Calvin + Hobbes

I got the complete Calvin + Hobbes boxset for Christmas; I finished the 4th and final volume at 1:30 this morning.  Excuse me while I gush.

I had just the slightest fear that this comic would be yet another artifact of youth that failed to quite live up to my most primordial memories, leaving me again feeling disconnected from my childhood.  Utterly unfounded fears.  If anything, I laughed with,  appreciated, and adored this cartoon even more thoroughly than I did as a child (and that's saying something!).  I quickly moved on from mere relief to awe at this comic's overwhelming brilliance.

The buzz I'm feeling right now is akin to the first time I read Catch-22 or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Tom Stoppard's Arcadia; or when I saw the Mona Lisa in person at the Louvre, or saw The Shawshank Redemption for the first time; or the first time I listened--really listened--to the Beatle's Abby Road, U2's Joshua Tree, or Arcade Fire or Animal Collective or Debussy; or when I saw the sun set on the Guajataca in Puerto Rico, or the fog rise off Yellow Mountain in China...

Yet Calvin + Hobbes predates all these experiences; and it's been both humbling and exhilarating to realize that everything I've ever thought, values, or known--everything I learned in college, grad school, and life in general--about materialism, art, philosophy, representation, semiotics, the Protestant work ethic, the innate worth of souls, goods of first and second intent, the sublimity of passion, Emersonian whims, the revolutionary potential of romance, the power of language, the wildness of words, the hugeness and incomprehensibility and grandeur of the universe, the uncharted possibilities of existence and imagination--I first encountered as a youth on these comic pages.

It's comforting, rejuvenating, and frankly incredible to consider that, in my own lifetime, there was a bona fide popular artist who refused to dumb down, who never sold out, who consciously went out on top on his own terms, who openly critiqued our destructive consumerism and pretentious posturing in the face of the terrible questions, and did so without condescension, without smug self-satisfaction, but rather with a complete and wondrous joie de vivre, the joy of life.

I loved Calvin + Hobbes as a child; but now I stand back in absolute wonder of Bill Watterson's achievement, at the utter rarity that is this jewel of a comic that both fulfilled and transcended its medium--and how profoundly blessed I was to encounter this strip in its first run, while still a child itself, when it could still enrapture my imagination in youth.

Maybe I'm overselling the comic right now, maybe my reflections are more tinged with nostalgia than I'm conscious of, maybe it's best to approach this cartoon on its own terms and not with any overhyped promises of grandeur from me--no matter.  David Markson wrote in Wittgenstein's Mistress that he could imagine a world without people easier than he could a world without Mozart; I, too, can picture the world ending easier than I can a world without Calvin + Hobbes.