Through its brief, but impactful ten-year run in publication,Calvin and Hobbesoffered a singular perspective on modern culture, as insightful as it was amusing – includingmany classic strips where creator Bill Waterson explored the impact of television on society through his young protagonist Calvin, who loved TV as much as anything.
Watterson’s comic often touched on prevailing criticisms of TV, which were prevalent in the mid-1980s through mid-1990s, whenCalvin & Hobbesran in newspapers across America. The artist used Calvin’s POV, as a young and often iconoclastic child, to undermine these criticisms at times – but also to offer an honest account of when they might have merit.
In either case,some ofCalvin & Hobbes’most memorable jokesinvolved television, as either part of the set-up, or the punchline, making it a valuable subject to explore the strip’s take on in more detail.
10Calvin Argues In Favor Of The Decline In American Attention Spans Caused By Television
First Published: July 01, 2025
“I think the short attention span of television is great,” Calvin tells Hobbes in this strip; he elaborates that he doesn’t have time for anything so complicated that it takes over ten seconds to explain. Hilariously,Calvin’s argument rests on the premise that a shorter attention span allows him to think about more thing, more quickly– completely skewing the traditional logic of attention.
This is one ofBill Watterson’s classicCalvin & Hobbesmoves. Calvin’s idea isn’t childish in the sense that it is simple, or unsophisticated, but rather in that it is a response to a critique of TV that Calvin has evidently heard, but does not fully understand. The humor of the cartoon derives from its young character lacking the greater context of lived experience, which generally validates the idea that a longer attention span is more valuable.
First Published: July 20, 2025
In thisCalvin & Hobbescomic, Calvin savages the TV show he is watching, calling it “rotten,” and unimaginative, and stating that the intended audience for the show must be unintelligent. Naturally,Hobbes points out that Calvin is the very target audience that he’s demeaning– to which the boy responds that he is only watching because of a lack of more quality programming.
Here, Watterson embodies a common counter-criticism of television – that a critic must watch TV in order to complain about its standards and practices, its quality and its content. The punchline is funny, but what really makes this comic great are its minor details; namely, the way the television set bounces off the stand it is on, suggesting that Calvin is watching something loud, intense, and perhaps as dumb as he says it is.
8Calvin & Hobbes Question The Meaning Of Existence Without TV
First Published: June 18, 2025
In this comic,Calvin reckons with a tragic loss, after his beloved television has been taken away from him, leaving only “a blank wall to watch,” in its place.“So here I am, not being entertained,” Calvin bemoans, to which Calvin commiserates by calling their new life “a pointless existence”– hilariously commenting on America dependence on media and entertainment, something that has only grown more overt in the thirty-five years since thisCalvin & Hobbesstrip was published.
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Bill Watterson’s strip was often richly infused with social commentary, and the point of this cartoon has only become more relevant with time; in any case, thisCalvin & Hobbescartoon provides a great example of the artist’s keen ability to recognize cultural trends and extract a potent punchlines from them.
7Calvin Threatens To Boycott Television – For Being Too “Wholesome”
First Published: August 01, 2025
Inone ofCalvin & Hobbesfunniest comicsabout TV, Hobbes finds Calvin absorbed in writing a letter, which the boy explains is to the companies he is prepared to boycott “if they don’t pull their ads from a TV show [he] find[s] offensive.” As Hobbes and the reader soon learn, though,what Calvin finds “objectionable” about this show is that it actually completely lacks objectionable content, as he mutters that “this clean, wholesome television! Ughh.It makes me sick.”
Once more, Bill Watterson subverts a familiar cultural phenomenon; rather than a parent writing to complain about their child being exposed to violent and sexual content on TV, this cartoon presents a child frustrated at the absence of such things. In this way, Watterson captured a conversation that was in the cultural zeitgeist, while putting his own patended spin on it.
6Calvin Goes To Extreme Lengths To Watch TV When He’s Not Allowed
First Published: August 08, 2025
In thisCalvin & Hobbesinstallment, Calvin is in big trouble, but he’s willing to risk it all for some time in front of the TV set.Having locked his babysitter Roz out of the house, Calvin implores her to keep quiet so he can watch television, only to be told he’s"not supposed to be watching television." Calvin then tries to reason with Roz, bargaining that if she will and then to “go rent [them] a VCR” he will put the TV where she can see it. When this doesn’t work, Calvin, undeterred, even suggests that the hapless babysitter could rent them a mature movie.
