this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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Calvin and Hobbes
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Hello fellow Calvin and Hobbes fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… The comics are posted in chronological order on the day (usually) they were released. Posting them to match the release date adds a bit of fun and nostalgia to match the experience of reading them in the newspaper for first time. Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips. It really sucked when I missed a day. Only years later, when I got the books was I able to catch up on the missed strips.
Calvin and Hobbes is a daily American comic strip created by cartoonist Bill Watterson that was syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. Commonly cited as "the last great newspaper comic",[2][3][4] Calvin and Hobbes has enjoyed broad and enduring popularity, influence, and academic and philosophical interest… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes
Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s Calvin and Hobbes!
Ps. Sub to all my comic strip communities:
Bello Bear !BelloBear@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/bellobearofficial
Bloom County !bloomcounty@lemm.ee https://lemm.ee/c/bloomcounty
Calvin and Hobbes !calvinandhobbes@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/calvinandhobbes
Cyanide and Happiness !cyanideandhappiness https://lemm.ee/c/cyanideandhappiness
Garfield !garfield@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/garfield
The Far Side !thefarside@sh.itjust.works https://lemmy.world/c/thefarside@sh.itjust.works
Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.
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that is surprisingly morbid. I love it
how?
I see it as morbid from the imagination of Calvin. Calvin seems perfectly cool with the idea of letting his tiger devour bullies in front of the rest of the kids. He is almost smiling about it.
If Hobbes was actually real, that would be one of the most terrifying things a kid could see. It's not like Hobbes could unhinge his jaw and swallow the kid whole: It would be fucking brutal.
Since all of this is in Calvin's imagination, it should start to create doubt about his mental health. (That is, if his extreme version of an imaginary friend didn't create that doubt first.) Calvin continuously shows that he is 100% unable to tell his imagination from reality and his parents almost encourage the behavior.
Stepping back and looking at the comic as a real-life scenario is really fucking weird. Alas, it's not real (sorry) and it still remains one of my favorites for life.
how will create doubt and mental health in Calvin?
I don't understand.
Imaginary friends may be considered normal during childhood. The level of interaction Calvin has with his imaginary friend is extraordinary and if this was a real life situation, it might be comparable to how Wilson came to be in the movie Cast Away.
I am absolutely not a shrink, but times of extreme stress or some kind of deep trauma might be a trigger to create an imaginary friend such as Hobbes or Wilson. It could he helpful to a person in some circumstances as a means of survival, I suppose.
As a cartoon, Calvin and Hobbes works perfectly. If it were real life, this would be a different situation. It's that dichotomy that may make some of the C&H cartoons seem very strange or morbid to some people.
I often think we have this strange notion, at least here in the West,that kids are some kind of nice innocent little creatures, almost angel-like. They're not. They're kids, for sure, they're smaller and more fragile and they need help with a lot of things but they're still full on human beings. Meaning they can be as cruel as we adults (suffice to observe kids fighting one other, or a bunch of kids bullying one of them they consider a weakling)... if not more than us, as most kids have yet to learn the skill of hypocrisy, aka the art of hiding their true feelings and emotions.
But I do agree with you, this strip is quite unsettling.