The snowbeings are a riot.

The Ten I love the best are:

1) The strip that ends with Calvin saying "oh, you know how people are. They never recognize greatness until some authority confirms it."

"Oh, you know how people are." has become a all-purpose catch-phrase for me whenever someone tells me a story about how somebody did something typical but disapointing.

2) The strip that ends with Calvin saying "I'm always right and everybody else is always wrong! What's to argue about??"

For obvious reasons.

3) The very first (or was it second?) strip, where Calvin "catches" Hobbes, and then asks his father "what do you do with a tiger when you catch it?" Dad answers "you stuff it!" and the final pannel shows Calvin & Hobbes in the kitchen, with cans of tuna all over the place and Hobbes finished a tuna sandwitch. Calvin offers him more and Hobbes says "oh, no thanks. I couldn't eat another bite."

4) The strip where mom serves up one of her concoctions and, as usual, Calvin won't eat it. His father whispers to him "it's a plate of toxic waste and it'll turn you into a mutant if you eat it." Calvin gobbles it down and mutters happily "I can feel it working already." while mom gives dad a disaprooving glare and tells him "I wish you wouldn't do stuff like that."

5) Hobbes steers and honks the horn!

6) Hobbes: "What fun is it being 'cool' if you can't wear a sombrero?"

7) Calvin & Hobbes are going to sled off the roof of the house, Hobbes asks Calvin if he asked his mom for permission and Calvin says "you don't have to ask questions you already know the answer to."

A good life-lesson.

8) The strip where Calvin hits the little girl - och, who's name slips my mind at the moment - in the back of the head with a snowball and she disclaims "oh, my eyeball, my eyeball" and claims that her eyeball popped out when he hit her, and enlists Calvin to help her look, then dumps him in a snowdrift.

for "oh, my eyeball! my eyeball!"

9) Calvin losing a game of monopoly to Hobbes and running amok, which is the imagery I'm invoking when I go on a "Calvin-like rant".

10) They decide to time travel, and figure out that they can get into the future by going very fast based on the theory of relitivity. They sled really fast down the hill. Hobbes looks at his watch: 30 seconds have passed! They're in the future! Calvin looks around in contempt; "nothing's changed. I'm disapointed."

I remember this one a lot now when reading some of the criticisms of progress in Afghanistan or Iraq. Not all criticisms, but quite a lot of them ("what, there's no instant, just-ad-water democracy and life hasn't become perfect? Afghanistan isn't throughly paved with interstate highways yet?")

11) Hobbes: "I don't know which is worse. . .that everyone has his price, or that the price is always so low."

12) Calvin sees something hidden under the covers of his bed. It must be a monster. He thumps it with a baseball bat. Hobbes emerges. Calvin appologizes and Hobbes replies "oh, no problem good buddy. Let me see that bat."

13) Calvin: "There's nothing worse than an inscrutable omen". Boy, is THAT true!

14) Calvin: "Know what I pray for? The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can't, and the incapacity to tell the difference." - Should be a personal motto. Perhaps it's the hidden motto of all bloggers.

Of course, that's more than ten, but Calvin wouldn't care so neither do I.

One strip I truly, truly miss.

For those with even a little bit of art history (Watterson clearly inclusive in this group), the It's Just Snow strip is supremely, deeply funny. One of my all-time favorites.

Bill Watterson lives about an hour or so away from me, in a little township just northeast of the Cleveland area.

I always knew there was something to Hobbes' identification of their home state as near the "E" is "States." What's knock-down incredible is that the forests behind Calvin's house are Northeast Ohio deciduous on the Lake Erie Plain, the same as around my house. Hell, I might have known the proverbial kid. ;-)

Losing Bloom County was bad enough; when Calvin ended, I stopped reading the funnies. I've got the books, though, so I've been able to cope.

i have every calvin and hobbes book printed. have you seen *this site*?

Road trip to Watterson's house! I got shotgun!

I miss the strip, too, but I'm glad he ended it before it got stale. Sort of like I'm glad Breathed didn't try to string Bloom County out like, oh, say Doonsbury has been.

Nothing worse than beloved strips that lose it and linger on for decades so all you can do is smell the rotting corpse.

Right now I'm just trying to get the screen decompressed.

Road trip to Watterson's house! I got shotgun!

Heh, heh. If only Bill Watterson didn't completely make himself out to be Howard Hughes with an ink pen. ;-)

I miss the strip, too, but I'm glad he ended it before it got stale.

That is true; both his stories and his wrist were becoming a little loose by 1987. Thankfully, Breathed redeemed himself after Outland with his string of books.

Nothing worse than beloved strips that lose it and linger on

Poor old Charles Schultz!

I want to know how to get Bill Watterson's email! I want to ask him some questions! Why is he so private? !!!!

The best comic strip of my generation.
If you can handle political satire, may I recomend the Boondocks :)

Best Calvin and Hobbes Strip is when he and hobbes have the wee-jee board and ask the board if he will grow up to be President. it spells out 'G.O.D. F.O.R.B.I.D'(I wonder if GW ever consorted a wee-jee board :P)