Owen and ?
By my count, I have thirteen Calvin and Hobbes books. When I was younger, I read every volume I got from front to back, multiple times.
I think we all go through those phases as kids, or at least that's what I'm telling myself. I remember from first grade on, when in the school or public library, I'd always try to find comic book compilations. Usually those books were horribly lame, like Garfield or Beetle Bailey - but when you're a kid you don't know any better. Comic strips are funny, even if you don't fully understand them. I think my parents were happy to see me reading, and were more than happy to help me along on this endeavor. I believe they bought me every single Calvin and Hobbes book that I own. I've got them all within eyesight, and I plan on giving every single one to my son.
It was by far my favorite comic strip as a boy, even though I didn't always understand the humor. Clearly it was being aimed at more than kids, which I understand now and couldn't have understood then. I think that's part of the reason my parents encouraged this particular fandom. These were smart comic strips that related to a broad audience. I go back now and read particular strips that made no sense to me when I was younger - and now they're hilarious, while the ones that I thought were hilarious when I was younger are also still hilarious. I never get sick of the snowmen gallery. I like that he took time to hand-paint his Spaceman Spiff or dinosaur fantasies of Calvin's. The details on his Sunday comics were amazing, and it was obvious he cared about newspaper print comic strips as an art form.
I remember being very, very sad when it went away - in as far as one can be sad about something like that at that age. I was probably inconsolable for about four minutes until something else came along to grab my attention. I couldn't quite understand it, why it had to end, when things like Garfield are still around.
Well, now I understand. Garfield hasn't been funny in years - while Garfield Minus Garfield is hilarious. I rate it slightly higher than Fred Basset. Bill Watterson went out at the top of his game, and he knows it. That link goes to his first interview in many, many years. He had a great comic strip that appealed to many in that it depicted a boy being a uncaring, completely free child - and still kept it intelligent and edgy so as to be appealing to adults.
Watterson is a recluse much like Salinger was. He very much so had his own beliefs about things, society, tradition. He was obviously quite intelligent, and bemoaned loudly through the voice of Calvin that traditions of yesterday were slowly fading. I also think his message was very Ferris Bueller:
I read about him indirectly in some publication recently. An author was trying to assemble a history of Watterson and his famous comic strip, and while he never managed to get an interview with Watterson, he wrote about his mystery and his message in Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip
Every once in a while, I toy with the idea of purchasing The Complete Calvin and Hobbes