Customer Reviews

The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: Includes Cartoons from Yukon Ho and Weirdos from Another Planet

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fans of Calvin & Hobbes who used to read the newspaper strip in the 80s and 90s will find great pleasure in reading this treasury of C&H comics. These witty comics about the 6-year old Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, named after the famous philosophers, will amuse people of all ages. The perceptiveness and humor of Watterson deserve the highest of cartoon awards, while his artistic creations exude hilarity. This cartoon is perhaps one of the most piercing yet funny critiques of modern society.

This book starts out with Calvin Transmogrifying himself into an elephant so he can memorize his vocabulary in a snap. Naturally, that leads to never-ending funny adventures to entertain adults as well as children. Here we enjoy Calvin playing croquet with Hobbes, their flying carpet adventures, snowballs against Susie, and Spaceman Spiff. Watch him play pilot, archaeologist, annoy Rosalyn the babysitter, and quarrel with Hobbes over the treehouse.

Note that there are two series of C&H collections: individual wide-format albums, each covering an entire year of strips (will call it "regular"), and the vertical aspect ratio "treasury series" which covers selected comics from two regular C&H books. Note that C&H ran for a year in newspapers, so there's 10 regular books and 5 treasury books. Though the cartoons are slightly smaller in the treasury collection, each treasury book is far thicker and contains more strips than a regular book, and is furthermore less expensive, so treasury books are a real bargain. "The Authoritative Calvin & Hobbes" belongs to the Treasury collection, and was first released in 1990.

Calvin is a beam of light, a dinosaur, Spaceman Spiff, a pollster on the election of new parents, a robotic explorer from Jupiter (in search of chocoloate) -- well lots of things. He's all the best and all the worst a boy about five can be, and that covers a lot of ground.

If the others around him never quite see things Calvin's way, that's really not his problem. Hobbes will always understand, and generally offer some understated commentary on events. I prefer not to say too much about Hobbes. It's really best if you let him introduce himself.

This book is a treasury of daily and sunday color strips. It captures a part of one of the best strip comics ever. If you already know C&H, you'll surely want this collection. If you missed the strip when it was still in the papers, this will give you a wonderful introduction.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood, and Calvin offers his for your enjoyment.

//wiredweird

It is my feeling that Bill Watterson had enough integrity and ethics to prevent the syndicate from cranking out endless meaninglessly repetitive compilations. Of course, he did quit partly because he was becoming disgusted with many of the commercial aspects of his work. With most comics, even good ones, the collections get stale after a few. Watterson's collections dont. There are a dozen or so C&H compilations/collections, but you wont be dissapointed with owning the whole shebang, especially since Watterson frequently did a lot of extra work to ensure that each collection had something new to offer. Even without this extra stuff, Watterson's body of work is extensive enought to warrant owning all these collections. He was steadily cranking out great material for a decade or so, and if you are like me you will be reading some C&H weekly for as long as you are on this earth, so tons of books is not a bad thing. Basically, I wholeheartedly reccomend all the books. If you like one you will like them all. They only get better as you get to know the characters. Watterson never goes for the cheap laugh by having any of the comic's principals act out of character. As you progress through the years with C&H, and I do reccomend reading them in order, you will see how art progresses and grows when the artist is committed to excellent work. So, go get the first one, titled simply Calvin & Hobbes, and then start down the enjoyable road to making Calvin and his tiger a pleasant little chunk of your life. (Yes, i have repeated this review for every C&H book I own, wich is all of them, so get used to seeing all this anytime you look one of them up)

The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes Collection

The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes Collection is not only a real good book, but it also had me rolling on my sides with laughter. One reason it is my favorite book is because it is REAL funny. Calvin and his stuffed tiger get into so many adventures, all having a humorous twist at the end. Another reason that I liked the book is because it interests me. Every comic strip I read, I wanted to know what was going to happen next. The last reason I favor The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes Collection is because it inspired me to start animating cartoons and comic strips. In this book I saw different types of cartooning that I liked. I am glad that I had chance to read The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes Collection I can't wait to read more!

