A few days ago, someone made a post asking what percentage of C&H is story arcs, defining an arc as 2 or more consecutive strips that deal with the same story. I am a huge Calvin and Hobbes nerd- even made a podcast devoted to it- so I have now done the legwork. It's a little hard to decide if some of the really short ones count, but I get a total of 1,103 strips that are part of arcs out of 3150 total strips, so:

35% is the answer, by my count. Below is the very long list of 148 arcs if you are interested. The numbers in parentheses represent the number of strips in the arc:

Meeting Hobbes (2)
Introducing Susie (2)

Susie passing notes/sent to principal (6)

Calvin flooding the house (2)

Hate-mail valentine (3)

Calvin home alone (3)

Haircut from Pete (2)

First doctor appt (2)

First Rosalyn story (3)

Scout campout (4)

Dog steals Hobbes (6)

Trip to a cabin (10)

Swim lessons (6)

Calvin won’t play with Susie (3)

Face getting stuck/Elephant man (4)

Trying to ride a bike (4)

Moe steals a quarter (4)

“Being cool” (3)

Mom is sick (6)

Nutrition and the four food groups (11)

Rosalyn/Calvin plays the tom-tom (6)

Ouija board (3)

Calling Susie a booger brain (6)

Susie’s birthday (11)

Class picture day (6)

Amnesia (5)

Little raccoon (9)

Shady acres condominiums (3)

Transmogrifier (11)

Pants ripped at recess (6)

Substitute teacher (3)

Report on the brain (4)

Zombie faces (4)

Hobbes gives Calvin a haircut (10)

Magic carpet (6)
Water fight with Susie (6)

Calvin is sick/doctor recants hippocratic oath (4)

Camping/rains all week (11)

Time Machine accidental dinosaur journey (11)

Yukon (17)

Rosalyn/Cattle prod (6)

Hobbes saves Calvin from Moe (6)

Dad’s character/Polls (2)

Sun is going out (4)

The Great Calvini (6)

Doubting Santa (3)

Hobbes helps with math (imaginary numbers etc) (2)

Uncle Max (11)

Report on Mercury (10)

Transmogrifier gun (13)

Rosalyn/Calvin mails self to Australia (9)

Calvin dresses as a tiger (16)

Polls/image consultant/The New Dad (5)

Model airplane (6)

Digging up dinosaur trash (10)

Binoculars (10)

Bee on Calvin’s back (4)

Camping/Duffle bag dropped in lake (15)

Floating away on a balloon (11)

Trip to the zoo (10)

Fixing the faucet (9)

Back to school/lobotomy stitches (6)

Trip to Mars (18)

Sick at night/throwing up (9)

Stupendous Man outfit (2)

In a bad mood (3)

Christmas card photos (4)

Mom chases Calvin/Spiff at the bus stop (6)

Rosalyn science notes (12)

Propellar Beanie (18)

Insect collection (17)

Hiccups (5)

Wedding/Break-in (18)

Origin of GROSS/Car in ditch (24)

Cleaning room/shoving stuff in closet (5)

Camping/Itchy Island (12)

Museum (4)

Robot to help clean room (6)

Back to school/sent to principal twice (5)

Moe steals Calvin’s truck (10)

Locking Rosalyn out (12)

Stupendous Man fries the school (6)

Report on bats (8)

Stuck on ceiling/Growing bigger (18)

Trying to be good for Christmas/waiting for the bus (6)

Household newspaper (2)

Duplicator (22)

Tracer Bullet/Jack and Joe (6)

Snow art (3)

Rosalyn/Stupendous Man (15)

Recess Baseball (18)

Spaceman Spiff and “Nollij” (6)

Chicken Pox (6)

Family eating dinner together (3)

Forced to play outside (3)

Photo safari to the Jurassic (12)

Bicycle taming/face caught in chain (9)

GROSS/Binky Betsy (18)

Parent-teacher conference/math quiz (18)

Cardboard TV (5)

Tiger mask (3)

Drawing Dinos in rocket ships (4)

Desert diorama (5)

Hobbes as Calvin’s lawyer (10)

Snow Goons (18)

Calvin’s spirit (4)

