Insects In Comics

Calvin the Bug

Calvin the Bug[/caption]There is a lot of Buzz about the brief return of Bill Watterson (creator of the comic, Calvin and Hobbes) to the comic pages last week. Calvin and Hobbes rarely featured insects but the most memorable was “Calvin the bug”.

Calvin the bug was Calvin pretending to be a fly searching the picnic for someone to bite or Calvin at home taking bites from multiple cookies while pretending to be a fly doing the same. The drawings of the fly are accurate and contain many of the details visible on flies.

Other than imitating the annoying behavior of some insects, Calvin showed no interest in insects. When assigned to make an insect collection, Calvin forgot to make one.

When assigned to write a report on insects Calvin came up with this faux pax:

Calvin and Hobbes captured the commonly held belief that insects are annoying or not very interesting.

About jjneal

Jonathan Neal is a retired Associate Professor of Entomology at Purdue University and author of the textbook, Living With Insects (2010). This blog is a forum to communicate about the intersection of insects with people and policy. This is a personal blog. The opinions and materials posted here are those of the author and are in no way connected with those of my employer.

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