Book Review: FoxTrot Sundaes by Bill Amend

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Laughs with the Fox Family

Cons: None for me

The Bottom Line:

The Fox family

Some Sunday strips collected

Plentiful laughs here

Our First Dose of Sunday Fun with FoxTrot

I’ve been a fan of the comic strip FoxTrot since I discover it while I was in college.  The antics of the Fox family made me laugh for years, and I was disappointed when cartoonist Bill Amend made the decision to semi-retire, only releasing new strips on Sundays.  That means that the collections of his books are also coming out less frequently.  I’ve been buying them, but for some reason not reading them.  I finally fixed that with the first of the Sunday only collections – FoxTrot Sundaes, and I immediately remembered why I loved this strip so much.

If you have yet to meet the family, there are five members of the Fox family.  In addition to the parents, we have high school junior, Peter, high school freshman, Paige, and fifth grader, Jason.  The kids (and parents for that matter) fall into a bit of your typical stereotypes, maybe with the exception of Jason, who is super smart and your typical geek.  And yet, they still manage to be real characters and make us laugh, even after all these years.

This book originally came out in 2010, and it collects almost two years’ worth of comics in full Sunday color.  We can easily follow along with the seasons as first days of school and holidays help us pinpoint where in the year we are.  While the strip when it was daily had quite a few great strips around new pop culture movies or TV shows, this one isn’t quite as pop culture dependent.  However, there are a couple of references to current events that definitely date the strips.  But that’s a minor issue (and the strips are still funny).

Fans of the series will definitely be glad to hear that nothing has been lost by cutting down to just Sundays.  Yes, the jokes might be familiar – Jason tormenting Paige, Paige being obsessed over guys, the mom’s awful vegan cooking as examples – but they are still funny.  There are enough twists to the jokes to make me enjoy them all over again.  Okay, so the time I spent away from the characters might help as well.  These strips were collected here for the first time; nothing from this book was also in the previous collections I’ve read.

I’ve got all but the most recent book.  Now that I’ve reacquainted myself with the Fox family, I am hoping to make a point to revisit them again this year.  Any fan of family comic strips will enjoy FoxTrot Sundaes.

Book Review: It's a Magical World by Bill Watterson

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: “I’d Say Some Promotions, Awards, Medals, and Advanced Degrees are in Order!”

Cons: “Should We Get Them Before We Get in Trouble, or After?”

The Bottom Line:

This one last wild romp

Proves the strip still going strong

Thanks for all the laughs

“If You Couldn’t Find Any Weirdness, Maybe We’ll Just Have to Make Some!”

Sadly, all great things come to an end.  That was the case 20 years ago for fans of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, and we are still mourning the loss.  Fortunately, we get one last hurrah with It's A Magical World.  And the book is proof that the strip was still going strong even at the end.

By now, everyone is familiar with the world of Calvin, a six-year-old with a very active imagination.  For example, Hobbes is his stuffed tiger – at least to the rest of the world.  To Calvin, he’s very much alive and his best friend (when they aren’t arguing just like best friends do at that age).

This book contains some classic stories as Calvin and Hobbes hold an emergency meeting of G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS) when their neighbor Susy spends the afternoon at their house when her mom is out.  Calvin’s standard conflict with his babysitter Rosalyn meets his favorite game – Calvinball.  His father tries to teach him how to ride his homicidal bike.  And, of course, he has to worry about whether he’s been good enough for Santa to bring him any presents.

There are about nine months’ worth of strips in this book, but what actually surprised me the most was how many of them either stood alone or were only stories that covered two or three days.  The epic stories are definitely in the earlier strips.

However, that’s not to say the humor is any less funny.  I still laugh every time I read the book, and I can’t remember how many times I’ve read these strips at this point.  Some of the jokes definitely work best if you know the characters since they are running gags that had been around for years at this point, but most of the punchlines everyone will still get.

As the strip went on, creator Bill Watterson took some swipes at the culture of the 1990’s.  We get some of that here with Calvin’s subscription to Chewing magazine which feeds into his constant desire to improve his hobby of chewing gum.  Then there’s his take on art with Calvin and his snowmen.  Finally, there’s his take on the political discourse of the day.  Sadly, that still rings true today as well.

The pictures that go along with the dialog are brilliant as well.  In fact, the sight gags are sometimes as hilarious as anything anyone says.  This book is a complete treat in every sense of the word.

The one thing I haven’t touched on is possibly the biggest storyline of the last few months.  Calvin has a leaf project for school that he procrastinates on.  No surprise there.  What is a surprise is when two aliens show up and Calvin sells them the planet for 50 leaves.  Why bring this up now?  Bill Watterson has said that he almost had this story play in to the end of the strip.  I’m so glad he didn’t.  Instead, the final strip leaves things open for Calvin and Hobbes to have many more great adventures together.  As sorry as I am that the series ended, the last strip is perfect just the way it is.

So if you have never found Calvin and Hobbes, you really do need to fix that today.  It's A Magical World might not be the best place to start since it is the end of the series, but it is a wonderful book that fans of the strip will treasure.  I know I do.

This review is part of this week's Marvelous Middle Grade Monday.

Book Review: There's Treasure Everywhere by Bill Watterson

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: "I Guess We Learned a Lesson, Huh?"  "I'll Say.  Smooth Talking a Teacher Really Pays Off."

Cons: "I'll See You in Your Room Momentarily."

The Bottom Line:

The laughs keep coming

In this brilliant collection

Sure to entertain

"You Should Always Save Hyperbole Until you Really Need It."

Sadly, we are approaching 20 years since the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes stopped running in news papers.  Fortunately, we still have wonderful collections like There's Treasure Everywhere to keep us laughing.

In case you have missed this stupendous comic strip, it revolves around Calvin, your typical six-year-old, and Hobbes, his not so typical stuffed tiger.  You see, while the rest of the world sees Hobbes as a stuffed tiger, we know the truth, he is really alive and Calvin's best friend.  That is if your best friend will throw snowballs at you and wait to pounce on you when you get home from school.  And, while Calvin isn't that smart in school (he gets barfy face stickers), he is actually pretty astute when it comes to culture.

For most of 1994, Bill Watterson took a sabbatical from creating the strip, and that nine month gap is reflected here.  It's why we get fall, winter, spring, and then suddenly it's January again going toward spring.  That weird time jump hardly matters, however, because the laughs are plentiful.

