Yukon Ho! Its a Magical World!. Review on Calvin and Hobbes

“I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!”

--Calvin

AHHHHHHHHHHH! This is so unfair! A month and a half ago I asked MS guys to put up Calvin and Hobbes in their database. My only mistake was I asked them to put it up in cartoons series! I didn’t know Calvin and Hobbes existed on MS as books already, and no one at MS reminded me!! :(. When I today saw Calvin and Hobbes review on MS, my creative juices started flowing, hand started to wave, mind started to think, my brains and PC were full of null pointer exception – The only way I can restore my normalcy is to write on none but Calvin and Hobbes.

“The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us”

--Calvin to Hobbes

“History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.”

-- Calvin

A brief HISTORY

To fully state the description of Calvin and Hobbes, I take the liberty of quoting the author Bill Watterson as I find it’s the most appropriate description of Calvin ever. –''Calvin is autobiographical in the sense that he thinks about the same issues that I do, but in this, Calvin reflects my adulthood more than my childhood. Many of Calvin's struggles are metaphors for my own. I suspect that most of us get old without growing up, and that inside every adult (sometimes not very far inside) is a bratty kid who wants everything his own way. I use Calvin as an outlet for my immaturity, as a way to keep myself curious about the natural world, as a way to ridicule my own obsessions, and as a way to comment on human nature. I wouldn't want Calvin in my house, but on paper, he helps me sort through my life and understand it.''

I again take the liberty to quote him for the most appropriate description of Hobbes too - ''Named after a seventeenth-century philosopher with a dim view of human nature, Hobbes has the patient dignity and common sense of most animals I've met. Hobbes stands upright and talks of course, but I try to preserve his feline side, both in physical demeanor and his attitude. His reserve and tact seem very catlike to me, along with his barely contained pride in not being human. Like Calvin, I often prefer the company of animals to people, and Hobbes is my idea of an ideal friend.”

Calvin:What's it like to fall in love?

Hobbes:Well... Say the object of your affection walks by...

Calvin:Yeah?

Hobbes:First, your heart falls into your stomach and splashes your innards. All the moisture makes you sweat profusely. This condensation shorts the circuits to your brain, and you get all woozy. When your brain burns out altogether, your mouth disengages and you babble like a cretin until she leaves.

Calvin:That's love?!?

Hobbes:Medically speaking.

Calvin:Heck, that happened to me once, but I figured it was cooties!

Why do I LOVE them?

There are thousand and one reasons for Calvin and Hobbes being special to me. This is one of the rare comic strips which makes you laugh and yet make you see the brighter side of life. Calvin’s and Hobbes’s discussion may make you laugh, but many a times there is an underlying message in them. Bill Watterson’s genius lies in bringing out that message in the most subtle way.

Hobbes: How come we play war but not peace?

Calvin: Too few role models.

And it need not be that the author sends a message with each strip. The essence of the comic strip lies more in the word play. Calvin thinks bigger for his brain and Hobbes aptly but quietly supports him. Anything can happen in Calvin and Hobbes. Hobbes comes to life only around Calvin; otherwise he is a stuffed tiger – something the author has used beautifully to create a semi-fantasy world, where he could shift between reality and fantasy just as easily as he wants to! One of my favorite ones is when Calvin and Hobbes decide to go in future to remind his own self that he needs to do his homework, else he will suffer. The future self and his own self then decide to go back somewhere middle in time so that they both can remind the middle guy that he needs to do the homework! Eventually it’s the future Hobbes, and the current Hobbes which end up doing the homework (of course not done!)

“The secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that is even worse.” - Calvin’s Dad

Any one ELSE around?

Of course Calvin and Hobbes are not alone. They are surrounded by a bunch of people whom they mostly hate. Calvin especially likes kicking Susie and is the joint president of the Get Rid Of Slimy girlS club. His parents are usually the frustrated lot with is behavior. He doesn’t like to bathe, doesn’t believe that school can actually help him become something. Some of the most hilarious strips are in his school when is caught by his teacher Mrs. Wormwood. The very face of that teacher has me ROLFing!

Calvin: Mom and Dad drive me crazy. They don understand me and I don’t understand them. Its hopeless. I am related to people I don’t relate!

The DAYS are just PACKED!

Personally I feel that Calvin and Hobbes is one of most effective comic strip to be written. It is Insanely funny and at the same time conveys the meaning of life through a small kid and his tiger, something which is so much necessary in this world of violence where all that we read even in comics are the adventures of super heroes, bat man, pac man(?) and the gang. For more information on any Calvin and Hobbes and the books which exist, please visit https://reemst.com/calvin_and_hobbes/. Or else, simply read the Times of India!

Calvin: Isn’t it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor. When you think about it, its weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We Laugh at nonsense. We think its funny. Don’t you think (Hobbes) its odd that we appreciate absurdity. Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?

Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.

(-: -----^-.-^----- :-)