This Cartoon’s Epic Humor Comes With An Urgent Warning
Calvin makes some valid points.
Published in
5 min readFeb 2, 2021
It had been a long time since I’d read a Calvin and Hobbes book, but the other day I stumbled across a dusty copy of Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat, part of the epic collection by Bill Watterson. My kids wanted me to read it, so we started flipping through the pages.
The pictures entertained them for a little bit, but most of the humor went over their heads. I, however, could spend days posting Calvin’s quotes on Facebook and Twitter.
Seriously.
It’s funny but it’s not.
Some thoughts came to me as I laughed through Calvin’s antics. One cartoon (page 80) showed a series of pictures, all of Calvin in various situations:
- a cow being led to slaughter
- running on a hamster’s wheel
- in a jail uniform working on the railroad
- a robot with green gunk being poured into his head
- a fish gasping for air
- a zombie
- a peg being hammered into a hole
- a parrot
In the last scene, Hobbes asks Calvin how school was, the implication being that those previous scenes depicted his…
