Calvin

Calvin is named for a sixteenth-century theologian who believed in predestination. Most people assume that Calvin is based on a son of mine, or based on detailed memories of my own childhood. In fact, I don't have children, and I was a fairly quiet, obedient kid -- almost Calvin's opposite. One of the reasons that Calvin's character is fun to write is that I often don't agree with him. . . .

Many of Calvin's struggles are metaphors for my own. I suspect that most of us get old without growing up, and that inside every adult (sometimes not very far inside) is a bratty kid who wants everything his own way. I use Calvin as an outlet for my immaturity, as a way to keep myself curious about the natural world, as a way to ridicule my own obsessions, and as a way to comment on human nature. I wouldn't want Calvin in my house, but on paper, he helps me sort through my life and understand it.

Hobbes

Named after a seventeenth-century philosopher with a dim view of human nature, Hobbes has the patient dignity and common sense of most animals I've met. Hobbes was very much inspired by one of our cats, a gray tabby named Sprite. Sprite not only provided the long body and facial characteristics for Hobbes, she also was the model for his personality. She was good-natured, intelligent, friendly, and enthusiastic in a sneaking-up-and-pouncing sort of way. Sprite suggested the idea of Hobbes greeting Calvin at the door in midair at high velocity.

The so-called "gimmick" of my strip -- the two versions of Hobbes -- is sometimes misunderstood. I don't think of Hobbes as a doll that miraculously comes to life when Calvin's around. Neither do I think of Hobbes as the product of Calvin's imagination. . . . Calvin sees Hobbes one way, and everyone else sees Hobbes another way. I show two versions of reality, and each makes complete sense to the participant who sees it. I think that's how life works. None of us sees the world exactly the same way, and I just draw that literally in the strip.

Calvin's Parents

I've never given Calvin's parents names, because as far as the strip is concerned, they are important only as Calvin's mom and dad. Calvin's dad has been rumored to be a self-portrait. All my characters are half me, so it's true in some ways, but Calvin's dad is also partly a satire of my own father. Any strip about how suffering "builds character" is usually a verbatim transcript of my dad's explanations for why we were all freezing, exhausted, hungry, and lost on camping trips. These things are a lot funnier after twenty-five years have passed.

Calvin's mom is the daily disciplinarian, a job that taxes her sanity, so I think we get to see her at her best. I regret that the strip mostly shows her impatient side, but I try to hint at other aspects of her personality and her interests by what she's doing when Calvin barges in. . . .

As secondary characters, I've tried to keep Calvin's parents realistic, with a reasonable sense of humor about having a kid like Calvin. I think they do a better job than I would.

Susie Derkins

Susie is earnest, serious and smart. . . . I suspect that Calvin has a mild crush on her that he expresses by trying to annoy her, but Susie is a bit unnerved and put off by Calvin's weirdness. This encourages Calvin to be even weirder, so it's a good dynamic. Neither of them quite understands what's going on, which is probably true of most relationships.

Miss Wormwood

As a few readers guessed, Miss Wormwood is named after the apprentice devil in C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. I have a lot of sympathy for Miss Wormwood. We see hints that she's waiting to retire, that she smokes too much, and that she takes a lot of medication. I think she seriously believes in the value of education, so needless to say, she's an unhappy person.

Rosalyn

Probably the only person Calvin fears is his baby-sitter. I put her in a Sunday strip early on, never thinking of her as a regular character, but her intimidation of Calvin surprised me, so she's made a few appearances since. Rosalyn even seems to daunt Calvin's parents, using their desperation to get out of the house to demand advances and raises. Rosalyn's relationship with Calvin is pretty one-dimensional, so baby-sitter stories get harder and harder to write, but for a later addition to the strip, she's worked pretty well.

Moe Moe is every jerk I've ever known. He's big, dumb, ugly, and cruel. I remember school being full of idiots like Moe. I think they spawn on damp locker room floors.

Spaceman Spiff

Spaceman Spiff predates Calvin and Hobbes by over a decade. I trace Spiff back to a comic strip I drew for high school German class, called Raumfahrer Rolf. It was a pretty silly two-page comic in which the protagonist got eaten by a monster at the end, but it was written in some sort of German, and that was what counted. I reworked the character in college, calling him "Spaceman Mort," but the strip was conceived as a fairly elaborate, continuing project and that didn't seem like the best use of my academic time, so I never published it.

