Welcome to my latest new project! A project that will assuredly cause me to lose control and start nosediving directly toward the center of the Insanity Desert, where I will disintegrate into three thousand pieces and no one will ever discover the wreckage…

Hello! Hi! Here’s an introduction! I can cite four comic strips that MASSIVELY inspired my early (and short-lived) ambitions to be a cartoonist: Peanuts, Garfield, Foxtrot, and Calvin and Hobbes.

-My Garfield inspiration is now embarrassing as an adult, and I formally retract this influence even though I bought all twelve original Fat Cat 3-Packs.
-My Peanuts inspiration is still very respectful, because this strip was a huge influence on anybody in the cartoon business who is worth a damn. Plus, most of it still holds up pretty well.
-Foxtrot is Foxtrot. Who doesn’t like Foxtrot?

Calvin and Hobbes is king, though! Calvin and Hobbes is where it’s at! And I wasted too many words on this introduction already! I have many, many days ahead to blither and blather about my childhood with respect to all manner of Calvin and Hobbes! The first entry on my journey will be short and sweet, since the strip’s debut was within the last half of the November, 1985. Just two days before my older cousin was born. I haven’t seen him in 20 years and I don’t care if I never see him again! For all I know he was murdered in Christmas Eve, 2014!

So let’s get started!

November 18, 1985 – One tuna fish sandwich, and the rest is history!

The first Calvin and Hobbes strip delighted readers of all ages when it dropped on November 18th, 1985. It ran in only 35 newspapers, so these “delighted readers of all ages” comprised 13 people. Good thing those 13 people told their friends, because it wasn’t long before word really started to spread.

So what do you think happened? Calvin’s parents bought him a stuffed tiger, then Calvin fabricated an origin story where he hangs his new stuffed animal from a tree in the backyard? OR, did Calvin find Hobbes in the wild? Perhaps some other child threw him out of a car window? Or perhaps President Ronald Reagan shot down an airplane with a surface-to-air missile directly over Calvin’s neighborhood and Hobbes was among the falling wreckage? He looks like he’s in pretty good shape, but we can’t rule that out.

November 20, 1985 – The torture begins already.

It doesn’t take long before Calvin and Hobbes begin tormenting his parents into an early grave. Bill Watterson clearly knew what he wanted to do with the series early on, and it doesn’t take long at all before Calvin transcends the thoughts and behaviors of an actual six-year-old (when he wants to, of course). These first couple months are just some mischievous Dennis the Menace shit without any concrete story arcs. Just a little kid havin’ fun and goofin’ off! Isn’t that what life’s all about?… NO?!? Who said that? Get your ass over here.

November 24, 1985 – The little sociopath already tries to kill his father.

It takes about a week for Calvin’s mom to actually appear in the strip for the first time. Bill Watterson probably had some dad issues and he spent the first few days working them out. As you can see in the above strip, the very first Sunday strip, Watterson inserts some wish fulfillment in the form of the main character shooting his dad several times with a dart gun and (off-panel) beating him half to death with a baseball bat! Look up the very few pictures of Bill Watterson that exist and you’ll see how close Calvin’s dad’s appearance is compared to the man himself. Just a spindly dork. And you can imagine his own father looked similar. Just a spindly dork. He probably told Bill as a child to quit crying all the time as he tore the heads off his teddy bears.

November 27, 1985 – Playing God starts in the sandbox.

Calvin’s sophisticated imagination allows him to take limited control over his own life when he can, and if that means building up an entire civilization only to snuff it out in one fell swoop with a catastrophic industrial disaster, then who am I to be a judge of his character? This is the first strip that really shows Calvin’s desire to some sort of evil, God-like entity. It won’t be the last.

November 30, 1985 – Beginning and ending with Goin’ Exploring.

With the final strip of November, 1985, we see that Watterson had hit all the typically important Calvin & Hobbes beats with the first 13 days. Torturing the parents, classroom delinquency, philosophical discussion in the wagon, and the budding sociopathy! Such rich world-building! And look, barring a couple of extended hiatuses, we still have 121 months to go! Buckle up, this is going to be an interminable journey that I’ll never, ever finish!