Bad webcomics

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Brenda Holiday said:
Yet another run of the mill troonslop comic that needs to steal already established characters because no one would give two shits if it was all OCs.
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It feels particularly egregious to spew this diarrhea all over Calvin and Hobbes. If it were trans Garfield or trans Spongebob or whatever, it might be annoying, but those are corporate properties designed to make money, and even their owners have little emotional investment in them. But Calvin and Hobbes is really genuine and earnest, and this comic clearly does not respect the source material. Even ignoring the troonslop, Hobbes has only spoken in two comics so far, and some of Calvin's moments are wildly out of character, and I'm pretty sure a lot of the art is just directly copied and pasted from Watterson's art. Check out how weird Hobbes looks standing next to Calvin in the only strip that he has more than one line.
 
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gasolineman said:
It feels particularly disrespectful to spew this diarrhea all over Calvin and Hobbes. If it were trans Garfield or trans Spongebob or whatever, it might be annoying, but those are corporate properties designed to make money, and even their owners have little emotional investment in them. But Calvin and Hobbes is really genuine and earnest, and this comic clearly does not respect the source material. Even ignoring the troonslop, Hobbes has only spoken in two comics so far, and some of Calvin's moments are wildly out of character, and I'm pretty sure a lot of the art is just directly copied and pasted from Watterson's art. Check out how weird Hobbes looks standing next to Calvin in the only strip that he has more than one line.
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I remember there was a half decent couple of issues of a follow up called Bacon & Hobbes by Phil Berry with a grown up Calvin giving his daughter Hobbes when she had a nightmare, and it was a cute, inoffensive, five or so issues. It felt like how I'd expect a grown up Calvin to be, but without the long rambling philosophical musings I loved, and felt so out of place for a six year old, which was part of the charm of the original, but c'est la vie.

To give credit where its due, the one about Calvin not being able to climb a tree did feel like a real joke that would exist in C & H, of course, its ruined by Calvin looking like a loony troon.

Anyway, I absolutely adore Calvin and Hobbes and have fond memories of reading it all the time as a kid, and I want to just share some great strips. Some were just funny:

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But it would also just sometimes slow down and deal with the reality of life, in ways that a lot of more mature works struggle to do.

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Something about the juxtaposition of all the wacky fun and imaginative non-sense, alongside strips about how sometimes you just need to appreciate what you have always stuck with me.

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I think my life is richer because of Watterson's work. This shit is insufferable.
 
A Very Big Fish said:
I remember there was a half decent couple of issues of a follow up called Bacon & Hobbes by Phil Berry with a grown up Calvin giving his daughter Hobbes when she had a nightmare, and it was a cute, inoffensive, five or so issues.
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That's probably the most famous follow-up, but there have definitely been a lot more fancomics about grown-up Calvin, although I can't remember others by name. In my experience, most Calvin and Hobbes fans really dislike them for some reason. The fact that they like the tranny fancomic to the exclusion of all the others is pretty telling.
A Very Big Fish said:
To give credit where its due, the one about Calvin not being able to climb a tree did feel like a real joke that would exist in C & H, of course, its ruined by Calvin looking like a loony troon.
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There are a few moments that are like that. I think the strip where Calvin inadvertently says "when I grow up," Hobbes points it out, and it takes all the air out of Calvin is absolutely something Watterson would write. But then there are other moments which are bizarrely out of character. In the second strip, Calvin pulls a knife on the monsters under the bed. Can you imagine that? I can't think of a single moment across ten years of comic strips that Watterson portrayed Calvin as a threat. Also the moment where Calvin tells Susie he got boobs because they're "neat." This is contemporary sex-addled troon humor which feels wildly out of place in the world of Calvin and Hobbes.
 
A Very Big Fish said:
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Its is chronologically more accurate to depict Tyrannosaurs in F-14s than it is to show a T-rex fighting a stegosaurus.


gasolineman said:
That's probably the most famous follow-up, but there have definitely been a lot more fancomics about grown-up Calvin, although I can't remember others by name. In my experience, most Calvin and Hobbes fans really dislike them for some reason.
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The issue with "grown up Calvin" is just that: Calvin is grown up and that isn't Calvin.
There are so many things that pretty much foreclude a "fan continuation". The largest is that usually the fart-huffer trying to grave rob C&H can't help but having their smug subversion of the thing they are graffitiing and that removes all charm and whimsy.

They also never grapple appropriately with the nature of Hobbes where he doesn't seem to be more than stuffed toy but then things happen in the comic that should be impossible if he was truly inanimate.

The one's that don't completely shit all over the premise by having Calvin "grow out" of his imaginary friend and still have Calvin and Hobbes interacting while he's older ruin the core premise by ever interaction injecting a bitter reminder of what growing up took from us. The magic of reading Calvin and Hobbes is adults reexperiencing that (and for kids, relating to it) so an adult calvin completely ruins that timeless appeal.

The only possible way you could even hope to provide comics that aren't just crude imitation that continuations of the original run, would be to have post-retirement Calvin having idle-old-man adventures with Hobbes.
Calvin doesn't work when he has serious responsibilities he can't just duck out of, and retirement home Widower Calvin would fit that bill nicely.

gasolineman said:
The fact that they like the tranny fancomic to the exclusion of all the others is pretty telling.
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they are not fans they trannies.