Some collections of this strip feature more stories of the messes that Calvin and Hobbes get into.  This one doesn't, however.  Yes, we get a couple, like Calvin inventing a brain enhancer to come up with a topic for his paper.  Then there's the math homework he forgets to do until two in the morning.  But for the most part these strips stand on their own.  Yes, there are some familiar themes like Calvin's snowman art or adventures with his homicidal bike but the several days in a row we see these recurring gags don’t really tell a story.  For example, for a week Calvin tries to get the people in his life to sign waivers about their relationship with him.  Each strip is a different character, but all of them are hilarious.

Not that I'm complaining.  You will laugh at these strips.  After all, what does it say about Calvin that Hobbes is the smarter of the pair.  Hobbes is always making the observations that Calvin should make but just ignores.  Calvin's dad has a sarcastic streak like you wouldn't believe.  We get plenty of run ins with Mo, the bully in Calvin's class.  Susie, Calvin's next door neighbor, is also around waiting to insult Calvin (not that he doesn't usually deserve it).

And I mentioned the social commentary.  Whether it's Calvin's take on modern art (as shown via snowmen), Hobbes's take on advertising, or his dad's take on modern living in general, it's all pretty funny.  Sadly, it's also fairly accurate even 20 years later.  Our culture hasn't changed much, at least not for the better.

Despite the time jumps, you still get about nine months worth of strips in this book.  The daily strips are still black and white, but the Sunday strips are reprinted in color.  There is some great artwork in these and Bill Watterson often really lets his, and Calvin's, imagination soar.  But even the daily strips are filled with fun art work that adds to the humor of the words.

And that's why this strip still holds up 20 years later.  You will laugh at Calvin and Hobbes no matter whether you are reading it for the first time or the three hundred billion gazillioneth time.  That makes There's Treasure Everywhere well worth buying.

This review is part of this week's Marvelous Middle Grade Monday.  It is also part of The 2014 Funny Pages Write-Off.

Book Review: Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat by Bill Watterson

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: "I Like Verbing Words.  Verbing Weirds Language."

Cons: "Some People Have Secret Admirers.  You Have a Secret Detractor!"

The Bottom Line:

A great comic strip

With timeless humor to make

You laugh as you read

"I Bet Some Kids Walk Around Corners Without Even Thinking About It."

I still miss Calvin and Hobbes.

And I’m sure every fan of the classic comic strip would echo that sentiment.  The strip was funny, creative, and always funny.  The characters had personality.  The punch lines were often surprising even when the set up was familiar.  And the way the strip managed to poke fun at our culture was brilliant.  Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat was a collection from late in the strips run and includes strips from 1992 and 1993.

The strip follows six-year-old Calvin and his best friend Hobbes.  Hobbes just happens to be a stuffed tiger who is real only to Calvin.  And he often seems to be the more intelligent of the two.  Rounding out the cast we have Calvin’s parents, neighbor Susie, and teacher Miss Wormwood.

This book covers nine months and seems to contain more stand alone strips than actual stories, although there are several recurring gags.  For example, we get lots of Calvin’s take on modern art as he creates snow sculptures.  In a strip that scarily is even more appropriate today than it was 20 years ago, Calvin’s lemonade stand fails because of the high prices he is charging.  Missing in this book is babysitter Rosalyn, and bully Mo only gets one appearance.

As far as multiple day story arcs go, Calvin starts getting mysterious letters in the mail.  Who is sending them?  What will the messages say?  Late in the book, we get another episode with Get Rid Of Slimy girlS (G.R.O.S.S.) as they plot to ensnare neighbor Susie in a fiendish trap to lure her behind the house to hit her with water balloons.    Calvin’s alter ego Stupendous Man makes an appearance to take a history test for Calvin.  Calvin makes a deal with Susie to eats worms for money.  And as Christmas approaches, Calvin tries to figure out just how good he has to be to get presents from Santa.

At times, the strip was just a funny look at the life of a six-year-old who struggles in school mainly because he isn’t interested in the subject matter.  But at times, it was also a brilliant look at our culture.  I already mentioned Calvin’s snow sculptures with are a biting look at modern art.  While there’s only one strip involving his magazine for gum chewers, Hobbes' comment about our quiz addicted society is still spot on.  In fact, it’s rather hard to believe these strips are 20 years old.  Many of the remarks and observations made are still spot on today, sadly.

Coupled with the great writing is the great art work.  And I do mean art work.  Especially in the Sunday strips (which are reproduced in full color here), we get some beautiful pictures.  Sometimes it is of the outdoors where Calvin and Hobbes play.  It might also be on distant worlds that Calvin is exploring in his imagination.  Okay, so maybe they aren’t fine art, but they are certainly better than much modern art and the best you’ll find on the comics pages.

And did I mention that these strips are still funny?  Because they certainly are.  I have some of these strips memorized and use them as punch lines in my own life.  And yet I will still laugh when I read them in this book.  Twenty years later, that’s great humor.

So I continue to recommend Calvin and Hobbes in any book form.  Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat is just one great example of a strip I wish had lasted longer.

Book Review: The Days are Just Packed by Bill Watterson

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: "Actually, I Just Like to Say Smock.  Smock, Smock, Smock, Smock, Smock, Smock."

Cons: "If You Ache, It's Because You Don't Properly Stretch Before Exercising."

The Bottom Line: 

New collection style

Filled with the same old humor

For book filled with laughs

"What Would You Call the Creation of the Universe?"  "The Horrendous Space Kablooie."

The Days are Just Packed represents a change for the classic comic strip Calvin and Hobbes - at least for the books.  The strips themselves are just as funny as ever and really do hold up over time.

So what's this change?  The format of the books.  They are now sideways on legal size paper.  That allows for two black and white strips or one fully color Sunday strip per page.  It also means that the Sunday strips that have some unusual spacing are really able to shine.  It makes the book a tad more awkward to read, but I'm now really complaining about that.

And why would I when the contents of the book are so classic?  Here we are almost 20 years after this book came out, and I'm still laughing at the same old strips over and over again.

If you've missed the strip, it stars six-year-old Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes.  Hobbes is Calvin's best friend and is completely alive to Calvin.  Of course, Hobbes can be a bit of a pain, like when he tackles Calvin for no good reason or reacts sarcastically to Calvin's brilliant ideas.  (Of course, maybe Hobbes just knows from experience that Calvin's ideas are doomed to fail.)  Calvin's world is filled with his parents, his neighbor Susie, teacher Miss Wormwood, and the bullyMo.

