It will come as no surprise to nearly anyone that's met me that I often fall victim to procrastination. It's my personal demon. When I do procrastinate, as I assuredly will, I will go to almost any lengths to avoid what I should be doing until the last minute. At that point, I use the adrenaline and the mad, panicked rush of meeting deadlines to fuel my late-night writing sprees. All this is to say that it was in the hours before one of these sprint-to-the-finish rushes that I went back and read some of my favorite comic strips that I remember growing up with.
As a kid, I remember always wondering how some Calvin and Hobbes strips would have my 10-year old mind in stitches, while others would make my parents laugh until they cried but leave me wondering what this little boy and his trusty tiger had said that was so funny. So now, being older in body and slightly older in mind, I decided to pay my favorite over-imaginative 6-year old a visit. Any time Calvin and Hobbes would discuss something that went over my head as a kid, it always seemed to be while they were exploring outside. After looking up several examples, this one struck me as particularly deep.
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As usual, our dynamic duo are climbing over rocks and trees and rivers, and this time Calvin is talking about how it's interesting that evolution would give humans a sense of humor. He can't wrap his mind around why we, as a people, find absurdity amusing. Our love of things that don't make sense leads to a common response shared by all: laughter. While Calvin racks his brain for some solution, Hobbes comes up with a simple response that, in ways, seems far too deep and philosophical for a kid's comic.
"I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that didn't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life." As Calvin stopped dead in his tracks, so did my the thoughts running through in my brainpan. How could this imaginary tiger say something that seemed like it could be paraphrasing one of the great minds of the past? It was at that moment that I realized just how true it was that comic strips aren't just for kids. Sure, the slapstick humor and bright colors that dominate the panels of the Sunday paper attract the attention of younger readers, but it's the humor and truths in the subtle, more mature dialogue that grows with the audience and keeps them hooked for decades.
