This piece argues that Bill Watterson's *Calvin and Hobbes*, which ran from 1985 until its final strip on 31 December 1995, remains the greatest newspaper comic strip ever produced, some 31 years on. It credits the strip's enduring reputation to Watterson's distinctive and increasingly refined artwork, which gave the comic a painterly, three-dimensional quality that set it apart from flatter contemporaries such as Garfield, and to its central premise of a lonely but imaginative six-year-old boy, Calvin, and his sentient stuffed tiger, Hobbes.

The article highlights how the strip blended everyday mischief, such as building snowmen, inventing the game Calvinball, and clashes with Calvin's parents, with flights of fantasy, including Calvin's alter ego Spaceman Spiff, to explore weightier themes like death, existentialism and the confusing behaviour of adults, reflected in the characters' namesakes, the philosophers John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes. It contrasts the strip's ambition favourably with simpler gag-based comics like Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, placing it alongside Charles Schulz's Peanuts in terms of emotional depth, while suggesting its imaginative core would never have translated successfully to a feature film.