7 Greatest ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Comic Strips of the 1980s, Ranked

Image via Bill Watterson Published Oct 29, 2026, 3:52 PM EDT Shawn Van Horn is a Senior Author for Collider. He's watched way too many slasher movies over the decades, which makes him an aficionado on all things Halloween and Friday the 13th. Don't ask him to choose between Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees because he can't do it. He grew up in the 90s, when Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, and TGIF were his life, and still watches them religiously to this day. Larry David is his spirit animal. His love for entertainment spreads to the written word as well. He has written two novels and is neck deep in the querying trenches. He is also a short story maker upper and poet with a dozen publishing credits to his name. He lives in small town Ohio, where he likes to watch professional wrestling and movies. Sign in to your Collider account Bill Watterson began his influential Calvin and Hobbes comic strip on November 18, 1985. While other comics, like Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts, lasted for decades, Calvin and Hobbes, similar to Gary Larson's The Far Side, was around for a much shorter time. Just 10 years after it began, Watterson ended his daily newspaper tales of a young boy and his stuffed tiger on December 31, 1995. Over that one decade, Calvin and Hobbes never slipped in quality. Still, many of its best strips were first published in the 1980s. 7 Calvin Becomes Spaceman Spiff Image via Universal Press Syndicate Calvin has quite the wild and vivid imagination. It's the theme of the entire strip, after all, with Calvin imagining that his stuffed toy tiger, Hobbes, has come to life to be his best friend. That imagination doesn't end with Hobbes, though. Calvin is bored with the daily monotony of life, and at the top of the list is school. There were many strips over the years when he checks out during class to imagine himself as a space hero named Spaceman Spiff. Here, after imagining how high his insurance premiums must be for his spaceship (a worry he surely overheard from his parents), Calvin as Spiff begins a fiery descent as his craft begins to crash. He's not totally lost in his mind. The crashing ship represents the anxiety of having to answer a math question. When Calvin accidentally gets it right, it's shown as Spaceman Spiff avoiding a crash landing just in time. 6 Calvin Tries on Sunglasses Image via Universal Press Syndicate Part of what makes Calvin and Hobbes so great is Bill Watterson's artistic talent. Beyond the message of the content is some beautiful artwork. In this strip, we get a wide array of colors, from green to purple, orange to green. In this one, Watterson leaves us in the dark, so to speak, about what's going on, with the first several panels showing Hobbes looking at us through those rainbow colors, each time giving his opinion on an unknown subject. In the last three panels, what's going on becomes clear. Bored at the store with his mom, Calvin is trying on sunglasses from a display case. Rather than his mom indulging him, she gets angry and tells him to put them back. Hobbes' remark about adults having no taste sums up how Calvin feels all the time. Adults don't understand him, and he doesn't understand them either. 5 Calvin Gives His Dad a Big Surprise Image via Universal Press Syndicate Calvin has an interesting relationship with his parents. Although we are often shown that they love him, and their son loves them back, they also get easily annoyed by his high-energy and incessant imagination. Here, you might expect Dad to get upset when his son interrupts his reading by asking him to close his eyes and open his mouth for a big surprise. Instead, despite the past telling us he should be wary, Dad goes for it, peeking just a tad because he knows what his son is capable of. Rather than revealing what gross surprise Calvin has from his father, the last panel shows Calvin opening his hands only for nothing to be there. Whatever he was holding got away. This leaves the reader to use their own imagination. Was Calvin holding something very real and gross, like a frog, or was there nothing truly in his hands to begin with because his mind was conjuring up something even more disgusting? Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which MCU Character Is Your Best Friend? Steve Rogers · Tony Stark · Peter Parker · Shuri Pick where you meet, what they text you at two in the morning, what they hand you on your birthday and what the two of you keep arguing about. Four very different people are waiting on the other side: the one who never leaves, the one who is exhausting and worth it, the one who replies in four seconds flat, and the one who will roast you and then fix your life. 🛡️Steve Rogers(Captain America) 🛠️Tony Stark(Iron Man) 🕸️Peter Parker(Spider-Man) 🐆Shuri(Black Panther) FIND YOUR FRIEND → 01 Where do the two of you meet? Nobody in this universe makes a friend somewhere normal. AIn a gym at six in the morning, where the two of you are the only people awake. BAt a party you were not really invited to, where they talked to you for an hour. CQueuing for coffee in Queens while something loud happens six blocks away. DIn a lab you had no clearance for, and they decided to let you stay. