Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for March 31, 2021

Back to parent-teacher meetings for Mom.

Calvin is in trouble for school but his social life is better.

We’ll have to see how his Mom reacts when she sees how Calvin looks now.

Translation in the last panel: At least I can stop being nice now.

Excellent observation, Hobbes!

Nobody is all-Yin or all-Yang. At least a little of both resides in all of us.

I think the point where Bill Watterson took a year-long break from the strip is coming up…

From psychopathy to sociopathy?

Hobbes doing Spock: “Fascinating”.

Spectralized. A very seldom used word. People should start using it more often. So that it can be added to the dictionary. Like for example, Ex president Trump spectralized a couple months ago, now if only Covid-19 would spectralize as well.

Ahh. Back to normal. :(

Hobbes, as always gets it spot on, and as always it goes over our hero’s head…..

Oh my! The life of a six year old can be very confusing.

“Calvin and Susie, sitting up a tree… K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”

Calvin is now eligible to open a Twittler account!

Hobbes is right, now that calvin’s good side no longer physically exists, calvin has to go back to doing his homework and chores himself again

Well, Calvin has always been up to no good!

Give it 15 years, and Calvin’s bad side will have perished from exhaustion and the good side will marry Suzie…

A conscience is a terrible thing to waste. …unless you have a sheet of plastic.

Live and don’t learn. That’s Calvin.

This has nothing to do with this strip or storyline. But if any of you remember the Sunday strip where Calvin gets out of bed to start his day, only to be out the door on his way to school and heard his mother wake him up for school and it turned out he dreamed all of that? I just had a similar experience with my dreams last night. Trippy.

Some of my comments during this wonderful story arc have been on the real goodness within Calvin and on the questions about reality inside this strip.

When I began reading it in 1987, I naturally assumed that it was about a bratty kid imaging that his toy tiger was real. In one of the earliest Sunday strips that I read, I was introduced to Calvin’s good side when he picked up a tin can that someone had dropped and complained to Hobbes, “Now I have to carry this because someone was too lazy to do so!” This showed me that Calvin has a caring side and can set a good example. I think we saw more of his good side there than anywhere in this current story arc where Calvin’s “good side” seemed more concerned about impressing people.

I began to question whether Hobbes was imaginary in 1988 when I noticed that he is sometimes shown doing things when Hobbes isn’t present and – as I have said several times – I finally learned that Bill Watterson doesn’t see Hobbes as imaginary in 1992.

I understand,seems like my bad side wins too often.

At least two readers have told me that Bill Watterson saying that he doesn’t see Hobbes as imaginary but doesn’t allow anyone but Calvin to see Hobbes as alive is self-contradictory.

I think Bill Watterson’s point is that he characterises Hobbes as being a real character that he can believe in himself rather than as someone that Hobbes can imagine. He has also explained that Calvin is largely based on his own immature side yet he used his mature side to make Hobbes more mature and knowledgeable than Calvin yet still someone who can be a good friend to Calvin.

I would have liked to see how other characters reacted to this alternative Calvin. We saw how Mom reacted but not Dad who is usually more cynical about Calvin than Mom is. I would also have liked to see how Moe and Calvin’s duplicate reacted to one another. Best of all, I would have liked to see how Rosalyn reacted to this version of Calvin.

On the plus side, I enjoyed seeing how Mom, Miss Wormwood and Susie all reacted with Susie being far more hostile than Mom whereas Miss Wormwood was the only character who seemed to be pleased.

“Spectralized?” I couldn’t find it in the dictionary so I just learned a new word from a 6-year old?

“You’re the only person I know whose good side is prone to badness” is one of my favourite quotes from this comic

Love how intelligent Calvin’s dialogue in the second panel is.

You know, as much as I love Calvin and Hobbes, sometimes it just makes my brain hurt.

Am I reading Calvin…or Young Sheldon?

Even the Pope would throttle this kid.

not home work

please mom

Throttled? Spectralized? Not being a native English speaker, I’m amazed I can get such a developed vocabulary from a 6-year-old.

He didn’t evaporate, he “poofed”