It's a terrible injustice, regardless.

Bill Watterson = Super Genius :D

I drew a picture of a stickman.

Why is Leonardo DaVinci's drawing of a man better than my stickman?

You're not looking at it chronologically or even in the right context. It's like you're saying there are plenty of shows where little kids talk like adults, so what makes Peanuts so special?

Calvin wasn't a sweet little kid, or a poor-luck nice guy. He was selfish and egostitical, but not because he was a jerk, but because kids that aget have trouble empathizing with others. They havn't reached that stage of cognitive ability yet. Waterson didn't write kids as miniature adults or stereotype kids, he wrote them as kids with thier actual short attention spans, hair-trigger imaginations, self obsorbtion, and naive vulnerability. Some sundays Waterson would free himself up to wax poetic through Calvin about human nature, the meaning of existance, the complexities of time and space, but always remembering to give Calvin a good kick to the face of reality to bring him down to earth.

As for art, Waterson was always trying to do more than the measly space given on the comics page would let him. Giving panels with Calvin's fantasies the vividness, detail, and beauty that a kid with a runaway imagination would see. The Spaceman Spiff stories, the Bullet Tracer storyline, The Dinosaur comics, Calvin outgrowing the world. All wonderful handcrafted peices of art alone that would be fit to hang on your wall.

But I think that it's the same care and emotion found in classic Disney feature animations, as reminded by the recent passing of the masterful Character Animator Frank Thomas, in the joy and sorrow of the characters, such as Calvin snuggling up to a warm sleeping Tiger belly, Calvin's panic/fear/bravery when after worrying about the repurcusions of accidently crashing his Dad's car in a ditch, he confronts his father with tears in his eyes afraid that after this and all his other agrivations might cause his parents not to love him any more. The way Hobbes tortures Calvin with a daily tackle at the front door and tries to hid his joy at seeing Calvin come home from school as his tigerish instinct to attack weak animals. Or just seeing how lonely and powerless the commonly loud and self-confident Calvin is when he loses his best friend for a week worrying him to death.

Calvin and Hobbes ended years before Pepper Ann even began. You're a decade off. :)

My guess would be that something probably was lost in the translation. I suppose Calvin and Hobbes wouldn't lend itself particularily well to being translated into another language, as Watterson's writing style has a distinctive charm. And Calvin's world involves a lot of invented concepts and made-up words, so some poor shmoe in the translation department would've been stuck with the problem of how the hell you say "Transmogrifier" in Portugese. Do translations in general lose a lot of the original feel? It would be interesting to do some comparisons.

Garfield is actually more due to come out funnier than C&H because there's just too little text attached to it. It's often just body language and slapstick humor, and that kinda thing is, at least to a bigger extent than a particular writing style, universal. There's a reason why the damn cat appeals to so many people around the globe afterall.

The biggest difference was that Calvin and Hobbes was a comic strip and the rest where animated cartoons. So how people experienced them was completely different. With comics strips we provide the voices and make the connections between panels. So for some people Hobbes is real--and others he's all in Calvins imagination. That makes it unique for each reader and gives it a personal connection.

Structure wise Bobby's World was very similar to Calvin in how you popped in and out of his imagination. But they they controled the comings and goings rather than leaving it up to the audience. I personally still enjoyed that show.

Doug and PepperAnn where very similar to themselves. But I wouldn't compare them to Calvin in Hobbes because they where more slice of life pre-teen "moral tales".

-d

http://www.yaytime.realmsend.com

I've purchased every single Calvin and Hobbes book available. The comic was genius in the way that Bill Watterson managed to capture the exact and intrinsic nature of almost everything he observed. His versatility in subject matter (death, the "system", television, advertising, slimy girls, etc) was just captivating, and having it come through the mouth of a six year old, for whatever reason, gave it more impact.

Watterson's work is the reason I do webcomics. Absolute genius.