Rating: 
Summary: A Strong Finish
Review: This is the last of the C & H strips, and I think Watterson finished on a pretty strong note. I hear people say that Watterson should come back and write more strips. First of all, I think he did good to quit while he was ahead. Second of all, it always bother me when people complain about a writer leaving a series. As if they didn't have a life of their own and had to locked up somewhere and forced to churn out strips for the sake of their fans. If Watterson felt that he was tired of doing Calvin & Hobbes then we have to respect that.This book has got almost nothing but five star reviews here. So I feel that it's necessary to offer a dissenting opinion. I don't think this is Watterson's best work, and there are signs here that the quality of the strips was slipping. For one thing, while the Sunday strips are intricately drawn, the daily strips seem somewhat sparsely decorated. I think Watterson was putting so much time into drawing the Sunday strips that he had to just rush off his daily strips to meet his deadline. Second and most importantly, I think that the characters and the world of Calvin & Hobbes were beginning to lose their charm to some degree. Calvin was evolving from a hyperactive child to an obnoxious brat, and even though Calvin has always talked alot smarter than your average seven year old, I think some dialogue here sounds wierd coming from his mouth. Also, I think there's too much preaching from the soapbox here, and that sort of thing always gets on my nerves. I don't mean to give the impression that these faults are as bad as I'm making them sound. Most of them are hardly noticeable. I am simply trying to point out that there is a decline here from the glory days of the strip, and that's it's best that Watterson quit when he did before things got worse. He himself probably realized that he was losing his touch a little. I know that there are people who are fans of the strip and feel they have to come here and rave about any book with Calvin and Hobbes on the cover. (There is even one guy who posts the exact same review for every book in the series.) Some people think that's what being a fan is all about. It's the same sort of mentality that would make Star Trek fans go crazy over a Star Trek X even if the Enterprise was shaped like a cereal box. But you can be a fan and still have a discriminating taste. You can still separate the good from the bad. I think giving this book five stars does a disservice to better work like Snow Goons and The Authoritative C & H, which I think were the high points of the series. Anyway, this isn't a bad book. It's still vintage Calvin and Hobbes, and I think Watterson choose the perfect time to hang up his drawing board.
Rating: 
Summary: C&H is a World of Magic
Review: Fans of Calvin & Hobbes who used to read the newspaper strip in the 80s and 90s will find great pleasure in reading this collection of C&H comics. These witty comics about the 6-year old Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, named after the famous philosophers, will amuse people of all ages. The perceptiveness and humor of Watterson deserve the highest of cartoon awards, while his artistic creations exude hilarity. This cartoon is perhaps one of the most piercing yet funny critiques of modern society. Snow creations, sledding, pranks against Susie, Miss Wormwood and more creative ways to escape class, ... the fun in Calvin's world never ends! Note that there are two series of C&H collections: individual wide-format albums, each covering an entire year of strips (will call it "regular"), and the vertical aspect ratio "treasury series" which covers selected comics from two regular C&H books. Note that C&H ran for a year in newspapers, so there's 10 regular books and 5 treasury books. Though the cartoons are slightly smaller in the treasury collection, each treasury book is far thicker and contains more strips than a regular book, and is furthermore less expensive, so treasury books are a real bargain. "It's a Magical World" belongs to the regular series and was published in 1996.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone has a little Calvin in them
Review: I remember first becomming a Calvin and Hobbes fan back when I was about 9 or 10. Some 14 years later I've got the entire collection in a magazine holder in my bathroom.
Let's get past the point that Calvin and Hobbes is funny. Of course it is. What Watterson does that's so impactful is remind us everytime we look at a Calvin and Hobbes strip how we all have a little bit of Calvin in us. Whether it's our desire to make crude snow figures everytime we see a snow sculpture to dreaming of T-Rex's in F14's during a class, Calvin still lives on.
I loved how this book not only reminded me of first reading them in the Sunday paper, but Watterson's explinations underneath a lot of the strips explaining what he was thinking when he first wrote them.
Calvin and Hobbes will always stand the test of time. From laughing at the strips when you're 10, to laughing once again when you're 20 at the ones you didn't get when you were 10, Watterson will always be missed.
Opening the Sunday paper has never been the same since his retirement. Watterson proves how typical blocked in comics lose their appeal quickly, and every now and then circles and frameless pictures make things come alive.
I dream of the day when I have kids old enough to be introduced to a world of a small boy and his tiger friend.
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