The Complete Calvin and Hobbes - Hardcover

Bill Watterson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0740748475 ISBN 13: 9780740748479

Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2005

Synopsis

The complete Calvin and Hobbes collection in one deluxe package. This three-volume hardcover box set celebrates Bill Watterson’s art and storytelling while providing a complete journey through the magic of Calvin and Hobbes. With a compelling introduction, full-color artwork, and every daily and Sunday cartoon that appeared in newspapers, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is a must-have for fans, collectors, and new readers who want to experience these iconic adventures from start to finish.

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collects every daily and Sunday strip from 1985 to 1995, spanning the series’ entire 10-year run. Readers can follow Calvin’s boundless imagination and Hobbes’ witty companionship in every adventure, from snow goons and Calvinball to daring space missions and philosophical musings.

This definitive hardcover edition offers an introductory essay by Bill Watterson, full-color cover and spot art from the classic Calvin and Hobbes collections, and all of the special illustrated stories and poems that appeared in previous books. Exquisitely printed on art paper with a sturdy slipcase for display, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is the ultimate treasure for fans, collectors, and new readers eager to experience every laugh, adventure, and heartfelt moment of one of the most beloved comic strips of all time.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Every daily and Sunday strip from 1985–1995
• Boxed set of three oversized hardcover volumes
• Iconic story arcs and beloved characters
• Highlights Watterson’s wit, artistry, and philosophical depth
• Perfect for collectors, longtime fans, and new readers
   

About this title

About the Author

Bill Watterson is the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, one of the most popular and well-regarded cartoon strips of the twentieth century. Calvin and Hobbes appeared in newspapers from November 1985 until Watterson's retirement in 1995.

Online:

gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/

Reviews

Starred Review. [Signature]Reviewed by Art SpiegelmanBy the 1980s the once glorious newspaper comics section had become a wasteland, ravaged by shrinking space, editorial timidity and other ills. The real excitement in my medium had moved to the fertile margins of the alternative press. Bill Watterson, as uninterested in underground comix as I was in the mass media's bland concoctions, marched directly into the wasteland and made the comatose syndicated strip form kick up its heels and dance.From 1985 until Watterson abandoned it at the height of its popularity 10 years later, Calvin and Hobbes echoed the classic strips the artist most admired. Stirring the richly conceived characters and efficient drawing of Peanuts with the visual virtuosity and linguistic playfulness of Pogo and Krazy Kat, he applied his intelligence and supple cartoon skills to come up with a creation beloved by the millions who still mourn its passing.Now, a decade after his demise, six-year-old Calvin has a fitting monument—a lavishly produced three-volume boxed collection of all the strips, which weighs as much as a tombstone. Following in the wake of Gary Larson's The Complete Far Side, and with a 250,000-copy "limited edition" first printing, the publisher realistically predicts that this book will be "the heaviest and most expensive book ever to hit the New York Times best seller list." While not as exquisitely wrought as Walt and Skeezix, the recently launched reprinting of Frank King's epic run of Gasoline Alley, or as intimate and dignified as Fantagraphics' ongoing republication of all 50 years of Peanuts, this luxurious set is dressed for success and deserves an honored spot on the happily expanding shelves of strip reprints.The Complete Calvin and Hobbes offers two intertwined narratives. One details the friendship between Calvin—the egotistical, feverishly imaginative, wised-up young tyke with the vocabulary of a Yale lit major—and his animal familiar, Hobbes. Hobbes is seen by Calvin's parents as a nondescript plush toy and by Calvin and the reader as a pouncing and amiable "real" tiger—Calvin's slightly-more-sensible better half. The crosscutting between private and shared reality gives the strip its vitality.The autobiographical introduction by the notoriously reclusive Watterson kicks off another tale about the collision of private and shared realities: the story of an ornery artist's battle to explore his craft within the claustrophobic confines of a few inches of newsprint space. The beleaguered Watterson fights the strictures of brutal daily deadlines, skirmishes with editors to win more space for his often graceful Sunday pages, slugs it out with his syndicate to keep his creation from being reduced to a stuffed doll. The later strips begin to dwell obsessively on the horrors of our dumbed-down commodity culture, and there's something poignant about the artist's hopeless struggle to work within the confines of mass culture while simultaneously critiquing it. These books offer a testament to Watterson's dedication and to the medium's ability to keep reinventing itself against all odds. (Oct.)Art Spiegelman is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0740748475
• ISBN 13: 9780740748479
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Bill Watterson
• Number of pages: 1440