Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for June 12, 2014

A mother’s instincts. Or in this case, past experience.

Well, Calvin’s Mom, you’re right, he certainly Is in trouble…Big Time trouble! ;)

Someone’s getting fed to the tiger.

Oh you are so right, Mom!

My husband loves this arc. He did a similar thing when he was about Calvin’s age, even worse really; his little brother was in the car with him. John released the handbrake and the car rolled down the driveway. He ran into the house and tried hiding behind the door leaving little brother screaming in the car. Fortunately neither of them were injured just terrified. Their father gave him a hiding with a strap and their mother nearly had a heart attack. John is 85 now but remembers the situation very, very clearly.

oh… turn around mom

Panel 5: policeman at front door with Calvun in tow.

Yet another story with a dramatic car chase scene.

Okay, so……. On Monday and Tuesday of this week, Calvin needed help from the “real” Hobbes in order to be able to push the car out of the garage. On Wednesday, the “real” Hobbes grabbed Calvin and prevented him from running into the street after the rolling car. And today, the “real” Hobbes is seen running after the car, together with Calvin, right behind Mom’s back. This raises the question: Does Hobbes actually become alive when nobody but Calvin is watching, or is all of this only in Calvin’s imagination? The answer is: Neither interpretation is correct, and both interpretations are correct.Bill Watterson intentionally leaves Hobbes’s real-vs.-imaginary reality as a mystery for the reader to try to sort out, which can never fully be explained.Here are a couple of excerpts from a 1989 interview with Bill Watterson. The interview was conducted just 2 months before Bill drew this week’s strips.RICHARD WEST: … Hobbes is implicitly, explicitly just a product of Calvin’s imagination.BILL WATTERSON: But the strip doesn’t assert that. That’s the assumption that adults make because nobody else sees him, sees Hobbes, in the way that Calvin does. Some reporter was writing a story on imaginary friends and they asked me for a comment, and I didn’t do it because I really have absolutely no knowledge about imaginary friends. It would seem to me, though, that when you make up a friend for yourself, you would have somebody to agree with you, not to argue with you. So Hobbes is more real than I suspect any kid would dream up....RICHARD WEST: … Hobbes tied Calvin up to a chair. If you accept the rest of the fantasy that you’ve created — that Hobbes is imaginary — that’s an impossibility.BILL WATTERSON: Yeah, and Calvin’s dad finds him tied up and the question remains, really, how did he get that way? His dad assumes that Calvin tied himself up somehow, so well that he couldn’t get out. Calvin explains that Hobbes did this to him and he tries to place the blame on Hobbes entirely, and it’s never resolved in the strip. Again I don’t think that’s just a cheap way out of the story. I like the tension that that creates, where you’ve got two versions of reality that do not mix. Something odd has happened and neither makes complete sense, so you’re left to make out of it what you want.Click here: Calvin and Hobbes (December 5, 1987)

Well, this is my first sighting of the living Hobbes and an adult in the same frame !!

spaced: of course SHE doesn’t see him!

That calmness on Mom’s face on 2nd and 3rd panels is irritating me.

Gut feeling = pattern recognition

Mom is pretty calm, at least for now.

Hi tsandl. When people ask me whether I am imaginary, I think to myself, “Get real!”

Mom’s radar kicks in.

It’s very simple, Hobbes is like a “Weeping Angel” from several Dr Who episodes. He is completely “real” (in the comic strip world) – except when anyone (in the comic strip world) except Calvin is observing him. (Like in the Dr Who episodes, readers/viewers don’t count as observers as they do not inhabit the story world.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeping_Angel

Like a Weeping Angel, when someone except Calvin observes Hobbes, he goes into “quantum lock”, and takes on the form of a stuffed tiger. When the observer blinks, Hobbes becomes a real tiger again for the duration of the blink.

Calvin is very exceptional in that he is not subject to quantum lock himself (unless Spaceman Spiff is his real form), and yet does not trigger quantum lock for Hobbes.

I say, Holmes — how DO you do it?

Do Calvin’s Mom & Dad know what a parking brake is for? Oh yeah right, I forgot. This is a comic strip. :)

I thought that all mothers had eyes in the back of their heads

Yeah, Mom, I’d say that’s a pretty safe bet!

A mother’s intuition!xxx

Why does it look like the car was going uphill?

“Beep-beep; beep-beep; his car went beep-beep-beep…Hey buddy, how do you get this car ….out…of….second….GEEEEAAAAR?”

Yup true.

I love how much emotion and vitality Mr. Watterson can put into those two tiny figures in panel three!

her mom senses are tingling

Yes Taco-guy, you missed something. You made your comment because Space Mans comment was right after Hobbes strip. BUT, Space Man was referring to TODAYS strip. Look at panel three.

Mom’s Spidersense is tingling, or would that be Calvinsense?

And here I thought Calvin and Hobbes was just an enjoyable comic strip…

I’d like to see the reaction of someone who only started reading this arc here.

Hope it doesn’t go into the ravine across the street.

@tsandl: Have you ever seen your imaginary girlfriend when she wasn’t made up?

Are Calvin’s parents’ names ever revealed?