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Paul Garvin (South Carolina) wrote on February 10, 2009 at 9:58am
(...) As a kid, I don't think I ever realized how fortunate I really was...at least as far as entertainment went. It was so easy to take TV shows like Animaniacs, Looney Tunes, and Batman: The Animated Series for granted. But one needs only to look at any Sunday paper nowadays to find the biggest quality drop from my youth to kids' today...the comics.
Comics like Peanuts and The Far Side were treasured by kids and adults, respectively. But, there was one comic that transcended age entirely. There was one comic that you could literally read one strip at age 5 and laugh hysterically...and then read the same strip at age 20 and laugh hysterically. And here's the crazy part: for absolutely different reasons. Welcome to the magical world of Calvin and Hobbes.
You see, the comic that actually pulled off this incredible feat was packed with some of the best (and least noticed) satire and black humor that I can think of. Reading it as a kid on Sundays, I vaguely recall wagon rides gone wrong, long conversations during a walk in the woods, and some bizarre-looking snowmen. However, I rarely look back at the middle parts of those strips. You see, after the two-panel intros (which served as a protest against standardized formatting in Sunday comic pages, in which comic writers were asked to include a certain amount of "dead space" to allow it to fit in an allocated slot), there were usually 5-6 panels of dialogue. And usually, kids didn't really read much of it; we just glossed over to the part where Calvin and Hobbes would tumble off a cliff, get into a fight, or deliver a catchy pun. Unfortunately, that meant we missed out on some of the most profound quotes ever delivered in the medium (and in popular entertainment).
So below, I've listed several of the least-noticed quotes from this outstanding series.
"I should always be saying, 'My life is better than I ever imagined it would be, and it's only going to improve'". (Calvin)
"The problem with you, Hobbes, is you're always at a loss for words." (Calvin)
"I've found that saves many a friendship." (Hobbes)
"I wonder why we think faster than we can speak." (Calvin)
"Probably so we can think twice." (Hobbes)
"Without an appreciation for grace and beauty, there's no pleasure in creating things and no pleasure in having them!" (Calvin)
"Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?" (Calvin)
"That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder." (Calvin)
"It's not denial. I'm just very selective about the reality I accept." (Calvin)
"The problem with being avant-garde is knowing who's putting on who." (Calvin)
"Do you think babies are born sinful? That they come into the world as sinners?" (Calvin)
"No, I think they're just quick studies." (Hobbes)
"A good compromise leaves everybody mad." (Calvin)
"History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices." (Calvin)
"It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end." (Hobbes)
"If good things lasted forever, would we appreciate how precious they are?" (Hobbes)
"We seem to understand the value of oil, timber, minerals, and housing, but not the value of unspoiled beauty, wildlife, solitude, and spiritual renewal." (Calvin)
"We need to start putting prices on the priceless." (Hobbes)
"I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life." (Hobbes)
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