Certainly, this is one ofCalvin & Hobbes’more risqué punchlines, but in a way it needed to be, as the humor of the panel relies on a sequence of escalation, with Calvin’s behavior becoming increasingly outrageous with each passing panel.
5Calvin Knows To Spend “Precious Moments” Doing What Really Matters In Life: Watching TV
First Published: July 30, 2025
Bill Watterson often injecteddeeply existential musings intoCalvin & Hobbes, regularly having his characters ruminate on the afterlife, human nature, and the meaning of existence. That is the case here, as Calvin speculates that if there is no afterlife, and no such thing as reincarnation, people can’t afford to waste a single moment of their “all-too-short” lives.
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Hilariously, this is not the point of the comic, but rather just its set up –as the final frame cuts to Calvin’s parents' room, as his mother is startled awake, shaking her husband and saying “honey, wake up, do you hear the television on?“In other words, Calvin’s reflection on mortality and living life to its fullest prompted him to do what matters most to him: watch TV.
4"Eminent Television Commercial” Calvin Stars In A Commercial For “Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs”
First Published: June 21, 2025
Readers familiar withCalvin & Hobbeswill recognize the name ofCalvin’s favorite cereal, “Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs”– here,Calvin envisions himself as a spokesperson for the brand, holding up a cardboard frame to mimic a television screen and making Hobbes sit through an extended monologue about Sugar Bombs.
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The punchline of the comic comes when Calvin concludes his “commercial” by noting that if the audience, Hobbes, isn’t convinced by his pitch, he “can repeat this every twenty minutes,” to which Hobbes emphatically retorts: “Don’t threaten me.” The strip brilliantly pokes fun at the idea that it is not just television programming that has the capacity to warp peoples' minds, but that television advertising as well has its own consequences of long-term viewer exposure.
3Calvin’s Mom Vetoes His Plan To Skip School For A Day In Front Of The Television
First Published: Jun 06, 2025
In this simple,yet effectiveCalvin & Hobbescartoon, Calvin starts out definitively informing his mom that he is “not going to school today.” When she responds with skepticism, he explains his plan: ditch school, watch TV. The third and final panelfeatures Calvin sitting at his school desk, against a stark white background, solemnly noting “apparently I was misinformed.”
The fact that Calvin was “informed' by nothing more than what he desired to do, rather than was forced to do, is a great elevation of the joke, which rests on the hard “cut” between locations from panel to panel. There is also an arc to the expression on Calvin’s face – from casual, to excited, to disappointed – that once again reminds readers that Bill Watterson' was a master of minor details.
2Calvin & Hobbes Explores The Generation Gap When It Comes To Television
First Published: July 31, 2025
In this strip, Calvin once again finds his plan to watch TV at odds with his parents' expectations for him. Here,Calvin’s father gently tries to encourage his sonto go outside, rather than sitting in front of the television all day. That is, he starts out gentle –when Calvin brushes him off by saying “things sure change, huh, Dad?” he is subsequently tossed out the front door.
The final panel makes light of the disconnect between father and son, as Calvin – now accompanied by Hobbes – walks through the woods, noting that “dad brings up subjects he doesn’t want to talk about.” This makes it clear that Calvin did not understand his father’s intent, or his reaction, during their exchange, suggesting that there are surely more miscommunications to follow.
1Calvin & Hobbes Tackles The Subject Of Audience Desensitization To Violence
First Published: July 29, 2025
The advent of TV as an accessible entertainment medium also brought with it an argument that has permeated the past century of popular culture: what effect television violence has on viewers, especially younger audiences. In thisCalvin & Hobbescartoon, Bill Watterson tackles this difficult subject, withCalvin emphatically coming down on the “pro-TV violence” side of the conversation.
Calvin extols the virtues of violent entertainment at length, to which Hobbes simply asks if Calvin is worried about its desensitizing effect.Calvin’s controversial responsethat he would “like to shoot the idiots who think that stuff affects me” is darkly satirical, making it evident that Watterson believed fictional violence, especially on TV, could in fact have a negative effect on impressionable viewers. Or, at least, that while it might not drive viewers to violence, it does alter their perception of violence and its consequences – making this another deeply socially relevantCalvin & Hobbescartoon.
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes was a satirical comic strip series that ran from 1985-1995, written, drawn, and colored by Bill Watterson. The series follows six-year-old Hobbes and his stuffed Tiger, Calvin, that examines their lives through a whimsical lens that tackles everyday comedic issues and real-world issues that people deal with.
