Calvin's alter egos (Calvin and Hobbes)
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In the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes the protagonist, Calvin, often pretends he is someone else. His hyperactive imagination leads him to imagine himself as other characters with different powers and goals, as he sometimes vanishes into a fantasy to escape a difficult situation (like a school quiz). Hobbes is not seen taking part in the fantasies involving Calvin's alter-egos (except in the early dinosaur fantasy as a saber-toothed tiger in one Sunday strip), other than criticizing his choice of alternate personae. On several occasions, Calvin has appeared as either a larger or a smaller version of himself, wreaking havoc like Godzilla or crawling across a book page as "Calvin, the human insect." More frequently, however, his imagination transforms him into a being of a different kind.
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[edit] Spaceman Spiff
First Appearance: November 29, 1985
Spaceman Spiff, "interplanetary explorer extraordinaire," explores the outermost reaches of the universe ("by popular request") in a red flying saucer with a bubble canopy. He talks in third person in all but three strips. The saucer is tiny, with just enough room for Spiff and apparently little else; yet the craft is equipped with an astounding array of weapons, detectors and propulsion devices, many of which have bad tendencies to malfunction (one should note that the vessel is never shown to actually fire any of its weapons). The design of the ship appears to be based on a toy spaceship of Calvin's, which appeared in one strip. Spiff wears square glasses, or goggles, whose lenses change their shape according to his emotions. The galaxy is a cruel place where Spiff is often zapped, shot down, captured by ferocious and disgusting aliens (who, in reality, are often people such as Calvin's parents, Miss Wormwood, etc.), or stranded on a planet. Most planets seem devoid of civilization, and often have hostile environments or alien predators. Spaceman Spiff appeared long before Calvin's other alter-egos; his first appearance was in the twelfth strip of Calvin and Hobbes.
The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book provides background on Spiff's character. Watterson first conceived an earlier version of Spiff when he was taking a high school German class, producing a two-page, short-lived comic titled "Raumfahrer Rolf". When he was in college he reworked the strip and renamed his hero "Spaceman Mort". Later on, after finishing college, Watterson came up with the name "Spaceman Spiff" and made what he hoped was a professional strip with Spiff as a hero. There was little resemblance to the Calvin-Spiff character: The early Spiff was a "diminutive loudmouth" with a Charlie Chaplin moustache who explored space in a dirigible with his sidekick Fargle. The newspaper syndicates all rejected this early strip, and the present Spiff was finally born as one of the many imaginary alter egos of Calvin when the Calvin and Hobbes strip took off.
Most of the names mentioned above for Spaceman Spiff use the literary technique alliteration. As the comic developed and evolved over time, Watterson began to introduce Spiff's adventures with alliteration, ranging from the first phrase or sentence to eventually the whole first panel, such as "Poised precariously over a percolating pit of putrid pasta".
Early in the strip's career, the alien planets Watterson invented were, in his words, "rather generic." As his work matured, Watterson brought the Spiff saga in line with his principle that "Things are funnier when they're specific, rather than generalized," basing his alien landscapes on the rock formations of southern Utah, as well as the landscapes within Krazy Kat. Gradually, the monsters also took on more detail, becoming more than mere blobs of slime. The vocabulary, and in particular Spiff's array of high-tech gadgetry, offered a caricature of the "science" found in many science fiction books and TV series.
Watterson himself described Spaceman Spiff as a parody of Flash Gordon. The grand "space opera" style of Spiff's adventures may also point to a spoof of Star Trek and Star Wars. Since all the Spiff adventures have a lone protagonist playing with reality, they are close to the early work of Philip K. Dick and that of other writers who have featured lone individuals going to the edge of their perceived world. In the final years of Calvin and Hobbes, Watterson began to show an interest in information technology, often pitting the progressive and computer-savvy Calvin against his reactionary father, who comments, "It's bad enough we have a telephone." (Calvin then goes into the backyard and shouts, "Help!") Watterson's satire of the personal computer and its effects spilled over into the Spaceman Spiff strips. For example, in one strip, Spiff's ship was depicted as having a computerized weapon control system that was so finicky and slow that Spiff was hit by the aliens before he had a chance to use any of his weapons.
Interestingly, Spiff rarely lands on a planet without crashing or experiencing some technological malfunction. He often makes remarks about this in throwaway gags.