The strip was a mix of stories told over the course of multiple strips and one off strips that are a self-contained joke.  This book seems to have more of the single strip jokes than the longer stories, but they're all funny, so it doesn't matter.  Among the stories here, Calvin decides to believe his daily horoscope only to see it fall far short of expectations.  He also tries to time travel to get his homework for his future self so he doesn't have to do it, only to find out that it never got done because he was too busy time traveling.  The ending to that one is a classic.

There are also critics of American culture as Chewing, the magazine for gum chewers, is introduced.  The satirical look at advertising is just as true today as it was then.  There are also jokes at art culture as Calvin continues to build hideous snowmen or build with model clay.  Again, the screwing of culture is spot on and hilarious.

Since creator Bill Watterson took a break while these strips were first being run in newspapers, we have about nine months worth of strips, but they take place in a weird time where we have a touch of winter before hitting summer and then spring and summer again.  Just go with it, and you'll be fine.

The art work is stylized, and most comic strips are.  The characters are somewhere on the continuum between realistic and caricature, but you can always tell exactly what is happening.  For the jokes that rely on the surroundings, that's important.

There are really no jokes here that date the strip.  And the humor is still spot on, so everything is just as funny today as it was when these first came out 20 years ago.  If you haven't read it before, I guarantee you will laugh at the strips here.  As I said earlier, I still laugh at some of the ones I've read countless times before.

As so I highly recommend this book.  You can never go wrong with Calvin and Hobbes, and The Days are Just Packed proves it.

Book Review: Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons by Bill Watterson

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: "You Cannot Trace Us.  You Cannot Find Us.  Sincerely, Calvin."

Cons: "Nothing Spoils Fun Like Finding Out it Builds Character"

The Bottom Line:

Kid and stuffed tiger

In comic strip that still makes

Me laugh as I read

"Well, Hobbes, I Guess There's a Moral to All This.  Snow Goons are Bad News." 

Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons has always represented a half way point in the classic comic strip Calvin and Hobbes to me.  It's the seventh collection of comic strips, but the first one not to be combined into a treasury.  All the books after this one were only released as treasuries.  Don't ask me why this one is the orphan.  So the strips are only black and white here.  That doesn't make the humor any less funny.  In fact, there are some classics here.

As usual, we follow the adventures of imaginative six-year-old Calvin and his best friend Hobbes.  The catch is Hobbes just happens to be a stuff tiger to the rest of the world.  Calvin's life is inhabited by his parents and teacher Miss Wormwood, neighbor Susie, and bully Mo.  His babysitter is the only regular character not to make an appearance in this book.

We've got roughly nine months of strips to enjoy.  We start at the beginning of summer vacation as Calvin comes down with chicken pox.  And we end in the spring as Calvin duplicates his good half (who surprisingly isn't shorter than Calvin). 

None of the Sunday strips tie into each other or any of the daily strips.  And some of the daily strips are just one and done gags.  But I'd say about two thirds of the strips here tell various stories.  For example, Calvin kidnaps one of Susie's dolls but manages to have to pay ransom to get Hobbes back from her.  In the story that gives the book it's title, Calvin builds a snow man and brings it to life, only to find out it's a monster that wants to kill him.  Speaking of trying to kill him, Calvin's dad insists that Calvin learn to ride a bike even though his bike is homicidal.  Calvin and Susie bet over who will get the top score on a math test.  Calvin puts off a school project until the night after it is due.  We get the first mentions of the mysterious noodles incident.  While we can't prove Calvin did it, it sure comes up frequently for the rest of the strip.

Something else that happens for the first time here is a subtle critic of our culture.  This mostly happens when Calvin decides he must be a great artist when his "dinosaurs in spaceships" pictures get him in trouble at school.  As the series progressed, it took an even harsher look at the arts and consumerism in America.  I always loved that because the strips were so funny and so true.

Christmas always means funny strips, and this book has a great series where Calvin hires Hobbes to be his lawyer and plead his case to Santa.  Of course, they barely get out of the yard before Calvin wants to hit Susie with a slushball.

The earlier books have some dates strips where Calvin begs for a VCR or cable.  This book is copyright 1990, and as a sign of the times, those things seem to have been dropped.  Honestly, these are pretty timeless strips.

These strips are filled with sarcasm.  Calvin's dad is the worse, but Calvin has definitely picked up that habit as well.  There's also plenty of absurdity and creativity.  You can't help but laugh at what you'll find here.

Every collection of this great strip is well worth owning, and this one is no exception.  No matter if I have some of these strips memorized, I still laugh at the punch line.  That makes Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons a classic.

Book Review: My Space by Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues #24)

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Lots of laughs at family life

Cons: None

The Bottom Line: 

Family dynamics

Between siblings and parents

Played for lots of laughs

A Luxury When Raising Kids

I first found the comic strip Baby Blues when it was only a couple years old.  At that time, the MacPherson family just had two kids, Zoe and Hammie.  My Space is the twenty-fourth collection of strips, and they now have baby Wren and Zoe and Hammie are in elementary school.  Obviously, time goes slower in their world than ours.  But that's okay because the strips are still so funny.

Each strip is almost always its own gag.  It's very rare to find something that carries over for several strips and even more rare to find anything beyond the most basic connection when they do.  True, there is a series about the kids in a fast food playground.  And we get to meet a new friend of Zoe's who lives with her great-grandmother.  But most of the time, these are one and done strips about the joys and trials (okay, mainly the trials) of raising kids.

What makes these strips so funny is how true to life they are.  I don't have kids of my own, but I was a kid once, so I still get most of the humor here.  Yes, it will appeal to all ages.  For example, in one strip, Zoe tries to tattle on Hammie for hitting her.  When Hammie denies it, Zoe confesses that she was preemptively tattling since she expected to get hit for eating his Halloween candy.  As Hammie and Wanda (the mom) turn against her, she exclaims, "Hey!  I'm the potential victim here!"

There are about seven months worth of strips here.  The weekday strips are in black and white, but the Sunday strips are in full color.  Over the course of the book, we get a summer, Halloween, Christmas, and New Years.  There's a discussion about the differences between boys and girls and several on how parents record the milestones in each child differently.  Hammie finds a new cause to champion - global worming.  Zoe learns that it is possible to be in favor of something and opposed to it at the same time.  And we get lots of sibling rivalry between Zoe and Hammie.

If you are a parent, you'll definitely love the humor in My Space.  Even if you don't have kids, you'll still find this Baby Blues collection to be pretty funny.

Book Review: The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: "The Score is Still Q to 12!"

Cons: "Bats Aren't Bugs!"

The Bottom Line:

Classic comic strip

Lots of imagination

And even more laughs

"What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"  "Whenever You Ask That, My Tail Gets All Bushy."