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Your phone lights up at two in the morning. What does it say? You find out what kind of friend somebody is by what they send at that hour. ANothing at all, because they are already outside, having heard you had a rough week. BFour hundred words about an idea they just had, plus a schematic you cannot read. CAn apology for texting so late, followed by a question that could have waited. DA meme aimed directly at you, sent with no context and absolutely no mercy. NEXT QUESTION → 03 It is your birthday. What do they hand you? The present is never really about the present. ASomething small they made themselves, handed over slightly awkwardly. BSomething absurd and expensive that fixes a problem you mentioned once, months ago. CA gift that clearly took months of saving, wrapped badly, with a long note inside. DAn upgrade to something you already owned, installed without asking you first. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What does a good Saturday with them actually look like? Superheroes have days off, and this is how they spend them. AA long walk, an old diner and a conversation you had both been avoiding. BWhatever they decide at noon, which somehow ends with you in another country. CBad takeaway and an old film on their couch, interrupted about eleven times. DTwo hours in a workshop, arguing about whether your idea would even work. NEXT QUESTION → 05 You have your worst day in years. What do they do about it? This is the part of a friendship nobody puts in the trailer. AThey sit next to you and say almost nothing until you are ready to talk. BThey throw money, noise and three terrible plans at it until one of them helps. CThey turn up with food, refuse to leave, and then check on you every day for a month. DThey tell you the honest version of it, which nobody else was willing to say. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Every real friendship has one fight it keeps having. What is yours? The thing you argue about is usually the thing you like most about them. AThey take risks with their own life that they would never let me take with mine. BThey vanish into work for weeks and expect me to be completely fine about it. CThey keep apologising for things that were never even slightly their fault. DThey are three steps ahead of me and do not always bother explaining why. NEXT QUESTION → 07 The alarm goes off and you are both in the field. What is your job? You get one role on the team, and it says a lot about who you want next to you. AHolding the front line so that everybody behind me gets out of the building. BDoing the thing nobody has a plan for yet, at speed, and inventing the rest. CGetting people off the street quietly before anyone realises we were there. DRunning everything from a screen and talking the rest of them through it. NEXT QUESTION → 08 Ten years on, what do you want this friendship to be? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who picks up the phone. AExactly the same, because some people are simply permanent and that is the appeal. BLoud and complicated and worth every bit of the trouble it caused along the way. CStill the person I look out for, and still the first one who checks on me. DTwo people who keep each other sharp and never once get sentimental about it. REVEAL MY BEST FRIEND → The Line Is Ringing Your Best Friend Is…Four people, four completely different ideas of what it means to have somebody in your corner. Here is who picked up, what they would ask of you, and what you would get back. Steve RogersYou want the friend who does not leave. Steve is the one who turns up at the door without being asked, who remembers what you said you were worried about, and who has never once made you audition for his attention. His entire character is built on a single sentence, which is that he will not abandon somebody just because it has become expensive to keep them. He is far funnier than people give him credit for, and the joke is almost always at his own expense rather than yours. The friendship comes with a cost, since being close to Steve means being dragged into fights that were never yours and being glad about it later. You would get a friend who tells you the hard thing to your face and then defends you to everybody else in the room. Tony StarkYou want the friend who is genuinely exhausting and completely worth it. Tony will forget your birthday, then build you something at four in the morning that you did not know you needed, and hand it over as though it were nothing. He is bad at saying the warm thing out loud, so he says it in hardware instead, which is why everybody around him ends up with upgraded everything. Being his friend means putting up with the disappearing, the deflecting and the jokes that arrive about ninety seconds too early. What you get in return is somebody who will spend an unreasonable amount of money and effort on a problem the moment it becomes yours. He is the loudest person in the room and the one most likely to be quietly panicking about all of you. Peter ParkerYou want the friend who replies in four seconds and apologises for it. Peter is earnest in a way that is almost unfashionable, and he will take on far more than he can carry rather than admit that he is struggling. He is the only one on this list who needs looking after as much as he looks after you, and that balance is exactly what makes it a real friendship. Nobody in the MCU is better at the small stuff, from remembering the thing you were nervous about to showing up with food you did not ask for. Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrived in July 2026 and put him back where he works best, which is broke, local and carrying the weight on his own. You would get a friend who is sincerely, embarrassingly happy for you when something goes right, with no edge to it at all. ShuriYou want the friend who insults your shoes, fixes your phone and then quietly rearranges your entire life for the better. Shuri does not do soft reassurance, and that is the reason you would believe her when she says you are fine. She is the smartest person in almost any room she walks into and treats that as a reason to tease you rather than a reason to lecture you. The teasing is the affection. When Shuri stops making fun of you, something has gone seriously wrong and you should probably ask her about it. Her story is the one on this list that goes somewhere genuinely dark, which is what turned her from a scene stealer into the emotional centre of the films. You would get a friend who never pities you, never softens the truth, and never once lets you take yourself too seriously. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 4 Calvin Builds Snowmen For Dad Image via Universal Press Syndicate Calvin and Hobbes moves through the seasons of a young boy's life. Some of the best strips are about the freedom of summer away from school or the fun that can be had in the winter after it snows. Calvin's imagination is dark and gory, with him bringing his twisted thoughts to life in the form of snowmen put in the worst of situations. Over the years, he's shown them mangled and killed in some very disturbing ways, and this strip is no different. It begins with Calvin using his feet to write some sort of insulting message to his dad in the snow, before moving on to building a collection of snowmen. Satisfied with himself, Calvin walks away with a smile on his face. The final reveal is hilarious, with a group of snowmen gathered around Calvin's dad's car, shocked to see that another has been ripped into pieces in an accident. While Dad jokes about getting his kid a psychiatrist, Calvin got what he wanted: his father's attention. It's funny, gross, and a little sad all at once. 3 Calvin's New Year's Resolution Image via Universal Press Syndicate One of the best 1980s Calvin and Hobbes strips comes on the last day of the decade, as this one was first published on December 31, 1989. Bill Watterson's comic, while it might star a young boy, is not at all childish and tame. The creator often used his panels to work out his own adult thoughts through the eyes of a kid who is curious beyond his years and doesn't understand adulthood. Here, like in real life, it's New Year's Eve, and Calvin is walking in the snowy woods with Hobbes as he complains about the absurdity of New Year's Resolutions. What good is it to make them if the woes of the world continue on unchanged? Hobbes has it all figured out at the end. There is no real future, because we're still stuck making the same mistakes in the here and now. That's deeper than the snow they walk in. 2 War Is a Stupid Game Image via Universal Press Syndicate This one is another example of Watterson commenting on society through his comic strip. As much of a troublemaker as Calvin can be, he's still innocent, which means that how he perceives the world is much more powerful than if the same thoughts were shown through a grown-up. Calvin and Hobbes love to play games (Calvinball, anyone?), yet this time, it gets all too real and thus not much fun. Most kids grew up playing war, with friends pitted against each other as good guys and bad guys, the goal being to kill each other with their pretend guns. It's pretty messed up if you stop and think about it, which Calvin does. When it's all over, Calvin and Hobbes realize that everyone dies in war, and no one truly wins. It really is a stupid game we play. 1 A Christmas Hug Image via Universal Press Syndicate Underneath the hijinks and mayhem, Calvin is a softy at heart. He really cares about his family, and he loves the holidays, especially Christmas. It's not just a time of presents for him — it's about togetherness, especially when he gets to spend more time with Hobbes and show how grateful he is for his best friend. Here, Calvin is stricken with guilt over not getting Hobbes a Christmas present. That's okay, though, because Hobbes didn't get him one either. They hug, and in a moment of pure emotion, Calvin cries. It's a sweet comic on multiple levels. The message of love being the true meaning of Christmas is there, but so is how Calvin's mind works. He's a lonely child, and his imaginary best friend helps him get through a confusing world. He doesn't know what he would do without the stuffed toy that means so much to him.