Spiff carries a futuristic sidearm, originally named the Atomic Napalm Neutralizer. Later on, the name was changed to the simpler Death Ray Blaster (his ship's computerized weapon mentioned above bore the same name), or Death Ray Zorcher. It is difficult to say whether it was a replacement weapon or not, since both guns were similar in shape; on one occasion Spiff also used a similar one called an Atom Blaster. The Death Ray Blaster had many different cooking-based settings (for example, "Shake-n'-Bake", "Medium Well", "Deep Fat Fry" and "Liquefy"), yet they near-inevitably prove useless against practically every enemy Spiff ever faced. The real-life equivalent of these fantasy weapons often turned out to be Calvin's dart gun, water pistol or snowballs (and, on one occasion, a rubber band, and on another a book), explaining their ineffectuality. Spiff's other weapons include Demise-O-Bombs (water balloons) a Zorcher (his water gun) and at least one Hydro Bomb (apparently a jar or glass filled with water).
Failure to land his ship properly (although he succeeded a few times) or win any fights often leads to Spiff being captured by evil aliens. Despite his apparent incompetence as a pilot and a marksman, Spiff is still considered by Calvin to be a hero.
Spiff has also been used as a 'character' in Cosmic Encounter, with the special ability to 'crash land' on opponents' planets.
Spaceman Spiff had an entire ten-page watercolor mini-graphic novel devoted to him in the Lazy Sunday Book. In the story, a giant Naggon space shuttle fired a laser at Spiff that caused his ship to malfunction and crash. On the mysterious planet, he discovered a bat-webbed booger being, and fired his ray gun. The being became angry, and it sent a siren call to the Naggon mother ship, and a gigantic Naggon emerged. Spiff tossed a Hydro Bomb, and prepared another, only to be caught by the Naggon. He was sent to the dungeon, where he set a trap for the Naggon King. In reality, Calvin was kicked out of the house, and he saw Susie. He squirted his water gun, only to make Susie angry. Susie told on Calvin to his mother, and Calvin filled his water balloon with water. When his mom came along, Calvin tossed the balloon. He began to fill another, but then Calvin's mom took Calvin to his room. Calvin's mom told her husband to have a talk with Calvin. Little did he know, however, Calvin had a trap rigged in his room.
In the Introduction to Opus: 25 Years of His Sunday Best, fellow comic strip artist Berke Breathed noted that in 1981, he himself had begun a storyline for his character Milo Bloom in Bloom County, which he described as 'a little blond-haired boy with an over-tweaked imagination working out his real-life anxieties and passions via space hero fantasies'; had it continued, it would have featured 'Dukakis and Donald Trump aliens'. Daunted by the negative reaction from the fans after the first strip based on this story, Breathed decided not to continue with the story, and began a new storyline by introducing a Penguin who watched the 'Mister Rogers' Show - an idea which sat much better with Bloom County readers. Five years later, Calvin rocketed into his adventures as Spaceman Spiff, which Breathed says 'was just how the comic universe was meant to be'.
Spiff's last appearance was on October 1, 1995. In this story, Spiff must find food. The vegetables are poisonous and the meat looks disgusting. He eventually finds ice cream sandwiches, which is what Calvin is eating for lunch in real life.
[edit] Stupendous Man
Stupendous Man is a superhero Calvin often becomes. He, like Spaceman Spiff, talks in third person. Unlike all his other alter egos, there is a link between Stupendous Man's imagined clothing and what Calvin is actually wearing. He usually wears a mask similar to the ones he uses to play Calvinball, but with a tight spandex hood and a cape added that his mother made for him. Calvin only possesses the crimson cape and cowl; his imagination supplies the rest of a colorful spandex outfit. He seems entirely oblivious to the fact that his costume does not effectively disguise his identity, and is absolutely baffled when he is punished for things he did while wearing it. Stupendous Man has several nemeses: Mom Lady (Calvin's Mom), Babysitter Girl (Rosalyn), Annoying Girl (Susie Derkins), and the Crab Teacher (Miss Wormwood). Despite his frequent use of various "stupendous powers", Stupendous Man has admittedly only won "moral victories". Twice, while changing into his costume, Calvin has audibly hummed some kind of tune, which is apparently meant to be Stupendous Man's theme. It is unknown how the tune goes, though both times, the number of notes did seem to fit into John Williams' score for the original Superman films.
The character of Stupendous Man first appeared in the strip dated October 30, 1987, in which Calvin, sitting at the top of the playground slide, imagines himself as a superhero ready to leap from a tall building. His appearance was slightly different in this strip, only wearing a simple eyemask and cape rather than the hood and spandex costume that would later define the character. Calvin would debut his Stupendous Man costume a year later, in the November 2, 1988 strip.
