And so it began.

This treasury included the strips from the first two collections of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. And if you don't know what you have been missing, you are in for a treat.

The comic strip follows the misadventures of Calvin, a highly imaginative, hyperactive six year old. How imaginative? His only real friend is Hobbes, his stuff tiger. But that isn't a problem because Hobbes is really a real tiger, at least in Calvin's mind.

Since this is the first book, things are still being established. But many of the strips staples are here already. We meet Calvin's parents, teacher Miss Wormwood, neighbor Susie Derkins, and bully Moe. We even get the first couple of run ins with babysitter Rosalyn. While we don't get the hilarious social satire that would show up later, we do get some comments on the environment and Calvin's obsession with polls. (He is constantly trying to get his dad to bend to political pressure by showing his standings with household six year olds and tigers.) And we get plenty of adventures from Spaceman Spiff, Calvin's imagination again as he tries to deal with the various aliens in his life like his parents or teacher.

I tend to read the later books more often, so I had forgotten just how go the early strips are until I picked this up. There are so true classics here, most of the time at Calvin's six year old nature. Not that I'd want my kids getting any ideas from Calvin. He doesn't see anything wrong with pounding nails into coffee tables or popping popcorn without the lid on the pot.

And that does bring up the only possible flaw with the book. These strips originally appeared in 1985-1987, so at times they are a little dated. Calvin makes reference to renting a VCR or wanting to get cable. But that doesn't bother me in the slightest.

This "treasury" collects the strips from the first two books. As a bonus, there is a story told in poem form at the beginning and the Sunday strips are in color. If you have the two books, you probably don't need this one. But if you don't have them, this is the way to go.

The day this strip ended was a sad day indeed. But thanks to books like this one, we can relive it over and over again.

Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes series is all about six year old Calvin and his tiger Hobbes. Hobbes may seem to be just some soft toy, but with Calvin he truly comes alive, and the two buddies hurtle through life together.

Anyone who has been six (so, all of us) will find this series well-observed, touching, and funny. In one strip, our heroes are just getting up to exactly the kind of highjinks we all got up to when we were young (adventures in the woods, building time machines using discarded packing cases, ...). But then on the next page, Calvin's six year old wisdom hits on an aspect of contemporary life, exposing it for the silliness that it is.

If you want to remember what it was like to be six, if you ever had an invisible friend or you talked to your teddy bear, if you were ever convinced there were monsters under your bed, or if you just want to laugh out loud, then BUY THIS!

Absolute brilliance. Stories of a 6 year old and his 'tiger' friend and how they see the world. Bill makes it absolutely hilarious though. Philosophy, humour, - it's all here.

The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, first published in 1988, is chock full of early Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. No cartoonist, not even Charles Schultz, has captured the magical essence of childhood the way Bill Watterson did in this strip, and it should come as no surprise (although it did to Watterson) that Calvin and Hobbes quickly developed an incredibly loyal following. This strip went way beyond mere popularity. While I was in college, the campus newspaper decided to stop running Calvin and Hobbes (I think this was during one of Watterson's sabbaticals) - this resulted in nothing less than a furor on campus, as countless students immediately demanded the return of C&H. In a matter of days, Calvin and Hobbes were right back where they belonged.

How does a comic strip featuring a mischievous six-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger attract a fiercely loyal following of adults? Most adults would love to be children again, to know the freedom and sense of wonder that somehow withers inside the human soul after the onset of puberty. Calvin and Hobbes vividly recreates the feelings and emotions of the very essence of childhood. It brings back memories of things we forgot far too long ago, and it thus reawakens the deepest parts of our ever-hardening souls. Reading this comic strip is the next best thing to being a child yourself. Calvin does everything you used to do: he takes time to stomp in mud puddles, he lets his imagination run wild to make thrilling adventures out of even the most mundane tasks, he ponders the same deep questions you are now, as an adult, afraid to ask, he goes for the gusto no matter what sort of risk is involved, he is in every way a perfect specimen of childhood. Who, as a child, didn't pretend to be a dinosaur, walk around with a hideous expression in hopes of your facing freezing that way, tease the girls (or boys) you claimed to hate, journey to distant worlds unseen by human eyes, etc.?

Of course, Hobbes is just as important to the comic strip as Calvin. Hobbes is a tiger, Calvin's best and constant friend, a fellow partaker in the joys of childish innocence. To Calvin, Hobbes really is all that, and that is how we see him as well - until, that is, someone else comes into the frame, when he suddenly becomes nothing more than a stuffed animal. Watterson is a fantastic comic artist, and there is just something captivating about the way he draws Hobbes in his stuffed animal form. Everything about Watterson's art is fantastic, though, particularly the way it captures the emotions of its two principal characters.

Sadly, we have only ten years of comic memories in the form of Calvin and Hobbes, as the inscrutable Bill Watterson retired (around the age of 37) in 1995 and quite obviously has no plans of returning to the public arena. Watterson is actually frighteningly private and seems to be living a life of unmatched solitude. I find this extraordinarily sad: here is a man who captured the essence of childhood so vividly in the form of Calvin and Hobbes, a world bursting with life and possibilities, yet now he seems to have withdrawn from life itself. We must be thankful we do have as much Calvin and Hobbes material as we do, and The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, with 255 pages of black and white daily strips and color Sunday strips, features much more than just a chunk of it in and of itself.

This Calvin & Hobbes book is so funny as many of them are. Every time I read this it is so funny I laugh out loud. Many Calvin & Hobbes books are very funny but this one is so long it took me a long time to read. Most of the others I can read very quickly. I found this book so, so funny I bought loads more. I am trying to collect all of the Calvin & Hobbes books I can get because it is so good. This is a must buy!!! I suggest you get a smaller Calvin & Hobbes book & see if you like it first. If you do buy this!!!