3 out of 5

Another early C and H collection, ‘Yukon!’ is an important era for the strip – mid ’87 to early ’88 – where Watterson thank christ transitioned out of a temptation to go cute with things and started to bring in more mature and allowably odd elements (allowably in the sense that he doesn’t have to point out to the reader that it’s just pretend).  The shift is signaled most obviously by the content, but also slight tweaks to how our leads are depicted.

The binding / presentation itself gets my standard comments – the square size makes for easier casual reading even though it conforms the shape of the strip and the covers are a thick but flexible cardboard stock that can be held apart lightly but prevents easily curling it.  The pages are a nice bold white that keeps the look clean, and though the paper feels cheap it avoids tears.  The printing is standard – the blacks aren’t too rich, but contrast plenty well with the paper, and the printing space is always amply away from the crease so taking in the full pics is never a problem.

The extras are also pretty standard – reformatting leaves, apparently, an odd space on several pages for new sketches by Watterson.  There’s also a prose poem thing that introduces the collection and sets up the brief Yukon adventure.  It’s amusing but I have to admit I found it a barrier to entry – it’s not an introduction, so you feel like you’re supposed to read it (sorry, introductions), but you sorta’ want to just get to the comics…

In terms of content, the first half of the book is pretty tragic.  Watterson had introduced family friendly elements early on, but he takes a full dive into moral lessons and bullshit environmental strips, sometimes even avoiding gags for a few weeks in a row to do something more traditional.  Blech.  This was also when he felt the need to point out Hobbes’ fakeness and reminding us of when we’re experiencing Calvin’s imagination NOT REAL LIFE FOLKS, CALM DOWN IT’S OKAY, IT’S SAFE.  The combination of these tempered attributes totally rob the strip of the bent nature that made it such a joy to read later on.  It also underlines the repetition of many of the gags, which never felt like a problem down the road, even if we’d seen Spiff countless times.  Midway through this set of strips, though, Watterson seemingly starts to experiment – Calvin’s cheeks get less rounded (less childlike), Hobbes proportions get less cartoonish, elongating his torso and maybe removing a bit of a stoop in his posture – maturing him, in other words.  We also start to see more of Hobbes functioning independently of Calvin, or doing things that wouldn’t quite be possible for a stuffed tiger.  Plotting occasionally does the environmental thing, but Watterson would return to that quite frequently.  It’s at least less cloying, more using it to point to human’s ironic ignorances than just saying ‘save the whales’ so blatantly.  We also see the attempt at expansion with Uncle Max, who comes and then thankfully goes pretty quick, which would signal, perhaps, a need for Bill to dig deeper in the eras that followed for other ways to expand his world than the standby of expanding the cast.

So the collection is valuable historically for witnessing these changes, but average overall in terms of good vs. boring strips as compared to the other books.