Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for June 13, 2014

Does Hobbes look gleeful in the second panel?

That needs a saviour!!

Better find a good place to hide, Calvin! ;)

Well, now Calvin has a nice empty garage for a club house.

You are toast, bubbeke!

@Reality, really? – You’re over thinking it. If it was a manual transmission it would be in neutral anyway and just held on the parking brake. You wouldn’t need the keys in the ignition.

Plus he has the strength of a 6 yo and a tiger to get it moving :)

call your mom..okay

my favorite calvin face in panel 4

Yep, that expression in panel 4 is sheer perfection.

Reality? In a comic strip? With a talking toy tiger????

The car must be a manual (standard) transmission car. You don’t need keys to shift a manual out of gear and take off the parking brake.

Looks like it’s GRUNTCH time for Calvin. One of those times when Hobbes feels fortunate that he is able to keep a low profile when adults are around.

These are one of my favourite Calvin in Hobbes story line; that and the one where he had his clone;

Reminded me of the time when I broke my parents bed by jumping on it…from the top Drawer.

@john james: ditto.

In the first 3 panels, Calvin and Hobbes have the same body language. If I didn’t know better, I would think that Calvin is somehow in control of Hobbes. If I didn’t know better.

Back when I was a teenager I had an episode like this. It was possible to jiggle the ignition switch without the key (in our 1975 or so car) enough to get the shift out of park (though not actually all the way into neutral, but the effect was the same), and roll the car down the driveway and into a tree.

So why do all the whining “reality based” comic critics keep saying this is not possible? Maybe not with your brand new 2014 car, but quite possible with the car Calvin’s family had 20 years ago.

Just wait until your 16 and crashing it yourself; that’ll be fun.

I had a similar experience to this as a four year old. I climbed into my grandparents’ Volkswagen Beetle when they weren’t watching and started playing “driver”. I popped the stick into neutral as I was pretending to change gears (easy to do with a manual transmission, even without pressing the clutch), and the car started rolling. Terrified, I jumped out.

The car rolled down our driveway and into a neighbor’s yard, passed her window where she was inside folding clothes, and hit a retaining wall behind her house with a loud “boom”. It must have been an interesting sight for the neighbor to see a car roll past her window. The car was surprisingly undamaged, buy my grandparents had to give the neighbor money to fix her wall.

I still wonder how a little kid would know, and know how, to get the car into neutral. Or why his parents left it in neutral….

@ConstantinepaleologosThe look in the fourth panel is one of relief because nobody got hurt.

“Ravine across the street”? Well, I guess we know Calvin does not live on a normal city street with homes on both sides.Or, am I missing something here?

I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks Calvin face is a picture in the last panel.

xxx

I love both their expressions in panel four. Hobbes is just adorable and poor Calvin! He could just play innocent and probably get away with it. My mom always had an automatic, but one time she didn’t put it in park and when she looked out the window the car had rolled down the driveway into the street. We kids had nothing to do with it.

Your history Calvin 0____0

Calvin is underwhelmed with joy in panel 4.

Better go back to playing in the house or backyard. What car….??

No worries Calvin! Social Progressive parents don’t kill their children themselves, their neglect will do it for them!

@ Cameron HallBill Watterson managed to survive “socially progressive” parents and have a quite successful life.

It’s funny how they act identically until the last panel.

My brother did something similar in Gramma’s car when he was about that age. except he was inside it the whole time and it landed in the (fortunately) shallow creek at the end of the drive way. Everyone started keeping the cars locked up after that.

Yup—Calvin’s face in the last panel is great.