"...Let's go exploring!"

• Editor & Publisher summarizes Bill Watterson's 13-page introduction to The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

Reading the last installment of "Calvin and Hobbes," nearly nine years ago now, gave me a pang of loss that has never quite gone away. Thankfully, nowadays we can just plunk down $100 or so for the complete three-volume edition, published this week by Andrews McMeel, and bask in all the nostalgia you could ask for.

And what a strip it was... charming, literate, funny, beautifully drawn and above all, tremendously imaginative. Hyperactive Calvin and sage Hobbes were two characters with incredible warmth and dimension, and it was a bittersweet thing to see them disappear from the funny pages. But Watterson had the balls to know when enough was enough, and more power to him for that:

"In 'Calvin and Hobbes,' I used my childhood -- sometimes straight out of the can, sometimes wildly fictionalized, and sometimes as a metaphor for my twenties and thirties -- to talk about my life and the issues that interested me. Without exactly intending to, I Iearned a lot about what I love -- imagination, deep friendship, animals, family, the natural world, ideas, ideals ... and silliness. These things make my life meaningful, and having the opportunity to consider it all at length through the medium of drawing was the most personally rewarding part of 'Calvin and Hobbes.'"