This treasury is far and away the best of the entire Calvin and Hobbes Collection. I own every book, and have recently reread them all, and without a doubt this is the very best. For one thing, it was written right in the middle of Watterson's C&H career, which means that the writing and ideas are still fresh, while super-improved drawings and Sunday strips have just begun. Second of all, Watterson must have been on a powerful creative streak, because there is an amazing number of stories within the "Indispensible" collection. There are three Rosalyn babysitter tales, the bug collection story, the bat project, two camping trips, G.R.O.S.S. adventures, the burglar break in, the car down the hill, multiple Stupendous Mans, multiple Spaceman Spiff getaways, the duplicator going "boink" and creating more Calvin's, a rare, great Tracer Bullet story, Calvin defying gravity and size, Calvin on the baseball team, and a time machine adventure to the dinosaur age. The sheer amount of stories here is unheard of for a C&H collection, and the best part is that almost every one is fantastic. Thirdly, the Sunday strips are in color, which is a huge plus. Fourthly, Calvin's parents have finally been rendered as three dimensional and sympathetic individuals, a characteristic that had been lacking in the earlier books. Last of all, as always, these comics are frequently hilarious, sometimes touching, and always entertaining. This collection personifies those characteristics to the nth degree, and is without a doubt the best Calvin and Hobbes for anyone to buy. If you're looking for other good C&H books, I would also recommend the Essential Collection (first two books, funny yet lacking in drawing), Snow Goons, Psycho Jungle Cat, Treasure Everwhere, and the 10th Anniversary. I hope this was helpful both for prospective buyers, and old fans looking back.
By Big Erik
Fans of Calvin & Hobbes who used to read the newspaper strip in the 80s and 90s will find great pleasure in reading this treasury of C&H comics. These witty comics about the 6-year old Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, named after the famous philosophers, will amuse people of all ages. The perceptiveness and humor of Watterson deserve the highest of cartoon awards, while his artistic creations exude hilarity. This cartoon is perhaps one of the most piercing yet funny critiques of modern society.
This book starts out with Calvin praying for snow so he can engage in one of his favorite hobbies: sledding, and then his other favorite hobby, throwing snowballs at Susie. Aside from the snowman exhibition, this book is a must-have since it covers the founding of C&H's GROSS (the Get Rid of Slimy girlS club). This also has the hilarious series about the time Calvin's personal gravity polarity reversed, and the episode when the Transmogrifier becomes the Duplicator.
Note that there are two series of C&H collections: individual wide-format albums, each covering an entire year of strips (will call it "regular"), and the vertical aspect ratio "treasury series" which covers selected comics from two regular C&H books. Note that C&H ran for a year in newspapers, so there's 10 regular books and 5 treasury books. Though the cartoons are slightly smaller in the treasury collection, each treasury book is far thicker and contains more strips than a regular book, and is furthermore less expensive, so treasury books are a real bargain. "The Indispensable Calvin & Hobbes" belongs to the Treasury collection, and was first released in 1992.
By Giant Panda