Cartoon: "Aiee They Got Frank!" (Calvin and Hobbes)

                 In light of analyzing fiction and particularly visual fiction, a cartoon seemed to be the ideal topic for this week’s AOW. Because Calvin and Hobbes stands as a testament to the greatness of comic strips, this strip, drawn by Bill Watterson, is not only one that brings a smile to a reader’s face but also, for Watterson, serves as a medium for delivering his opinions on what normally would be sensitive issues.

                The scene opens up on a typical office setting, where this general setting is quickly made fictional in an instance of role reversal; a group of deer (one of them ironically named “Bamb”) carrying hunting rifles violently shoot and kill an office worker. The comic then displays how this rather unusual depiction is actually the brainchild of Calvin, who, as the smart aleck he is, essentially implies that in the future it will be necessary to do some “thinning of the herds”. Watterson ends this strip with Calvin’s parents dejectedly accepting a (yet another) parent-teacher conference.

                Rhetorically, as both a cartoon and medium for discussion, this Calvin and Hobbes strip stands out as an example of the power of visual rhetoric. What immediately is noticed by the reader is that if one were to take out the “comic” aspect of this, it depicts a violently shot man by angry deer, and a possibly mental child who has consistently displayed similar negative tendencies. What is ironically so powerful about cartoons is how simple and lighthearted they are. Because of “cute” pictures and the notion that Calvin is a smart aleck, Watterson can make a bold statement to readers of usually newspapers and comic strip collections about perspectives people should have about animals and “sports” like deer hunting. Even the fact that Calvin is put in trouble for posing such a topic implies what Watterson feels is unjust about deer shooting, of how poor justification such as “thinning the herds” is not at all appropriate.

                Overall, Watterson’s purpose of making a statement about animal rights through Calvin is achieved. It is also certainly worthy of a grin at the very least. J