And with the above phrase, Bill Watterson said goodbye to the best comic strip ever created… Forever.
Since I’m reveling in nerdery in all its forms today, I thought I’d spend at least a little bit of that energy talking about comic strips, one of the most reviled and misunderstood forms of pop culture. Comic strips, on a whole, are disappearing*, and I think a large part of that has to do with the end of The Far Side, and Calvin & Hobbes, which were like a one-two punch for the strip format.
Calvin & Hobbes, at least, got a beautiful send-off a few years ago with the Complete Collection which, as the title implies, contains every single bit of Calvin and Hobbes ever made. Except for that one strip where Calvin is pissing on a Ford logo, or getting drunk at a keg party. You know the ones I’m talking about.
Anyway, from the first crude strip to the last, beautiful elegy, Calvin & Hobbes was a genius work of art, and deserves to be on every shelf in America. If for no other reason than that I get choked up every single time I read the one posted above.
[$95, Amazon]
*This is not quite true, as the future of comic strips is moving to online web strips… However, web strips are still essentially printed strips, online. As The Streets might say, “Let’s push things forward.”