A year or so after college, the newly christened Spaceman Spiff was my first strip submission to newspaper syndicates. Spiff was a diminutive loudmouth, not like Calvin, albeit with a Chaplin mustache, flying goggles, and a cigar. He had a dimwitted assistant named Fargle, and they roamed through space in a dirigible. For obvious reasons, the syndicates rejected it. Years later, when I came up with Calvin, I finally had the opportunity to bring Spiff back.

When I was a kid, I followed the Apollo moon program with great interest, so Calvin shares that fascination with space travel. Spaceman Spiff is also a bit of a spoof on Flash Gordon. The narration in Flash Gordon is fairly overwrought, so I have Spiff describe his own exploits with the similar search for breathless superlatives.

The Spiff strips are limited in narrative potential, but I keep doing them because they're so much fun to draw. The planets and monsters offer great visual possibilities, especially in the Sunday strips. Most of the alien landscapes come from the canyons and deserts of southern Utah, a place more weird and spectacular than anything I'd previously been able to make up. The landscapes have become a significant part of the Spaceman Spiff sequences, and I often write the strip around the topography I feel like drawing.

Like all of Calvin's fantasies, Spaceman Spiff provides a way for me to draw some other comic strip when I want a break from Calvin and Hobbes. I can draw and write things that wouldn't fit in the strip otherwise, and this opens up opportunities to experiment with new interests.

Calvin's Wagon

Calvin's wagon is a simple device to add some physical comedy to the strip, and I most often use it when Calvin gets longwinded or philosophical. I think the action lends a silly counterpoint to the text, and it's a lot more interesting to draw than talking heads. Sometimes the wagon ride even acts as a visual metaphor for Calvin's topic of discussion.

Calvin rides the wagon through the woods, bouncing off rocks and flying over ravines. When I was a kid, our backyard dropped off into a big woods, but it was brambly and swampy, not like Calvin's, which seems to be more like a national forest. I was not a real outdoorsy kid, but occasionally I'd tramp out through the bush to map a pond, or try to see unusual birds and animals. Calvin's woods is important to the strip, because it's the place where Calvin and Hobbes can get away from everyone and be themselves. The solitude of the woods brings out Calvin's small, but redeeming, contemplative side.

Get Rid Of Slimy girlS

The Get Rid Of Slimy girlS is based on similar clubs my next-door neighbor and I formed when we were kids. Our mission was to harass neighborhood girls, but if they wouldn't come out, we'd often settle for harassing my brother. We prepared for a lot of great struggles that never happened. Once we gathered big hickory nuts, loaded them into a suitcase, locked it so nobody else could open it, and stashed it up high in a tree. When the Critical Moment came, we planned to scramble up the tree and unleash a hail of nuts upon our astonished pursuers. Six months later, when the leaves were down, we looked up and discovered the suitcase was still in the tree. The hinges had rusted, the nuts had rotted, and the suitcase was ruined. Our great plans often had this kind of boing anticlimax, which is why fiction comes in so handy.

Dinosaurs

The dinosaurs I put in Calvin and Hobbes have become one of my favorite additions to the strip. Dinosaurs have appeared in many strips before mine, but I like to think I've treated them with a little more respect than they've often received at the hands of cartoonists.

When I was Calvin's age, I had a nicely illustrated dinosaur book and some dinosaur models, so it was a natural step to have Calvin share that interest. The first dinosaurs I put in the strip were based on my childhood memories of them. Back in the 60's, dinosaurs were imagined as lumbering, dim-witted, cold-blooded, oversized lizards. That's how I drew them in the first strips, and these drawings are now pretty embarrassing to look at. when I realized that dinosaurs offered Calvin interesting story possibilities, I started searching for books to rekindle my interest in them. It was then I discovered what I'd missed in paleontology during the last twenty years.

Dinosaurs, I quickly learned, were wilder than anything I'd ever imagined. Tails up, with birdlike agility, these were truly the creatures of nightmares. My drawings began to reflect the new information, and with each new strip, I've tried to learn more and to depict dinosaurs more accurately. I do this partly for my own amusement, and partly because, for Calvin, dinosaurs are very, very real.

Dinosaurs have expanded Calvin's world and opened up some exciting graphic possibilities. The biggest reward for me, however, has been the fun I've had exploring a new interest. I enjoy dinosaurs more now than I did as a kid, and much of the job of being a cartoonist lies in keeping alive a sense of curiosity and wonder. Sometimes the best way to generate new ideas is to go out and learn something.

-- All text was taken from The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book By: Bill Watterson. If you like this page and contents, then support Calvin and Hobbes and buy the book. Myself, I own the books, and love 'em. Thanks again to Mr. Watterson for bringing us Calvin and Hobbes.

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