouncing on Calvin in affection.
[edit] Santa Claus and “being good”
As Christmas approaches each year, Calvin feels the need to behave himself so as to maximize his chances of receiving gifts from Santa. He is often tempted to throw snowballs at Susie, and the ways through which he resists or succumbs to the temptation are humorous due to their insight into how difficult it is for people in general to do the right thing. These situations often lead Calvin to ponder philosophical questions, such as the difference between "acting good" and "being good", the idea that someone who is "naturally good" might deserve less for being good than does someone who must work hard at it, the question of whether future good acts can "make up" for previous (and unrelated) bad acts, etc. In many strips, Calvin questions the nature of Santa Claus' "operation", and even the existence of Santa himself. In the end, Calvin decides to believe in Santa and to go along with trying to be good, justifying his decision by using what is essentially Pascal's Wager.
[edit] The Noodle Incident
The "Noodle Incident" was an event alluded to in many Calvin and Hobbes strips, which Watterson said that he preferred to leave to the readers' imaginations. Although the event was never shown and the characters never discussed the exact details, the many references made to it reveal some information. For one, we can be sure that it happened in school, as Calvin was worried about whether Miss Wormwood had told his mother about it. Watterson frequently alluded to the Noodle Incident in comics around Christmas time. Hobbes typically mentions the incident when Calvin talks about Santa Claus's view of his behavior. When asked about the incident Calvin would usually answer, very loudly and defensively, "No one can prove I did that!!" Calvin claims he was framed for whatever the incident actually was and that his explanation (never told) was the "unvarnished truth" (Hobbes believed that the explanation deserved a Pulitzer). One similar reference to a "Salamander incident" is also found in the strips.
[edit] Learning to ride a bike
Throughout the series, Calvin unsuccessfully attempts to master the art of cycling. His utter fear of riding is reflected in the bike being portrayed as a savage and untameable beast which stalks and attempts to injure him. One would have to assume that Calvin's fear of learning to ride is his fear of falling off and hurting himself. This is somewhat a contradiction for Calvin given his willing acceptance to hurtle down hills in his wagon resulting in constant injury. There are several strips that portray Calvin's father's love for riding his bike, adding to the irony. One time, the bike rushed into the house after Calvin, which resulted in him hiding on the roof, with the oil and tire marks throughout the house, Calvin responds "One day, people will look up and wonder why there's a grown man wearing kids' clothes on the roof."
[edit] Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie
Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie is Calvin's favorite bedtime story, read by his father, whose attempts to read Calvin a different story are met with outrage.
The plotline of the story is never revealed; the most insight the reader gets into the story is when Calvin asks his father to perform "the squeaky voices, the gooshy sound effects, and the happy hamster hop." At one point, Calvin's father becomes so irritated by the frequent reading requests, he substantially alters the story, leaving a wide eyed Calvin and Hobbes to wonder if "the townsfolk will ever find Hamster Huey's head."
Watterson has said that he'd prefer to leave the plotline to the reader's imagination. In a 1993 strip, Calvin also reveals the author's name, Mabel Syrup, and the existence of a sequel to the book entitled Commander Coriander Salamander and ’er Singlehander Bellylander.
In May of 2004, a book of this title was printed on a small vanity press, purporting to be by the author Mabel S. Barr. It was met with scathing reviews on Amazon.com, due to its length and apparent attempt at "cashing in" on characters alluded to in Calvin and Hobbes. Very little information exists about the purported author or what connection, if any, the book has with Bill Watterson.