The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes is the third treasury of this classic comic strip.  It contains all the strips from the original, smaller books The Revenge of the Baby-Sat and Scientific Progress Goes "Boink."  It has all the Sunday cartoons in their original color and includes some poems at the beginning that are also new to this book.

And if you are new to Calvin and Hobbes, you are in for a treat.  Calvin is a hyper-active, overly imaginative six-year-old.  Looking for proof?  His best friend is Hobbes.  Now to everyone else in the world, Hobbes is a stuffed tiger.  But to Calvin, he's a real tiger that walks upright and talks.  Somehow, Hobbes does seem to be the smarter one of the duo.  Other characters populating the strip are Calvin's parents, next door neighbor Susie, school bully Moe, Rosaline the babysitter, and his teacher Miss Wormwood.

The strips in this book represent a year and a half of time (although the characters never age).  Some of the strips are one offs with a punch line at the end of the panels.  Others tell a story with a joke each day leading up to a climax of some sort.

This book seems to be pretty big on Calvin's imagination.  For example, we get lots of stories involving Spaceman Spiff, Calvin's astronaut alter ego and his fight with the aliens who want to make him do his homework of go to bed (ie., Miss Wormwood or his parents).  This book also contains a classic series where Calvin must write a report on bats for school, and he tries to make it up as he goes along.  We get plenty of appearances by Calvin's superhero identity Stupendous Man (Calvin in a cap and mask) as he tries to defeat Rosaline or get out of homework.  Speaking of homework, there's a long sequence when poor Calvin gets in trouble for not doing his homework after his personal gravity reverses so he falls up.  Once that is resolved, Calvin finds himself growing to the size of a galaxy.  And Calvin invents a duplicator that makes enough copies of himself so he only has to go to school one day a week.

This book also features two first that would later become common themes in the strip.  This is the first time we see a meeting of G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS).  Before the tree house became their meeting place, they tried to meet in the garage with disastrous results.  Finally, we get the first few strips involving Calvinball, the only sport where you can't play it the same way twice.

As you might have guessed by now, I love this strip.  It doesn't matter how many times I've read it, I also laugh at some of them.  Calvin can get pretty philosophical at times, especially while careening down a hill on a sled or wagon, and the results of those are usually pretty funny as well.  Yes, there is general humor, but there are also jokes that take stabs at our culture with dead on results.

The strips collected here are some the late 80's and early 90's, so some of the references are a bit dated.  Calvin talks about renting a VCR for example, instead of having a DVD player to watch movies.  Outside of that, most of the jokes are something that will appeal to all ages.  True, Calvin is not a good role model, but his antics are so wacky that I think most kids would recognize that fact.

Even after 20 years and countless reads, I still find something to laugh at every time I read The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes.  If you haven't read anything from classic comic strip, do yourself a favor and pick up a book today.  You'll be laughing before you know it.

Movie Review: Garfield - the Movie

Stars: 2 out of 5
Pros: The opening parts are funny.

Cons: The rest of the movie isn't nearly as funny.

The Bottom Line:

I wanted to like

Garfield deserves much better

Just like a Monday

"Once Again, My Life Has Been Saved by the Miracle of Lasagna."

As a kid, I read the comics religiously.  And Garfield was a favorite back then.  I just loved this sarcastic, self-centered, lazy cat.  So I always intended to see Garfield: The Movie.  Somehow, I never got around to it until I caught it on TV.  Yep, free was the right price.

Garfield (voiced by Bill Murray) has it made.  As Jon's (Breckin Meyer) only pet, the cat can get away with just about anything.  Sleeping late?  Check.  Eating all of Jon's lasagna while leaving Jon his cat food?  Check.  And he never even has to leave their street.

All that changes on one of their frequent trips to veterinarian Liz (Jennifer Love Hewitt).  Jon has been in love with Liz since high school.  He goes fully intending to finally ask Liz out on a date, but instead comes home with a new dog named Odie.  Garfield doesn't like the encroacher on his kingdom.  It's even worse that this is a dumb mutt.  But when Odie goes missing, Garfield decides he must go on a rescue trip.  Can he do it?

Probably because the title character is so iconic, the producers made Garfield a computer animated character while everything else, even the other animals, are live action.  As a result, Garfield is the only thing that looks like his comic strip counterpart.  All the effects worked quite well, however.

The first few minutes of the movie were pretty true to the strip.  I was smiling as characters and things I hadn't thought of in years came back to me.  I mean, the first line of the movie is "I Hate Mondays," a recurring quote from the strip.

But as the story starts to get going, the movie falls apart.  The movie wasn't really that funny.  Maybe Garfield's sarcasm and pessimism work better in small doses.  But I love that stuff, so I have a feeling the jokes were just falling flat.

Furthermore, the story was by the number predictable.  If I were enjoying it, I might not have cared.  But since I was already bored with things, I just sat there waiting for the movie to end.

And I never could get past the Jon/Liz relationship.  In this movie, the attraction is mutual.  In the strip, Liz can't stand Jon.  I was willing to overlook some of the other differences, but that's a pretty major one.

I'm not faulting the cast for any of this.  They all do a fine job.  But you can't make a non-funny script funny no matter how talented you are.  I was actually surprised to see several well known names voicing the animals.  People like Alan Cumming, Brad Garrett, Debra Messing, and Richard Kind voice characters here.  I've heard there was some debate about Bill Murray as Garfield.  Personally, I thought he was perfect in the part.

The few moments that put a smile on my face weren't enough to make the movie worth watching.  Instead of seeing Garfield: The Movie, find one of the comic strip collections.  You'll have a much better time.

Book Review: 2009 Dilbert Day by Day Calendar

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Plenty of work related humor

Cons: Now completely out of date

The Bottom Line:

Relieve your work stress

By laughing at a worse job

Dilbert fits the bill

2009 - A Year Well Spent with Dilbert and the Pointy Haired Boss

I used to read comic strips faithfully.  But as I got busier with other things, it became harder and harder to find the time to do that.  So I have settled for getting my favorite strips in the page a day calendar (or as I like to call it, a daily rip off calendar).  There are three strips I make sure to get every year, and Dilbert is one of them.  The 2009 calendar, sub-titled We Have a Motion to Adjourn, is now old, but provided many great strips as always.

Dilbert has become the comic strip for the working people.  Our main character, Dilbert, is a cubical dweller at an unnamed company where he works as an engineer.  While at work, he has to deal with his crazy co-works like Wally, who just walks around and does no work, and Alice, the super aggressive female.  Worse yet, he is faced with his nameless boss who makes arbitrary decisions and too many unreachable demands.