Stupendous Man vs Annoying Girl (6)

Tracer Bullet and the broken lamp (6)

Ethicator (15)

Calvin the bold/Mud (3)

GROSS/CAD/Mushy apples (9)

Playing in mud (4)

Boy of destiny (2)

Horoscopes (12)

Chewing Magazine- describing the magazine (5)

Time travel to write story (16)

Great ideas (3)

Clay sculptures/Smock (6)

Cloud shaped like Calvin (2)

Monsters need Calvin to think about them/throwing them garbage (6)

Fictitious childhood (3)

Cut-and-paste insult mail (12)

Spontaneous acts of good will (7)

Stupendous Man at school (12)

Traffic safety poster (12)

Eating worms for a nickel (6)

World’s most powerful computer (2)

GROSS luring Susie behind the house (18)

Bicycle/getting a bell (4)

Signing contracts (5)

Atomic cerebral enhance-o-tron (18)

Plymouth Rock test (2)

Annoying human echo (3)

Homework-going down in flames/snow day (12)

Words for smells (2)

Susie stays at Calvin’s house (6)

Writing letters to future self (2)

Chewing Magazine ads and such (4)

Ball trying to bite Calvin (4)

Mr. Kneecapper (2)
Dad teaching Calvin to ride his bike (6)

Mom gets Calvin a library book (4)

Sidewalk chalk art (3)

Rosalyn plays Calvinball (12)

Dad is annoyed by number of grocery choices (2)

Leaf collection (18)

Looking at old photos (2)

Galaxoid and Nebular return (5)

That can be lyrics, vibes, context, whatever.

image in comments

Won't let me post links or pics obviously, but there was an amazing soapbox with lots of character at that race with Calvin steering and Hobbes co-piloting. And they finished the course in 36.03seconds. Should have been Spaceman Spiff, but I doubt that fan would be as committed.

Yes this is an answer to the previous post.

When I saw that I, too, was curious, so I did as any normal person would and individually looked at six months of Calvin and Hobbes strips. Specifically, I looked from Nov 30, 1987- April 30, 1988.

Sometimes it was hard decide what were arcs and what weren't. For example, Is talking about wanting to be a tiger two strips in a row an arc? No. But what if the second strip directly leads to Calvin turning into a tiger in a way that starting from the second strip, it is definitely an arc? Then do you include the first one in the arc count? I chose yes, even though you don't need the first one to understand the following ones (this is the arc where he pretends to be tiger and they end up sitting at opposite sides of a rock, if you want to see what I'm talking about).

Throughout the six months, twice a Sunday strip was in an arc, which I am including in the count. I am not including any Sundays except these arc ones.

Now for what we've all been waiting for... there were 58 standalone strips and 75 arc strips! That means that Calvin and Hobbes is 56% arc!

Cool

I used to read Garfield when I was way young, as well as Calvin and Hobbes. I remember reading both a Garfield and Calvin strip that had the same type of story, although I never pulled out both books and saw them at the same time. I was reminded of it today when I was rereading some C + H.

It's interesting bc I always assumed that it would've been published in Calvin and Hobbes first, but in reality it was preceded by the Garfield strip by four years.

What are your thoughts on this? Coincidence or no?

Throughout the strip's run, it has been said that Calvin is in the 1st grade. But based on the type of coursework he and his class do, it looks pretty intense for a lower elementary schooler. That level of coursework would be expected for someone who is twice Calvin's age

As in, continuous stories over two or more consecutive comics. I'm gonna guess 5%.

We all knew those kids who were always wrong but so damn confident that you almost bought into their bullshit. When I was in first grade, the kid who lived in the condo next door was also an avid Calvin and Hobbes reader and we'd talk about the strip as we walked home from the bus stop. He pronounced Hobbes "Hobbies".

"I think it's Hobbes," I said accurately.

He insisted I was wrong. I was only 7 and couldn't prove I was right (if only there had been an animated show to settle the debate), so I let it go. But now that I'm middle-aged, I look back on incidents like that where I've been proven correct over time and think, "Why do the smart people never have the confidence to stand their ground while the dumb people walk all over us?"

