Wondering, “WHAT SHALL I GET HIM FOR CHRISTMAS?”
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By Bill Watterson
ISBN13: 978-0751512748 Paperback (Time Warner) ISBN: 0-8362-1809-4 Hardback (Andrews and McMeel)
Christmas is best experienced through the eyes of a child — and better yet if he’s a fictional child controlled by the whimsical sensibilities of a comic strip genius like Bill Watterson. Unlike most of his fellows, Watterson shunned the spotlight and the merchandising Babylon that follows a comic strip mega-hit and dedicated all his spirit and energies into producing one of the greatest treatments on childhood and the twin and inevitably converging worlds of fantasy and reality anywhere in fiction.
Calvin is a hyper-active little boy growing up in suburban middle-American Everytown. There’s a city nearby, with Museums and such, and a little bit of wooded wilderness at the bottom of the garden. The kid’s smart, academically uninspired and happy in his own world. He’s you and me. His best friend and companion is a stuffed tiger named Hobbes, who may or may not be alive…
And that’s all the help you’re getting. If you know the strip you already love it, and if you don’t you won’t appreciate my destroying the joys of discovery for you. This is beautiful, charming, clever, intoxicating and addictive tale-telling, blending wonder and laughter, socially responsible and wildly funny. After ten years, at the top of his game Watterson retired the strip and himself, and though I bitterly resent it, and miss it still, I suppose it’s best to go out on a peak rather than fade way by degrees.
This sumptuous volume is a compendium of the first two collections, Calvin and Hobbes and Something Under the Bed Is Drooling, and shows the magic of the strip in tales that will make you laugh and isn’t afraid to make you cry. Truly this is a masterpiece and landmark of American cartooning. This year why not get yourself a present that will keep on giving?
© 1988 Universal Press Syndicate. All Rights Reserved.