Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for January 08, 2019

Ahhh, a cat supremacist.

A best selling bed time story.

At least it’s not Hamster Huey again, right Dad?

When you live in a green jungle, orange, black, and white are the wrong colours for camouflage. And yet those huge beasts are invisible (and totally silent) until the last minute. Which is usually too late for you. I think it’s because, like all other cats, they have a built-in invisibility cloak.

An appropriate ode for the morning after the Clemson Tigers won the national championship.

Camouflage can also be about just breaking up the outline to confuse an onlooker. Take zebras. One zebra is pretty much a sitting duck. But in a herd of stampeding zebras, the black and white patches jumping back and forth as the zebras cross back and forth might cause a lion to have to think about where to strike, and by that time, the zebra is out of reach.

Also check out the camouflage that warships used in the early 20th century. Same theory. I’m not sure how well it worked. It didn’t do HMS Hood any good. But it was used until anti-shipping missiles made the whole idea obsolete.

A dead giveaway to the fact that this strip is really old: it rhymes.

Calvin is his own toughest critic? Calvin?

I don’t know if I would have done this as a father, but I’d like to think that if I had a kid who had written something like this, I would really enjoy the experience of reading it aloud to him. You have to have fun with your kids. It’s a reward both of you get for the times you have to be a father.

Aw, I was expecting “Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie”!

Self-praise stinks, we say!!

It’s tedious, but we have to keep Hobbes happy!

Well, in as much as Calvin is Hobbes, I am thinking it is a pretty impressive poetic effort. Well done Hobbes.

Wait, he knew phrases like “haute couture”?!

Funny that Calvin knows the term “haute couture”, and can spell it correctly (if Dad’s words are reading it as it is spelled)… :-P

I don’t care what they say, this kid has a future. American Greetings, Hallmark or maybe a band!

So what’s the situation here? When Calvin and Hobbes are alone, Hobbes is alive and he wrote the poem. When Calvin’s dad is present, Hobbes is a stuffed tiger and Calvin wrote the poem?

Night Night Hobbes

Is that your son’s handwriting? ☺

Can a tiger write doggerel?

“Red is gray, and yellow, white, but we decide which is right…and which is an illusion??”

One more thing Dad, use your best David Attenborough voice.

Curtis as much effort of work as you wrote, you could apply that effort for school.

After last night, this could be an ode to Clemson!

Should be titled “An Ode to Hobbs”.

Even when Calvin is not trying to get into the tree house, Hobbes must be worshiped.

TIGER, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears, And water’d heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? (William Blake)

Wrote a long poem about tigers, was supposed to be the rest of this but it didn’t fit at all.