Calvin (Calvin & Hobbes)

Calvin, named after theologian John Calvin, is the main protagonist of Calvin and Hobbes. He is highly intelligent, though without any self-discipline or concentration, a six-year-old boy with a vivid imagination and a habit of getting into trouble and adventure. The comic centers around Calvin's life, his troubles, and his adventures, with Hobbes alongside as his companion.

Calvin is characterized by his imagination, philosophy, extensive vocabulary, social awkwardness, and mischievous behavior. Calvin is very cynical and usually gets annoyed with Hobbes. His first piece of dialogue was the first line of the strip and his last line of dialogue was also the strip's final line.

Calvin and/or his alter egos appeared in almost every strip of the series ever printed and published, however, there are several strips he does not appear in, those being where his parents or other side characters reflect on Calvin or recent events (such as Calvin's home being broken into).

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Calvin will act like a brat a lot.
 * 2) He will often drag his imaginary friend Hobbes into stuff he doesn't want to take part in.
 * 3) Despite knowing how to make a time machine out of a box, he can't even figure out simple math equations.
 * 4) *More examples of his sometimes-limited knowledge is the time where he thought that putting fake feathers on him would make him fly and ends up getting injured badly while falling off a cliff, or the time where he found a bunch of trash on the ground and thought it was dinosaur skeletons.
 * 5) Calvin is a sexist, as shown by the times he drastically annoys his neighbor Susie just because she's a girl, and named his "secret" club "Get Rid Of Slimy girlS".
 * 6) Calvin, despite being 6, has done some things that are too young for his age.
 * 7) *Most of Calvin's snowmen showcases involve them all being slaughtered, most of them being slaughtered, or snowmen looking at a gruesome death.
 * 8) *He has made a surprisingly haunting quote ("I'm yet another recourse-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you're old and weak!"
 * 9) *He also has an existential mindset and discusses things like death, something that a 6-year-old realistically should not care about.
 * 10) Most of the time, Calvin has little to no respect for his parents and has shown signs of not being grateful for what they do for him, such as constantly insulting the food he's served.
 * 11) He does gross stuff very often, such as the time where he decided to attempt giving a snowman genitals or when he tried to eat a worm for a nickel.
 * 12) He will break stuff and make up totally unbelievable stories of someone or something else breaking it.
 * 13) He will do whatever it takes to torture Rosalyn, his babysitter that's just trying to get paid for college tuitions, by locking her out of the house, threatening to flush her test papers down the toilet, etc.
 * 14) He absolutely hates baths with all his guts for no explained reason and floods the entire bathroom just to not bathe.
 * 15) He actually walks around without his clothes on outside sometimes, which is childish for someone like Calvin.
 * 16) He acts as if being good is extremely hard, and even then he's only good to get Christmas presents.
 * 17) He's a sore loser, as when Hobbes beats him at a board game, he goes on a complete tantrum and flips over and outright destroys the board game.
 * 18) Hypocrisy: Calvin gets mad at Hobbes when he angers him, but what Hobbes does is completely in his control as Hobbes is his imaginary friend, thus giving Calvin the ability to make Hobbes act however he wants.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Calvin can be nice most of the times and sometimes has common sense.
 * 2) He can be relatable in some comics.
 * 3) Calvin & Hobbes' charm would be non-existent without him.
 * 4) His alter-egos (Stupendous Man, Spaceman Spiff, Tracer Bullet, etc.) always make for a fun story.
 * 5) He's not really a bad character; he's just flawed.
 * 6) He gets his comeuppance plenty of times through-out the comic series.
 * 7) He has a lot of memorable quotes, most notably "Sometimes I think that the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.".
 * 8) He does have a point about littering being gross and terrible.
 * 9) He's an accurate representation of how children his age can act.
 * 10) His character design is good, like everyone else.
 * 11) He does have some well-meaning intentions, such as a time where he flooded the house trying to fix the bathroom faucet.
 * 12) He can be sympathetic at times.

Comments


‏