Things aren't much better at home, where Dilbert lives with his dog, Dogbert.  Dogbert is the smartest character in the strip and is always coming up with some new way to get idiots to give him money.

I've been getting these calendars for years, and I noticed something new with 2009 that I really liked.  All the strips were in color.  The last several years have featured the Sunday strips in color since they originally run in color, but the other six days have been black and white.  I enjoyed seeing all the characters in color for all 365 days.

And that's another thing I appreciate about the calendar - this truly is a page a day calendar.  Many of the other ones I get have one combined day for Saturday and Sunday.  Here, we get seven pages a week.  The ironic thing is, this calendar actually sits in my office where I don't see the weekends while the other strips stay at home where I could flip the pages for every day.

The strips in the calendar originally appeared in 2006, but they aren't really that topical.  The humor still applies.  Over the course of the year, the employees are subject to a company picnic, on a Sunday.  Dogbert buys out the company and fires Dilbert because he is tired of Dilbert's whining about his job.  Dogbert also writes a best-seller that is part fake autobiography and part plagiarized.  The boss gets caught for embellishing his resume.  And Dilbert drinks so much coffee it starts giving him unusual abilities.

I just use the calendar for a daily laugh (and I don't like to cheat ahead), but if you needed to jot a quick note to your self on a page, you could.  While there are no lines, there is plenty of white space to make notes.  If there is a National or International holiday on that date, it shows up on the bottom of the page.

I discovered recently just how used to having this calendar I've gotten.  I look at it several times a day, not necessarily for the joke, but to double check the date before I got to write in on something at work.  It's nice to have for that reason alone.

Obviously, now, you don't want to get the 2009 calendar.  But if you want some work related humor, keep your eyes open for other Dilbert page a day calendars.  You'll laugh your way through another great year.

Book Review: Wrapped-Up FoxTrot by Bill Amend

Stars: 4 out of 5
Pros: Still funny after all these years...

Cons: ...even if many of the jokes are familiar

The Bottom Line:

Familiar punch lines

But still can elicit laughs

As daily strip ends

The End of the Daily Adventures of the Fox Family

After 19 years, cartoonist Bill Amend decided to semi-retire.  While he no longer does the daily version of his comic strip FoxTrot, he still does a Sunday comic.  Wrapped-Up FoxTrot collects the final year and a half of the daily (and Sunday) strips.  All of them have been previously released in the books Houston, You Have a Problem and And When She Opened the Closet, All the Clothes Were Polyester!

Things are still pretty much the same in the Fox family.  Father Roger burns the hamburgers and can't get anyone, including the computer, to play chess against him (he's that bad).  Mom Andy just tries her hardest to hold things together.  Oldest son Peter, a high school junior, thinks he is a jock.  Now, if only a coach would agree.  Freshman daughter Paige is boy crazy.  And the youngest, Jason, is an ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra geek and the genius of his 5th grade class.

This collection consists of some single gag strips and longer week long stories.  Jason makes a friend via the online version of computer game "World of Warquest" only to learn it is his class nemesis Eileen.  Andy becomes hooked on the "Nintendo Dogs" video game and doesn't let Jason have his system back.  Paige becomes a JJV cheerleader.  Jason gets Peter to play King Kong in his home movie version of the story.

The problem with a strip that has been running for 19 years is that a cartoonist can run out of ideas.  That does show here at times.  I mean, how many times can Jason's pet iguana chew up stuff?  But we also get some great jokes about cartoonists filling in for each other.

And I love the cultural references.  The strips originally were published in 2005 and 2006, so some of the jokes references movies that came out during that time, like Jason dressing up for Superman Returns.  There are a couple great strips aimed at 24.  And the size of the Complete Calvin and Hobbes set also provides a good laugh.

The final week of strips gave Bill Amend a chance to thank his fans for their loyalty over the years.  Yes, they were funny.  But it was also a night gesture.

Frankly, even with the familiar elements behind many of the jokes, I still found myself laughing on just about every page.  He still finds just the tweak needed to make the familiar not seem so stale.

And so Wrapped-Up FoxTrot may not be the strip at it's absolutely best.  But it is still plenty funny.  Fans will want to add this book to their collection so they can laugh at it over and over again.

Book Review: The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: "I May be Crazy, but I'm Not as Crazy as You."

Cons: "There's Never Enough Time to Do All the Nothing You Want."

The Bottom Line: "Golly, I'd Hate to Have a Kid Like Me."

"Don't Forget...At Midnight Opposite Day is Over, Okay?"  "Yes!"

I still miss "Calvin and Hobbes."  There, I said it.  Not that I will find one of the strips many fans who would disagree with me.  That's why the books, such as treasury The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes, are so wonderful.  We may not be getting new adventures for our heroes, but we can relive the old ones over and over again.

If you aren't familiar with the strip, it stars six-year-old Calvin.  He is flunking school, but he's smart enough when it comes to something he loves.  And what an imagination he has.  His best friend is Hobbes, his stuffed tiger.  Hobbes is alive when the two of them are alone.

Calvin's world is also inhabited by his exasperated parent; his 1st grade teacher Miss Wormwood; Moe, the class bully; Rosalyn the babysitter; and neighbor and fellow student Susie Derkins.

 For the first few years, the strips were released twice.  The first releases were all in black and white.  Then would come a "treasury" that would include all the content from two books with the Sunday strips in color plus an added story to entice people to buy the treasury.  This is the second treasury and includes all the cartoons from Yukon Ho! and Weirdos from Another Planet.

The book actually starts with the bonus content, an extended story where Calvin turns himself into an elephant using his Transmogrifier.  The purpose of this experiment?  To never forget his vocabulary words.  Unfortunately, it doesn't turn out quite the way he expected it to.  (It never does.)

As is usually the case, this book is a collection of the individual stories and longer stories that take a week or more to tell.  Heck, a few times the stories spill over to the Sunday strips as well, showing an amazing amount of planning on creator Bill Watterson's part.

The book covers a year and a half, roughly half of 1987 and almost all of 1988.  During that time, Calvin's family takes two camping vacations together, one in the rain and the second without his dad's glasses.  Calvin and Susie have to work together for a report on Mercury.  Calvin's cardboard box (the basis for the Transmogrifier) turns into a time machine that sends them back to the time of the dinosaurs.  Speaking of the Transmogrifier, Calvin invents a hand held version that comes in handy when he is carried away by a helium balloon.

