Summary
- Watterson's art is masterful, showcasing detailed surroundings, expressive characters, and dynamic movement in Calvin and Hobbes comics.
- From realistic moments by the fire to imaginative fantasies about dinosaurs and aliens, Watterson's art captures the essence of childhood and Calvin's adventures.
- Genius use of negative space, hyper-kinetic movement, and experimental art styles that come out of nowhere reveal Watterson's impressive range as an artist.
Bill Watterson's his (possibly) imaginary friend Hobbes the tiger. However, while the sweet-natured, endlessly imaginative strip deserves plaudits for its insightful take on childhood, it should also be celebrated for the high quality of its art.
Watterson has argued that the strip never makes it definitive whether or not Hobbes is truly imaginary, saying that while adults make that assumption, there are strips where Hobbes seemingly knows things Calvin doesn't or affects the world without an easy explanation.
Watterson is an incredibly talented artist, and while Calvin and Hobbes has a definitive style that's recognizable at a glance, it also often experiments with different approaches, giving the readership a window into just how skilled Watterson is. These ten Calvin and Hobbes comics showcase how impressive Watterson's art on the series really was, and how experimental his approach could be. Be sure to stick around to the end to vote in our poll for which of these comics is the best of the bunch.
10 Christmas Eve
Even Without Any 'Tricks,' Watterson's Art Is Amazing
It's important to begin by acknowledging how impressive Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes art is even when it's not doing anything unusual. This Christmas comic expands the strip to a single and shows the title characters napping by the fire. Watterson's ultra-expressive cartoon characters are contrasted with more realistic surroundings, combining a definitive sense of place with protagonists who are easy to project yourself onto, and who showcase big, lovable emotions. The reflection in the glass and the few snowflakes in the corner of the image show Watterson's immense talent for appreciating small details without overloading the . Watterson has also chosen the perfect perspective and character poses for the single image, with the comic's use of color capturing the warmth inside vs the cold outside.
Calvin and Hobbes can't be given enough credit for its hyper-kinetic depiction of movement.
9 "Speed Sled Base Snow Ball"
Watterson's Hyper-Kinetic Art Is Perfect for Calvin's Made-Up Sport
Calvin and Hobbes can't be given enough credit for its hyper-kinetic depiction of movement. Calvin is a young kid with a lot of energy, and depicting him bounding around is important for his characterization. Here, Calvin and Hobbes play a homebrew take on baseball, where Calvin has to make his way around the course without being hit by a snowball. Hobbes' movements are a masterclass in communicating velocity and intent, while the use of small, focused s creates a 'quick cut' intensity for still images on a page. The strip does a huge amount with its character's expressions - just the change in Hobbes' face from the first to the second shows Watterson's mastery of his tiger character.
Watterson's most frequent excuse to flex his artistic muscles is depicting Calvin's fantasies, showing his inner life in vivid detail (often in the lead-up to a joke where he's brought back to reality.)
8 Calvin's Random Fantasies
Watterson's One-Off Style Changes Showcase His Range
Watterson's most frequent excuse to flex his artistic muscles is depicting Calvin's fantasies, showing his inner life in vivid detail (often in the lead-up to a joke where he's brought back to reality.) The strips above - where Calvin imagines himself as a space explorer and diabolical god of the underworld - see Watterson adopt multiple different styles with enough skill that they could anchor their own comic strips to run alongside Calvin and Hobbes. We've chosen the disaster-movie fate of Farmer Brown as the best example of Calvin and Hobbes abruptly changing its approach, but the high-octane deer hunt and jarring Tarzan fantasies are great jokes that showcase Watterson's abilities.
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7 Calvin's Dinosaur Fantasies
Watterson Frequently Depicts Calvin's Prehistoric Fantasies - But His Teacher Being a Plesiosaurus is the Best
While Calvin has many fantasies as a hyperactive school kid, his most frequent distraction is imagining himself as various dinosaurs. Here, Watterson not only captures the prehistoric behemoths in glorious detail, but also adjusts the s to reflect the wide-screen nature of Calvin's imagination. We've chosen Calvin's teacher interrupting his fantasy as the best example based on how Watterson masterfully uses the s - Calvin's dinosaur fantasy is so much bigger than the mundane school day, while the nested interruption puts the reader in Calvin's head-space, where the dinosaurs are the real business at hand and schoolwork an unwanted imposition - not to mention the final of Calvin wistfully returning to his fantasy. However, despite this choice, the depiction of Calvin "becoming" a T-Rex to menace his school is masterful, as his newly tyrannic foot comes down with a "GISZH!"
One of the most underrated aspects of comic art is negative space, with Calvin and Hobbes ending in 1995 with the image of the two sledding off to more adventures against a blank canvas of snow.
