The Calvin and Hobbes Portable Compendium (Books 5 + 6)

The third set of books collects Bill Watterson’s timeless Calvin and Hobbes comics in a new portable format designed to introduce the timeless adventures of a boy and his stuffed tiger to a new generation of readers, featuring nearly 500 comics presented chronologically from June 1988 to November 1989.

Calvin and Hobbes was a powerhouse of a comic strip, arguably the natural successor to the enormous success Charles M. Schulz achieved with Peanuts. Notably, Schulz was an admirer of Calvin and Hobbes, but where Schulz leaned heavily into licensing and merchandising Peanuts, Bill Watterson, Calvin’s creator, took the opposite approach. Watterson famously refused to license his characters for any commercial use, insisting that the strip should live solely within the comic panels. This decision may have limited Calvin and Hobbes’ cultural impact. While Calvin could have become a lasting pop culture icon, his world was confined to the printed page. This limited exposure has led the strip to fade into relative obscurity, its legacy sustained mostly by the nostalgia of its original readers.

Another compendium collection is now being released in a budget-friendly format rather than the deluxe hardcovers seen by other publishers. Although it may attract new readers, it’s a reminder of what could have been had the strip had a broader reach and continued beyond its original run. We can only speculate on the impact Calvin and Hobbes might have had if Watterson had allowed the characters to grow beyond the comic strip’s confines.

This compact, portable collection of Calvin and Hobbes comics will fit easily into backpacks, and bookshelves—and make for a perfect stocking stuffer. Featuring an archival slipcase and cover art selected by the author, The Calvin and Hobbes Portable Compendium pays tribute to the strip’s origin in newspapers while appealing to both new and existing fans of Calvin and Hobbes. This is the third set in a series of seven.

Calvin and Hobbes is one of the most popular comic strips ever. The imaginative world of a boy and his real-only-to-him tiger first appeared in 1985 and could be read in more than 2,400 newspapers when Bill Watterson retired on January 1, 1996.