Bill Watterson. Even his mere name sends electric impulses through my body, for the genius behind Calvin & Hobbes is someone I've idolized my entire life. His comic strips have inspired awe in me, they have ignited every feeling there is in this world inside me. Primarily humorous, sometimes these little comic strips had such deep meanings hidden within, they would wipe you off their feet with the imaginative content inside them. Sometimes I ponder on how the imagination of Bill himself could be so expansive, so wondrously vast, as to accommodate a six-year old's point of view of the world, and perhaps his whole mindset, fully.
Calvin, that six-year-old, was what made this comic strip special. The whole of this strip was about the world of imagination Calvin had in his mind. What I saw in Calvin was a version of myself. It made me think about how the world molds you into thinking that imagination is a stupid thing to have, how a set of rules and constraints is what governs this universe, and we can't do anything to change it. And then, there's the famous quote, "There's always hope." I'd very much like to change that to "There's always imagination." Above all the things that Calvin and Hobbes has shown me, of all the feelings that it has made me feel, the most important and significant thing that it has taught me is that being imaginative is always good.
Being a self-proclaimed information addict, I wouldn't mind if the whole of imgur or Reddit were to be filled with Calvin and Hobbes strips only. Of all the things Calvin and Hobbes is to me, the only regret I have is that the strip didn't last longer. 10 mere years. Why would someone want to end this stroke of artistic genius want to end this masterpiece, just after 10 years of its publication.
But looking at the bright side, it did last 10 years, as long as the whole series of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
At least it didn't end up being a comic strip version of Firefly.