In one strip, Stupendous Man had a battlecry, in which every letter that makes up the word stupendous, stood for something--a parody of Captain Marvel's magic word, "Shazam." This had limited success, because Calvin is a horrible speller.
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- S for Stupendous!
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- T for Tiger, ferocity of!
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- U for Underwear, red!
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- P for Power, incredible!
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- E for Excellent physique!
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- N for ...um... something... hmm, well I'll come back to that...
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- D for Determination!
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- U for... for... wait, how do you spell this? Is it 'I'?
Occasionally, Watterson seemed to use Stupendous Man to parody popular superhero comics with his use of superhuman powers for useless plans, like rotating the Earth around to give Calvin another day off school. This is a take-off from the 1978 film, Superman in which Superman spins Earth backwards to reverse time so that he can save Lois Lane. In one strip, Stupendous Man is identified as "billionaire-playboy Calvin", which could be a homage to Batman's alter ego Bruce Wayne. Coincidentally, the strip takes place in a dark city which closely resembles Gotham City, Batman's home.
Stupendous Man's powers include high speed flight, "the strength of a million mortal men," enhanced vision, "ultra-sonic hearing," and superhuman intelligence. Calvin often gives Supendous Man titles such as "the masked man of mega might."
Stupendous Man's last appearance was on August 31, 1995 in a story where Calvin mentions that are aren't many real super heroes. He is shown putting on the costume, mentioning that it is up to him for there to be super heroes.
[edit] Tracer Bullet
Tracer Bullet is a hard-boiled private investigator styled after film noir and detective fiction stereotypes, who spouts incisive metaphors and similies in a style reminiscent of Raymond Chandler's style of writing. He wears a trench coat and fedora. He resembles Calvin, though the high-contrast art style Watterson uses in the Tracer Bullet strips (which heavily resembles the film noir-style Frank Miller adopted for his comic series Sin City) obscures Bullet's features. Watterson considered this style dramatic but regarded it as time-consuming, so he drew relatively few Tracer Bullet strips (Tenth Anniversary Book). Indeed, there have been only three strip sequences that involved Tracer Bullet: his introduction in the story where Hobbes gave Calvin a horrible haircut, one where Calvin had to solve a problem on a math test (and wound up putting 1,000,000,000 when the answer was actually 15, as stated by Susie Derkins), and one where Calvin's mother was reprimanding him for breaking a lamp (Hobbes being the true culprit). Every Tracer Bullet comic starts out with an alcohol reference (ex. "I keep two magnums in my desk. One's a gun and I keep it loaded. The other's a bottle and it keeps me loaded.") The name Tracer Bullet is a pun on tracer ammunition, a type of round used in machine guns. Tracer bullets were fitted with a glowing chunk of phosphorus to let the operator see where the shots are hitting.
Watterson first used Tracer Bullet in a story where Calvin has Hobbes cut his hair because, "the barber never cuts it the way I like." Subsequently, Calvin ended up almost completely bald. This story turned out to be one of Watterson's favorites: the sight of Calvin's haircut was one of the few times his own work made him laugh out loud while he was making a strip, and Calvin's use of a fedora to cover his head led to the introduction of Tracer Bullet. Watterson would later lament, "Would that I could write like this more often" (Tenth Anniversary Book).
Tracer Bullet's last appearance was on March 2, 1991 in the story that involves Calvin and Hobbes breaking a vase.
[edit] Others
- Dinosaurs
- Calvin loves dinosaurs; they are one of the few subjects he studies of his own free will. This, of course, means that Calvin imagines himself as a dinosaur in many of the strips. Whenever Calvin is pretending to be a dinosaur, he is usually a predator (such as a Tyrannosaurus rex) on the hunt. Once, he claimed to have discovered 'Calvinosaurus,' a monstrous theropod that could apparently devour even the largest sauropods in one bite, namely an Ultrasaurus. On one occasion, he delivered a "tasteless and entirely uninformative" report on overpopulation, in which Susie Derkins is devoured in the schoolyard by a pack of Deinonychus dinosaurs, thereby, in Calvin's own words "the weak and stupid are filtered out in a heartless but essential process keeping the human population in check... at least, that's how it ought to be." He also once pretended to be an Allosaurus fighting a straggler in a Brontosaurus herd. His adventures pretending to behave like dinosaurs usually end with him getting in trouble for making loud dinosaur noises, like getting in trouble from his Mom and getting thrown out of the public library.
