{"id":65,"date":"2005-10-30T23:32:42","date_gmt":"2005-10-31T03:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2005\/10\/30\/calvin-hobbes-then-and-now\/"},"modified":"2005-10-30T23:32:42","modified_gmt":"2005-10-31T03:32:42","slug":"calvin-hobbes-then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2005\/10\/calvin-hobbes-then-and-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Calvin & Hobbes, then and now"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Calvin and Hobbes has been back in the Boston Globe ever since the demise of Garfield<\/a>.
\nMy mixed feelings about it at the time has taken a dive towards the
\nnegative, not because the strips are no good, but because the syndicate
\nthat’s now recycling old strips seem to be doing so with little respect
\nfor the material. For example, over the past few weeks the Sunday
\nstrips have had Calvin suicide-sledding, and yesterday’s early snow<\/a> notwithstanding, it’s still autumn!\n<\/p>\n

Perhaps the worst example of this lack of respect came today. Any fan of the comic would immediately recognize it as the very last Calvin & Hobbes ever<\/a>,
\npublished December 31, 1995. Why October 30, 2005 (2 months shy of a
\n10th anniversary!) seemed a fitting day to rerun this particular strip
\nis entirely mysterious to me…\n<\/p>\n

… except for the entirely personal fact, for our 6th (dating)
\nanniversary, Rachel (that’s Ms. Anderkoo if you’re nasty) gave me The Complete Calvin and Hobbes<\/a>
\n3-volume, 25 lb collection. Somehow she lugged that thing home from
\nwork, where she’d had Amazon ship it. I was none-too-subtle about
\nwanting it (in fact, I distinctly remember sending an email to her with
\nthe message “This would be a nice gift”), but it was sweet all the same.<\/p>\n

The best part of the collection for me is the all-new introduction
\nwritten by Watterson himself. Since he’s such a recluse, any insight
\ninto his thinking is a rare gift. He’s still rather worked up about his
\nfight for artistic integrity of his strip:\n<\/p>\n

Even though I finally got my way, teh whole mess is
\ndepressing to recall, even all these years later. The fight was
\npersonally traumatic. For several years it poisoned what had been a
\nhappy relationship with my syndicate, and in my disillusionment and
\ndisgust at being pushed to the wall, I lost the conviction that I
\nwanted to spend my life cartooning. Both sides paid a heavy price for
\nthis battle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps
\nI speak as one who now owns every Calvin and Hobbes strip ever printed,
\nbut I do feel publication of the strip in today’s papers doesn’t show
\nit in its best light. Some of the material is dated — Watterson’s
\nnemesis is obviously the television, but C&H ended just before the
\ndot-com explosion and mobile phones, and a comic strip that portrays a
\nmodern kid without referencing mobile phones or the internet seem
\nquaint. Most of the strips remain delightful, but if the Globe has to
\nresurrect old strips to fill up space, why not go all the way back to
\nLittle Nemo in Slumberland or some of the other classics? Or why not
\ngive some fresh blood a chance?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Calvin and Hobbes has been back in the Boston Globe ever since the demise of Garfield. My mixed feelings about it at the time has taken a dive towards the negative, not because the strips are no good, but because … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[413],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comic-strips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}