Below are all of Watterson’s 8th December posts (categorized by year) — I’ve added surrounding art where some strips are series instead of the usual standalone comic.

1985

1986
also repeated in 1991 (30/12)

1987

1988 (06/12 to 08/12)

1989
also repeated in 1994 (16/12)

1990

1991
also repeated in 1986 (09/11)

1992 (08/12 to 11/12)

In Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche essentially says that the natural functional non-good has been socially transformed into the religious concept of evil by the slave mentality of the weak and oppressed masses who resent their masters (the strong). He also makes a critique of morality by saying that many who consider themselves to be moral are simply acting from cowardice (wanting to do evil but scared of the repercussions).

1993

In 2013, Tracy Vaillancourt of the University of Ottawa published a paper explaining that a woman’s survival is directly linked to the survival of her offspring. As a species, women often avoid engaging in tactics involving direct aggression in order to protect their physical well-being, so they can continue to be alive for their kids. Instead, women lash out in less overt ways and rely on ‘indirect aggressions’  —  i.e. criticizing appearance, spreading rumors and, of course, the classic eye roll.

Evolutionary scientists suggest these indirect aggressions evolved to help women attract and secure a mate. If a woman came face to face with a ‘competitor’ (for instance, a seemingly more attractive female,) she could easily reinforce her status as the dominant female with a mere flicker of her eyes. All of a sudden, high school makes so much more sense.

1994 (06/12 to 10/12)
also repeated the series in 1990 (from 11/12 to 15/12 respectively)

1995 (05/12 to 08/12)

23. Two more years before my first major milestone. Hope I can achieve it in the next 24 months.

In other news, imagine getting blocked by an Instagram page dedicated to Calvin & Hobbes content. The gist is someone shared a picture of a ‘creative lock screen’ on the /r/calvinandhobbes subreddit and Ho33es crawled out from the woodwork to attack the original poster, claiming the original poster ‘stole’ the setup from him. Credit where credits due I guess, OP was a bit on the slower side.

Now, I don’t usually comment and try to avoid comic strip drama, but I recognized the username because I follow their page religiously on Instagram. It’s also one of the only accounts I like and save content from. Late October, he shared a link on his story to purchase an e-book of the entire C&H collection. I jumped at the opportunity, even though I owned the entire hardcover set at home:

I ignored him after. When I replied to his parent comment on Reddit I guess he connected the dots, searched for the people who called him out over DMs and blocked me. Bruh.

Anyway, I updated my phone’s lock and home screen quite a while back. Thought it was pertinent.

Below are all strips containing the words fraud, scam, or swindle. And Calvin generally screwing around with his parents and other secondary characters. Yes, I’m petty. Enjoy this week’s comics.

1986 (swimming lessons series from 21/07 to 26/07, 17/08, 20/08)
also repeated the series in 1991 (from 16/09 to 21/09 respectively, 16/10 for dinners ready)

Splash. Sundays don’t get repeated.

1988 (10/01, Uncle Max series from 11/01 to 22/01, dinosaur series from 09/05 to 13/05, 13/05, 14/05)

Uncle Max:

A break.

Dinosaur Excavation:

And we’re done with the two series!

1991 (09/03)

1992 (11/08)

The May 08, 1993, comic was in regards to the poster series but I didn’t want to duplicate content. Always fresh strips delivered straight to your inbox — 2020s almost done.

I recently found this playlist on Spotify:

Brother by NEEDTOBREATHE has a telling verse:

Brother let me be your shelter
Never leave you all alone
I can be the one you call
When you're low

Anyway, fewer comments, more comics. Received the memo. Not particularly happy with the feedback but I’m here to please.

1988 (15/10)

1990 (a twenty-part series about baseball and peer acceptance from 16/04 to 05/05)

A breather —

Let’s continue:

Another break. If you have a keen eye, you’d notice the full-color half-page spreads are published every seventh count, landing every Sunday. Some more background is presented here.

And we’re back! Trust me, it’s well worth the wait.

1991 (05/04)

1992 (02/08, 29/09, 10/10)

Do whatever you want, whenever you want.
Life is too short. Family is everything.
Some food for thought.

After five threads of these comics, one might ask why some comics were sometimes repeated in later years. After reading David Astor’s Nine-month Vacation for Bill Watterson, it was understood Watterson took multiple sabbaticals from the strip, but Universal Press Syndicate continued to charge newspapers full price to re-run old Calvin and Hobbes strips. Few editors approved of the move, but the strip was so popular that they had no choice but to continue to run it for fear that competing newspapers might pick it up and draw its fans away. Imagine having that much power. This week’s Hobbes includes two series which span over a handful of days. Let me know if my opinions in the captions are unwarranted and I’ll stick to the comics itself. :-)

1986 (the Oiijia Board series from 17/12 to 19/12)
also repeated the series in 1992 (from 08/01 to 10/01 respectively)

1991 (24/02*)
*So I’m actually super confused about the order. The search engine I used said the date of publication was 07/01/1990 based on the transcribed text, but according to GoComics and the online PDF of the collection, this was created on February 24, 1991. I guess I’ll go with the latter? I hate to see my scripts fail me. Based on my preliminary research this is not the first errata, so moving forward, I’ll use the GoComics hyperlinked date as a reference.