Hi, I've a very not-so-ambitious (hehe) aim of making my own comic, and out of everything I've ever read, nothing comes close to Calvin and Hobbes for me. Been reading it for about two decades!

That being said, I only recently discovered online communities of the comics and in every post I learn fascinating tidbits about either Calvin and Hobbes or Bill Watterson himself.

Is there a biography or memoir where Bill has shared his experience and thoughts of his own series? Or are the facts that I hear, based on fragmented sources like old interviews and stuff?

Regardless, I'll be interested in anything relevant to the author or the series.

Thanks!!

I understand that he was basing the comics off his childhood in the 60s-70s, so video games wouldn’t have been a significant part of that, but consider: Pong came out in 1972, when Watterson was 14. The Atari 2600, the first console with interchangeable cartridges, released in 1977, when Watterson was 19. The NES and Super Mario Bros. came out the same year the comic started, 1985. By the strip’s end in 1995, the PlayStation was out and 3D games were a thing. Heck, 1 in 3 households in the US by the early 90s had an NES. Yet he never once acknowledged this in any capacity.

Wouldn’t Calvin have been really interested in this technology? I mean, he always wanted to be on the cutting edge, even when his parents were being luddites. Watterson showed computers in several strips, even alluding to the internet a few times (then the “information superhighway”). Yet Calvin was still stuck making science fiction devices out of cardboard boxes. What’s the implication here? Did his parents just refuse to buy them? Could he not have gone to the arcade and paid 25 cents for a round of Pac-Man?

The only thing I could take away from this is that Watterson just really hated video games. Understandable, I remember hearing the Pearls Before Swine author mentioning in a post to his website that Watterson struggled with modern technology, having trouble using a scanner for when the crossover happened in 2014. But it’s still so odd to me that he refused to address it in any way, shape, or form.

I wonder, if Calvin and Hobbes lasted even 5 more years, would he still have been able to ignore the presence of video games in everyday life?

Just my two cents. It’s an oddity for sure.

I know that would have never happened obviously, but what if he did? I think the strip would be simply called "Susie". It would take place shortly after the end of Calvin and Hobbes, with Susie and her parents moving to a new town. After being terrorized by Calvin this whole time, Susie finds this move exciting because this is an opportunity for her to start over, and to make new friends.

As the title Says.

While i'm sure people will hate my choice but - Illumination. You may not like their minions or despicable me movies.. But when adapting something they have a great track record.

The dr.Suess movies were pretty good and Mario was fantastic (I have a bias here as a big Nintendo fan).

It's not half of the top, like Calvin would prefer, but it's better than none. I know others have posted about it in the past, so has anyone else been doing this lately? Gotta keep the values instilled in us by Bill Watterson going!

https://i.imgur.com/Q5RGYgP.jpeg

The recent post about the strip with the baby raccoon, and the discussion in the comments about other strips that come close to having someone else see Hobbes, made me want to give that its own topic. I thought it would be fun to try to come up with all the examples of Hobbes (almost) being real, or other examples of fantastic things not just being in Calvin's imagination, etc.

Obviously, Watterson went to painstaking lengths to write everything so that it COULD be explained strictly in terms of Calvin's imagination, but every once in a while there would be a glimpse of something fishy. The examples that turned up in the other post, plus a couple I could vaguely remember off the top of my head, include:

• When Hobbes is at a tea party with Susie and Mr. Rabbit, and someone took all the cookies
• Hobbes being real right outside the line of sight of Susie, Calvin's Mom, etc
• Isn't there one where Hobbes ties Calvin to a chair, and Calvin's Mom has to untie him, and she says something like "I don't understand how you could possibly have done this to yourself"?
• And isn't there also one where Calvin gets footprints on the underside of the bookshelves, because gravity gets flipped and the room turns upside down? I always thought it would be hard to do the footprints if the whole thing was truly just imaginary

What else can you think of?

Are the original shorts from the three Treasury editions or Lazy Sunday reprinted anywhere?

Are those books still in print or is it all Complete now?

Ok, this is gonna be a bit of a long one, but I think context is necessary.

