Cartoon Art for Cartoon Art’s Sake

In the arts, as in politics, someone who apes the immediate past seems conservative, but an individual who emulates the more distant past may appear innovative.

By reviving the principles of solid draftsmanship, inventive humor and visual storytelling that originally made newspaper comics popular, Bill Watterson has created an imaginative and original strip. “Something Under the Bed Is Drooling” (Andrews & McMeel: $6.95, paperback; 128 pp.), the second collection of “Calvin and Hobbes,” is, simply, the most entertaining comic strip anthology in at least a decade.

Since the early ‘50s, when Charles Schulz introduced a highly simplified graphic style in “Peanuts,” most comic artists have stressed writing over drawing. The humor in many contemporary strips--”Cathy,” “Drabble,” “Hartland”--is based solely on words, because the artists don’t draw well enough to communicate a joke visually.

“Calvin and Hobbes” continues the strongly pictorial tradition of Winsor McCay’s “Little Nemo in Slumberland,” George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat” and Walt Kelly’s “Pogo.” Watterson’s vivid drawings often don’t require captions, as the characters’ expressions and poses are all that’s needed to make a story point or provoke a laugh. Instead of telling the reader about Calvin’s fantasies, Watterson depicts the imaginary world where a toy tiger becomes real, and a small boy can transmogrify himself into a gigantic dinosaur, a tiny insect or an intrepid spaceman.

The humor in comic strips involving children is usually predicated on things a child does that an adult finds cute. “Dennis the Menace,” “Rose Is Rose” and “The Family Circus” brim with the “adorable” misperceptions and mispronunciations that delude grown-ups into a nostalgic view of childhood as a time of happy innocence.

Watterson works from a child’s point of view. For Calvin, childhood is neither happy nor innocent: It’s a time of bewilderment, fear, mischief, daydreams and impotence in the face of seemingly arbitrary rules. Calvin is clever enough to disguise himself as an amoeba to filch cookies, but naive enough to believe his mother would fall for the ruse. He may realize that the monsters under his bed are a product of his imagination, but he’s still afraid of them.

Calvin inhabits a world of fantasy so intense that real life pales by comparison. He doesn’t play at being Spaceman Spiff or private eye Tracer Bullet--he becomes those characters. Hobbes isn’t just a stuffed toy--he really is Calvin’s best friend, who fights for his share of the covers at bedtime, plays pranks of his own and tries to discourage Calvin’s crazier schemes. Although he’s imaginary, Hobbes is whimsical, sardonic and prudent--which reinforces Calvin’s declaration, “I’ve got plenty of common sense--I just choose to ignore it.”

Bill Cosby’s monologues about his own childhood offer the closest parallels to Watterson’s strip. Both men re-create the weird and wonderful universe children build around themselves. Calvin and the young Cosby never perform for their parents the way Pasquale does in “Rose Is Rose.” Adults simply don’t exist in their world, except as foes to be outwitted or a source of comfort when things get a little too scary.

Rather than follow the easy formula of keeping Calvin an obnoxious but funny little kid, Watterson takes chances and explores other facets of his character. In a touching series of strips, Calvin finds an injured baby raccoon that dies, despite his efforts to save it. Confronted with this apparently meaningless death, the heartbroken little boy turns to his parents for explanations and to Hobbes for comfort. Calvin enjoys teasing his friend Susie, but when he discovers he’s hurt her feelings, he searches for a way to apologize without revealing his affection for her.

Watterson’s imaginative approach to his material and his inventive graphics have made “Calvin and Hobbes” one of the few strips universally admired by other cartoonists. Bill Ziegler (“Mary Worth”), Berke Breathed (“Bloom County”) and Charles Schulz are outspoken fans: In a recent strip, Breathed even drew one of his characters in a T-shirt that read “Calvin and Hobbes rule.” Pulitzer Prize winners Garry Trudeau and Pat Oliphant wrote the introductions to the two anthologies. Watterson received the National Cartoonists Society’s prestigious Reuben Award--traditionally given for a body of work--in the strip’s second year.

Although comic strips usually build an audience over years and even decades, “Calvin and Hobbes” has become one of the most popular strips in America in just three years. It appears in more than 500 newspapers, and the first anthology stayed on the trade paperback best-seller list for more than 47 weeks. (“Something Under the Bed Is Drooling” entered the list at No. 1 on March 27.) The initial printing of “Something Under the Bed” was a staggering 1 million copies: The average cartoon book has a press run of between 50,000 and 75,000 copies.

The popularity of “Calvin and Hobbes” seems doubly impressive, as it was achieved without recourse to the rampant commercialism that threatens to turn some cartoon characters into a national blight. Comic strips have been linked to merchandising campaigns since the early part of the century, but the sale of licensed character products has skyrocketed in recent years.

Snoopy currently appears on approximately 5,000 products, including water skis, chopsticks, skateboards, designer sweaters and the dispenser for the special glue Japanese schoolgirls use to keep their knee socks up. Garfield’s likeness is featured on hand cream dispensers, waste baskets, air fresheners, seed packets, boxer shorts, welcome mats, kites, cake pans and more than 3,000 other products. Garfield is also used to promote real estate in Palm Coast, Fla., and the Embassy Suites hotel chain. Snoopy appears in the Met Life insurance ads and serves as spokesman (spokesdog?) for Sanwa Bank in Japan.

Watterson doesn’t even consider offers to merchandise his characters and instructed his syndicate to say, “Thanks, but no thanks” to all inquiries. He has also declined numerous proposals to do animated versions of his strip: He reaches his audience solely through the printed page.

An extremely private person, Watterson rarely gives interviews, refuses to allow himself to be photographed and eschews the flashy life style he can now afford (behavior that seems bizarre, if not downright un-American in the media-obsessed ‘80s). His only interest is drawing a good comic strip. This dedication and integrity seem sadly out of place in an era that exalts hype over substance, but his readers and the art of the newspaper comic strip are richer for it.