I am 9 years of age and I have 9 Calvin&Hobbes books.The Athoritative Calvin&Hobbes is the best tresury Calvin&Hobbes Bill Watterson has ever written. One of my favorite strips written in that book is when Calvin pretended that his house was a drive thru.It was a shame Bill had to quit his job as a cartoonist. I was so sad when it happened.I started to collect Calvin&Hobbes when I was 6. The Athoritative Calvin&Hobbes was the last Calvin&Hobbes I had bought. Everyone in my 4th grade class likes Calvin&Hobbes. No one hates them. I mean, who can.

Whether the collection is the "Indispensible" or "Essential" or "Quintessential" Calvin and Hobbes, it doesn't really matter. Watching this hyperactive, hyperimaginative child and his willing though wise accomplice, Hobbes, take on evil babysitters, Susie Derkins, the class bully and all creatures (real or imaginary), is a pleasure and laughter without stop. "The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes" is another in a long list of the great comic work of Bill Watterson. This is an indispensible/essential/quintessential collection for all Calvin and Hobbes and humor fans!

I loved Calvin and Hobbes when i was a little kid and I still do now! They're hillarious and Calvin reminds me so much of myself at
his age (not in every aspect). Especially our family camp trips. calvin and his mom remind me so much of myself and my mom when
our dad took us camping and it turned out to be a disaster, lol. These cartoons make me want to be a kid again. Almost everyone has
said this but I'll say it again. You'll start out planning to read a few pages but you won't stop there. you can't. it's so additive. some of
the younger kids might not understand some of the big words but older kids will. But I think that grownups will enjoy them the most.
With the purchase of this collection all the sunday comics are colored and you also get a monster never before seen cartoon. Get them
all!

...are you gonna luv this! Especially when you get to those episodes of C and H turning the Transmogrofication Ray gun on each other and whenever the dynamic twosome's playing another game of the wildly unpredictable 'Calvin Ball'. Note: Calvin's
Mom and Dad don't seem to help matters any whenever he goes in these imagination sprees...in fact, they seem to add fuel to the fire. The worst thing about these is that Watterson quit the game of bringing these hilarious comic strips to us. We could all use a coupla good laughs, here and there. What I'm gonna do is read this for the 10,000th time and get my chuckle on! I recommend that you get this and do the same.

truly and surely one of the best comic strips ever! were you to be sick in bed and need something to make you laugh, this is the best medicine!

This was the second treasure of the classic comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes." It contained all the strips from YUKON HO! and WEIRDOS FROM ANOTHER PLANET.

Naturally, the title stories are in this collection. In the first, Calvin secedes from the family and attempts to move to the Yukon. In the second, Calvin and Hobbes move to Mars when they get upset with the state of the Earth's environment.

Of course, that's just four weeks or so of the year and a half worth of strips. We get two family camping trips. In the first, it rains the entire time. The second summer, Dad breaks his glasses at the start of the trip. Calvin's babysitter Rosalyn shows up a couple times as well. There are plenty imaginative adventures for Spaceman Spiff and some run ins with the evil Mom Lady for Calvin's Stupendous Man.

In other stories, Calvin and Susie have to work on a report on Mercury together. Calvin and Hobbes find a dinosaur skeleton in their own backyard and travel back in time. The Transmogrifier shows up as a hand held devise. And Calvin attempts to but together his first model.

Yes, there is lots of fun to be had here. I laughed quite a bit while rereading it. So don't misunderstand what I am about to say. I've always felt this was the weakest of the Calvin and Hobbes books. Yes, I laugh. Yes, there are some classics here (like the Opposite Day trio.) But, on the whole, the strip just wasn't quite up to the level of the others. It seems like he started strong, then wasn't quite sure what to do with it for a while. Mind you, these are still great strips. But they don't reach the level of humor and cultural commentary he'd reach later.

So, if you are already a fan of "Calvin and Hobbes," by all mean, get and enjoy this book. But if you've yet to discover this wonderful strip, start with one of the other books, then come back and enjoy this one.