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Calvin and Hobbes

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

22/09/2009

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Calvin and Hobbes

Phill Jupitus on the comic strip about a boy and his tiger.

Phill Jupitus reveals how Bill Watterson's boy and tiger comic strip could have earned him multi-millions worldwide. From September 2009.

Phill Jupitus celebrates Calvin and Hobbes, the comic strip about the little boy and his stuffed tiger named after eminent philosophers. 

Over the course of ten years, the strip became an international phenomenon, being syndicated in 2,500 newspapers worldwide. It tells the tale of a young boy whose stuffed tiger is as real to him as the people around him, and deals in the process with philosophical issues about free will and the meaning of life, via the perspective of a child with an extraordinary imagination. Its creator, the reclusive Bill Watterson, could have become a multi-millionaire through merchandising deals and film offers, but turned them all down without hesitation. 

Phill sets out to discover more about the characters and the man behind them. In Watterson's absence, Jupitus heads to Oxford to speak with artists, merchandisers, booksellers and philosophers to find out what makes the strip so popular, years after Watterson drew the final frame.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2009.

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