The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book
If you don't buy any other Calvin & Hobbes book, buy this one!! Besides reprinting almost every one of my favorite strips, it has essays by creator Bill Watterson on:
The Comics In Transition,
Licensing,
Sabbaticals,
The Sunday Strip,
Influences,
The Process
and Cartooning and Calvin and Hobbes.
There are bio's of each of the cast members, and a bio of Calvin's wagon. This book gives a great deal of insight into the workings of the Comic strip industry, as well as the inner thoughts of Bill Watterson. Buy this book!
It includes the famous playing classical music at 78 RPM dance, the baby raccoon story, The first Tracer Bullet episode (Calvin's Haircut), the first Transmogrifier episode (Calvin turns into a small tiger), The first family camping trip, an excellent explanation and bio of Spaceman Spiff (page 68), Bill Watterson's views on childhood on page 84, the Rosalyn meets Stupendous Man episode, the duplicator story, and the Ethicator story, the baseball series that leads to the development of Calvin Ball, My all-time favorite Tracer Bullet story (case of the trashed living room), the G.R.O.S.S. meeting wherein Calvin & Hobbes kidnap Binky Betsy, the playing doctor strip, drawn soap opera style, Stupendous Man goes to school, and a definitive sampling of the cream of the crop Calvin and Hobbes stories. This book is the bomb.