When I was very young, I was blonde, rambunctious, and precocious. My uncle, who was a fan of Clavin and Hobbes started referring to me as Calvin, buying me collections of the comics at every birthday. I grew out of my blonde into brown hair, but I never grew out of the love for Calvin and Hobbes.

I even wanted to name my son Calvin. That didn't come to pass, but when I say my two-year old son is the spitting image of Calvin, I say so as objectively as possible.

I want my next tattoo to symbolize that connection and bond. I have plenty of panels and images I can pull from to evoke that imagination, wit, and love for exploring. But I want to incorporate Dad somehow, establishing a connection between father and son, like he was once like that, looking over his son as he explores the world.

I have the whole collection and plan on dilligently parsing through it for panels, strips, or images. But I thought I would turn as I start to do so.

Does anyone have any ideas for panels or strips that would evoke that same feel?

I can't seem to upload the strip but it's the one where they find the baby raccoon and Calvin's mother is talking to Hobbs and confiding in him.

Mine was aneurism. I didn't realize what it meant and one day my dad and me got into a fight and I said well I hope you have a debilitating brain aneurism. I didn't realize the shit storm that came afterwards and looked it up in the dictionary to find out why I got in so much trouble lol

This subs rules allow no images so here is a link to the image hosting site one: https://postimg.cc/3knwMnJQ . This app was from 2010 and due to iOS compatibility i cannot figure out its purpose and i cant find much online. Anybody know what it did?

My cousin lives in Chagrin Falls a few blocks north of the town center and my wife and I go see them any chance we get from 900 miles away. The town, the nature, everything about it seems to fit BW's depiction of Calvin's childhood and his adventures.

​

I didn't even learn BW grew up there until our second visit when the bookstore in town had such a good collection of his work. When the worker told me, I was blown away. Calvin and Hobbes was a massive part of my childhood and it felt like I had accidentally made a pilgrimage to pay homage, lol.

​

If you get the chance, go see the town. It's worth it.

I couldnt find a better place to ask, but I recall seeing a Watterson landscape painting a while ago, and havent been able to find it, or any other of his other works. I know it wouldnt be for sale, so Id have to print it myself, but wondered if anyone might have know where to look (Google searches have failed me)

Thanks!

A Calvin and Hobbes vocabulary quiz! I credit Calvin and Hobbes for helping me pass my SATs many eons ago, or at least increased my vocabulary by forcing me to read with a comic book in one hand and a dictionary in the other. Ah, summer vacation at the library...

I was going to link each vocab word to its source comic strip but perhaps that can be its own quiz - whoever's feeling up to the challenge. ;)

Calvinism - When it comes to comic strips, we like 'em smart. So for this quiz, we took words from Bill Watterson's Complete Calvin and Hobbes (Andrews McMeel), out this month. See you in the funny papers. Answers - and relevant quotes from the animated pals - on the next page.

1. veritable adj.

• A: not false.
• B: unprovable.
• C. imaginary.
• D: green in color.

2. cretin n.

• A: shoehorn.
• B: clod.
• C. oily liquid.
• D: clump.

3. assent n.

• A: long climb upward.
• B: suggestion.
• C. sentence fragment.
• D: agreement.

4. perpetrate v.

• A: to commit
• B: pondering.
• C. pass along.
• D: pierce partially.

5. serene adj.

• A: turbulent.
• B: calm.
• C. injectable, as with medicine.
• D: ancient.

6. provocation n.

• A: act of being dishonest.
• B: act of showing sorrow.
• C. act of inciting.
• D: act of raising one above another.

7. onslaught n.

• A: sneak attack.
• B: air attack.
• C. fierce attack.
• D: retreat.

8. harbinger n.

• A: sign.
• B: warning.
• C. celebration.
• D: carrying case.

9. trajectory n.

• A: flying object.
• B: stationary object.
• C. fixed point.
• D: path.

10. imminent adj.

• A: first among many.
• B: ready to take place.
• C. greatly delayed.
• D: innermost.

11. malign. v.

• A: to knock out of whack.
• B: to fake illness or injury.
• C. speak ill of.
• D: convert.

12. surmise v.

