The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury [Paperback]

Bill Watterson (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 254 pages
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing; 3rd edition (1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0740740520
• ISBN-13: 978-0740740527
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #600,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bill Watterson is the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, one of the most popular and well-regarded cartoon strips of the twentieth century. Calvin and Hobbes appeared in newspapers from November 1985 until Watterson's retirement in 1996.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Authoritative! What else can I say?, October 30, 2003

By 

Giant Panda (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes (A Calvin And Hobbes Treasury) (Paperback)

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A walk through someone else's imagination, July 25, 2004

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes (A Calvin And Hobbes Treasury) (Paperback)

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

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Watterson, a man for all seasons, August 10, 2002

By 

Samuel Krikorian (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes (A Calvin And Hobbes Treasury) (Paperback)

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)