Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes) - Origins and Development

Origins and Development

Watterson based some of Hobbes's characteristics, especially his playfulness and attack instinct, on his own pet cat, Sprite, who is known to unexpectedly jump out of nowhere. Hobbes takes great pride in being a feline (his love affair with tuna borders on addiction) and frequently makes wry or even disparaging comments about human nature, declaring his good fortune to lead a tiger's life. Reflecting upon his work in the introduction he wrote to The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, Watterson observed that his two protagonists revealed different facets of his own personality. Calvin generally voices what Watterson considered his immature side, often echoing the sentiments Watterson saw prevalent in modern America. ("The consumer is always right"; "There has to be a way to cram more violence into ninety minutes"; "Hold on, I need to inflate my basketball shoes.") By contrast, Hobbes offers a voice of ironic maturity — though he is himself far from immune to silliness.

Calvin captures Hobbes in a "tiger trap" during the first strip of the comic. Watterson initially believed that it was important to establish how his two main characters first met, but by the time he wrote the Tenth Anniversary Book, he had changed his opinion, saying it was unnecessary and even detrimental to the feel of the strip. Much later, it is apparent in several strips that Hobbes and Calvin have known each other their whole lives, including when Calvin was an infant. This contradicted the first two strips, which show Calvin and Hobbes' first meeting. One strip especially shows Calvin claiming that he didn't remember much of his infancy. While Calvin starts going on and on about how he suspects he was being brainwashed when he was very, very young, and asking nobody in particular what he remembered that someone wanted him to forget, Hobbes says "I seem to recall that you spent most of the time burping up." Also, in an earlier strip, Hobbes once mused about some advice his father gave him.

Hobbes' appearance changed over the strip's run; in the beginning he was slightly shorter, and his tufts of fur less defined and shorter. His eyes also had more of a round shape, as opposed to the oval shape of later years. The most notable change, however, were the pads on Hobbes's hands. In earlier years, Watterson drew the pads on Hobbes' hands as a reminder that they were really paws, but later removed them on the grounds that he found them to be visually distracting. However, in one strip after Waterson stopped drawing the pads, Hobbes remarks in response to a complaint by Calvin, "my fuzzy mittens have pads!"

Hobbes' name was revealed in the third strip when Calvin claims that Hobbes was making a lot of noise by jumping on the bed.

Hobbes has claimed that he actually had a family. In one strip, Calvin asks Hobbes what he should do if Moe tries to attack him. Hobbes claims that Calvin should scramble for a tree and sit in it all day. Calvin is outraged by the advice and Hobbes states, "It doesn't impress the girls, of course, but there's no sense in impressing them and getting killed, my dad used to say."