CALVIN AND HOBBS

Hobbes
--> According to Calvin, "Hobbes is always a little loopy when he comes out of the dryer."

It is official. Calvin is to much like the cartoon carachter.He still sleeps with his Hobbs stuffed animal that he's had since he was a baby. I have only let the kid read the books a couple of times because I thought that it would be good humor for him. But as he read them I started to experiencing a Dennis The Menic attitued. Strangly enough, even before Calvin was able to read the comics he fit the discription of this character to much, its scares me. If anyone knows Calvin, they know that his vocabulary is huge, he's a very popular kid everywhere he goes, he loves inventing things, and he's always in his room playing imaginary games. My mom gave him the nickname proffesor because he always has a huge definition as to why things are the way they are. He also trys to find as many ways that he can to get out of doing his schoolwork. I personally believe that Calvin is alot like his Dad who read Calvin and Hobbs as a child so much that he named Calvin after the cartoon. I'm sure that the comics were benificial in someway considering that I love Gabes sarcastic personallity. Gabe and I met in English class where I coppied off of him to pass the class and thankfuly passed highschool. Gabe is a scientist in my book. And he is very smart. Sometimes to smart. But I am thankful to God that I have a bunch of smarty pats living with me, otherwise I would be board.

hear is a snippet from Calvin and Hobbs.

Despite his low grades, Calvin has a wide vocabulary range (with the irony making it funnier) that rivals that of an adult as well as an emerging philosophical mind, as seen in this anecdote:

Calvin: "Dad, are you vicariously living through me in the hope that my accomplishments will validate your mediocre life and in some way compensate for all of the opportunities you botched?"

Calvin's father: "If I were, you can bet I'd be re-evaluating my strategy."

Calvin (later, to his mother): "Mom, Dad keeps insulting me."

He has also said, "You know how Einstein got bad grades as a kid? Well, mine are even worse!" In school, he typically does almost no work; for a project on bats, he writes a brief poem that describes bats as "unspeakable giant bugs", and for his "scientific illustration", he "traced the Batman logo and added fangs". Or on another occasion when he has to write a report on the mythology of Mercury (with Susie), he writes a short statement (5 minutes before it's due) about how Mercury was the god of flowers and gardens and is the reason for being the registered trademark of FTD Florists, and concludes with 'Why they named a planet after this guy, I can't imagine' (thus infuriating Susie and failing him). He appears to have some disdain for learning, as he once brags that he was successfully able to resist being taught anything. However, when he is once reluctant to go to the library to learn about snakes, he then realizes that learning is fun if it is not enforced. His difficulties in school may thus stem from the style of teaching, which may be why he imagines it as a prison or similar facility, and fantasizes about destroying it or fighting his teacher, Miss Wormwood. Miss Wormwood also notes that if he put half as much energy into his work as he did into his protests, he might do well. He also tries many inventive ways to avoid his schoolwork. For example, in one test he answers "I cannot answer this question for it is against my religious principles", or answering "I don't know" for every question in his homework once. He never tries to get any real help and almost always turns to Hobbes. Despite his need for help, Hobbes does not really help at all (sometimes he makes Calvin get an even lower grade). To him, Hobbes seems very intelligent, since Calvin does not realize his (Hobbes) errors. For example, on many occasions he does Calvin's simple math problems in a ridiculously advanced way (like thinking the "numerator" is Latin for "number eighter", when he only has to add 3 to 8) thus always resulting in the wrong answer, or wrote Atlanta, Georgia for the answer of one math problem.

 

Calvin
Calvin in a yelling mood.

He commonly wears his distinctive red-and-black striped shirt, black jeans, and magenta sneakers. Watterson has described Calvin thus:

• "Calvin is pretty easy to do because he is outgoing and rambunctious and there's not much of a filter between his brain and his mouth."[1]
• "I guess he's a little too intelligent for his age. The thing that I really enjoy about him is that he has no sense of restraint, he doesn't have the experience yet to know the things that you shouldn't do."
• "The socialization that we all go through to become adults teaches you not to say certain things because you later suffer the consequences. Calvin doesn't know that rule of thumb yet."

The subject of Calvin's grades was addressed in another strip, where Calvin's father points out that he loves to learn, and "has read just about every dinosaur book ever written". He then asks, "So why aren't you doing better in school?" to which Calvin replies, "We don't read about dinosaurs".

Calvin certainly doesn't hesitate to speak his mind. In one of his various silly money-making schemes, Calvin is shown standing behind a box with “SCIENTIFIC NAMES: $1.00” written on it:

Hobbes: "Scientific names?"

Calvin: "Sure. Scientists think up all these cool, wacky theories, but then give them dull, unimaginative names. For instance, scientists think space is full of mysterious, invisible mass, so, what do they call it??? Dark matter! DUUHHHHHH!!! I tell you, there’s a fortune to be made here!"

Hobbes: "I like to say ‘Quark!’ Quark, quark, quark, quark!"

