It's been nearly two years since I did one of these — a look at a single standout panel from a comic strip or graphic novel.
Calvin and Hobbes (1985–1995) by Bill Watterson is one of the most successful comic strips of all time. I've read just about every Calvin and Hobbes strip ever drawn, because it was a staple in The West Australian when I was a teenager. It still is, even though the strip ended over 28 years ago.
How many strips did Bill Watterson draw? Well, the complete three-volume hardcover collection published by Andrews McMeel contains a total of 1,440 pages, so you can work that out in your own time. Let's just say it's a lot, alright?
The dailies were your standard three- or four-panel gags, but where the strip really stood out was in its Sunday strips, with innovative and unconventional layouts and detailed renderings of things you wouldn't normally see in a typical gag strip: it might be two dinosaurs fighting, or a giant bee, or a speeding plane about to crash.
The protagonist Calvin is a six year old boy who has no friends and so frequently escapes into flights of fantasy, which allowed Watterson to let loose with his cinematic visuals. Nothing was off limits (within publishing guidelines, that is) and it all made sense in-world.
So, you're probably thinking that the panel I've singled out is one of those Sunday strip colour panels. Probably one depicting space or a Martian landscape, or even a stately winter scene. Well, it is from a Sunday strip, but it isn't any of those. It is, in fact, this!
When you see this, you instantly know that Calvin's dad, who is being seen as a slug-like creature with one eye, is talking to Calvin in his regular voice. While his dad sits there reading, Calvin imagines his parents and objects in the room becoming various monsters. Except Hobbes, who is absent from this strip. Would he just stay a tiger? Anyway, this panel sums it up for me — the little kid whose life is usually so dull that he has to literally make something abnormal happen just to stay sane.
The whole thing is great. I particularly like how the mounted monster head (where a picture frame was before) has a different expression in the next panel, and that the creature the lamp and table has turned into is now holding a little umbrella. The dad's facial expression is perfect. Surreal and bizarre moments like these in newspaper comic strips today are pretty much unheard of.
Strangely enough, the book of collected strips that this strip comes from...
...is Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat, published in 1994. Calvin and Hobbes was on hiatus for most of that year, as Bill Watterson was taking an extended break.
Well, my local library's copy of the book has an unusual label in it:
Hmmm. Well isn't that ominous.
