Early Installment Weirdness / Calvin and Hobbes

• The strip trafficked quite a bit in shock value and dark humor during its first few years. The fantasies were more grotesque than fanciful, and one notorious 1986 strip even had references to terrorism and inhaling pesticide.
• Calvin started out as a member of a Boy Scouts-esque organization, which was quietly dropped after Watterson had more trouble coming up with material for them than he thought he would (primarily because Hobbes was only animate when he was alone with Calvin, and the cub scouts are group cooperation-heavy, so Watterson had to keep finding ways to write the other scouts out of the story). Then he realized Calvin would never have joined such a group in the first place (unless, of course, one assumes his dad made him do it to build character). These were replaced with the camping trips Calvin's dad forced the family to go on each summer.
• The first camping trip had the family going to a cabin instead of sleeping in tents as was the norm for every camping trip afterwards. It also had No Ending and just stopped abruptly with no explanation (the last strip is Calvin and Hobbes cooking hot dogs and burning them and then the next one is Calvin and his family back home), unlike later story arcs which always had a definitive conclusion.
• Hobbes started out with pads on his hands. Watterson removed them later on the grounds that they were "visually distracting." Hobbes' hands were also sometimes completely or partly orange in the earlier Sunday comics, but in later strips they became consistently white.
• Though Calvin was always unusually precocious for a six-year-old, the first few years of the strip are quite a bit lighter on the philosophical moments and had less overt commentary than the rest of the comic, even in the occasional dramatic storyline such as Calvin losing Hobbes or the well-known injured raccoon story arc. Later strips also tended to be much more dialogue-heavy more often.
• The very first strip is the only time Calvin refers to his father as "Pop" instead of "Dad".
• One early strip had Susie trying to cheat off of Calvin on a test. Later strips would characterize her as a diligent student who would never do that (not to mention being smarter than to trust any answer Calvin came up with, even though it was (unintentionally) correct).
• One strip implied the family owned two cars. Before kicking off another Rosalyn arc, Calvin thought his parents were going to leave him home alone while they went out for the evening. Calvin suggested to Hobbes that they "get in the other car and learn to drive." This "other car" is never seen or mentioned again in future strips and the little purple hatchback the family is usually in remains their sole vehicle.
• Earlier strips had more explicit Ship Teasing between Susie and Calvin, including Susie often making attempts to socialize with Calvin, and Calvin actually giving her a valentine (albeit a vulgar and insulting one). Their relationship became more outwardly hateful later on (although a duplicator arc suggested it wasn't that Calvin stopped liking Susie, only that he stopped showing it). Susie and Calvin were also more frequently friendly towards one another early on rather than the back-and-forth belligerent relationship they had for most of the run.
• One 1986 strip had Calvin eating several bowls of cereal known as "Crunchy Sugar Bombs", rather than the Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs that became standard as Calvin's undisputed favourite.
• The very first strip had Calvin's dad washing a car that resembled a Ford LTD. This car never appeared in any other appearances; the car seen in every subsequent strip was an econobox hatchback from then on (rarely, a second car is mentioned, but never seen).
• Some of the earlier story arcs incorporated the longer Sunday format into them (for example, the "Yukon Ho!" story and the camping trip where it rained the entire week), but this is absent in later long-form stories because it took too much effort to ensure Sunday strips lined up with the dailies to make it worth the effort.^note In the 10th anniversary edition commentary, Watterson stated that Sunday strips needed to be done at least two months in advance (meaning if a longer story arc had a Sunday incorporated into it, the entire story needed to be done two months in advance) and couldn't be plot essential, since many newspapers didn't include a Sunday strip.
• A 1986 strip had Calvin in an Imagine Spot where he saw Hobbes as a saber-toothed tiger. A strip from earlier that year had Calvin imagining himself as a pirate, with the last panel showing that Hobbes was aware of the fantasy. In later strips, Hobbes only appeared in the "real" world and never took part in Calvin's Fantasy Sequences, likely because Hobbes would come across as too "imaginary" if Calvin imagined him as anything other than a tiger.
• The earlier dinosaur-related fantasies were much looser on accuracy, depicting the tyrannosaurs as tail-dragging, upright kangaroo-stanced, three-fingered, and coexisting with cavemen in a Hollywood Prehistory setting, but this was abandoned fairly quickly when Watterson realized Calvin would probably be pretty knowledgeable and up-to-date on paleontology, so he started doing more research himself to better reflect this; all the dinosaurs became more realistic and they were never shown alongside cavemen or sabre-tooth tigers again.