There are other staples of the strip here.  We get many strips involving fearless space explorer Spaceman Spiff who always seems to face some danger that relates to Calvin's real world.  Calvin's alter ego Stupendous Man makes a few appearances, mostly tangling with his arch nemesis Mom Lady.  And yes, Rosalyn makes two appearances as well.  With the 1988 elections looming, Calvin attempts to get his dad to bend to his will by sharing recent polling data on "household six-year-olds."  One of my personal favorites is the day that Hobbes lies to Calvin then announces that it was really Opposite Day.

And we can't forget the stories that gave the original books their names.  In the first, Calvin secedes from the family and attempts to move to the Yukon.  In the second, Calvin and Hobbes move to Mars when they get upset with the state of the Earth's environment.

Now if you haven't figured it out yet, a healthy imagination is in order to enjoy the strips.   Even as I am reading some of the more outlandish stuff, the back of my mind is trying to explain it all.  Yet I really don't care.  This strip is so much fun I always get lost in the panels before I know it.

And yes, the strips are funny.  Thanks to heavy sarcasm, there are so many laughs between the covers.  Yes, the strips do get serious at times, and the stories don't always have a laugh every single day.  But even then, the pay off is always worth it.

Even so, this treasury is the weak link in the history of the comic strip.  I've always thought so.  Yes, there are classics here.  Yes, I laugh from cover to cover.  But it seems a bit repetitious and just not as original as the rest.  We're past the first strips when everything was new and not quite to the strips that showed just how creative a guy Bill Watterson was.  As the strip progressed, it would build on the foundation of the early years and truly go some imaginative places.

So do I recommend The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes for fans?  Absolutely!  But if you haven't met these characters, start with another book (like the first one) and come back to this one.

Book Review: Foxtrot - Assembled with Care

Stars: 5 out of 5
Pros: Cartoonist wins Survivor!

Cons: That A++ Jason got on his math final lowers his GPA.

The Bottom Line:

Assembled for laughs

Pop culture and family life

Grins the whole way through

"If You're in a Jam, Call JAM."

Foxtrot: Assembled With Care is the eighth anthology of the great comic strip Fox Trot. But if you are worried that the strip might have been running out of ideas by this point, don't be. It's still as wonderfully funny as ever.

For those not familiar with the strip, it follows the members of the Fox family. Father Roger is a pencil pusher at a local company. (Have we ever learned more than that?) Mother Andy (short of Andrea) is a stay at home mother with a love of cooking tofu, lima beans, and other healthy food for her family to eat.

There are three kids in the family. Peter is a sixteen year old high school junior who wishes he could play on all the sports teams. Paige is a boy obsessed high school freshman. About the only character that is out of the box is ten year old Jason. Yes, the youngest loves to pick on his siblings, but he is freaky smart. He's solving calculus problems for fun after doing his homework. And he's a geek in every sense of the word. He counts the hours until summer vacation is over. He calculates the speed of falling leaves to trick his sister into getting it stuck in her eye. Of course, he often gets caught with his schemes against Paige because he's not smart enough to hide his work.

And we can't leave out Quincy, Jason's pet iguana. Paige is afraid of him, so you can guess how often Jason leaves him in Paige's room.

This particular anthology collects strips from three books and puts them together in one convenient package. The included books are Death by Field Trip, Encyclopedias Brown and White, and His Code Name was the Fox. It was also the first to switch to a slightly new format. Each two page spread features two weeks worth of strips. The six daily strips are in black and white, but the Sunday strips are still in color.

This go around, we get strips from Fall 1999 to Summer 2001. Many of the strips are individual jokes about daily family life. For example, Jason watches the trailer for the upcoming Lord of the Rings movies to see if they are cutting corners. (To his horror, it looks like they weren't using real undead ring wraths to make the film.) Peter attempts to ace his English class by using Cliff's Cliff's Notes. (Hamlet is reduced to "Danish prince dies." Sorry to spoil it for you.) And Paige makes flashcards so she's ready to start high school. (In case you wondered, the correct response to "Hi, Good Looking! What's your name?" is "Tee hee. Paige.")

But there are longer stories that last a week or longer. The family imagines what it would be like if Jason and his equally geeky best friend Marcus got cast as the lead hobbits in Lord of the Rings. Andy's mom visits for Thanksgiving. Jason rewrites "The Grinch" Christmas special with a new character, Mrs. Grinch who gives dictionaries and clothes for the holiday. Food-aholics Roger and Peter go grocery shopping. Jason and Marcus become detectives to find a friend's missing scrap book (and briefly call their agency JAM). Roger's mid life crisis leads to him writing a very bad novel. And the entire family goes on vacation to the "Isles of Fun-Fun Caribeanny Resort." Of course, it doesn't impress Andy that it is 1,000 miles from the ocean.

And there are the hidden jokes. This isn't always the case, but quite often, if you read the names of the magazines or newspapers, you'll see a joke. For example, Peter reads a bungee jumping magazine and it includes an advertisement for jumping from the St. Louis arch. And you wouldn't believe all the good fortune that the cartoonist their paper reports on has.

While many of the strips are timeless humor about family life, the strip has always found humor in the news. You've probably already noticed that I talked about the still in production Lord of the Rings movies. There are also jokes about Y2K, the 2000 election, and the last threatened Hollywood strikes. Personally, I've always loved these jokes, but they can date the strips. On the plus side, we do find out what really happened in Florida during the 2000 election.

Comic strip fans will remember this was the era where Charles Schultz published the final Peanuts strip and died. There are a couple nice tributes to him here as well as another funny switcheroo on April Fool's Day.

One thing I love about the strip is the fact that it continues to find humor in the same things. The characters never aged, and many of the set ups here have been used for years. And yet, the punch line is still fresh and funny.

Filled with sarcasm and exaggeration, Fox Trot makes me laugh every time I read it. Whether you are a long time fan or not, Foxtrot: Assembled With Care will have you laughing before you know it.

Book Review: The Essential Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

Stars: 5 out of 5
Pros: More fun than exploding a potato in the microwave!

Cons: "There is no problem so bad it can't be made worse by guilt."

The Bottom Line:

Comes recommended

By household six-year-olds and

Tigers.  You will laugh

"I Try to Make Everyone's Day a Little More Surreal."

Ask any member of my family what the best comic strip of all time is, and without question you will get the answer Calvin and Hobbes. We can sit around cracking each other up quoting favorite strips we've read countless times before. The Essential Calvin and Hobbes collects the first year and a half or so of strips. While they are laying the foundations of the strip, they are still hilarious.

