Calvin and Hobbes Log Bridge Parodies

About

Calvin and Hobbes Log Bridge Parodies are a series of fan art illustrations depicting two fictional characters crossing a creek over a log bridge, as originally seen in an iconic Calvin and Hobbes cartoon drawing by Bill Watterson.

Origin

The original drawing stems from Calvin and Hobbes, a daily comic strip illustrated by American cartoonist Bill Watterson that ran in more than 250 U.S. newspapers from 1985 to 1995.^[4] During its decade-long run, Watterson developed a recurring visual motif in which Calvin and Hobbes are crossing a body of water over a makeshift bridge. This image originally shows up in 1988 Sunday comic collection: The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book.^[13] A very similar version of this image is found in a comic strip published on April 19th, 1992,^[3] and this "Log Bridge" instance being one of the most widely recognized iterations in the series.

On October 27th, 2007, DeviantArt user spacecoyot^[1] uploaded a historical fanart illustration of Renaissance thinkers John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes, after whom the cartoon characters were named, crossing a log just like in the original drawing.^[2]

Spread

On April 1st, 2008, Three Men in a Tub^[5], a sketch blog run by artists Ted Dawson and Wes Hargis, published a post titled "Calvin and Hobbes Goes Manga" with an illustration of the pair on the log reimagined as Japanese manga characters. The post announced Calvin and Hobbes would be released as a manga, but it was eventually revealed to be an April Fool's Day prank.

On March 4th, 2012 Threadless T-shirt artist CoolJohnny^[6] submitted an illustration for consideration for a potential T-shirt printing titled "Bilbo and Gandalf" which featured the Lord of the Rings characters crossing the log. The submission was scored by over 500 people and received a T-shirt printing(shown above, right).

On January 6th, 2014, Dorkly^[7] published a post titled "30 Incredible Calvin and Hobbes Mashups" which included illustrations that replaced Calvin and Hobbes with characters from Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad.

Notable Examples

Calvin and Hobbes are often swapped out for characters in sci-fi and fantasy movies and television shows including Matthew Waite's^[8] Batman and Breaking Bad versions, Joel Watson's Walking Dead take, Oliviero's^[10] Pokemon mash-up, iamleche^[11] Adventure Time version, and SimonDiff's^[12] Last of Us take.

Search Interest

External References