Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for March 16, 2025

Hobbes loves a good food fight.

this might be where Calvin learns how to cook?

Better throw Calvin into the washer with the rest of the laundry. Mom. You notice that she doesn’t even SEE how beaten up he is!

Stealing his tuna fish sandwich AND reading his comics? Hobbes has gone too far this time.

Must have been a tuna sandwich.

Life ain’t fair.

What got into Hobbes?

Now I am hungry too.

Be happy, Calvin, at least Hobbes took your dinner and didn´t take you as a dinner….

Mom doesn’t eat lunch with Calvin when Dad’s not there. She’s smart. Maybe if they let him read comics at the dinner table there’d be less fuss.

I love when Hobbes fights with Calvin. Especially when his shoe and shirt flies off in a seperate frame. I’ve never seen this one before.

I see we’ve once again hit that point where I am largely unfamiliar with the strips. I got every collection I could but somehow MISSED one back in the day- I was shocked to find strips in a bookstore I’d never seen before. I’ve read the entirety of the C&H run, but because I only read these ones as an adult and not constantly as a kid, I forget them more often.

Another strip that raises the question of what Hobbes is. I started out assuming that he was a stuffed doll who only came alive in Calvin’s imagination. I later started to wonder whether Calvin’s imagination really does bring Hobbes to life. Several other readers have expressed this view and the Calvin and Hobbes Wiki entry on Calvin states that Calvin’s imagination does seem strong enough to bring Hobbes to life. However, Watterson stated in The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book – which was published towards the end of the strip’s ten year run – “I do not see Hobbes as a stuffed doll who miraculously comes to life when alone with Calvin. Neither do I see Hobbes as a product of Calvin’s imagination.”

Another popular fan theory is that Hobbes is part of Calvin’s split personality. This is a pretty good idea. However, we sometimes see Calvin and Hobbes doing things in different places at the same time. It was the fact that Hobbes is sometimes shown doing things when Calvin is elsewhere that first led me to suspect that Calvin’s imagination was bringing Hobbes to life – which I now know was NOT what Watterson intended.

Watterson does go on to explain, “Calvin sees Hobbes one way. Everyone else sees Hobbes another way. I think this is how life works. No two people see the world in exactly the same way. Hobbes is more to do with the subjective nature of reality than with dolls coming to life.” This is a good enough explanation but I also like to remember that Hobbes is portrayed as Calvin sees him when he is alone in the strip. Calvin seems to see the true reality of Hobbes.

Couldn’t Hobbes just ask nicely? Oh wait I forgot, he’s a tiger

- By the way, you got that t-shirt this morning, why can’t you keep anything clean for more than a few hours?

Nice salmon sandwich.

Moms can be so clueless sometimes :(

Is there a tiger in that basket?

WIZ FIZ laundry detergent! For when your kid gets the p!ss scared out of himself by his ‘stuffed’ tiger.

Don’t blame it on a stuffed tiger no matter how real he is to you.

But he’s a growing boy!

LOL, guess this is one of the draw backs of living with a tiger, for they’re always hungry.

Oh……….the struggles of friendship!!!!!

Yes, but can Hobbes wait for dinner?

He’s eaten the original and now wants a follow-up. The wrestling match was his imagination at work. But it made for a great arc for a gray, wet, windy Sunday.

It must have been a tuna fish sandwich.

Musta been tuna.

I honestly felt kind of bad for Calvin in the last panel, since Hobbes ended up taking his lunch. Of course, Hobbes just loves to eat…

“It’s only your lunch if you can defend it.” – Article 7, section II.B, BYLAWS OF THE JUNGLE

Tis the law of the jungle.

Yep, this happened to me.

Moms usually say have an apple.

That glass of milk is a true survivor.

If only Wiz Fiz were real. It would be the only detergent I’d use.

In panel 6, Calvin’s shirt looks normal, but in panel 8, it has a few rips. HOW???

Must’ve been tuna in the sandwich

I’m impressed with Calvin in the fourth strip, standing his ground against Hobbes in the form on a non-anthropomorphized tiger.

I’m seeing Inspector Clouseau and Kato!

I remember playing with those toy soldiers like in Toy Story and they spoke with each other and to me then one day they didn’t speak anymore and I lost interest in playing them, such is life.

Mom would give us a snack if it was more than 2 hours to the next meal. But it was a snack of her choice. Usually carrots or celery (with peanut butter or cream cheese though). Occasionally you might talk her into crackers and cheese. It was a relief, in my teens, to be able to drive to town and buy a couple of burgers. Not that I did it very often: I was always saving up for something I lusted after. My brother was into cars, I was more into getting a better slide rule (remember slide rules?) by the time I had a drivers license. At that age I ate three (or four) big meals a day and STILL was “starving” by the time the next meal came around. And a gallon of milk every day too.