Review by Woodrow Phoenix

The Calvin and Hobbes Portable Compendium Set repackages Bill Watterson’s classic newspaper strip in a form that makes them convenient to look at and to carry around with you: two softcover books in landscape format, housed in a cardboard slipcase. Volume six of seven features another 500 daily and Sunday strips about the boy and his tiger friend, covering the period from July 1993 to July 1995 in two books.

Calvin and Hobbes is named after the principal characters, but the strip is formed from an ensemble cast. Calvin’s relationships with his parents are an integral part of the humour as they deal with the challenges of Calvin’s personality in their own ways. Calvin’s interactions with his dad are often magnificently, unpredictably silly as the outwardly sensible and reasonable man amuses himself – and perhaps gets a little revenge for his daily torments – by giving misleading replies to his son’s incessant questions.

“Dad, why do my eyes shut when I sneeze?” asks Calvin. “If your lids weren’t closed, the force of the explosion would blow your eyeballs out and stretch the optic nerve,” his Dad tells him, authoritatively. “so your eyes would flop around and you’d have to point them with your hands to see anything, ” he says, demonstrating by holding his hands in front of imaginary popped-out eyeballs. “Gross,” Calvin agrees. “How come you know so much?”  “It’s all in the book you get when you become a father,” his Dad replies. These episodes are even funnier because we see how Calvin accepts these answers completely and we get to reflect on how and where this warped information is going to re-surface in the future.

Superbly drawn, ingeniously crafted, brilliantly observed, piercingly intelligent and laugh-out-loud funny, Calvin and Hobbes earned its place in the Pantheon of all-time greats. This Compendium Set is the perfect way to get these strips into the hands of a new readership and tempt old readers back again for another happy re-read. The last year of strips plus an assortment of extras appears in the final Volume Seven.