Review by Woodrow Phoenix

The Calvin and Hobbes Portable Compendium reprints Bill Watterson’s classic newspaper strip extolling the joys of childhood. Calvin is a hyper-imaginative six-year old boy, and his best friend is Hobbes, either a stuffed toy tiger that he imagines is real, or a magical being that nobody else can see, who appears only when Calvin is alone. Perhaps both options are true, or perhaps there’s a third possibility. In any case, the result stands alone as the greatest newspaper strip of its 1980s and 1990s era, and there’s a mystique perpetuated by Watterson’s refusal to allow the characters to be merchandised.

Each of these Portable Compendiums is a cardboard slipcase containing two softcover books which slide from the top of the package. Their landscape orientation is the standard layout for newspaper strip cartoon collections, allowing for four dailies to a spread. Each book is 144 pages, and together they present 500 black and while daily strips and colour Sunday strips. Set three features seventeen months of comics from June 1988 to November 1989.

The Calvin and Hobbes Portable Compendium series is designed to make picking up these books so easy that you won’t give it a second thought. The strips are printed much larger than they appear in newspapers today, on bright white paper that presents Watterson’s brilliant cartooning to maximise the effect. The combined books are neatly compact enough to easily slip into a backpack or bag, while the slipcase they slide into means they stay protected, so their corners won’t get crushed or bent. Each set is very reasonably priced too. How can you resist? You can’t. New readers can start here, and previous fans will love the convenience of this format too.