Calvin and Hobbes is not good.

It’s not deep. It’s not clever. It’s not funny or timeless. On the contrary, it’s very much of its time, and that time is getting further and further, not closer.

That being said, it’s not BAD. It’s poignant, sure. It’s occasionally witty. But by and large it seems to be the Peanuts of Gen X-Z insofar as I’ve consigned myself to the likelihood of seeing these tired tropes and oversaturated characters and outdated observations for the rest of my life, drenched in commercialism, paraded in front of me against the creator’s wishes, ad nauseum.

Edit: It’s apparently worth clarifying what I meant here. The comic itself is not “drenched in commercialism”, but the overhyped greatness of it (which is the crux of my undoubtedly unpopular opinion - and again, I dont think it’s a BAD comic, necessarily, just overrated) will lead to this commercialisation as soon as the chance arises for shitty companies to defy the creator’s will in pursuit of the almighty dollar, and I’m dreading this since I already see plenty of unwarranted (albeit not necessarily undeserved) C&H glorification as is.

We as a culture have had enough C&H. We can put it away now. Yes, just there, on the shelf next to edgy Alice in Wonderland reimaginings. Perfect, thanks.

  • BarqsHasBite
    2•1 year ago

    It’s that no one else has quite captures the essence of being a kid. Most strips portray kids as mini adults.

    And when he got to let loose on the drawings for Sunday comics, some of them are very elaborate and exquisite for a daily strip.

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•1 year ago

      Now this, I can definitely see. Not to wax melancholic, but mine was an abnormal and truncated childhood, so I never found the comic personally relatable, and that might amount for the disconnect - it always came across as either outlandish and nonsensical (bordering on lolsorandumb) to faux-deep and mollycoddling of the reader’s inner toddler that never seemed much more than condescending to me.

      But in the context of cueing it through the hypothetical series of how a regular adult might reminisce about their own childhood, the nostalgic, near-wistful fondness I see for it makes a lot more sense, even if to me it feels saccharine and, dare I say, disingenuous.

      Thanks!