Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for February 25, 2020

Now we have to explain exposed film to the kids.

It’s all fun and games until you destroy Dad’s camera.

Imagine Calvin driving an actual car…

The back of the camera opened

… and the rest of the camera is in a dozen pieces.

It’ll be obsolete in just a couple of years.

Could be worse. They could have run into Susie.

Note to the young: Cameras used to physically have film that made the picture when exposed to the tiny amount of light let in by the shutter opening and closing (and that made a sound that is mimicked by you phone’s camera – that click sound). Now, if the back of the camera opened and let in ALL the light, that film would be ruined (at least for that picture, and likely the ones before and after it on the roll).

And that, my friends, is the joke. :)

ah, film!

I suppose the only good thing about film was getting physical pictures for your albums. Otherwise, I don’t miss film at all!

today, that stunt would have been done on a cell phone and shared all over social media…

He needs a cell phone.

Re-reading comic strips that were first published thirty years ago reminds me of when I was a kid in the 1970s and learned that many of my favourite cartoons – featuring characters such as Tom & Jerry, Donald Duck, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny – were made in the 1940s and ‘50s. I also learned that Hanna-Barbera had stopped making Tom and Jerry cartoons and started producing cartoons such as Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear at the end of the 1950s so those were nearly twenty years old. Nowadays, of course, twenty or thirty years doesn’t seem nearly as long ago as it did when I was very young.

In those days you first had to finish the roll of film, then had to wait for someone to make a trip to the pharmacy to get developed, and a week after that someone had to go pick it up, only to find out you chopped everyone’s head off in the photos or had terrible lighting.

I once went camping in northern Minnesota in December—when I was younger and foolisher. I took several photos to prove my folly. I carefully kept the camera inside my parka except for the brief moments I snapped a picture. Unfortunately, the film didn’t catch on the take-up spool, so I didn’t actually expose any film. And I wasn’t about to do it over.

He was almost the first casualty due to a selfie.

Calvin would have loved living today. By the age of six, he’d have ten million selfies!

Calvin does indeed lead a ‘GoPro’-able life.

The strip has arrived at a crises of technological references. While overall CALVIN AND HOBBES can run perpetually, and continue to offer truths to new readers, it is caught in a trap it could not have avoided. Calvin no longer can represent ‘kids today.’ He is now clearly from another generation, where kids still knew telephones that were plugged into walls and did nothing more than make and receive calls, as small tabletop televisions that did not have hundreds of viewing choices and offer the ability to watch what we want when we want- and yes, film cameras.

This is sort of why I am no longer promoting certain strips I developed but did not manage to sell at the time these Calvin strips first ran. Not unless I want to define them as period pieces. Even the reruns of our own MARIA’S DAY are now showing their age in some gags.

But, after all, SKIPPY can still be read and enjoyed, as long as one is not hung up on what some of the dated references mean.

Also, too bad Dad doesn’t exactly have a great sense of humour, Calvin. Best of luck!

Calvin, when you’re right, you’re right.

Calvin and Hobbes can survive a lot, can’t they?

Most people under 25 today don’t understand what this means.

Don’t worry – we caught it. Panel 3.

“Back of the camera opened”. Boy, that dates this one. :D

This would have to be explained to today’s teens

“Back of the camera?”

Kid still shooting a film camera? He’s so old-school. Digital camera’s typically don’t have a “back.”