Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County, two of the most popular comics come together in a throwback comics-page mega-team-up. The strip titled Calvin County was posted on Bloom County creator Berke Breathed’s official Facebook page.
Originated from a comic strip known as The Academia Waltz, Bloom County began in late 1980 by the Washington Post Writers’ Group and continued till 6 August, 1989. It was a subversive work of satire that examined political and cultural events through the viewpoint of a fictitious small town in Middle America, where children emanate adult personalities and animals talk.
It eventually found a wide mainstream audience confounding and infuriating the establishment. Breathed won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1987 making Bloom County the first daily newspaper comic strip to take that award since Doonesbury in 1975. At its peak, the comic strip was syndicated in more than 1,200 daily newspapers with a combined readership of 40 million. The strip was restated in 2015 and it can now be found through its creator’s Facebook page.
Calvin and Hobbes, from Universal Press Syndicate, was written and illustrated by Bill Watterson from late 1985 to 31 December 1995. Set in the contemporary suburban United States, it traces Calvin, a precocious, mischievous, and adventurous six-year-old boy, and his frequent flights of fancy and friendship with his sardonic stuffed tiger, Hobbes.
It also examines his relationships with family and classmates (especially the love/hate relationship with his classmate Susie Derkins). Hobbes’ dual nature is a defining motif for the strip as to Calvin, Hobbes is a living anthropomorphic tiger but all the other characters see it as an inanimate stuffed toy. The living Hobbes represents how imaginative kids see their stuffed animals.
Though not as political as its contemporaries, Calvin and Hobbes does explore broad issues like environmentalism, public education, philosophical quandaries, and the flaws of opinion polls. Calvin and Hobbes later doubled the readership of Bloom County, appearing in 2,400 newspapers following which Watterson closed it in 1995.
This team-up anticipates a promising run in the near future as both of these comic strips hold a dear place for every age group especially teenagers who have a deep nostalgia for 1980s popular culture.