[edit] Mealtimes
Lunchtime and dinnertime find Calvin eager to share his scorn for the food he is served. His companions are generally disgusted by his colorful descriptions ("This smells like bat barf"), which is one of the reasons his parents seldom take him to restaurants. Calvin's dinners at home are often depicted as unidentifiable blobs of green goo. Calvin is mostly repulsed, though his mother (or father) occasionally coaxes him to eat his dinner by informing him that they are in fact serving some outlandish or stomach-turning dish — e.g., toxic waste (which Calvin's father says will "turn you into a mutant if you eat it"), stewed monkey heads, spider pie ("You can pick out the big legs and give them to your dad if they're too hairy for you", his mother quips), soup with maggots (actually rice) in it — which Calvin then eats with relish (but rejects a meal which he classifies as "toad stroganoff") while his other parent usually loses appetite. On occasion, once his parents are out of the room, his meals even become animate (sometimes growing a mouth and speaking), resulting in an epic fight that leaves a large mess, straining his mother's patience.
Calvin also claims his food during lunchtime at school is of especially disgusting origin, infuriating Susie. In one case referring to Calvin's school lunch as "a thermos full of phlegm" provoked a newspaper to cancel the strip [citation needed]. For example, Calvin sits down next to Susie saying, "Mmm mmm, lunchtime! And today's lunch is extra special! Ever since the weather got warm I've been swatting flies and saving them in a jar. Finally I got enough bugs to mash them into a gooey paste with a spoon." Calvin then takes out his sandwich and holds it up to Susie, grinning and saying, "I call it 'bug butter.' Care for a taste?" Susie, exasperated, leans her head on one hand and asks, "Tell me, Calvin, do you have any friends at all?"
In many strips Calvin eats for breakfast his favorite cereal, Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. He describes them as "tasty, lip-smacking, crunchy-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside, and they don't have a single natural ingredient or essential vitamin to get in the way of that rich, fudgy taste" and sometimes remarks that he even sprinkles sugar on them. Hobbes detests the cereal, claiming that it makes his heart skip and comparing it to eating a bowl of Milk Duds. The one known nutrition fact about the cereal is that it contains 100% of daily caffeine allowance, which might account for some of Calvin's hyperactivity, because he often eats more than one bowl. The cereal is also made with marshmallows, but Calvin's mom won't buy it for him. Its mascot is "Buzzy the Hummingbird."
The cereal occasionally includes special items, like a plastic trinket in one of ten colors. In one story arc, Calvin sees an offer on the back of the box for a "beanie", a cap with a propeller on top, in exchange for proofs of purchase of four boxes. He succeeds in eating the amount required (Hobbes, recruited to help, quits after the second bowl) and shows the proofs of purchase to Hobbes in his euphoria. Hobbes reads them and points out that it will take six weeks for delivery. This sends Calvin's hopes down the drain, and he is left to wait out the period, rushing home after school every day and asking his mom if the beanie came yet. Sometimes he checks the mailbox more than once a day, encouraged by Hobbes suggesting that the mailman might have made an unscheduled round to deliver the beanie after the usual delivery time, which gives Calvin an incredible — albeit short-lived — boost of morale.
Finally after he has lost all hope, the beanie does indeed arrive to Calvin's great joy. He tears open the box, only to read in the manual "Some assembly required. Batteries not included." He then dismally starts to build his hard-earned toy when he breaks the battery case after an argument with Hobbes, who promptly points out "See? Insult a tiger and you get bad luck every time." However Calvin's dad comes to the rescue and next Calvin is strolling around proudly in his beanie. When he finds out that it doesn't allow him to fly, he throws it to the ground. Forever the optimist though, he discovers that the beanie came in a great cardboard box (see #Cardboard boxes).
[edit] Bathtime
To Calvin, bathtime is somewhat of a paradox. Trying to get Calvin into the bath on a nightly basis is a nearly impossible task for his mother; however, once in the water, Calvin often makes an imaginative game of it. He may envision himself as an underwater explorer (like Jacques Cousteau), an exotic or deadly sea creature (an octopus, shark, or Godzilla), or merely a diver enjoying a leisurely descent along a reef. Imitating a deadly creature is often a foil to his mother's attempts to instill a value of cleanliness in Calvin: while a shark, he may leap out of the water and snap viciously at his mother, (whose furious answer is "For someone who doesn't like baths, you aren't making this any easier!"). At other times, Calvin's behavior in the bath is merely implied: for instance, when a naked and wet Calvin streaks past his father and moments later his mother appears, her clothes are soaking wet. He also has climbed out of his bath and walked down the stairs, claiming to be a "nude descending a staircase" (a mock reference to Marcel Duchamp's famous Neo-Cubist painting). Calvin has also tried alternative methods of bathing, such as standing in the toilet bowl and pulling the handle (this method proved to be a time-saver).
