Calvin and Hobbes Comics About Socially Awkward Kid

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Either it's Calvin's imagination, or his magical ability, or both. Or neither I suppose. Like you, I like the magic of the real tiger and the duplicator and other gadgets Calvin creates on the fly.

I definitely have a better idea of Hobbes now. I mostly ignored him before.

what a rich imagination calvin has, I wonder if his creator was similar as a child?

Here is another funny one where Calvin once again takes his mother's words literally and is once again puzzled by his mother's behaviour. In this story, Calvin is once again being inadvertently naughty by being impulsive and creative.



There are four frames. They are drawn in black and white without colour. In the first frame, Calvin is shown alone indoors in his house hammering nails into the surface of a coffee table for no apparent reason. He has a smile on his face and appears to be in a happy state of concentration. The nails are not being hammered all the way into the wood of the table. They are left sticking out and are being spaced quite far apart and distributed in a seemingly random pattern across the top of the table. He has already ruined the coffee table by hammering seven nails into it all over the place, and is in the process of happily hammering in an eighth nail. We do not know why. There is no indication that what he is doing is part of one of his scientific experiments. We are left to speculate on the reason why he might be hammering the nails into the table. We conclude that possibly he just happened to be bored and was left unsupervised and found some nails and a hammer in his Dad's toolbox and decided to practise hammering them into something.

In the second frame, Calvin has been discovered. Calvin's mother appears, rushing up to Calvin at top speed with her arms outstretched in horror and her mouth wide open as she shrieks loudly "Calvin! What are you doing to the coffee table?"

In the third frame, there are no words. Calvin is merely pictured pausing from hammering in any more nails and simply gazing down at the nails in the coffee table in perplexity, as though trying to figure something out while pondering how to answer his mother's question. He is still holding the hammer in his hand but isn't hammering in any more nails.

In the fourth frame, Calvin is still holding the hammer in his hand and is still standing next to the coffee table and is looking up at his mother saying to her in a curious and confused manner "is this some kind of trick question?" while his mother covers her face with her hands in despair. And that is the end.

I find this one funny because Calvin is right: the answer to his mother's question is obvious. What is he doing to the coffee table? Well, he's hammering nails into it. Isn't that obvious? What's to explain?

The real question his mother should have asked is "Calvin, why are you doing that to the coffee table?" But she never did ask him why he was doing it, and this particular story ends here, so we never get to find out why he was doing it.

So many of the stories are very short and are like small snapshots of one particular occasion. A lot of it is often left unexplained and you have to try and figure it out for yourself, which is intriguing.

What does everybody else think? Why do you think Calvin was hammering nails into the coffee table?

DataB4, if you have Netflix, there is a documentary on there called Dear Mr Watterson. It is about Calvin and Hobbes. You might enjoy listening to it. The man who drew the comic is called Mr Watterson so the title is a reference to him. Some of the documentary is obviously visual but there is a lot of talking as well so you would be able to get most of it.

Although I am not blind, I have experience of listening to Netflix movies instead of watching them, because I often like to watch Star Trek while doing my housework. I put my bluetooth headphones on while I am doing the housework and because I am looking at the housework I am doing, I can't be looking at the screen as well. So I just listen instead. So I have personal experience of the fact that it is fairly possible to listen to TV programmes rather than watch them, and still get a very good idea of what is going on.

I see from your profile that you are a Star Trek fan as well. I have "listened" to several seasons of Star Trek Voyager and wasn't actually watching much of it at the time because I had to be focussing on my housework so I couldn't look at the screen, but I still managed to figure out the plot because the script writing is often so bad that the characters use words to describe what they are doing, rather than letting the action speak for itself. In scriptwriting terms this is deemed to be a bad thing because there is a cardinal rule for sighted scriptwriters that says "show, don't tell" when writing scripts. This rule implies that whenever possible, things should be communicated by means of action rather than words. However, from the point of view of blind viewers or viewers who can't be looking at the screen because they are doing their housework, it is really good when scriptwriters are so bad that they do not follow this rule properly and they make the characters describe everything they are doing using words, because it means that you can understand what is happening without having to see it. Example: somebody on Star Trek disables a force field. Then the character announces dramatically with dialogue: "I've disabled the force field". This dialogue is redundant because what they are saying has already been shown with actions, and the other characters saw them do it, so there is no need for them to state what they have just done. However, the fact that the characters keep describing their own actions is nonetheless very helpful when you are listening to Star Trek instead of watching it!

End off-topic deviation. Resume discussion of Calvin and Hobbes.

I don't think Calvin really needs a reason to hammer the nails into the coffee table, other than liking tools and hammering. Maybe he was copying one of his parents using tools. Anyway, Calvin is definitely very literal in his understanding of grown-up questions and logic.

Re: Star Trek scriptwriters explaining everything as it happens, it's helpful for people who aren't visually seeing everything, and also for people who may not always understand the complex world of sci fi. OK, maybe it is a bit overkill though.

^Have you heard of the Star Trek spoof movie Galaxy Quest? It's one of the funniest movies ever. I highly recommend it!

Yes, I enjoyed Galaxy Quest very much too. I watched it years ago, so maybe I'll rewatch it at some point. Right now though, I'm slowly getting through Doctor Who because I have a couple of friends who are big fans.

