 |
| © Bill Watterson (The Tenth Anniversary Book ) |
Watterson’s ability to channel the imagination of a six-year old on full display in his use of a cardboard box. Hingston argues that “it is one of the strip’s quintessential devices, a fan favorite that was guaranteed to push the strip to new and unfamiliar terrirotry while merrily blurring the line between fantasy and reality with each new iteration.” (Hingston 32-33) According to Hingston, Watterson used the cardboard box ten times in the first five years of the strip and with it, created numbeous imaginary trip for both Calvin and the reader. This approach captueres what Hingston refers to as the trapdoor effect—"the possibilities created . . . were always far more numerous than the single, actual detail omitted, thus creating an imaginative space that infinitely dwarfed the reality around it. (Hingston 33) Watterson’s use of information gaps that lead to grand imaginative payoffs in the form of entertainment and adventure is part of the strips allure. Whether the reader realizes it or not, the gaps are intentional imagination triggers. In Watterson’s work, what he leaves out is as important as what he draws and writes. It’s in the “gaps” that imagination takes hold. His use of gaps and lack of endings that Watterson’s genius resides.
The Transmogrifier or Duplicator or whatever that cardboard box is in a given strip is both a trigger and a vehicle for a journey. Readers of Calvin and Hobbes, when seeing a box appear in a frame, know they are in for a ride and before they finish the strip, their imagination is hard at play.
 |
| © Bill Watterson (The Tenth Anniversary Book) |