[edit] The monsters under the bed
At night, Calvin is occasionally terrorized by monster/nightmare creatures apparently living under his bed. Only Calvin and Hobbes are aware of them (there are occasions on which they attempt to bribe Hobbes into handing Calvin over, often with food). There appears to be no continuing theme to their appearance except that they are very intimidating, but none too bright ("all teeth and digestive tract, no brains at all" or "all fangs and no brains"), and they probably want to "squeeze" Calvin. The monsters are not always frightening: upon occasion, when frightened by something even scarier than monsters, Calvin and Hobbes turn on the lights and kill the monsters or fire a few rounds with the dart gun (one time Calvin hit his dad by mistake). On one occasion, it is implied that Calvin fears them because there are multiple monsters - when a monster says that "only one" is under his bed, Calvin and Hobbes decide to "get him" (only to find out that the monster in question was lying when one (named Maurice) said "Quit shoving, you hogs"). In another strip, Calvin asks if there are any monsters under the bed. He gets, "No. Nope. Uh-uh." As his response. He promptly yells, "There had better not be! I'd hate to have to torch one with my flamethrower!" Hobbes: "You have a flamethrower?" Calvin: "They lie, I lie." Another time is when the monsters say they'll give Hobbes some fresh salmon. Calvin pleads for Hobbes to not listen to them. Another time, the monsters made water splashing and dripping noises in an attempt to persuade Calvin to get off the bed to go to the bathroom, so they can "grab him and suck out his innards with some vile proboscis". It almost worked, except that Calvin instead decided to urinate out of his window, which, ironically, his parents were under at the time, commenting on how the plants needed watering. Another time, when Calvin needed to go to the bathroom, he put his pillow off the bed as a decoy, and while the monsters were distracted with eating the pillow, he would slip out without them knowing. However, when they were actually eating the pillow, Calvin just said he'd stay there and wet the bed, believing it to be a safer choice than leaving the bed to go to the bathroom.
[edit] Comic books
Calvin is sometimes seen in the strip reading comic books, as is Hobbes. While it is never revealed how many he has, apparently he collects them, and is very concerned with their monetary value. In one strip he is seen with a doctor's mask on wearing gloves and holding tweezers to put a comic book into a plastic sleeve to preserve it. Hobbes on a few occasions threatens to tell Calvin the ending to his newest issue while Calvin is in a particular state of distress, such as when there is a wasp on his back and he can't move. Hobbes also sometimes draws in the comic books to annoy Calvin even more. Characters in Calvin's comics include Captain Napalm and the Thermonuclear League of Justice, and Amazon Girl.
Watterson has said, both in interviews and as commentary on various strips in the Tenth Anniversary Book, that he thinks that most superhero comics are stupid, and Stupendous Man is a parody of certain clichés of the genre -- generally the ones that portray Calvin, both as his alter ego and in his secret identity, in the best light. Watterson also pokes fun on occasion at other such aspects, such as the tight-fitting costumes. Hobbes: "Is one of Amazon Girl's powers the ability to slip that figure into that suit?" Calvin: "Nah, they can all do that."
[edit] References
- ^ Watterson, Bill (October 1993). The Days are Just Packed. Andrews McMeel. ISBN 0-8362-1769-1.
- ^ a b
[edit] See also
| Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson |
|---|
| Characters |
| Calvin | Hobbes | Secondary characters |
| Terms and objects |
| Recurring themes | Horrendous Space Kablooie | Opposite Day | Transmogrifier |
| Other |
| Calvin and Hobbes in translation | List of Calvin and Hobbes books | References to Calvin and Hobbes | Setting of Calvin and Hobbes |
