The Calvin and Hobbes Portable Compendium Set 1 (Volume 1)

Puré genius

From the end of the eighties onwards,, we collected every Calvin and Hobbes book released. The first few were nicely uniform and easy to hold single-handed (such as “Something under the bed is drooling” and “Yukon Ho!”. They looked good together on the bookshelf. Then, the format changed and the books were much bigger and in landscape format, making the opened book over half a metre wide (“Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat”). It became a two-handed operation to read, and ridiculously cumbersome when trying to enjoy a little bedtime reading. The anthologies were also large format, but portrait. A total mess on the bookshelf. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collated the entire comic strip in four books, but these were even bigger than the earlier landscape releases (nearly 3/4 of a metre wide when open). That makes this new Portable Compendium series so very welcome. The packaging is portrait, but the individual books are landscape, and a much more manageable size, allowing single-handed support - perfect for bedtime reading. They are also consistent between collections, so they’ll look neat and tidy on your bookshelves. It also appears that the spines are going to be colour-graded so the final collection of seven volumes follows the colours of the visible spectrum.The content was never in question. This is one of the best comic strips out there. Now, you can have the perfect presentation as well!

The drawings are great and this is a really lovely set.

Bought for my little sister, she loved it.

Go buy this .. every family should have Calvin and Hobbs

If you are looking at this as your first foray into the world of Calvin and Hobbes do not hesitate as they are great. Watterson is up there with Schultz and Barks as one of the great cartoonists; his work consistently makes me (and my 8 year old son) laugh and there is some profundity in his work as well.If you are already a fan: this is an accessible and easy way to read the strips. The complete collection is great and gives the cartoons the grandeur they deserve but for pick up and read, these are better. I will be getting the full series as they are released.

This will help save your sanity

Bought for a present and she loved them. Kept hearing giggling as she read them.