• The early Fantasy Sequence segments also had the same cartoony art-style as the "real" portions, but Watterson realized they didn't need to adhere to a uniform art-style and found the imaginary parts looking more "real" than the actual real parts funnier (compare the octopus in this early strip with the one in this strip, only a few years later). This is evident with the Spaceman Spiff strips, which had flat, cartoony backgrounds at first, but swapped to much more realistic desert landscapes later on.
• The fantasy monsters and aliens that appeared, such as the creatures Spiff encountered, the one-off aliens in Sunday strips, or the boogiemen that lived under Calvin's bed, also became much more detailed and uniquely designed than they had been prior, with many Starfish Aliens in the later comics.
• One of the earliest Spiff strips showed Spiff inside a giant spacecraft rather than the small one that appeared in every other strip. It also shows Calvin's classroom on the second floor, but all other appearances show Calvin's school only has one floor.
• In another one of the earliest Spiff comics, there is narration dialogue present in the panels separate from Spiff's own dialogue, which, unlike all other Spiff strips, is in first-person, rather than the third-person narrative dialogue that Spiff would use in all other appearances. The aftermath of Spiff shooting the "hostile alien" is also shown without breaking from the Fantasy Sequence, unlike other appearances where it would cut back to reality.
• Watterson also noted in the same commentary that as the fantasy sequences got an Art Shift, the art of the "real" sequences also changed to be more emotive, dynamic, and slapstick, with greater emphasis on implied movement. The change in art style started to take place by the third year of the comic's run.
• In the beginning of the comic's run, it didn't follow the flow of real life seasons as was the norm in the rest of the comic. Calvin would go from wearing a t-shirt in summer weather to wearing a coat in thick snow in the very next strip, and then back again, unlike later strips where it would stay winter for the duration of the winter months.
• In one very early strip, Calvin asks a question and in the next panel his television is shown answering the question with a thought bubble, and in one other early strip, an Ouija board insults Calvin. Inanimate objects snarking never appeared again outside of the very early strips.
• Earlier strips were generally heavier on then-contemporary references and Shout Outs, which tend to date them more apparently. Later strips had far fewer explicit references to other media, or restricted it to media that were more broadly popular, likely in a stronger effort to keep the comic more timeless.
• In a March 1986 story arc, Calvin's parents go out on a date and leave Calvin home alone for the night because they couldn't find a babysitter. This arc predates Rosalyn's first appearance by a few months, after which it was characterized that Calvin's parents would never, ever, under any sane mind leave Calvin alone for that long, and Rosalyn would always babysit him on his parents' dates. (Although it's possible that they simply learned from their mistake.)
• One of the earliest Rosalyn appearances was in a one-off Sunday comic (by production it is the earliest), but this never happened again. This was because Watterson initially intended her to be a one-off character but realized she had more potential for further appearances, so all other Rosalyn appearances are multi-part story arcs which were not covered by Sunday strips.
• Rosalyn's first appearances (the Sunday strip and the first story arc) also had her act more as a Babysitter from Hell, acting mean towards Calvin for no real reason. Subsequent appearances made her into more of a Badly Battered Babysitter whom Calvin would actively provoke first.
• In one early story arc, Rosalyn was Calvin's swimming instructor, rather than his babysitter for once. This was a very rare instance of a side character operating outside their normal role in Calvin's life and never happened again. Similar to the cub scout segments, this was also an early example of Calvin in a group activity, which were absent later in the comic's run for probably the same reason.
• Calvin was far less narcissistic and more child-like in the earlier part of the comic's run, but as Calvin's character solidified and the comic's humour got more sophisticated, it got funnier writing Calvin with the sensibilities of a bratty child but with the vocabulary of an adult.
• The first time the strip ran in October (in 1986), there was a Halloween story arc lasting a few days. This was the only time there was a multi-part Halloween-related story, and Halloween was rarely even acknowledged in subsequent years. Christmas was the only holiday that consistently retained story arcs.
• Similarly, the first time the strip ran in February (also 1986), there was a short Valentine's Day story arc lasting for three weekdays. This was the only Valentine's Day story arc and the only Valentine's-related weekday strips; all following Valetine's Day strips were limited to one-off Sunday strips.
• One early strip had Calvin attempt to turn into a hero called "Captain Napalm", while a few other strips had Calvin pretending to be Superman, before Stupendous Man was established as Calvin's only superhero persona. Captain Napalm was still occasionally referenced later on as a superhero whose comic books Calvin enjoyed reading, and was generally implied to be a parody of Captain America, albeit with an edgy '90s Anti-Hero makeover.
• Stupendous Man's first appearance had a different costume than later appearances, having a domino mask rather than a full cowl. He was also responding to a "cry of distress"; nothing like this ever happened again.
