Merry Christmas. Now that we got that out of the way, welcome to April, 1986! Clint Eastwood is elected fuckin’ mayor of a small California town. IBM creates the first megabit chip! Michael Jordan scores 63 points in one game! Geraldo Rivera finds nothing in Al Capone’s vault! The Chernobyl thing happens!

Is any of this Calvin’s fault? Absolutely! Especially the Chernobyl thing.

April 6, 1986 – The only reason Susie Derkins sits with Calvin during lunch day after day is because she they are madly in love with each other.

I knew a kid like this in elementary school. Every single lunch period was an exercise in attempting to get kicked out. One beautiful afternoon, this kid took forkful after forkful of mashed potatoes and sat on each one. Scoop. Sit. Scoop. Sit. He kept making “rrrghh” and “urrnngg” noises each time, moving his ass around to really squish it. We had never laughed harder.

That kid grew up to be an Olympic gold medalist, I couldn’t be more truthful about this. For the sake of anonymity I won’t drop his name, but let’s just say it rhymes with “Snarly Fight”.

April 7, 1986 – In Communist Russia, stupid lima beans eat you!

This strip likely saw some blowback from hardcore fans of the stars and stripes for even suggesting that Communist Russia could possibly be less awful than good old America the Beautiful, Land of the Free, Home of the Whopper. Especially from the mouths of babes! A babe like Calvin.

Dad got in touch with Uncle Vladimir, who offered to keep Calvin at his place for a month so he can experience the oppression of Russia first hand. He would have nothing to do but listen to Shostakovich and read Tolstoy. Doesn’t sound too bad, actually.

April 15, 1986 – Spaceman Spiff’s elementary school scum beings are always horrible tyrants.

Ms. Wormwood is ALWAYS some disgusting scum being. She looks old enough to have regretted more decisions than years I’ve been alive, and that’s at least eleven. Maybe even a couple dozen more!

Calvin is obviously pushing her into early retirement, but little does Ms. Wormwood know that Calvin will be perpetually six years old and the little hellion will be in her class for eleven more years. What did Ms. Wormwood do in a past life to deserve this torment? She probably killed a couple of presidents.

April 21, 1986 – Critical thinking is always more rewarding than direction-following.

Against all better logic and reason, Calvin had received a hammer for Christmas which has allowed to him wreak havoc upon anything that may come across his desk. Today it’s a model airplane, but what will it be tomorrow? Mercury-filled thermometers? Land mines? A box of chipmunks? Kid Cuisine TV dinners? His father’s flaccid penis?

Also, Calvin is a complete dingus because, according to what my two eyes perceive in Panel 2, the model airplane kit comes with exactly seven pieces and two decals. I’ve done model airplane kits with at least four more pieces than this and I only needed to whack it with a hammer once!

April 26, 1986 – ♫♪♫ and I feel fine… ♪♪

More heavy subject matter! Calvin probably saw that one atomic bomb commercial with the girl and the flower one too many times and now looks to his stuffed tiger for comfort. The thing about letting the air out of the tires is certainly a deflection.

I’m not old enough to remember any of the Cold War era, but it must have been pretty fucked up to wake up every single morning and remember that a nuclear missile hitting your face wasn’t out of the question. I wonder how people with anxiety coped with living in the world. Probably by killing themselves like they cope with it in the 21st century.

April 28, 1986 – I never Warsaw this joke coming.

I always liked this one. Very clever! I’ve written over 800,000 words worth of “jokes” for this dumbass website and I’ve never come with anything as clever as “KRAKOW! KRAKOW! TWO DIRECT HITS!” So concise, too! It would’ve taken Mary Worth an entire 19-month story arc to land this joke and it would’ve been botched.

Susie Derkins knows better than to cheat during a test, though. Perhaps she spent too much of yesterday evening eating Saltines and watching test patterns on TV to remember to bone up on her Poland knowledge.

That’s it for April, 1986! Stay tuned for May when Calvin derails a train, cracks Dad’s glasses, and aids and abets Osama bin Laden’s agenda.