the rix mix

Calvin and Hobbes fans still pine 15 years after its exit

It's been 15 years since Calvin and his tiger buddy Hobbes pulled up and rather suddenly left the comics pages. At the time, in 1995, the strip was at the height of its popularity, running in a staggering 2,400-plus newspapers and reaching an audience in the hundreds of millions.

Then, with a short note citing shifting interests and "the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels," creator and Clevelander Bill Watterson retired his masterpiece.

I stopped buying the Star-Ledger every day when C&H ended. Calvin & Hobbes compensated for slow news days. A Transmogrifier story was always news. I wonder how much the end of the strip affected newspaper sales. Watterson's reasons for shutting down the strip made sense. He admitted he could have pulled a few more good years out of it. Jef Mallett's Frazz strip postulates one possible future Calvin in his school environment, where Calvin (as Caufield) has become an imaginative, smartass, underacheiving third grader & practical joker, but basically a good kid capable of real friendships. Of course, Mallett denies the connection. Caufield doesn't live in a fantasy world apart from his tired old schoolteacher; rather, he's intellectually ahead of her.

Labels: culture