A Simpler Time

I have been a comics connoisseur since I was a awkward, elementary kid in Ames, Iowa. I had a weird fascination with reading the newspaper everyday. I read the entire paper, but I always started with the comics. Lets face it, the news could wait; but Calvin and Hobbs needed my attention first. Would the water balloon hit Suzy that had been launched from Calvin's treehouse during a meeting of the G.R.O.S.S. club? This was truly the pressing issue for me, whether not Oliver North was a criminal didn't really concern me. O.K. maybe it did, but in an attempt to not be to a strange child I still read the comics first.

Then in 1995 there was no more Calvin and Hobbs. The worst part about the void Calvin and Hobbs left in the comics page was that in 1995 I was an adult. As a kid I read the comics for fun, as an adult the comics were an escape from the misery found throughout the rest of the paper (especially in the sports section...try being a ISU Cyclones fan).

Until recently I was unaware of a great comic that could have been filling the void of Calvin and Hobbs during these last 10 years...Red and Rover. Red is a 10 year old boy how loves space, baseball and model rocketry. Rover is his dog and guardian angel. Of course, Red understands and hears Rover. Red and Rover is set in a time where P.C. meant "polite and courteous." It is almost a pseudo 1960s. His parents are always there for him and his dad has the same sense of humor as Calvin's dad.

Other than Fox Trot, Red and Rover is the only new comic that I try to follow every day or week. If your local paper carries Red and Rover consider yourself lucky, if not bookmark the Red and Rover comics page and get away from real life for a few moments every day.

I leave you with a few quotes from the Calvin and Hobbs comic strip:

Hobbes: " Do you think there's a God?"
Calvin: "Well, somebody's out to get me."

Calvin: "Leave it to a girl to take the fun out of sex discrimination."

Calvin: "The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us."

Calvin: "God put me on this Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind that I will never die."