CALVIN AND HOBBES - SUNDAY PAGES 1985-1995 An Exhibition Catalogue by Bill Watterson

Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2001. Soft cover. 95 pages. Very good condition. Book dealer stamp in front. Under 1kg.

Created by Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes will be hailed among the greatest ever created, right alongside Peanuts and Krazy Kat for its creativity, scope of influence and the enjoyment it offered the reader. It was a strip capable of being all things gleeful and all things sad, all things goofy and all things serious.

Bill Watterson's genius cannot be overstated. He was a master of the comic form. He somehow managed to be funny, clever, touching, insightful, warm, cynical, uplifting, devious, nostalgic, and mischievous, all in the space of a little three- or four-panel comic strip.

And his Sunday strips? A feast. His use of space and color, especially in the strip's later years, was masterful. He knew how to work a page like no other.

In this collection, some of the best Sunday strips are collected in glorious color. Each is amended with footnotes and annotations by the creator himself, along with early pre-newspaper versions of the strips. While many of these can be found elsewhere, this collection is a nice look back at some favorites, made even better by the insight and observations of the man who drew them. Even those intimately familiar with these cartoons will learn something new about the craft of comic creation through his annotations.

Each comic strip is a story - and for longtime Calvin & Hobbes readers, a memory. That final strip, with its clean slate of white snow into which Calvin and Hobbes disappear, talking of discovery and exploring ... just fantastic.