• Earlier comics had more appearances by one-off side characters, such as a florist when Calvin tries to get dead flowers for Susie, a barber in a story arc where Calvin gets his hair cut, a photographer for the school picture day story arc, a substitute teacher in a story arc where Mrs. Wormwood was away, a ticket booth employee in a strip where Calvin and Hobbes try to sneak into an R-rated movie and the gym teacher in a Spaceman Spiff strip. Later on, these characters appeared far more rarely as the cast was stripped down to the bare minimum; aside from his parents, the only adults to appear more than once are his teacher, the principal, and his doctor (and even then, the doctor stopped appearing halfway through the comic's run). Notably, a much later strip where Calvin has his hair cut keeps the barber completely offscreen and voiceless, as did a later story arc with another substitute teacher.
• Relating to this was the introduction of the character Uncle Max in 1988, who was intended to help broaden the cast by being a recurring side-character. However, Watterson found he was difficult to write for due to his self-imposed writing constraints for the strip and felt redundant because he didn't bring out as many interesting interactions with Calvin as he had hoped. So after his first and only appearance, he scrapped the character, making him the only member of Calvin's family besides his parents who ever physically appeared.
• In some of the earlier strips, the monsters under Calvin's bed spoke with normal speech bubbles, but later on they were given "dripping" bubbles to make them seem more sinister and inhuman.
• In its initial appearance, the bicycle that Calvin tries to ride was not depicted as being explicitly malicious or sentient, only that Calvin was ridiculously bad at riding it. Later on, it was rewritten as an intentionally aggressive and hateful beast towards Calvin, trying to run him down at every opportunity.
• The first two printed collection covers depicted scenes from one-off Sunday strips, but the subsequent covers all depicted scenes from long-form story arcs within the collection. However, when the format of the Sunday strip changed and the collections became wider, the covers went back to depicting scenes from one-off comics.
• One 1987 strip has Hobbes mention an mysterious unseen past event called the "Salamander Incident" that Calvin was involved in and denies responsibility of. This predates the later, much more well-known, Noodle Incident that was introduced in 1990 and became the strip's go-to mystery unseen event for the rest of the run, while the "Salamander Incident" was never mentioned again.
• The first time the Noodle Incident was mentioned, it was only called "the noodles". It was also made clear that it happened at school and Miss Wormwood knew about it; details like this were never mentioned again.
• In one of the earliest Spaceman Spiff appearances, Calvin has a physical toy of Spiff's little red spacecraft, which was never shown again; nearly all later Spiff appearances were entirely occurring in Calvin's head and what few "props" were used were all normal objects.
• The very first time Hobbes' Attack Hello was depicted, it was a more mundane pounce from Calvin's bed rather than a lunging grapple the moment Calvin opens the front door (a later early appearance also depicted it more as a downward pounce).
• In two of the little red wagon's early appearances, it's being taken along for a walk with Calvin and his parents, and in another, it actually manages to make it down the hill without crashing. Two very early appearances also had it hurtling off a pier (one of which inspired the cover for the first print collection), but all subsequent appearances had it either crash into a tree or off a cliff if a ride was shown ending (in fact, one later strip states that Calvin hasn't encountered a dock before, although solely for the sake of a pun punchline).
• One-off Imagine Spot strips where some random supernatural event would happen to Calvin or Calvin would imagine himself as something random (a bat, a dragon, an octopus, or a jungle explorer) became rarer later in the comic's run as Calvin himself solidified as a character and strips became more frequently dialogue-heavy, and long-form story arcs became more common (with the exception of the dinosaur-focused ones). When these Imagine Spot strips did appear in the later run, they were usually reserved for Sunday strips, so Watterson would have room to create suitably vivid illustrations.
• Hobbes' cat-like mannerisms were much more subdued earlier in the strip's run, and he was treated more like a general imaginary friend that just happened to look like a tiger. As the strip went on, Hobbes underwent a reverse Anthropomorphic Shift with more of his feline qualities made apparent, such as sleeping in the sun, chasing small animals, stalking on all fours, and so on.
• In one early strip had Calvin be attacked by a normal (and cartoony-looking) fish. This was absent in later strips, where he would only be attacked onscreen by Animate Inanimate Objects like a leaf pile, a baseball, his bicycle, or his blanket. He would still get attacked by bees and hornets, but they would always be kept offscreen.
• On a minor related note, several numerous early strips showed Calvin and Hobbes fishing, but outside of the first year, Calvin was never shown fishing again. This may be partly due to Watterson limiting the appearance of real animals in the strip (that is, animals appearing outside of Calvin's Imagine Spots) to keep Hobbes' Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane quality ambiguous; Hobbes couldn't actually catch fish because animals didn't see Hobbes as being real either.