- Adult
- Calvin appears in several strips as an adult with various professions. In these instances Calvin turns out to have been roped into playing make-believe with Susie Derkins, and the comic itself is drawn in a much darker and more realistic art style (reminiscent of early Judge Parker or Rex Morgan, M.D. strips) until the point at which Calvin gets fed up with the game and the real world scene is revealed. Calvin is apparently highly resentful of playing this part and is very disruptive. Generally, Calvin would be playing with Hobbes when Susie walks over and asks them to play "House". Calvin sometimes agrees, but only because Hobbes has a "crush" on Susie. Watterson mentioned that he enjoyed having the adult Calvin (and adult Susie) get into ridiculous dialogue and actions, making the strip seem more ludicrous.
- Godzilla
- On a number of occasions Calvin appears as a godzilla-like character and runs around (in reality, almost always naked) creating havoc.
- Giant
- In one Sunday strip he imagines himself growing to gargantuan size and destroying a town. In fact he is just crushing his toy cars. Another time, he appeared to have grown so enormous that he was the size of a galaxy.
- Pilot
- In multiple strips Calvin is seen piloting a plane for various reasons. One time he piloted an F-15 to destroy his school; another time he was flying in the model F-4 he had built. Other times he imagined himself piloting a civilian airliner where he is about to crash over a crowded highway, or where he must take on a rival airline's pilot to compete for the same runway. He once also imagined himself as a pilot supposed to be headed for Chicago, but decided he wanted to see the Grand Canyon up close. In reality, he only wanted to go there, he never went. Calvin only wanted to go to the Grand Canyon because he rejected the idea of going to the store with his mother, yet he had to go anyway.
- Animals
- Calvin sees himself in a variety of animal bodies as well, from large mammals to insects. Sometimes this is a result of being transmogrified. Some examples include: a chameleon, an ant, a bat, a shark, a crocodile, a tiger (appearing as a shorter version of Hobbes), an elephant, a dragon, a werewolf, an octopus, a whale, a sparrow, an eagle, a hummingbird, a lizard, a giraffe and an owl.
- Forces of nature/objects
- Calvin sometimes imagines himself as a gigantic thunderstorm, a light particle, an active volcano, a planet causing a solar eclipse, a "C-bomb," an omnipotent deity, a safe, and so on.
- Calvin occasionally finds himself being changed into various forms or having rather peculiar things happen to him. For example, he occasionally becomes a giant or tiny form of himself, somehow reverses his "personal gravity," or becomes half-human, half-fly (as in The Fly). On one occasion, he became 2-dimensional. (Note that Calvin has a "transmogrifier" that can theoretically turn him into anything).
- Captain Napalm
- A superhero who protects "truth, justice and the American Way." Only seen on three occasions and is a satirical Captain America of sorts. Calvin draws this character from a comic book hero of the same name, leader of the "Thermonuclear League of Liberty," whose exploits he diligently reads, though he is rarely seen with a new issue of it. According to Calvin, Hobbes frequently reads Calvin's comic books, neglects to put them back in the correct order, spoils the plots of Calvin's new issues by reading them first and commenting on the story as he reads, and will genuinely mistreat them (i.e., folding the cover back, drawing moustaches on the characters in pen, etc). It seems that this character was superseded by Stupendous Man. At one point, Calvin ducked into a closet in an attempt to transform into Captain Napalm, but he got stuck in the closet. Captain Napalm trading cards can be obtained from bubble gum packs, and Calvin, being an avid gum fan, has collected nearly the whole series "except 8 and 34" after chewing almost $50 worth of gum.
- Safari Al
- Once in a daily strip Calvin acted as Safari Al, a jungle explorer, and discovers a "giant gorilla". The gorilla then grabs "Safari Al" and states to him "Clean your room." The next panel reveals that Calvin imagined his mom as the gorilla, who continues her orders with "You heard me! It's a jungle in here!"
- Calvin the Criminal
- Calvin once imagined himself as a criminal on his way to be hanged. In reality, Calvin was forced to put on a tie.
- Calvin the God
- Calvin once imagined himself as a wrathful creator/underworld god in one Sunday strip. He demands sacrifice and torments the people. The last panel shows Calvin playing with tinker toys while his father comments "He's creating worlds in there."
- Calvin the Living Dead
- "The living dead don't need to solve word problems."
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