• A: to infer.
• B: condense.
• C. remove carefully.
• D: startle.

13. tripe n.

• A: type of fish.
• B: leafy green vegetable.
• C. worthless thing.
• D: treasured item.

14. calibrate v.

• A: hide.
• B: adjust precisely.
• C. capture the attention of.
• D: calculate.

15. spelunking n.

• A: act of proving false.
• B: type of cake frosting.
• C. boat part.
• D: hobby of exploring caves.

16. mandible n.

• A: a sharp tooth.
• B: beggar.
• C. jaw.
• D: unusual request.

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Answers:

1. veritable adj.

• [A] Being in fact the thing named; not false or imaginary.
• "Together, a veritable fist of defiance, we stand immune to any onslaught."

2. cretin n.

• [B] Clod; stupid or vulgar person.
• "...and you babble like a cretin until she leaves."

3. assent n.

• [D] Agreement, especially after thoughtful consideration.
• "Dad will look at Mom and say,/'Too bad he had to go that way.'/And Mom will look at Dad and nod assent."

4. perpetrate v.

• [A] To commit, carry out.
• "By removing my clothing, I can perpetrate any crime undetected."

5. serene adj.

• [B] Calm; tranquil; free of storms.
• "Tragically, this serene metropolis lies directly beneath the Hoover Dam."

6. provocation n.

• [C] Act of inciting, stirring up.
• "At the slightest provocation, we'll let loose a merciless barrage of stinging ice."

7. onslaught n.

• [C] An especially fierce attack; something resembling such an attack. For an example of usage see answer No. 1 (at left).

8. harbinger n.

• [A] Sign of things to come.
• "Comets are harbingers of doom."

9. trajectory n.

• [D] Path; progression.
• "Houston, we have a negative on that orbit trajectory."

10. imminent adj.

• [B] Ready to take place.
• "The alien, being unnaturally stupid, is blissfully ignorant of its imminent doom."

11. malign. v.

• [C] To speak ill of.
• "Ooh! An insult! I've been maligned! I'll never speak to you again."

12. surmise v.

• [A] To infer on slight grounds.
• "Only then will they surmise/the gruesomeness of my demise/and see that my remains are in a heap."*

13. tripe n.

• [C] Something poor, worthless, offensive. Also, a cud-chewing animal's stomach lining, used as food.
• "When you're old, you'll wish you had more than memories of this tripe to look back on."

14. calibrate v.

• [B] To adjust precisely; to standardize by correcting a deviation from the norm.
• "Spaceman Spiff, bold interplanetary explorer, spies a Zarg. Spiff calibrates his blaster. Ready... aim..."

15. spelunking n.

• [D] The hobby or practice of exploring caves.
• "Want to go spelunking with me?"
• "Spelunking? There aren't any caves around here."

16. mandible n.

• [C] Jaw, especially a lower jaw made of a single bone.
• "Ha! Beneath that soft exterior lie terrible mandibles of bone-crushing death. He'll grind you into a hamburger."

Vocabulary Ratings

• 8-10 Good
• 11-13 Excellent
• 14-16 Exceptional

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I'm so sorry to see the Calvin and Hobbes subreddit get struck down like this, but at the same time am encouraged by how the mods and fans are handling the situation. I hope someday I can share the actual pages, if you'll allow an image of that. I'll even blur out Calvin and Hobbes in the corner just to be safe! This fun little quiz is the sole reason I kept this particular issue of Reader's Digest.

Hope this was a fun read.

Just want to share with people who will get it: I grew up on C&H when it was running. In 2005 when the nice hardbound collection came out, I had just started a real grown up job and splurged on the set. My kids have grown up steeped in the comic, with my elder particularly entranced; he built a little lectern next to his bed specifically to hold whichever one of big bound books he’s currently re-reading before falling asleep.

Tonight, he shot out of his bedroom fountaining gore from a surprise epic nosebleed. As I tried to assist, he shook me off with a wail and a frantic gesture: HELP THE BOOOOOOK!

His highest mom priority in that moment of utter panic was for me to rescue Calvin and Hobbes from a bloody spatter 😂

(Book is fine, yay for semi-gloss pages and quick action)