He's actually just chewing his dinner with his mouth open.'īut another reality was crashing in on Watterson as the strip became more popular. 'And then suddenly in the last panel we'll do another crash back to reality and we see that, OK, he's not actually a living X-ray. 'So like a living X-ray, or he's a bomb falling from the sky, or he's a drawing come to life,' Hingston says. 8TVc0q3WLX- says Watterson sold readers on how the world was transformed by Calvin's imagination. Whether you're a diehard fan, or just have fond memories of newspaper comix, this is for you. Let's Go Exploring is on sale TODAY! A little book about imagination, snowmen, cardboard boxes, legacies, and illegal decals (you know the one). 'I also loved the fact that the strip never condescended to its young readers. Watterson was always challenging you to go look up what peripatetic, or hara-kiri, or Doctor Zhivago, meant.' 'I loved the drawings, and the jokes,' he says. Hingston fell in love with Calvin and Hobbes when he discovered it in the morning papers and realized how it elevated the comics page. But it also traces the development of Bill Watterson and helps explain why he ended the strip - and why 23 years later it endures. Michael Hingston's new book, Let's Go Exploring, looks at the duality of Calvin's life: the daily challenges for a six-year-old only child versus the animating machine of his imagination. 'Let's Go Exploring.' Never condescending, never merchandising 'It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy,' Calvin says gripping his toboggan in the final strip. Fans were grief-stricken, but the characters seemed to know where they were going. It was that when Calvin looked at Hobbes he saw a six foot tall tiger that could speak English.'Ĭalvin and Hobbes was an instant critical and popular success and it dominated the comic pages for 10 years, until New Year's Eve 1995, when Bill Watterson sent them out into the snow one last time and walked away from the strip for good. 'He had a very clear vision in his mind that it wasn't that the doll come to life. That's exactly how Bill Watterson wanted it to be. Calvin's version of reality, supercharged by his imagination - and often gobs of sugar - was grander, funnier and way more kinetic than a toy slumped on the floor. (Andrews McMeel Publishing)Īnd that's what makes Calvin and Hobbes explode. The first published Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Watterson published November 18, 1985.

Calvin and hobbes last comic