5
Hobbes Is Literally a Schrödinger’s Cat
Hobbes’ whole deal is that he’s Calvin’s accomplice, adversary and passenger when they’re alone, but he’s an inanimate stuffed tiger the second Suzie, Mom or Dad enter the scene. The human brain, desperate for resolution, will usually leap to one of two conclusions: either he transmogrifies between stuffed and real tiger at will, or he’s simply Calvin’s imaginary friend.
So is the magic on the page the magic that’s happening in Calvin’s world, or just in Calvin’s brain? Watterson has refused to clarify Hobbes’ true nature. He was famously opposed to merchandising his IP — more on that later — and one of his biggest reasons was that selling a plush Hobbes would cement him as a stuffed tiger. It would answer all those questions that hold together the zany, fantastical world he so meticulously built.
Personally, I think that’s short-sighted. A real marketing pro would see the obvious answer: sell a plush toy bundled with a live tiger.
4
The Strip Owes Its Existence to an 8-Year-Old Nepo Baby (And the Rage That Can Only Be Fostered in the Heart of a Corporate Drone)
Watterson’s first job out of college was as a newspaper political cartoonist. Unfortunately, he sucked at it, and was fired within a few months. He then landed a job in advertising: “I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the 4-and-a-half million minutes I worked there.” But he spent every spare minute drawing and pitching comic strips, enduring five years of rejection.
Until the right little kid saw his work. A Universal Press Syndicate editor was reviewing Watterson’s latest pitch, waffling over whether it was the right tone: “I thought it was perhaps too ‘adult,’ too literate. When my then-8-year-old son remarked, ‘This is the Doonesbury for kids!’ I suspected we had something unusual on our hands.”
3
Calvin and Hobbes Is Technically a Spin-Off
Among those countless ideas Watterson pitched to the syndicates was a comic called The Doghouse. As United Feature Syndicate was reviewing his pitch, they were delighted by a random side character: the protagonist’s little brother, a goofy li’l scamp with a stuffed tiger. That kid, they said, was the best character in the bunch, and that Watterson should make a series about him.