Well, I did not think I would be writing about another “retro” topic, but I was once again reminded about one of my favorites as a child. Next to Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes was easily my favorite comic strip. (Thanks to Drawn! for posting this article about the artist, Bill Watterson.) I have MANY clippings of the strip in various scrapbooks. Wikipedia does a nice job summarizing the strip. It even chronicles my favorite subject matter:
Calvin also builds snowmen; but these are usually grotesque, monstrous deformed creatures (e.g., two-headed snowmen, a snow monster with tentacles devouring a bunch of snowmen, a snowman who grabs another snowman’s head and uses it as a bowling ball, a snowman who scoops snow cones out of the back of a dead snowman, snowmen getting hanged, a buried giant snow monster destroying other snow men or holding their heads in its hands, and a prostrate snowman seemingly beneath the parked family car, surrounded by a host of worried “snow-onlookers”, etc.) In one 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 turns evil (reminiscent of the film Frankenstein) and becomes a “deranged mutant killer monster snow goon” by giving itself two heads and three arms. The snow goon then makes copies of itself, which Calvin eventually defeats by spraying water on them while they slept and freezing them solid. However, Calvin was caught by his parents and had to explain why he was outside when he should’ve been asleep (which wasn’t successful).
By the standards of today, I wonder if Calvin and Hobbes seems ancient considering it ended in 1995. I would hope that kids still like to read Calvin and Hobbes and find as much humor in it as I did.