1993 (Poster Competition and Miscarriage of Justice 12-part series from 26/04 to 08/05)

Wanted to post this during the elections but I had too many other relevant strips lying around.

Watterson took a sabbatical to let the series breathe and added this colored strip in between:

And we’re back:

As you might have noticed, color is used sparingly in Calvin & Hobbes. I’ll address why and the importance in my next post.

1986 (08/01, 30/07, 20/12)
also repeated in 1991 (29/05 and 25/09 respectively)

1988 (23/01, 09/04, 12/09)

1993 (09/01, 10/05)

1994 (27/01)

1995 (03/01, 04/01, 08/06)

[1] Besides this fanmade monstrosity:

A baker’s dozen worth of comics this time. And the fanmade monstrosity. I apologize. Also: I was today years old when I found out xkcd’s Randall Munroe writes (and draws) for the New York Times. There are some really interesting articles in the Science category. His illustrations fit NYT’s style.

Back to your regularly scheduled relevant content:

1986 (16/04, 10/06)
also repeated in 1991 (31/07 and 27/08 respectively)

1988 (30/12)

1992 (18/5)

1993 (24/03, 10/05)

1995 (29/11)

In my personal life: she thought I might be flying back to Delhi so she drew this for me…

1. The artwork leverages a PHP script that allows a full-text search of the strips dialog and occasional narrative descriptions, a chronological slideshow, and a date-based table of contents. The hopscotch code isn’t my best-designed work but it gets the job done.

2. The textual database comes from a transcription I can no longer locate, but appears to be the source of the C&H search engine — note that this site doesn't have any artwork, but merely links to the low-res artwork at GoComics. I have much higher resolution artwork stored locally and on the cloud.

Anyway, I thought I’d keep in line with festivities for this week’s strip.

1986 (29/10, 30/10, 31/10, 01/11)

1987 (24/04)

1990 (23/10)

1993 (31/10)

The last column is especially interesting since it doesn’t explicitly mention anything about the holiday itself but the author explanation clears the air:

Calvin, the tyrannosaur, roars triumphantly. Calvin’s struggle has given him a monstrous appetite. He rips gigantic chunks of the carcass and swallows them whole. It''s a disgusting spectacle of savage gluttony. Mom tells Calvin to stop eating his Halloween candy. Calvin is in a dinosaur costume. She tells him he will get sick if he eats all of it. Calvin says he earned it.

Sometimes you have to read between the lines (read: look at the publish date) or use context clues.

The guys really didn’t get the outfit memo. Pictured: Hobbes!

Happy Halloween!

I fell in love with Hobbes when I was ten. My father purchased the 10th Anniversary for my birthday. I never could draw parallels with his Adventure of Tintin series — even though I love detectives and mystery and now can ethereally identify with Captain Haddock — but for some reason, I always seemed to connect to these two animated characters, a ‘precocious mischievous adventurous’ boy and his ‘sardonic stuffed’ tiger. I spent hours of my days climbing into the big grandfather chair, propping the heavy-set book on my lap, turning the pages until it was time for bed. Sometimes I read the comics under my blankets late into the night. Calvin’s propensity to think outside the box and take undue risk complemented Hobbes's analytical reasoning and forethought, which spoke to me on a level that no other comic truly could.

I’ve graduated now to xkcd (for its comedic technical commentary) and The New Yorker (for its satirical political angles), but I always seem to come back to Calvin and Hobbes.

Some praise:

‘At some level, all American childhoods are the same, which probably explains our lasting love affair with Calvin and Hobbes.’ — Timothy R. Smith, The Washington Post

‘Calvin and Hobbes: America's Most Profound Comic Strip’ — The Wall Street Journal

‘Bill Watterson's 'Calvin and Hobbes,' easily one of the most beloved comic strips of all time...’ — Bryan Hood, New York Post

‘A student of comics, Watterson drew from an eclectic set of influences...The result was a strip that was vibrant, accessible, and beautiful.’ — Jake Rossen, Mental Floss

Perfect for both adults and children (though adult fans wouldn’t want their children getting their hands on these comics).

I’d like to share some of my favorite strips, weekly, here. Below was the last comic Watterson created, a day before he ended his decade long journey with the two boys.

Let’s go exploring.