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Summary: Everything i've ever learned in life, i learned from c+h
Review: calvin + hobbes is the best carrtoon ever! I need to get this book to complete my collection and have every single treasury book
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Summary: Great Look Behind the Scenes
Review: For the eleven years that it ran (1985-1995), Waterson's "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip was one of the greatest ever. His genius is reflected in a combination of brilliant images, imaginative story lines, unpredictable situations, and just the fun, love, and silliness of a little boy and his stuffed tiger. I have a few of the large format books, and I get a bit tired by Watterson's gassy forewords, in which he never fails to yak on and on about the cruel cartoon industry with its shrinking sizes, loss of artistic greatness, and insistence on merchandising every successful strip. Whatever. He does it again in this book, so you'll have to skip past that. The book doubled as the exhibit catalog for a showing of Watterson's works at Ohio State a few years ago. The interesting pages are dozens of Sunday strips with his personal comments under most of them. They appear in both the original draft and the final colored form (though personally, I didn't see much value added in running the same strip twice --in black-and-white and then in color). But it is fun to page through and laugh again at some of the most creative, clever, humorous, and well-drawn strips ever.
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Summary: Calvin and Hobbes are the best, duh.
Review: Hi, I am 12 years old and am in the 7th grade. I enjoy the Calvin and Hobbes comic books. This is one of my favortie books. I especially like the "Shakespeare-reciting" green dinner of Calvin's. Bill Watersoon puts his comments under the strips in this book. I think its cool when you get to know what he thought of some strips. Anyway, if you are thinking about getting this one, don't hesitate! (Look for my reviews on other Calvin and Hobbe!!)
~*The Clownfish*
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Summary: Great Reminder Of Why We Love Calvin And Hobbes
Review: I just got this book this morning after pre-ordering it a while back and read it right through.The book is great. It includes a 7 page essay by Bill Watterson and captions for most of his hand-selected Sunday strips. Each strip is shown in preproduction phase, with pencil marks, white-out, and colorless, and also in the finished format, just as Mr. Watterson liked to show it. If you're a fan of Watterson's work as I am, you will not be disappointed. I already had all the collections but this is a welcome edition. The originals of the Sunday pages are what is on display at the Ohio State University Cartoon Research Lab and this book serves as a catalogue for those who can't make it out there while the exhibit is displayed. Another testament to the amazing work of Bill Watterson, and I really hope that he will continue to share his work, in whatever format he chooses, for many years to come.
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Summary: Great for artists and a must for the hardcore fan
Review: I own every C&H book and treasury and, succumbing to sloth, I copied the same review 12 times on Amazon to avoid writing 12 different reviews. I am not doing that for this one because fans should know that this book is a bit different. It came to be as a result of an exhibition Waterson did in Ohio and has more of an artsy feel. It also has brief commentary by the cartoonist at the bottom of each page along with each set of Sunday panels. The format is a double print of each Sunday page. On the left-hand page you see it in black and white sketch version and on the right-hand page the final version in color. The left-hand side has eraser-marks and white out and other details you dont see in the finished color version. Personally, I love it and I am not really an artist at all. The quality of the book adds greatly to the appeal with nice super high-quality paper and amazing detail and crisp printing technique. The pages are not like most C&H books, with a matte finish. These are glossy and slick with great details. When my copy arrived I almost thought I had accidentally been sent a presentation copy or something, but all the ones I have seen are like mine; they just did a great job with the printing and formatting. Now I wish all my C&H books came with this kind of detail and sharp images, but you can't have everyting, and C&H is not so much about glossy images anyway. Having said that, I feel that this book allows the reader to see and appreciate the beauty in many of Watterson's Sunday pages. The black and whites also show a lot of detail you won't get in other C&H books. Of course, you also get a bunch of really good cartoons, as usual, but there are only half as many, since every one takes up two full pages with the two versions. To sum up, the material is old, the commentary is new and the quality is great. Get the other C&H books first, but then consider this one to spice up your collection with something a bit different.
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Summary: Bill Watterson is a brilliant
Review: It's great to know the man is still alive. This book began with a reflection by him about his great work on the sunday strips over the years. I was hoping he'd mention more about what he's done since he stopped doing Calvin and Hobbes, which he did but not as much as I'd like to know. Then the comics themselves were printed twice for every individual strip. Once showing the actual black and white inking with pencil marks, white coorection fluid blots and such, and again with the final printed color version. I love that stuff, I was lucky and saw an exhibit of Charles Shultz's origonal strips, which had his actual yellow legal pad pages he wrote ideas down on and little sketches. Bill Watterson has said his ideas have been limited by the space in which to tell a story in the newspaper comics. He's done all he feels he can within those guidlines. I can't imagine how great it would be to see what he can do stetching out of those guidlines.
