"Calvin & Hobbes" -- Bill Watterson's Use of Visual Style to Create Themes and Ideas

    In Bill Watterson's comic Calvin & Hobbes, he uses visual language to help emphasize his stories and themes. There are many things that attribute to visual language including linework and color, character construction, and aesthetics. The use of these can make a comic all that more powerful and impactful when a viewer sees and reads it.

    Linework and color are some of the bigger voices in a comic's visual language -- it's the first thing you see on the cover of the comic and this alone gives a big hint to the viewer what type of comic they're about to read. For Calvin & Hobbes, the linework is usually pretty simple but energetic, which is fitting as Calvin is an energetic and imaginative child. Keeping the linework simple also helps ensure that the art doesn't overtake the themes or messages Watterson wants to impart within the comic. Color-wise, it's usually kept with simple saturated colors, giving it a fun and inviting feel to it.

    Because viewers are used to this style, Watterson can make changes to the linework and colors to help emphasize other points. Like in the comic below: Watterson right off the bat in the first panel uses a more detailed and realistic style to showcase a dead bird, also leaving it colorless. Leaving it colorless shows its lifelessness, but even in death it still has a beauty to it -- which Calvin comments on within the third panel. Contrasting to this, Calvin and Hobbes are still in their style and are colored, signifying their life and the simplicity of a child first encountering death. Watterson leaves no room for a background until the final panel as well, featuring just the two sitting under a tree as birds fly by. These figures -- save the tree -- are all colored as it seems that the two are now reflecting life and the precious beauty of it. The use of color or lack thereof help settle the philosophical thoughts of life and death that Watterson had left with them in his words in the middle eight panels.

    Within Calvin & Hobbes, there is also character construction. For me, I for some reason kept interpreting it as character types (as in archetypes), but it is really more about art style, or how Watterson draws the characters in the comic. In the comic below, this has a good example. This is the usual character construction for Calvin and Susie, typical kids hanging out outside. For Hobbes, we can see that he is switching back-and-forth between his personified form and doll-form. When we get to see the world through Calvin’s imaginative eyes, then Hobbes comes to life and he is a real tiger; however, when we see through outsider’s eyes (in this case -- Susie’s), then Hobbes loses this form and takes his true form, a doll.

    Finally, there’s also the use of aesthetics within Watterson’s comics. Usually, he leaves it as just a comic-y, cartoon-y style. Sometimes, though, Watterson uses other styles and aesthetics to help propel certain stories. As in the comic below, Watterson uses a change in character construction and aesthetics to help create the tone or atmosphere around this story. It’s very clear and plain that the aesthetics this strip is going for is from the Twilight Zone. Watterson uses a greyscale, sepia toned color scheme to give a 1960s TV appearance. Through this aesthetic, we can envision Calvin in the TV world. The way his character is constructed, with the same mannerisms as his original design, however there are a few tweaks that have been made that help propel the feeling of horror or anxiety. His eyes are now more rounded and shorter than they usually are, and his smile stretches just a bit too wide than it should. The other characters’ faces also help form these feelings. Along with this, in the last panel, Watterson chose to color the scene. To me, this suggests the idea that we are now in Calvin’s mind and that perhaps he’s “broken out” of the “TV” and has entered the world with us. It’s almost as if Calvin’s world has been inverted completely through these aesthetics, even the borders surrounding the panels are black instead of white!

    Through the use of linework and color, character construction, and aesthetics, Bill Watterson implements visual language to explore and show ideas and themes in Calvin & Hobbes. It will leave readers happy to read when looking at the usual forms for the comic and then with the visual language in comics like the ones I’ve shown, the viewers will feel a full range of emotions, but for sure they will be very glad to have read such a well-made comic from the writing side to that artistic side.