Review by Woodrow Phoenix

The Calvin and Hobbes Portable Compendium collects Bill Watterson’s timeless Calvin and Hobbes comic strips in a new, cleverly convenient format designed to introduce the adventures of a boy and his stuffed tiger to a new generation of readers.

Each volume of this reprint series features two softcover books in landscape format, housed in a cardboard slipcase. The slipcase is nominally portrait orientation, with the two books sliding in and out of the top, but the spines have the title information on them along both long and short edges, so readers can put them on their bookshelves in either way that suits them. The two books together are neatly compact enough to easily slip into a backpack or bag. The slipcase that they slide into means they stay protected so their corners won’t get easily crushed or bent, giving fans an easy way to carry their favourite strip around with them to read anytime.

Set 5 features 500 daily and Sunday comic strips presented chronologically from March 1991 to March 1993. The Monday to Saturday daily strips are black and white, the larger and longer full-page Sunday strips are in full colour. The strips are printed much larger than they appear in newspapers today, on bright white paper that presents the art very well, allowing a good look at Watterson’s brilliant cartooning.

In addition to the innovative packaging each set is very reasonably priced. How can you resist? You can’t. Calvin and Hobbes is one of the most popular newspaper comic strips of all time, and if you don’t know why that is, it’s time you found out.