But seriously, break this down.
See what I mention above where Calvin only works when he has no responsibilities. he is self-centered, too dumb to know how dumb he is, no forethought. This describes the average troon.

A sociopathic narcissistic AGP Troon expecting the world to pay for his worthless tranny existence the the closest thing to a real understanding of the character.
 
A Very Big Fish said:
Calvin giving his daughter Hobbes when she had a nightmare
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It remineded me of the last Kunuffle Bunny where the girl loses her doll but ended up giving it to the kid that was cruying on the plane. It's based off the authors actual daughter,
 
Ghostse said:
They also never grapple appropriately with the nature of Hobbes where he doesn't seem to be more than stuffed toy but then things happen in the comic that should be impossible if he was truly inanimate.
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You know what, now I kind of think Jeph Jacques (before he forgot how to form sentences) writing Calvin with a robot Hobbes as an adult would have worked. For a few weeks, not to update every day until he dies.
 
Dr. Butt said:
You know what, now I kind of think Jeph Jacques (before he forgot how to form sentences) writing Calvin with a robot Hobbes as an adult would have worked. For a few weeks, not to update every day until he dies.
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Wouldn't that be Tim and Moby?
 
gasolineman said:
In the second strip, Calvin pulls a knife on the monsters under the bed. Can you imagine that? I can't think of a single moment across ten years of comic strips that Watterson portrayed Calvin as a threat.
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If I recall, with the monsters under the bed he would occasionally have a bat in bed, but the bat was never the actual focus of those strips, it just was there as a tiny visual gag and the actual punchline was his interactions with the monsters and them trying to trick each other.
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As in so much tranny “humor”, the “joke” in the tranny one is “oh hey, remember the thing?” and “we troonslop are good at carrying out violence against our enemies.” It ends up looping back to being a salient point, trannies are delusional nutters who use their fantasies of being under threat to justify their psychopathic behavior.
 
Surfin Terf said:
If I recall, with the monsters under the bed he would occasionally have a bat in bed, but the bat was never the actual focus of those strips, it just was there as a tiny visual gag and the actual punchline was his interactions with the monsters and them trying to trick each other.
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As in so much tranny “humor”, the “joke” in the tranny one is “oh hey, remember the thing?” and “we troonslop are good at carrying out violence against our enemies.” It ends up looping back to being a salient point, trannies are delusional nutters who use their fantasies of being under threat to justify their psychopathic behavior.
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Also, even when Calvin does "successfully" try to fight them, its not some weird troon power fantasy.
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A bit late to the party, but:

Berk Breathed in the 2010s Bloom County revival, seemingly with Watterson's permission, wrote an arc about Hobbes being lost for ages upon ages and found by Opus and co. - naturally, Opus is able to communicate with him! Opus and friends eventually find Calvin's address to mail Hobbes back to him, who by now is living off-the-grid but is a sheer engineering genius, making a real-life version of Spaceman Spiff's spaceship and it's exactly as fast and cool as you'd hope it is.

The last strip and panel of the crossover is a young spiky-haired man opening up a box labeled LIVE TIGER.

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I admit it. I always took this to be the "canon" epilogue to C&H not just due to Breathed (apparently) getting Watterson's blessing to do so, but also due to him treating the characters with exactly the same love, respect, and wonder Watterson did.

As a 10-year old spiky-haired boy who also liked tigers with parents suspiciously like Calvin's when the strip ended, I couldn't have asked for anything better.
 
Mayor Cody Travers said:
Berk Breathed in the 2010s Bloom County revival, seemingly with Watterson's permission, wrote an arc about Hobbes being lost for ages upon ages and found by Opus and co. - naturally, Opus is able to communicate with him! Opus and friends eventually find Calvin's address to mail Hobbes back to him, who by now is living off-the-grid but is a sheer engineering genius, making a real-life version of Spaceman Spiff's spaceship and it's exactly as fast and cool as you'd hope it is.

The last strip and panel of the crossover is a young spiky-haired man opening up a box labeled LIVE TIGER.
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Breathed went all way off the deep end into shitlibbery so view anything he made after Outland as just the spasms of a dying creator.

But Breathed and Watterson knew each other professionally, and were comfortable enough with each other to trade good natured ribbings
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Context: This is was drawn by Watterson. It depicts several Outland characters (Bloom's sunday-only strip that followed the end Bloom County. Or well the original print-paper run since he's rebooted it) being forced to get to work to fund Breathed's hobby of Powerboating.
It was faxed to Breathed by Watterson while Breathed was recovering from a broken arm he got in a powerboating accident.
This not the the shit you draw on the get well card for Susan from accounting.

Waterson also sent stuff like this
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(context: When bloom county ended/outland began, Opus went through a door in an alley with a little black girl character (see above) to Outland. Calvin is yelling to Opus through that door)


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I can't say how close they still are or aren't, but Breathed would want to be very careful with his friend's characters.
 
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