Week Three: The Comic Strip

Comic strips are one of my favorite mediums for comics, and the medium that very first got me into reading and drawing comics in the first place. I feel that I owe much of the joy in my life to my early days of reading the comic strips in the newspaper every day. This led me to reading certain comic books, western and otherwise, which eventually led me to the path that I continue to try and follow today of making comics.

Growing up, I'll admit it, I was a huge Garfield fan. I also loved other ones that appeared in my newspaper every day, like Get Fuzzy, Curtis, Pearls Before Swine, Shoe, and of course, Calvin and Hobbes. As I got older, I fell more into reading all kinds of different manga-- though as I entered college I became re-introduced to all kinds of amazing old comic strips and where they originated from. I was exposed to the long, beautiful, artful pages of Little Nemo, as well as the poetic comedy that was Krazy Kat. I had no idea about any of these comics when I was younger, but if I had, I was sure that I would have loved them. I was very much drawn back in to the comic form that I originally had fallen in love with in the first place, and I am still having a blast exploring all of the undiscovered goldmines of comic strips that I simply haven't been exposed to yet.

This week I chose to dive back into Calvin and Hobbes. Reading it as an adult, I find, is an entirely different experience than as a kid. When I was younger I focused on all the quick gags and the silly situations that Calvin and his tiger got themselves into. Now that I am older, the short, lucid moments in the comic are not lost on me. Truly one of the greatest strips in history.
Calvin and Hobbes is a concept that never got stale, or tired. Calvin always picked on the same girl, had the same childish stubbornness all kids his age have, had the same exasperated parents, the same lackadaisical tiger friend. I think what this strip has that others don't is an honest exploration of all the different facets of kidhood (which are countless) tied into the lucid thoughts a kid might have that marks the passage of time and his transition into an older, more thoughtful person. Every adult reading this comic had gone through this, and Watterson's beautiful ability to tell a concise story (or rather, a small, concise piece of a story) complimented the ideals he wanted to portray with grace. I know I just used a ton of flowery language, but I feel like out of the strips that deserve the attention, Calvin and Hobbes is unanimously one.

I personally want to delve back into comic strips a bit more-- concise storytelling is one of the best exercises you can do for yourself in comics.