 My name is
Larry Volz. I'm 26, and I teach art to sixth, seventh and eighth graders at a middle school in
Kalamazoo, Michigan. I started reading Calvin and Hobbes in the morning paper when I was twelve, the
fall it started, at the kitchen table before the bus. I read it every day for ten years, through
junior high and high school and most of college. On the last day of 1995 I was home for Christmas
break, twenty-two years old, and I read the last one at that same kitchen table, and I'm not too
proud to tell you I cried into my cereal.
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The Run
Calvin and Hobbes started on Monday, November 18, 1985, and ended on Sunday, December 31,
1995. Ten years, and Bill Watterson took two long breaks in the middle of it, which he'd earned.
When he came back from the first one in 1992, the Sunday strips came back in a new format: a solid
half page that the papers had to run whole, the way he laid it out, instead of chopping the panels
up to fit. Every cartoonist in America should send him a fruit basket for that. In November 1995 he
told the papers he was stopping at the end of the year. And he did.
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No Toys
Watterson would not license the characters. No stuffed Hobbes, no lunch boxes, no cartoon show, no
T-shirts. There were the books, and a couple of calendars early on, and that's it. He could have made
a fortune and he said no, and the strip stayed exactly what it was. I respect that more than almost
anything anybody's done in my lifetime.
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A Grudge, Stated Plainly
Which is why I cannot stand the window decals. You've seen them on the back of pickup trucks
all over Michigan: Calvin doing his business on the other guy's truck brand, or the other football
team's logo, or whatever. Every one of them is a bootleg. Watterson never drew it and never okayed
it. A kid who has never read the strip now thinks Calvin is that. When I see one at a stoplight I
think about all those Sundays, and I grip the wheel a little harder. My girlfriend Maggie says I
should let it go. I've let it go about as far as the next stoplight.
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The Cast
Calvin, six years old, named for the theologian John Calvin. Every idea he has is a bad one and
every one is wonderful.
Hobbes, named for the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. A stuffed tiger to everyone else, and to Calvin
the realest thing in the world. The strip never once tells you which is true. That's the genius.
Susie Derkins, the girl next door, smarter than Calvin and fully aware of it.
Miss Wormwood, his teacher, who I have come to sympathize with more every year I teach.
Rosalyn, the babysitter, the only person Calvin truly fears.
Moe, the bully. Every school has one. Every school.
Mom and Dad, who never get first names and don't need them.
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The Other Calvins
Spaceman Spiff, interplanetary explorer, usually crash-landed on a planet that turns out to be
Miss Wormwood's classroom. The best color work in the strip.
Stupendous Man, defender of liberty, in a mask and a cape, who mostly defends
Calvin from bedtime, homework and Rosalyn.
Tracer Bullet, private eye, drawn in black and white like an old detective movie, with
the hat, the trench coat and the tough-guy narration.
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The Stories I Loved
No strips on this page; they're Mr. Watterson's. Just what I remember, in my own words.
- The snowmen. Every winter Calvin built snowmen that told you more about him than any
psychologist could: snowmen in agony, snowmen in crowds, and once a whole army of monster snowmen
that came to life and turned on him. I read that one at fifteen during a February that wouldn't quit,
and it made me feel better about the February.
- The cardboard box. A box that was a time machine one week and a transmogrifier the next,
and then a duplicator that made extra Calvins, who of course were all just as bad as the first one.
The best argument I know for giving a kid a box instead of a toy.
- The raccoon. Calvin and his mom find a hurt baby raccoon and try to save it, and it doesn't
make it. Calvin asks the questions every kid asks. I was fourteen and it was the first time a comic strip
made me cry. Not the last.
- The break-in. The family comes home from a trip to find the house has been robbed, and it's
about a dad realizing he can't keep his family completely safe. Told from a six-year-old's height. I
didn't understand it then. I'm starting to now.
- The wagon. Calvin and Hobbes hurtling down a hill in a wagon, or a sled, talking about
God and death and whether people are basically good, and then crashing. The best
philosophy class I ever took.
- G.R.O.S.S. The anti-girl club in the treehouse. Two members, a very long list of officer
titles, and the password is the hard part.
- The last one. Fresh snow, a sled, and the two of them heading off to see what's out there. He
couldn't have ended it better. I'm not going to describe it any more than that. Go find it.
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Teaching with the Sundays
Every year my seventh graders do a unit on sequential art: panels, gutters, pacing, how a picture
can make time pass. I teach it from my own copies of the books. We look at a Watterson Sunday and ask
why one panel is tall and another is skinny, why there's a panel where nothing happens, why the
dinosaur panel is painted and the kitchen panel isn't. Then they make their own. Every year at least
one kid comes in the next week having read every book in the school library. That kid is why I teach.
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On My Shelf
Calvin and Hobbes (1987)
Something Under the Bed Is Drooling (1988)
Yukon Ho! (1989)
Weirdos from Another Planet! (1990)
The Revenge of the Baby-Sat (1991)
Scientific Progress Goes "Boink" (1991)
Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons (1992)
The Days Are Just Packed (1993)
Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat (1994)
There's Treasure Everywhere (1996)
It's a Magical World (1996)
plus the big treasuries, and the Tenth Anniversary Book (1995), where he writes about his own strips.
Mrs. Goebel across the hall has borrowed Yukon Ho! since March.
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CALVINBALL
My seventh graders play it on Fridays when we clean up early. The rules change every week. That's the
only rule that doesn't.
Read this month's rules »
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