Calvin and Hobbes - Academic Response

Academic Response

In her book When Toys Come Alive, Lois Rostow Kuznets says that Hobbes serves both as a figure of Calvin's childish fantasy life and as an outlet for the expression of libidinous desires more associated with adults. Kuznets also looks at Calvin's other fantasies, suggesting that they are a second tier of fantasies utilized in places like school where transitional objects such as Hobbes would not be socially acceptable. Another academic critic, Philip Sandifer, using the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, identifies the strip's depiction of time within Calvin's real and imaginary worlds as a manifestation of the Lacanian concepts of the Imaginary, the Real, and the Symbolic.

A collection of original Sunday strips was exhibited at Ohio State University's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in 2001. Watterson himself selected the strips and provided his own commentary for the exhibition catalog, which was later published by AndrewsMcMeel as Calvin and Hobbes Sunday Pages 1985–1995.

Since the discontinuation of Calvin and Hobbes, individual strips have been licensed for reprint in schoolbooks, including the Christian homeschooling book The Fallacy Detective in 2002, and the university-level philosophy reader Open Questions: Readings for Critical Thinking and Writing in 2005; in the latter, the ethical views of Watterson and his characters Calvin and Hobbes are discussed in relation to the views of professional philosophers.

Academics and intellectuals were interviewed for a September 9, 2009 BBC Radio 4 half-hour documentary about the comic strip, narrated by Phill Jupitus.

Paleontologist and paleoartist Gregory S. Paul praised Bill Watterson for the scientific accuracy of the dinosaurs appearing in Calvin & Hobbes.