by the Night Writer
How old do you feel?
How old would you feel if I told you it has been a little more than 14 years since the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip (December 31, 1995) appeared? Well, before you fall out of your rocking chair you might want to check out this link to a new interview with the reclusive C&H creator Bill Watterson in today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer. You may also be please to know that the U.S. Postal Service will issue a Calvin and Hobbes stamp this summer in honor of this iconic comic strip.
It’s hard for me to believe that the strip has been so long, and hard not to think that our world is the poorer for it’s loss. Of course, it’s not really gone since the books are still readily available and Google turns up a multitude of (legally questionable) images. As Watterson notes in his interview, it’s probably better that the strip went away while it was still hitting its stride rather than limping on into irrelevancy or bloated, cynical repetition (Calvin and Garfield, anyone?). The strip was a perfect combination of art and entertainment with an inspired premise — a stuffed tiger that was alive only when alone with Calvin — and boundless creativity nearly as unconstrained as Calvin himself.
And, behind the chuckles, it was an often profound and poignant look into the mind of an active boy in an increasingly “Sit down!” world. Boys are naturally energetic and imaginative, quaities that are non-conducive to factory schools. In my day I was fortunate enough to have teachers who recognized this and found ways to constructively challenge and channel our exuberance and hyper synapses. From what I hear and read today, and the studies I’ve seen, it appears the current approach to boys is to dope them with drugs or stupefy them with routine, slowing the brains and deadening any love for learning.
It was fun to see Calvin wage hopeless war against well-meaning but hapless orthodoxy, and hope that there was a brilliant man inside him, waiting to come out. Today we no longer have Calvin the cartoon; I hope to God we have not lost the character.
