Childhood’s end…..

Mon, Aug 24, 2009

Comics and cartoons

C&H

Like Wim said on his post – it can’t be Watterson, but that doesn’t make it any less wonderful. Painful, heartbreaking and wonderful.

(Seen first via Wim and then @Glinner‘s twitter)

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Richard - who has written 2045 posts on The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log.


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15 Comments For This Post

  1. Shug Says:
    August 24th, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    Wow. It’s the best C&H strip Watterson never did!

  2. Allan Cavanagh Says:
    August 24th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    Whoever did this completely missed the point of C&H. It’s dreadful, the implication is that imagination is an illness that can be treated with pills. I think that’s a thesis that Watterson would rail against.
    This respectfully evokes the spirit of the strip, unlike that appalling crap above.

  3. Kenny Says:
    August 24th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    I totally disagree with Allan’s reading. I think the guy is saying what if we took the madness out of life what a drab place the world would be. Hobbes no longer exists except as a stuffed Tiger and the world has gone black and white. I think that is very much in the spirit of C&H – let the magic live.

  4. Kenny Says:
    August 24th, 2009 at 4:06 pm

    BTW I also don’t think the piece you link to captures C&H at all. It’s almost the opposite of what the strip does unless you think it is purely about sentimentality. The strip allows us to see the world through the anarchic behaviour of a 5/6/7 year old boy – this piece sees the world of childhood through the eyes of an adult. Very different things – the first is funny and tender, but sometimes a little sad. The look back is maudlin and overly sentimental – if you see your childhood as merely wistful days of summer past – you had a very different one to me.

  5. Richard Says:
    August 24th, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    Personally I think the artist (and I’m sorry to whomever it is – can’t find any name to go with this) is merely using the modern solution to the perceived problems of over-active children as a device to tug at our collective heartstrings and point out to us what a terrible world this would be if imagination is removed – that pure force of imagination being the very core of Calvin & Hobbes.

    Of course imagination is not an illness. But increasingly, we see any exuberance or over-activity or non-conformity in children as an illness, treatable with drugs that cripple their imagination as a side-effect.

  6. Allan Cavanagh Says:
    August 24th, 2009 at 5:53 pm

    Great, I love when online discussions turn into psychological analyses of my childhood.
    “The strip allows us to see the world through the anarchic behaviour of a 5/6/7 year old boy”
    Really? What an incredibly verbose, insightful, knowledgeable and articulate child you must have been Kenny.

  7. Richard Says:
    August 24th, 2009 at 7:18 pm

    Boys, boys. play nice

  8. Allan Cavanagh Says:
    August 24th, 2009 at 9:03 pm

    Yes dad. Sorry dad.

  9. Richard Says:
    August 24th, 2009 at 10:01 pm

    That’s better. Now have a nice glass of lemonade and settle down together with Calvin & Hobbes. That will make you friends again.

    Oh shit. That’s what started all this isn’t it? Ooops.

  10. Shug Says:
    August 24th, 2009 at 11:58 pm

    I don’t think it matters that this misses the point of C&H. It’s beautiful in its own way. I almost felt the same way towards this as when I first saw the end of The Snowman.

  11. krill Says:
    August 25th, 2009 at 12:52 am

    I enjoyed regular C&H and I also enjoyed this strip. Remember the James Stewart movie Harvey? How the pills make Harvey disappear? How the cab driver says that that folks are always more fun on being driven to the asylum than back when they are medicated? I see the above strip in that spirit.

  12. Shug Says:
    August 25th, 2009 at 1:06 pm

    And not forgetting Drop Dead Fred!

  13. Alex Says:
    August 25th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    Wait a minute – I’ve seen this before. It was a joke strip posted somewhere, and it was originally about what would happen if Calvin was on Ritalin. Seems the original point of the parody has been lost.

  14. Alex Says:
    August 25th, 2009 at 2:36 pm

    Here:

    http://scottedelman.livejournal.com/121398.html

  15. Frankie Says:
    March 5th, 2010 at 9:23 am

    @Allan – Just because the strip is saying that pills can make you focus more on reality and less on the world of the imagination does *not* mean that the author of the strip is endorsing that. It’s obviously ironic, don’t you see that?