Brain Food # 5 : Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

this is a definite Brain Food book not only for those in advertising and marketing but everyone else who appreciates life. check out the books today, they are available in most bookstores.

calvin & hobbes is my all time favorite comic strip. if the the books themselves are not enough for you to get interested in it, read about the author, bill watterson and you will get floored.

bill watterson before he rose to fame with his calvin & hobbes cartoon was an advertising man.

view calvin & h0bbes posts in WAWAM! here : http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/search/label/calvin%20and%20hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes is a comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Watterson, following the humorous antics of Calvin, an imaginative six-year old boy, and Hobbes, his energetic and sardonic—albeit stuffed—tiger. The pair are named after John Calvin, a 16th century French Reformation theologian, and Thomas Hobbes, a 17th century English political philosopher.[1]

The strip was syndicated daily from November 18, 1985 to December 31, 1995. At its height, Calvin and Hobbes was featured in over 2,400 newspapers worldwide. To date, more than 30 million copies of the 18 Calvin and Hobbes books have been printed.[2]

The strip is vaguely set in the contemporary Midwestern United States, on the outskirts of suburbia, a location probably inspired by Watterson's home town of Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

Calvin and Hobbes appear in most of the strips, while a small number focus on other supporting characters. The broad themes of the strip deal with Calvin's flights of fantasy, his friendship with Hobbes, his misadventures, his unique views on a diverse range of political and cultural issues and his relationships and interactions with his parents, classmates, teachers, and other members of society. The dual nature of Hobbes is also a recurring motif; Calvin sees Hobbes as a live tiger, while other characters see him as a stuffed animal.

Even though the series does not mention specific political figures or current events like political strips such as Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, it does examine broad issues like environmentalism, public education, and the flaws of opinion polls.[3]

Because of Watterson's strong anti-merchandising stance[4] and his reluctance to return to the spotlight, almost no legitimate Calvin and Hobbes merchandise exists outside of the book collections. However, the strip's immense popularity has led to the appearance of various counterfeit items such as window decals and T-shirts that often feature crude humor, religion, binge drinking and other themes that are not found in Watterson's work.[5]

History

Calvin and Hobbes was conceived when Watterson, having worked in an advertising job he detested,[6] began devoting his spare time to cartooning, his true love. He explored various strip ideas but all were rejected by the syndicates to which he sent them. United Feature Syndicate, however, responded positively to one strip, which featured a side character (the main character's little brother) who had a stuffed tiger. Told that these characters were the strongest, Watterson began a new strip centered on them.[7] But United Feature rejected the new strip, and Watterson endured a few more rejections before Universal Press Syndicate decided to take it.[8][4]

The first strip was published on November 18, 1985 and the series quickly became a hit. Within a year of syndication, the strip was published in roughly 250 newspapers. By April 1, 1987, only sixteen months after the strip began, Watterson and his work were featured in an article by the Los Angeles Times.[4]

Calvin and Hobbes twice earned Watterson the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society, in the Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year category, first in 1986 and again in 1988. He was nominated again in 1992. The Society awarded him the Humor Comic Strip Award for 1988.[9]

Before long, the strip was in wide circulation outside the United States.

Watterson took two extended breaks from writing new strips: from May 1991 to February 1992, and from April through December 1994.

In 1995, Watterson sent a letter via his syndicate to all editors whose newspapers carried his strip. It contained the following:

I will be stopping Calvin and Hobbes at the end of the year. This was not a recent or an easy decision, and I leave with some sadness. My interests have shifted however, and I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises. I have not yet decided on future projects, but my relationship with Universal Press Syndicate will continue. That so many newspapers would carry Calvin and Hobbes is an honor I'll long be proud of, and I've greatly appreciated your support and indulgence over the last decade. Drawing this comic strip has been a privilege and a pleasure, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity.

The 3,160th and final strip ran on Sunday, December 31, 1995.[2] It depicted Calvin and Hobbes outside in freshly-fallen snow, reveling in the wonder and excitement of the winter scene. "It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy... Let's go exploring!" Calvin exclaims as they zoom off on their sled,[10] leaving, according to one critic ten years later, "a hole in the comics page that no strip has been able to fill".[11]

taken from here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes