Twenty-five years ago yesterday, a stuffed tiger and a kid — eponymous of philosophers — began a decade of newspaper syndication. You remember them: They hung around in the woods. In the winter, they carried a sled. In the summer, time always grew short.
Much of my childhood was spent reading Calvin and Hobbes. And I’d say the strip likely shaped some of my psyche.
Comics in local newspapers are interesting to me merely for their inclusion in a serious medium. As a kid, I wondered whom, exactly, was the affecting Calvin and Hobbes printed for? For me? What was this art doing tucked into the folds of The Providence Journal‘s Lifebeat section. And Bill Watterson — the strip’s taciturn creator — seems to be astounded equally at the stark difference between his creation and the rest of the newspaper.
“Cartoonists work within severe space constraints on an inflexible deadline for a mass audience,” Watterson told a group of students in 1989. “That’s not the most conducive atmosphere for the production of great art, and of course many comic strips have been eminently dispensable.”
But “art” might be a stretch for most strips — back in 1955, Leo Bogart argued convincingly that daily newspaper comics were easy conversation starters. So they’re socially important, I guess. So should we worry that trimmed budgets and web outlets like Comics.com will take comics out of newspapers?
Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury, a social-issue-heavy strip, last month celebrated four decades in print. As Jeffrey Toobin wrote recently on Slate: “It’s only a minor overstatement to say that Trudeau’s strip provides a comprehensive history of the past 40 years.”
That’s coming from one of the most venerable reporters covering the U.S. Supreme Court. I guess he should know a thing or two about U.S. history.