For those who have missed this gem (and cultural phenomenon), the strip follows the adventures of a six-year-old boy. Although Calvin isn't quite your typical six-year-old. For starters, he does poorly in school while showing incredible intelligence. I'm talking about analyzing the behavior of others in an adult way type of intelligence. Plus he has a very over active imagination. Which brings us to the other title character. Hobbes is Calvin's stuff tiger. To the rest of the world, he is a stuff tiger. But to Calvin he is alive, a real tiger, smart, and Calvin's best friend. Together, they have all kinds of adventures, from getting lost while hiking with the boy scouts, creating crawl spaces between floors of their house, to having serious life discussions while careening down a hill out of control in a wagon. And when it comes to brawls or sports, Hobbes always bests Calvin.

Of course, all this makes things hard on Calvin's longsuffering parents. Calvin's dad is an attorney who loves the outdoors. He's also got a bit of a mean streak and is rather sarcastic. (Actually, all the characters can be sarcastic.) Calvin's long suffering mom stays at home. Frankly, how she keeps Calvin alive is a wonder to me due to everything Calvin tries to do without her knowing.

The other regular characters are all introduced here as well. There's Miss Wormwood, his first grade teacher who has to deal with his antics which disrupt the class. Moe, the class bully, is street smart (which means he knows what street he lives on) but very slow witted. Susie Derkins, the only character to get a full name, is the class genius who lives just down the street from Calvin. The two are fascinated with each other yet Calvin does everything possible to drive Susie away. Finally, there is Rosalyn, Calvin's babysitter and the only character Calvin truly fears.

I always think of the later strips as the best because they offer some biting social satire. But before I picked this book up, I had forgotten just how funny these early strips are. These strips are more down to earth. Well, as down to earth as you can get with Calvin's imagination. He regularly turns life into a space adventure with him as the hero, Spaceman Spiff. The strip always ends with us discovering that the alien giving him a hard time is either his teacher or a parent, usually his mom.

One of my favorites from the book involves Calvin hammering nails into the coffee table. When his mom comes in, she demands, "What are you doing?" Confused, Calvin looks up to ask "Is that a trick question?"

And, of course, there is the classic where Calvin determines that popping popcorn on the stove without a lid is more fun that blowing up a potato in the microwave.

The strip is a mix of individual jokes and longer stories. Some of the stories include a family vacation (but not quite at the remote campground they'd visit later), Calvin taking swimming lessons from Rosalyn, Calvin loosing Hobbes, Susie inviting Hobbes (and Calvin) to her birthday party, and Hobbes giving Calvin a very bad haircut. We even get the first appearance of the Transmogrifier as Calvin "transforms" himself into a tiger (again, that imagination at work).

The strip does occasionally give way to a more serious subject. There are so rather pointed environmental strips, especially one Sunday strip where Calvin and Hobbes find a section of woods they play in cut down to make way for condos. And in one sad storyline, Calvin finds an injured raccoon only to have it die that night. But even when it turns pointed, it never stays that way long.

Another recurring feature that is introduced here is the political polls Calvin does. He never truly gets how his dad got his position and is always trying to influence him by sharing the results of polls with household six-year-olds and tigers. Of course, Dad never bows to pressure since he isn't up for reelection.

The only downside to the book is the age. While the humor is completely timeless, some of the references are dated. For example, Calvin repeatedly wants to rent a VCR and get all the cable channels. Since these strips originally appeared from 1985 to early 1987, that makes sense. Additionally, the drawings are a little cruder then they would become later in the strip's ten year run. Honestly, these are minor issues since I laughed the entire way through my recent reread of this book.

This is the first "treasury." As such, it contains all the strips from the first two, small books, Calvin and Hobbes and Something Under the Bed is Drooling. As a bonus, the Sunday strips are shown in color (they are in black and white in those early books.) Additionally, there's an illustrated poem detailing the monsters that almost get Calvin one night as he waits to go to sleep. If you don't have either of those smaller books, this is the way to go. If you've got the earlier books, you'll have to decide if that is enough enticement to buy this book.

Calvin and Hobbes was a treasure. It combined wildly imaginative strips with laugh out loud humor that can be enjoyed by everyone. And if you want to catch the fun from the beginning, you have to get The Essential Calvin and Hobbes.

Book Review: Big Honkin' Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman

Stars: 5 out of 5
Pros: Humor from exaggeration sure to make everyone laugh

Cons: The strips aren't in proper order

The Bottom Line:

Laughs and characters

That everyone will enjoy

No matter your age

This Collection is Plasmic

The comic strip Zits focuses on the life of your average teenager, in this case fifteen year old Jeremy Duncan. His life is just like your, only funnier. And if you are a fan, you'll love Big Honkin' Zits, the second treasury of strips. This book collects all the cartoons from the smaller books Don't Roll Your Eyes at Me, Young Man and Are We an "Us?"

For those who haven't met Jeremy, he's a freshman at your typical high school. He's been best friends with Hector for years. The two of them dream of finishing restoring a VW van and driving it across country as soon as they turn sixteen. His girlfriend is Sarah. That is, when he can understand girls. Not helping matters is Brittany, the school fashion expert/information pipeline. There's just no keeping anything from her. And, of course, there's RichandAmy, the school's over in love couple.

On the home front, Jeremy must contend with living in the shadow of perfect older brother Chad who is away at college. Dad Walt is an orthodontist, which doesn't always make Jeremy very popular. And Mom Connie is a stay at home mom who is pursuing a career in writing when she can find the time. Unfortunately, they are the height of uncool. Heck, they have a teen.

And, frankly, that's one of the joys of the strip. While the focus is on Jeremy, it doesn't make the parents out to be completely bad. True, there are plenty of strips about how clueless they are, especially when it comes to technology. But they are much smarter than Jeremy gives them credit for. For example, any times he lies, whether it's about attending the forbidden Gingivitis rock concert or sneaking in to see Cheerleader Sleepover, they quickly catch on.

As with many of the most successful comic strips, this one succeeds because it takes daily life and exaggerates it just enough to make it funny. We get to hear Jeremy's thoughts as he tries to talk to Sarah and then see what he actually says. One running joke is Jeremy's huge feet. When the joke calls for it, those shoes can be enormous. Then there's the time that Jeremy's parents announce they are going out dressed like dweebs in broad daylight. Right. Like any person would make that statement in real life. But it is absolutely funny.