^Which season are you at? Do you have a favourite character or episode so far?

I have a collection of Calvin and Hobbes books and I wish I knew how to upload my favorite strips, but I can describe them fairly well:

There is one that is just one panel instead of the usual four panels the daily strip has. It shows Calving sitting up in bed and it is very late at night. Calvin has a set of bongo drums on his lap and is holding a bicycle horn. His parents are both up and in their PJ's, glaring angrily at him from the doorway, implying that he had been making loud noises with the horn and the bongos that woke them up. Calvin looks annoyed and says to them, "Jeez, do I have to have a reason for EVERYTHING?"

Obviously, his parents, or one of them at least, demanded to know *why* Calvin was up playing bongos and tooting a horn in the middle of night, and he really didn't have a reason or couldn't think of a good one, so that was his reply. But you can pretty much tell just by the scene in that one panel that they had just asked him, so only showing Calvin's reply makes the strip a lot more funny.

sounds like perfectly reasonable behavior to me

I had forgotten all about this thread. I had no idea it was still going!

bumpers are a good thing IMHO

Thanks for reviving the thread, Lostonearth35. "Do I have to have a reason for everything?" is such a cliche phrase for parents to use, so now they get it used right back on them.

Hi Auntblabby. It's been a while. Yeah, very reasonable activity.

Hi Kuraudo. Since it's been so long, the comics are really funny again.

This strip is one of the earlier ones.

In the first panel, Calvin and Hobbes are sitting at the kitchen table, with a shiny toaster and a plate with bread in front of them. Calvin says, 'Wanna see something weird?" Hobbes looks interested.
In the next panel, Calvin puts the bread in the toaster as he continues talking, "Watch. You put bread in this slot and push down the leaver."
In the third panel, the toaster goes 'Ding!' and the very toasted bread leaps out as if spring propelled, as Hobbes watches. Calvin says, "Then, a few minutes later, toast pops out!"
In the final panel, Hobbes is peering into the toaster in confusion as he says 'Wow. Where does the bread go?" Calvin replies, "Beats me. Isn't that weird?"

[I hope I did an adequate job of describing it... ]

^Cute one Kura, thanks.

Here's a short yet amusing one.
Panel 1: Calvin is outside in the snow, with his snowsuit and hat on. Susie is marching up to him, furious, and says: "You sent me a hate-mail valentine and a crummy bunch of dead flowers!! !"
Panel 2: Susie then says, "So here's a valentine for YOU, you insensitive clod!' and throws a snowball at Calvin so hard that it knocks his hat off and literally knocks him off his feet, with a 'POW!' sound effect.
Panel 3: Susie, while walking away, thinks, "A valentine and flowers! He likes me!' with two little hearts over her head. Calvin, face first in a snowbank [all you can see of him is his hat and boots], thinks, "She noticed! She likes me!"

I'm going to try to describe this next one as best I can. It's one of the most visual strips, but also one of the funniest. Here goes.



This strip is completely in colour, and has eight panels.
The artwork is done in this mockingly serious tone, completely different from how Calvin and Hobbes is usually drawn.
The setting, the little we see of it, is a somewhat conventional home, with the lamps and pictures and furniture arranged 'just so'.
Panel 1: An attractive-ish, thirty-odd woman arrives at the house, wearing a magenta coat and matching lavender shirt/blouse with a bow, and a magenta shirt; her lipstick is also magenta. She says [imagine her 'trilling' her words as she speaks]: "Daaaaarling, I'm home! And I brought a surprise!"
Panel 2: A forty-ish, rough looking blonde man, with a square-ish jaw, obviously her husband, thinks to himself, "Let's hope it's a divorce!"
Panel 3: The woman, in the act of closing the door [while still acting artificially cheery], says, "Darling, I stopped at the hospital at my way home from work." The man wearing a brown suit and tie, is lighting his pipe, deliberately turned away from her, and says, "Don't call me 'darling', okay?"
Panel 4: The woman, smiling in a plastic way, announces, "I brought home our new baby!" The man stares at her in outraged horror, his eyes wide, and yells, "A baby?! I don't want a baby!"
Panel 5: The woman, cradling a bunny rabbit in her arms, wrapped in a blanket, says brightly, "What shall we name him?' The man, bending slightly to look at the bunny, yells in utter disbelief, "Our baby is a rabbit?!?!? How come we have a rabbit?!"
Panel 6: The woman, her eyes narrowed and mouth open in anger, pets the bunny protectively as she says indignantly, "He's not at rabbit, he's a little boy! We'll call him Jeffry, okay?" The man, from offscreen, replies snarkily, "He looks like a rabbit to me!"
Panel 7: The woman turns to face her husband and shouts, "Well, just pretend he's a baby!" The man, with his pipe in his mouth, points angrily at her with one hand on his waist and shouts, "NO! This is idiotic! I refuse!!"
Panel 8: The artwork abruptly shifts to regular Calvin and Hobbes style. Calvin is storming away from Susie in a huff, saying "Playing house makes me sick! I'm leaving!" Susie is holding her stuffed bunny, and protests, "I don't see why you'll play pretend with your dumb ol' tiger, but not with Mr. Bun!"

[If anyone else wants to try describing it more accurately, go right ahead.]
I hope I did it justice.