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Summary: A peek into Watterson's creative genius
Review: It's hard to comment on this book without a bit of nostalgia for the good old days when Calvin and Hobbes was a daily strip. It was, and remains to this day, simply the funniest, and best comic ever written. This new book doesn't offer any new cartoons, but offers a refreshing look at some old favorites. This book is a delight because it provides new insight into the brilliance of the best of Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin & Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995 compares the original pencil sketches Watterson drew with the final strip that ran in the Sunday paper. Included are comments Watterson added on his creative process, shining a light on the genius behind the boy and his tiger. They are at times witty and wistful, and the comics are, as always, laugh-till-it-hurts funny.
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Summary: GREAT fun and VERY educational!!!
Review: Loved it! Loved it! LOVED IT!!! I'm one of those people who read Calvin & Hobbes when it was at its peak, but sadly took it for granted. You can't give a book a greater tribute than to say it makes you want to order the person's OTHER works....and we should be grateful Bill Watterson's output for this now-defunct classic strip is still available in book collections. And this collection is one of the BEST. This book works on several levels...or, should I say, works PERFECTLY on several levels: --THE HUMOROUS LEVEL: The humor remains of a "cutting-edge" quality not seen in many comic strips (today's strip Zits is a great one). But it's humor that works on several levels, a la Rocky & Bullwinkle: adults get "more" of the hilarious verbal and (quite frequently) non-verbal jokes while kids get enough so they love it, too. --THE CRAFTSMANSHIP LEVEL: This book, originally created as a catalogue for Sunday pages on display at the Ohio State University Cartoon Research Lab, boasts his original uninked black and white drawings (you can even spot some White Out!) on the left side and the completed "product" (fully inked drawings) on the right side. You can see how each strip evolved. You soon realize that color selection is in itself a vital crafts/artistic decision. --THE ARTISTIC LEVEL: Watterson has a SUPERB 7-page essay about his strip at the beginning of this book. But there's a LOT more to learn as you go through the strips. Under each completed strip he explains a bit about what he was trying to do: why he changed "okay" to OK, how he tried depicting personalities, how a given strip's characters became more three-dimensional, his experiments with verbal and sight jokes, how a strip was inspired by local scenery, his struggle over what kinds of pads to put on the tiger's feet ..even his attempt to use cubist art in one strip. How do I know this book works on several levels? As I write this my 10-year-old nephew Greg is visiting. He immediately took this book, looked at it and said, "Oh, I've seen these! I love this!" and wanted to read it NOW. He was fascinated by the notes under the strips...and I told him that this is a book he can not only read for pure FUN but can also probably read for reading credit at school, since this is much more than "just" a Calvin and Hobbes collection...which in itself would be better than many comic collections on the market. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. YOU'LL READ IT AGAIN AND AGAIN!
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Summary: A nice reminder of the value of Art over Product
Review: Somehow, the essense of Calvin and Hobbes has been lost in the world. Its original appreciation of the specialness of friendship, the magical delight in small wonders of nature, and the value of companionship over corporate commercialism has been reduced to tacky car stickers, rip-off T-shirts, fraternity party drug/keg emblems, and other meaningless displays of unimaginative thick-headedness. "C&H" has been sacrificed on the alter of habitual consumerism by a public so conditioned to appreciate something only by BUYING a part of it, that perhaps only a few readers still remember its strong message about art, nature, joy, despair, and magic. Watterson strips Calvin and Hobbes of all the slick packaging we see in the finished treasuries, and opens our eyes to the sloppy, painstaking work of tape, ink, graphite, and correction fluid that become the characters we know. This book shows the art as it actually looks, not as it's published to appear, and we can see the smudges, the eraser marks, the notes to himself, and the corresponding commentary by the most elusive and tantalizing personality in comics. By approaching the work this way, Watterson reminds us that all along we were responding emotionally to a creation of almost primitive construction, and that something created from the messiness of patience and talent actually meant more to us than plastic-covered, mall-bought, factory-vomited trinkets and McDonald's toys. The book is as valuable for its function in turning us away from this commodity culture as for the delightfulness of its reading content....
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Summary: a little bit of perspective...and a lot of fun
Review: The commentary provided by the author on each of the Sunday cominc cartoon included in the collection in itself is worth the book. Each cartoon is presented twice, though. The left panel is similar to the sketches and the right hand presents the same cartoon in color. Each of the two pages provide a narrative related to the specific cartoon - explaining the artistic characteristics and inspiration for the cartoon....All in all, an excellent addition to any Calvin fan (and which intelligent reader isnt!)
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