Adding to the joy are the sight gags. In one series, Brittany starts picking on Jeremy's physical features. As a result, Jeremy winds up with a huge nose on a shrunken head. A "cutting" remark can make Jeremy split in two. And those withering looks can wilt a salad. At times, we see Walt turn into a dinosaur when he makes a comment about looking for the fan belt in a computer. And Jeremy's head turns into an Etch-A-Sketch right before he forgets something him mom told him to do.

For the most part, this book is a series of strips about daily life. There are running jokes about Jeremy getting up late or being surly. But every so often, they do introduce stories that cover multiple days of strips. For example, there's the previously mentioned Gingivitis concert (and you'll never guess who meets the band). Jeremy makes the mistake of not noticing Sarah's new boots. Plus he must deal with jealousy when a sophomore asks her to a dance. He shaves his head to help a friend's mom who has cancer. He fills in for a vacationing receptionist at his dad's office. He has to deal with the temptation to buy a school assignment on the internet. And he gets an American Express Gold Card.

And in case you are wondering at the title of my review, at one point Jeremy tries to introduce a new catch phrase. But he gets ridiculed for saying that "plasmic" means fine.

As I previously mentioned, this is a "treasury," which means it is super big and includes all the cartoons from two previously released "sketchbooks." Personally, I always wait for the treasuries because the Sunday cartoons are in color. Sometimes you get cool extras, too. In this book, there's a section in the middle that gives us details on the characters. What's interesting is they talk about one character who hadn't been introduced by this point in the strip. He was in the paper, just not the books yet.

This book does have a pretty serious flaw, however. The strips appear to be here in random order. For example, on one page it's summer, on the next they are in school, and then they are back to summer. As a result it's hard to tell exactly how many strips are here, although they do have two Mother's and Father's Day strips, so we've got over a year. It's even more annoying when we get strips with Autumn, Hector's girlfriend, before we actually meet her in the last few pages of the book.

That quibble aside, I laugh every time I go through this book. In fact, my whole family enjoys the humor of Zits. So if you have a teen or have been a teen, you'll enjoy some Big Honkin' Zits.

Book Review: The Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book by Bill Watterson

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Watterson's commentaries and essays at the beginning

Cons: Fans do already have these strips

The Bottom Line:

Comic strip best of

But added commentaries

Make it worth the price

Yes, Even Die-Hard Fans Need to Buy This Book

As a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, I put off getting the 10th Anniversary book because I thought it was merely a best of collection I didn't need since I had all the others. Boy was I wrong! This book is a wonderful insight into the mind behind my favorite strip of all time.

Bill Watterson spends the first part of the book talking about everything from character names and personalities to his fights to keep his characters from being over commercialized. While I wish there were more products available, I do respect him for sticking to his principles on this. He also talks about the format of the Sunday strips.

The rest of the book is a collection of strips, starting with the very first. What is interesting here is Mr. Watterson's commentary. Whether it's the idea behind or an amusing story that happened because of a strip, it's all very entertaining. It also brings out some of the themes talked about it the strip. He also discusses the ideas behind such staples as the wagon, Calvin's box, and Spaceman Spiff.

I truly miss this wonderful strip because of its creativity and insights into our American culture. The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book shows the behinds the scene story in an entertaining and informative way.

Book Review: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: This is a seriously funny comic strip.

Cons: Size and price

The Bottom Line: 

Calvin, Hobbes, and laughs

Collected in this one set

Large and expensive

"I Like Morals That Don't Apply to the Rest of Life."

Anyone who read comics strips in the 80's and 90's has one strip that always brings a smile to their face - Calvin and Hobbes. Now, the entire too short run of this classic is included in this classy set called, you guess it, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

For those not familiar, Calvin is a six year old boy growing up in a house with his parents. His best friend is his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, who happens to be real, but only to Calvin. Together, the two get into all kinds of scraps, mainly because Calvin is the poster child for obnoxious kids. The fact that his parents haven't strangled him is a major miracle.

For the reader, this is a wonderful treat, because it means we get to watch Calvin in one adventure after another refusing to learn anything. And his imagination makes those adventures far out. He might be Spaceman Spiff, battling the evil Zorg who want to torture him by sending him to school. He might create a duplicator and create duplicates of himself to ease his homework load. He might don his Stupendous Man costume to fight his nemesis Babysitter Fiend. Or he might use his time machine to travel forward in time to get his completed homework from his future self. And don't forget a nice round of Calvinball. Or a meeting of the top secret club GROSS (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS).

This strip was full of creativity and fun. Part of its charm was its ability to give a nostalgic look back at childhood through realist's glasses.

As the series progressed, its creator began to include some social satire in his strips. This became seriously hysterical. I just loved Calvin's gum magazine "Chewing."

This set is designed for collectors. It includes everything done for the strip over the years in three hardbound books collected in a slip case. This includes an all new introduction as well as covers and extra illustrations done for the collections over the years. The biggest draw back is the size. These are heavy books, and it's really hard to curl up with them and read for a few hours.

This set is for the serious Calvin and Hobbes fan. If you aren't already in love with these characters, find a collection today so you can meet them. Either way, you'll want the paperback collections for your everyday Calvin and Hobbes reading.

And maybe, someday, we can convince Bill Watterson to come out of retirement and give us further adventures of this wonderful duo.  Until then, we can enjoy the strips that are included in The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

Index: Comic Strip Collections and Comic Books

I've read a couple of comic books (based on TV shows I've loved) and many collections of comic strips.  Here are the reviews I've written based on them.

Baby Blues: My Space
Darkwing Duck: The Duck Knight Returns
Darkwing Duck: Crisis on Infinite Darkwings
Darkwing Duck: F.O.W.L. Disposition
Darkwing Duck: Campaign Carnage
Darkwing Duck/DuckTales: Dangerous Currency
FoxTrot: Assembled with Care
FoxTrot Sundaes
FoxTrot: Wrapped Up
Gibbs, Stuart - Bruce Wayne: Not Super
Grillo-Marxuach, Javier - Middleman: Collected Series Indispensability
Grillo-Marxuach, Javier - Middleman: Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse
Santat, Dan - Sidekicks
Watterson, Bill - Essential Calvin & Hobbes
Watterson, Bill - Authoritative Calvin & Hobbes
Watterson, Bill - Indispensable Calvin & Hobbes
Watterson, Bill - Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons
Watterson, Bill - The Days are Just Packed
Watterson, Bill - Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat
Watterson, Bill - There's Treasure Everywhere
Watterson, Bill - It's a Magical World
Watterson, Bill - Calvin & Hobbes 10th Anniversary
Watterson, Bill - Calvin & Hobbes, The Complete
Big Honkin' Zits