Something Under the Bed is Drooling...

Number one blogson already covered this story, but since Calvin & Hobbes is my all-time favorite comic strip, I've gotta say something. Calvin & Hobbes started in 1985 and ended a decade later, taking me through high school, college, and graduate school. I looked forward to the precocious six year old's exploits every day (it was the only thing worth getting the Boston Globe for) and have all of the published collections, including the collection of collections...

I even used a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip as part of a seminar as a grad student. We were discussing the bio-ethics of the Human Genome Project, and it seemed like the perfect place to use this comic:

Reprinted with all due respect to Bill Watterson and Calvin & Hobbes

I have a lot of respect for Watterson for not riding the strip to the lucrative world of licensed merchandising - yes, all of those various and sundry Calvin or Calvin and Hobbes T-shirts, bumper stickers, truck decals, etc. are all counterfeit and rip off Mr. Watterson. Turning C&H into yet another Garfield would have cheapened it significantly, as pressure mounted to mass-produce C&H merchandise and come up with hilarious saying after hilarious saying to sell more shirts/commemorative plates/feminine products/etc.

And I understand, on many levels, why Watterson chose to end the strip when he did. Rather than milking C&H for several more decades, he stopped writing when he felt that he'd explored Calvin's world to its fullest. Calvin as a middle schooler becomes problematic - with Hobbes he's a mentally unstable kid who continues an unhealthy relationship with a stuffed childhood toy; without Hobbes he's just another surly teen with a chip on his shoulder. Calvin's already a proto-teen in the way he delights in antagonizing his parents; it's a safe bet that by 14 he's stuffed to the gills with Ritalin.

It doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see some new material, though...

That is all.

Besides seeing the link at Borepatch's place, good friend and NE Blogger dinner attendee SCI-FI sent me this story...