Remember when Calvin & Hobbes told a bold story about bullying?

[pokerfan]

There was no happy ending, no neat resolution, when Moe bullied Calvin out of his toy truck. But during that two week stretch of Calvin & Hobbes strips from 1989, cartoonist Bill Watterson made a dark but salient point about how unfair life can be. It was a gutsy move, and it resonated with anyone who had a less than idyllic childhood. Calvin said it best: “People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children.”

In the 10th Anniversary anthology of his famous comic strip, Bill Watterson wrote mini-bios for each of his Calvin & Hobbes characters. He gave generous insight into each of them, describing their inspirations and internal motivations. But for Moe, Watterson only managed a few terse sentences. One might speculate that Watterson himself had been bullied at a young age: “Moe is every jerk I’ve ever known. He is big, dumb, ugly and cruel. I remember school being full of idiots like Moe. I think they spawn on damp locker room floors.”

One subtlety I appreciated was the way that Moe talked. Whereas Calvin spoke with an outsized, rich vocabulary, Moe used a lot of monosyllabic words, and Watterson drew them in simple, unsophisticated print. You could almost hear Moe’s voice—deep, dull, and plodding—through its visualization.

Read the rest: http://kotaku.com/a-string-of-upsetting-calvin-hobbes-strips-told-a-bol-1777424191

[benld74]

1. In 89 before both our kids arrived, I thought it was kinda funny,,,

now having seen it 1st hand, the affects on those bullied. I kinda wish Calvin would have made Moe snowmen or something,,,,,