6 Calvin and Hobbes' Final Strip
Calvin and Hobbes Mastered Negative Space
One of the most underrated aspects of comic art is negative space, and it's not surprising that Watterson is particularly skilled at deploying it. size, color, and negative space can all be used to communicate time in comic art, making a given 'moment' feel longer or shorter (as well as more or less significant.) It's therefore fitting that Calvin and Hobbes ended in 1995 with a huge showing Calvin and Hobbes sledding off to adventure, the negative space in the driving home Calvin's declaration that "it's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy." Of course, on the most literal level, it also shows the blank canvas of Calvin's childhood - a factor that often plays into his adventures in the snow (and his creation of horrifying snowmen.)
5 Neo-Cubist
Calvin and Hobbes Will Do Anything for a Gag
In another situation where Watterson does something new and exciting just because it helps sell a joke, Calvin's world breaks down into a "Neo-Cubist" wonderland as he attempts to see his dad's side of an argument. While Calvin and Hobbes definitely sympathizes with Calvin's parents, the art is often used to drive home his perspective. Here, that's used a little sarcastically, as Calvin refuses to really embrace his dad's perspective, but it's also honest - as a kid, Calvin is constantly absorbing new and challenging ideas, and the depiction of them throwing his world off-kilter communicates how big even a minor discussion can be for a child.
Calvin's parents aren't always the good guys, but he and his dad share an adorable struggle in trying to ride their bicycles (as rendered hilariously by Watterson.)
4 Calvin's Bicycle
Calvin and Hobbes' Physicality Recreates the Drama of Childhood Struggles
In another example of Calvin and Hobbes' kineticism, Watterson depicts Calvin attempting to ride a bike and failing badly. Watterson's art is incredibly playful, adopting different perspectives (above Calvin as he flees, below him as he tries to restrain the bike) and framings of space and time (the initial three s stretch out Calvin's dread), with various types of comic that would feel way too busy if implemented less skillfully.
The strip also showcases a common trick of Watterson's that's also in the 'Neo-Cubist' comic - Calvin's big, emotional adventures end up contrasted by a small when he goes back to report to his parents, contrasting the scale and emotion of childhood struggles with the experience of putting them into context with some familial help. Calvin's world would be pretty scary if it was always like the comic's first ten s, but thankfully that's not the case. Adorably, Calvin actually takes after his dad in his struggle to ride a bicycle, as seen in another ambitiously kinetic comic from Watterson:
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3 Hobbes Pouncing on Calvin
Calvin and Hobbes' Tiger Attacks Are a Masterclass in Pose and Movement
Hobbes pouncing on Calvin is one of the strip's best recurring gags, and truly showcases Watterson's understanding of pose, movement, and speed in still images. While the slow-motion attack was begging to be our example here (especially since it explores how Watterson shifts his characters out-of-frame for particularly chaotic movement), it ended up in second place. 12 small s of Calvin innocently playing followed by a huge hyper-kinetic pounce is irresistible. Calvin picking up his truck and creeping forward captures the underrated magic that sequential art can accomplish, clearly communicating movement against an entirely white background. The strip also shows Watterson's ability to create a kind of 'epilogue' that happens outside the formal grid structure of the main joke, as Calvin reacts to Hobbes' 'attack.'
Calvin and Hobbes' 'Dead Bird' strip is iconic, with Watterson's art turning the unfortunate bird into a specter that hangs over the strip, just as it's hanging over Calvin's thoughts.
2 Dead Bird
A Single Realistic Recreates a Confusing Childhood Realization
This strip also ends with a large, unbordered , but it communicates the exact opposite intent to the 'pounce' comic. There, the two unbordered s are essentially 'extra,' but here the negative space is the point, showing Calvin and Hobbes sitting with the deep thoughts engendered by discovering a dead bird. While the realism of that initial image gives the entire strip the necessary weight, the heavy border and placement over two rows also make it inescapable throughout the comic, just as it is in Calvin's thoughts.
1 Kazam!
No-One Captures Childhood Imagination Like Watterson
While 'Dead Bird' is one of Calvin and Hobbes' most famous strips, we'd argue that "Kazam!" is equally meaningful and even more ambitious. In the strip, Calvin annoys his parents by yelling 'Kazam!", imagining that he's transforming the world around him into an alien environment. However, the reader has the benefit of Watterson's incredibly creative art, and sees what Calvin's parents won't - what he's doing is genuinely amazing, as the imaginative potential of a young child is casually unleashed and even more casually dismissed. Calvin looking dejectedly out of his window as his mind conjures an interstellar vista underscores one of the great injustices of childhood.
There are lots of small details that make this strip great - Calvin's angry look back before he climbs the stairs, the way the majority white space lets the alien landscape dominate the strip, and the fact that the mounted alien head changes expressions between s, when Watterson could easily have just reused the same image. However, the cumulative effect - recreating a childhood experience that might be hard for adults to really embody - shows why no-one but Bill Watterson could have drawn Calvin and Hobbes.
