3 out of 5

Early C & H.  Don’t get me wrong – all of Calvin and Hobbes contained the core elements that kept it so unique and made its effect long lasting, but it definitely took Watterson time to either find his exact voice or get comfortable with being 100% cynical and silly (or both).

As is the case with collections, addressing more the publication and content covered.

As I’ve said about the squarebound editions, they are nicer for reading but they do rob the strip of its widescreen effec.  And jamming 2-3 strips per page, while it can help the flow if there are linked concepts or plots, can also render those ‘poignant’ C & H moments all too easy to bypass.  There’s also the oddity of the Andrew and McMeel editions that the strips either went to an undesired page count OR perhaps they wanted to include extra material, so every few pages there’s a random Calvin drawing on the bottom.  Again, nice, but because they have no relation to anything, they can sometimes seem incorrectly matched with whatever emotion is happening in the strip – for example if we get a girl-bashing strip and then the drawing below is something ‘heartwarming’.  Aw, cynical no longer.  Pfft.  It might be because my copy of the book has been through the wringer, but it also seems like this early collection (this was the 2nd Calvin book) is a step down in page quality.  The paper is still thick but has a cheap look to it, and is off-white as opposed to bright white of some of my other squarebounds.

Content: In terms of extras you get a foreward by Pat Oliphant, whom I don’t know, but maybe you do.  (Wikipedia does.  Still don’t know ‘im.)  Not just because the name isn’t familiar, but his words seem like empty praise.  I have no doubt he digs the strip, but it just feels like such a generic, searching for a tagline ‘this is great’ opener that its, eh, not worth much.  Sorry, Pat.  The collection of work touches on a couple familiar Calvinisms – origin of the Transmogrifier, some babysitter interaction – but also has a couple early gags that were more kind-hearted and Watterson making sure we knew the line between fantasy and reality.  There was even a strip that sort of broke the “is the tiger real?” meta question because it directly flip-flopped from real to stuffed in a way that leaves no question that this is all in Calvin’s head.  Certain tropes seemed to be not quite established at all, as we get several strips of Calvin maybe sorta being okay with Susie.  Weird.  And yes, environmentalism has always lurked around the strip, but its really sappy obvious here.  There are some strips that just go for a “nature rocks, people sucks” peace sign without a wistful Calvin statement or gag to highlight some kind of disconnect.  Things were just less layered back in these Calvin days.  So it’s still fun, but not near as sharp as later eras.

The drawing feels the same way.  There’s actually a pleasant looseness to things here, which gives the book a sort of fledgling charm vs. the sure-handed scrappiness that would come, but the sacrifice is that Calvin’s expressions are sometimes a little too ‘duh’ and the proportions are sometimes off, Bill apparently fiddling with just the right tiger to boy ratio.

Obviously there’s no deterring Calvin fans from owning these strips in one collection or another, and the series does not suffer from being unreadable at any given point.  There’s plenty to laugh at here.  But beyond what was always a fun setup, the humor and writing are a bit more traditional in the strips in ‘Drooling.’