Calvin: "Instead of making a fool of yourself, how about going and finding me some scientists?"

 Inventions

Calvin occasionally makes machines (usually made out of a box), which normally lead to disaster. Here is a list of all of his inventions:

• Transmogrifier: A box with the open part down. It has a dial on the side with various creatures labeled. It morphs the subject(s) under the box into whatever the dial is set to, usually to some sort of animal. (For example, Calvin morphs into an elephant in order to memorize his homework.) If the subject does not want to morph into an animal or object that is on the dial, he can simply write the name of a new object on the box.
• Portable Transmogrifier, a.k.a. Transmogrifier Gun: A squirt gun that fires a burst of light. It transforms the target into whatever the shooter is thinking of, usually an animal of some sort. However, it often has unintended consequences; when Hobbes turns Calvin into a pterodactyl, he comes out far smaller than he thought, and is disappointed enough to shoot Hobbes with the gun, starting a shooting war that uses up the ammunition before Calvin can revert to a human (but he somehow turns back on his own; Calvin presumes the effects simply "wore off."). These transformations are part of Calvin's own imagination. On another occasion, while free-falling after his balloon popped high up in the atmosphere, Calvin shoots himself with the gun with the idea of making himself "safe", and transforms into a safe. Then he transforms into a light particle.
• Duplicator: A box that is sideways with a button on it. It can clone whoever is inside it; Calvin cloned himself in an attempt to get his chores done. However, the clone rebelled, running off to play before creating four additional clones, all of whom got Calvin into trouble and left him to take the blame. Calvin eventually turned the clones into worms while they were hiding under the Duplicator, which he turned into a Transmogrifier by writing on it with a marker. (It was later turned into a duplicator again, but he added an "ethicator" to make the clone all good or all bad. It still eventually backfired).
• Upgraded Duplicator, with Ethicator: This is the original duplicator, but with an "ethicator" added (really just an arrow that points to either "Good" or "Bad"). Calvin uses this to create a "good" version of himself to perform various chores and go to school; it initially seems as though Calvin has undergone a significant personality change before Calvin reveals what is going on. The "good" version has hair that is combed flat, is extremely helpful and responsible, is quite even-tempered, and, unfortunately for Calvin, has a heavy crush on Susie Derkins. However, when Calvin discovers that the "good" Calvin loves Susie, and when the duplicate learns of Calvin's reputation (through Susie), he becomes angry, and when he threatens to rip Calvin limb from limb, he is destroyed for having an evil thought (which Calvin describes as a "built-in moral compromise spectral release phantasmatron"). Because of this, Hobbes points out how even his good side is "prone to badness".
• Time Machine: A box with the open side facing up. Calvin initially planned to take himself and Hobbes to the future in order to take back a future invention to be rich, but they were facing the wrong way and ended up in the past. On another trip, they took photographic proof, but his dad thought they were toy dinosaurs. The dinosaurs that Calvin and Hobbes saw were all from the Late Jurassic period (Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and Allosaurus). Calvin also attempted a smaller-scale time travel; he went from 6:30 to 8:30 one night to pick up an assignment, but learned from the version of himself at 8:30 that he had never done the work. While the 6:30 and 8:30 Calvins fruitlessly attempted to get the 7:30 Calvin, whom both of them blamed, to do the work, the 6:30 and 8:30 Hobbeses finished the work, writing an essay about Calvin fighting with the other 2 Calvins while time traveling.
• Box of Secrecy: In one strip, Susie had to stay at Calvin's house for a few hours. Horrified by this idea, Calvin called an emergency meeting of G.R.O.S.S. to deal with the situation, but there wasn't time to get to the regular HQ (Calvin's treehouse). As a result, he and Hobbes crawled underneath the cardboard box to hold an emergency meeting. The name "box of secrecy" is a take on the "cone of silence" from the television series Get Smart.
• Cerebral Enhance-o-Tron: A colander that is worn on one's head, attached by three strings (input, output, and ground) to a cardboard box. Calvin uses this to make himself super-intelligent so that he can think of a topic for a "persuasive argument"-style paper he has to do for homework. As a side-effect of its use, his head becomes much larger (apparently "[his] brain swelled"). Both the swelling and the super-intelligence are temporary.
• Grades

  Calvin also explains his poor grades to Susie Derkins, when Miss Wormwood gives everyone their test back:

  Calvin: What grade did you get ?

  Susie: I got an A.

  Calvin: Really? Boy, I'd hate to be you. I got a C.

  Susie: Why on Earth would you rather get a C than an A?

  Calvin: I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone's expectations.

  It should also be noted that he received an 'A' on one of his tests, as the panels panned to a grand-scale image of a parade thrown in Calvin's honor. Much to his dismay, Miss Wormwood immediately returned to the lesson plan, completely disregarding the anomaly. Also, Calvin got an A+ on the assignment 6:30 Hobbes and 8:30 Hobbes completed for him.

  
  

  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia