One of the most interesting parts of any long-running newspaper comic is often its first few years. The first entries in any new comic strip are often significantly different from what they’d later become, especially if they’re given time in which to evolve. The jokes are rougher, different characters cycle in and out of the spotlight, and the cartoonist hasn’t quite finalized their art style yet.
For example, the first two years of Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County are a big departure from what it eventually became. Milo Bloom, the title character, is still its protagonist. Opus is present, but he hasn’t yet stolen center stage, and his nose is a fraction of its eventual size. Cutter John, who’s almost entirely sidelined as the strip moves further into the ’80s, gets several storylines to himself, while Bill the Cat wasn’t introduced at all until 1982.
In the case of Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, its run can be usefully split into two eras: pre- and post-sabbatical. During the strip’s original run in syndication, Watterson took two long breaks, the first of which was from May 1991 until February 1992. Upon his return from that first sabbatical, Watterson immediately made several big changes to Calvin and Hobbes.
The best-known example is the introduction of the more elaborate half-page format for Sunday strips, though that didn’t kick in immediately. In addition, post-sabbatical C&H takes bigger swings with its art, has shorter story arcs, and often takes jabs at then-modern comics and newspapers as a format.
Pre-sabbatical Calvin and Hobbes, unlike some other strips, isn’t so different as to feel like a wholly different comic. While Watterson is still figuring some things out as he goes, most of the base ingredients of C&H are there from the jump. The big innovations he makes over the course of the run are largely from format rather than style.
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Home is where the TV heart was
On a reread, some highlights from early Calvin and Hobbes include the burglary arc, when Calvin’s family comes home from a wedding to discover their house has been robbed. Calvin’s first worry is for Hobbes, but many of their valuables are missing.
More crucially, Watterson writes at length about the family’s sense of vulnerability in the aftermath. Your home is supposed to be a constant and a sanctuary, but much of that’s a necessary illusion.
It takes a few strips to get there, but Calvin’s dad’s thoughts in the aftermath remains one of the better meditations on adulthood that you’ll find in all of Western comics. At the end of the day, even the most self-assured person you know is, to some extent, just making it up as they go. There’s no shame in that. It’s simply part of the human condition.
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Maybe this hat will fix me
Another storyline that jumps out, although one that’s aged poorly in the age of next-day delivery, ran from February through March of 1989. When Calvin learns his favorite cereal is offering a propeller beanie as a prize for sending in box tops, he goes through an ordeal that’s uncomfortably familiar to anyone who remembers the 1980s.
First, Calvin gorges himself on Sugar Bombs, then he waits six weeks for the beanie to arrive. Once it does, the beanie is… just a hat. Calvin allowed himself to get hyped up for a product that could in no way deliver what he wanted from it. Granted, Calvin thought it would let him fly, so much of this is on him.
If you were born before 1990, you likely had this or something like it happen to you. Even today, it’s a fairly universal childhood experience to wait for something — a movie, a new season of a show, the release of a new game — only for the anticipation to ruin the event. It’s just that now that wait time is measured in days, not months.
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To change the world, start in your own back yard
A storyline that’s only aged better as time’s gone on, however, started in Sept. 1988. Calvin reads the newspaper, decides to abandon Earth, and takes Hobbes on a trip to Mars.
They intend to colonize the place permanently, but after a few days of solitude and an encounter with a Martian, Calvin realizes they’ve got to head back to Earth. “We ought to fix up our own planet,” Calvin says, “before we go messing around with other people’s planets.”
At three weeks long, Calvin and Hobbes’ Martian voyage is one of the bigger storylines in the strip’s run, as well as an immediate, preemptive counterpoint to the modern argument for Martian colonization.
Maybe it’s worth visiting another planet, but you can’t solve Earth’s problems (or many of your own) by running away from them, and Bill Watterson made that argument quite efficiently 38 years ago.