Dec. 7, 1993: Rage against the machine

May 10, 1989: Adulthood is an ad-lib

According to his essays in the 10th anniversary collection of Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson deliberately chose to not give Calvin's parents actual names. While readers occasionally get a glimpse into their inner lives, through Dad's cycling habit or Mom's love of reading, both characters' primary relevance to the strip is in how they relate to Calvin. For all his precociousness, Calvin's still at an age where he might not realize that his parents have real names. More importantly, it adds nothing to the strip for them to have them, so they don't.

In addition, Watterson was always careful to keep Calvin's parents from being prosaic dispensers of time-honored wisdom. In fact, every time Calvin's dad tells him an entertaining lie about the world rather than the actual truth (like........

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