Welcome to May, 1986! Top Gun hits theaters! Not much else happens.

Calvin didn’t get to see Top Gun because he was grounded for sticking fireworks in stray cats’ butts.

May 2, 1986 – Let’s burn down the house before Dad gets home!

KAPWING POW BANG ZANG BOING. Panel 3 is the stuff, especially Hobbes’ immediate reaction to Calvin’s dangerous, house-threatening experiment! I want to know where Calvin’s parents buy their popcorn, because it looks to me that the kernels multiply like bunny rabbits during the popping process. It’s like those replicators from Stargate SG-1, or perhaps some other reference that isn’t insufferably geeky.

May 6, 1986 – He’s out to get everyone. He’s kind of a motherfucker that way.

Again, the kid and his stuffed tiger get philosophical at the expense of organized religion, effectively alienating the Christian audience and causing pious parents nationwide to start cutting the strip out of their daily newspapers in order to prevent their children from becoming indoctrinated further in the dark arts.

Calvin believes in the Old Testament God, the mean one with the beef against all the people he created in his image. I can get behind that.

May 15, 1986 – Mom’s looking good in her sweater vest and neck shoelaces.

The first appearance of Rosalyn, the vindictive college student babysitter who gets paid eight dollars per night to barely tolerate the out-of-control six-year-old! I can’t tell based on the context of this strip if this is the first time Rosalyn is babysitting Calvin. Mom acts like she vaguely knows the young woman, plus it seems rude to shake someone down for cash fourteen seconds after you meet them, but what do I know about anything. Fucking nothing, that’s what.

May 21, 1986 – Calvin wouldn’t last seven minutes alone in the woods before getting eaten by a troupe of wily bears.

In a fruitless effort to rid their child during the summer afternoons, Mom and Dad are always sending Calvin to camp or to Boy Scouts or Little League. In a predictable fashion, Calvin always acts like a little asshole about it.

Susie Derkins is the only one of Calvin’s peers who can get under Calvin’s skin. Other than her, no one can penetrate Calvin’s formidable exterior. Even Moe the bully isn’t able to frustrate or anger the unflappable child! The kid in Panel 3 is mean and Calvin takes it in stride. I don’t know many six-year-olds who can get yelled at by a kid his age and not retaliate in kind. This kid’s going places! Over the next hill, as it seems.

May 24, 1986 – RIP Calvin, drowned in the pool under his father’s watch.

I love the strips where Calvin’s overactive imagination permeates every panel except the last, where the reveal is that the kid is being a complete fucking weirdo. Case in point, by all appearances Calvin has drowned in the pool! I got a good LOL out of that one, friends.

May 25, 1986 – A cigarette machine! What a blast from the past!

CIGARETTE MACHINES!  They used to have these in regular old restaurants, and Calvin is either in one or in a Nazi biker bar.

From a 2023 perspective , this has got to be one of the craziest motherfucking Calvin and Hobbes strips to graze the mainstream daily newspaper. I cannot fathom letting my own six-year-old try a cigarette if she asks for one just to prove a point. Mom went all in on this one, obviously even helping Calvin light it. Getting down on her knees, holding the kid’s head still, sparking that flint… Watterson should’ve just illustrated that too.

Panel 5 is the underdog here. Hobbes’ bug-eyed happy expression, Calvin’s smug satisfaction. 1980s Americana at its most resonant.

May 30, 1986 – Hobbes is looking pretty sharp on his date.

The end of May featured a story arc where Calvin lost Hobbes while walking around outside. I could go back and check if Calvin was alone during every encounter he ever had with Susie, but that sounds like a stupid waste of time! Instead, I’ll just assume that Susie has legitimately never seen Hobbes before. It sounds unlikely, but perhaps Bill Watterson and his dumb pedophile mustache did his own research on that one.

I love how Hobbes is larger than these kids. I wanted a Hobbes stuffed animal so badly when I was Calvin’s age, but of course Bill Watterson refused to merchandise his creation like a jerk. Nowadays, people are making their own to sell on Etsy. If my daughters ever want one, you can bet your hairy butt that I’m scooping one up.