I’ve been struggling through a depressed state recently. I was reading Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison. As good as that story is and as much as I am looking forward to returning to it, I found myself genuinely upset reading it because of things going on in my own life, so I needed to set it aside for a bit.
In my time of need, I reached for Calvin and Hobbes.
After my gramps died (he was the only grandparent I really remember at all), I wound up with all of his Hagar the Horrible, The Lockharts, and BC chapbooks. I was already collecting Garfield books by this time, and The Far Side, Zits and Get Fuzzy would come later. But the turning point in my comics reading came when I started reading Calvin and Hobbes.
Calvin and Hobbes was a funny comic that dabbled in serious themes. Calvin would get distressed over people dumping trash in the woods; he’d get fed up with people and want to move to the Yukon or live his life as a tiger; he’d find a dead sparrow and he and Hobbes would contemplate and discuss the fragility and preciousness of life. That was between rounds of Calvinball, pretending to be one of his many alter egos, and making ridiculous snowmen.
That was the brilliance of the strip and Bill Watterson, its writer/artist. Calvin and Hobbes was never just one thing, because life isn’t just one thing. Yes, everything was filtered through the perspective of an imaginative boy and his stuffed tiger. But just like Calvin made Hobbes real for me (and us), that perspective made those complex ideas digestible.
Re-reading the three books I did this week (There’s Treasure Everywhere, Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat, and It’s a Magical World), I was reminded why I love this comic enough to name my cats after it. So if you’ve never read any Calvin and Hobbes, do yourself a favor and pick up a book. It’s well worth it.
The Chimerical Dark 