From the New York Times this morning.
Thirty years ago today, a mischievous 6-year-old and his stuffed tiger appeared in a comic strip.
It was the start of a 10-year run for “Calvin and Hobbes,” a peek into childhood that a Wall Street Journal essay this year called America’s strangest, funniest and most profound comic strip.
The strip took its name from the serious philosophers John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes, but the comic’s Calvin believed in having the most fun with the least amount of effort and the wildest imagination.
Calvinball, for instance, is a sport with no rules except those Calvin makes up as he goes along. (The Washington Post this year compared Donald J. Trump’s campaign to Calvinball.)
At its peak, “Calvin and Hobbes” ran in 2,400 newspapers. Then in 1995, the creator, Bill Watterson abruptly ended it with little explanation and has been largely out of view since.
“I’m proud of the strip, enormously grateful for its success and truly flattered that people still read it,” he said in 2010, “but I wrote ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ in my 30s, and I’m many miles from there.”
Still, anything is possible. The cartoons “Bloom County” and “Doonesbury,” which soared in the same era, only to be retired, made comebacks.
Here's hoping.