• The first two strips had Calvin catching Hobbes in the wild, because at the time Watterson felt obliged to show how the two met. Later strips would outright ignore or even retcon this origin, with Hobbes remarking on what Calvin was like as a baby suggesting they had always known each other, mainly because Watterson came to regret showing a definitive origin.
• The first time one of Calvin's parents tricked Calvin into eating his dinner by saying it was something disgusting it was his dad, but further times the joke was done, it was his mom, and Calvin's dad would always be the one to inadvertently get grossed out.
• One of the earliest strips showing Calvin and Hobbes in their treehouse fort had them roleplaying as "a fierce and dirty band of cutthroat pirates", rather than members of G.R.O.S.S., because it would be a few more years before the club was established in the strip (although even as pirates, Calvin was still adamant on excluding girls). Also, the first appearance of G.R.O.S.S. had Calvin try and set the club up in the garage rather than the treehouse.
• On a minor, mundane note, the first few strips showed Calvin's house having a wall-mounted rotary phone, but it quickly swapped to a more classic table-mounted phone (although still a dial rotary model) within the second year.
• The earliest reference to the nighttime monsters in Calvin's bedroom was in the very first Sunday strip, but differs in numerous respects from future strips involving them. For one, the "monster" turned out to be Calvin's dad, while in all future strips the monsters are "real" (or as real as anything fantastical is in this comic). For another thing, the "monster" is seen clearly and in full, when in all other appearances they are He Who Must Not Be Seen. Thirdly, this is one of the few times there's an Imagine Spot (Calvin imagining his dad as a monster) that never breaks from the "real" sequences. Lastly, it's the only time monsters are referenced being outside Calvin's room rather than confined in it.
• The first time there was an expanded Sunday strip, the panels were numbered, likely because Watterson was afraid the viewers wouldn't be able to follow the new unconventional panel layout. Every other Sunday strip following it did not have numbers, possibly because Watterson became more confident in making comprehensible arrangements.
• Several early strips portrayed Calvin's parents with five-fingered hands (and at least one early strip mistakenly gives Calvin five fingers), before it was established that everyone in the "real world" of the comic only has Four-Fingered Hands.
• This June 1986 strip mentioned Hobbes's father, making it the only time he was referred to as having parents, or indeed family of any sort. As with his initial capture via Calvin's tiger trap, Watterson most likely decided that such biographical elements hindered Hobbes's character more than they helped, especially since they would've made the "imaginary friend" interpretation of his nature less plausible.
• In this 1985 strip, Calvin attempted to hit monsters under his bed with his baseball bat, only for Dad to come in and show that it was just Hobbes. This would imply that Hobbes was inanimate when no one but Calvin was around; there's no way a living character would just let himself be beat like that. In later strips, Hobbes would make it very clear it was him instantly.
• A 1986 story arc had Hobbes stolen by a big dog (off-panel). Not only does this rely on Hobbes being just a toy, Calvin would have to see him as one. Obviously, nothing like this happened again. However, it marked the start of the dramatic story arcs with Bill Watterson saying that he got letters from fans who were worried about Hobbes.
• Some early strips had Calvin in gym class. These were dropped soon after, and Calvin was never seen in any class other than Miss Wormwood's. While Moe would continue threatening to beat up Calvin in gym class, it would not be shown.
• One of the gym class strips had Moe throw a ball at Calvin hard enough to knock him into the wall, and brags about it to a classmate. No other strip had Moe interacting with anyone other than Calvin, nor did this student appear again.
• In one 1986 strip, Calvin places a toy duck in the bath. This was the only time Calvin was ever shown to have an animal toy other than Hobbes.
• In an early Sunday strip, Calvin, who's trying to get some money, asks his mom when his birthday is, to which she responds "Not for a long time." This is the only time in the strip's run that Calvin's birthday was ever mentioned, presumably to avoid the complication of him having a birthday but staying six years old.
  • Likewise, a 1987 arc had Hobbes invited to Susie's birthday party (and given begrudging permission to bring Calvin as a plus-one). Presumably for the same reason as the above, neither Susie nor any other supporting character was ever acknowledged as having a birthday ever again.
• Principal Spittle's name is only referred to in the entire series twice in one story near the very beginning (January 1986), and then he is never referred to by name ever again. In fact, his already meagre speaking roles were drastically reduced to near-total silence as the series went on.
• One early strip has Calvin imagining himself as a Bold Explorer named "Safari Al". Presumably, Watterson was toying with the idea of Al as another recurring alter ego for Calvin and an opportunity to pastiche Jungle Opera tropes, but if so, he clearly found less inspiration there than he was expecting, and Safari Al never reappeared.
• An early strip shows that Calvin's home has a patio in the backyard. Said patio never reappears in subsequent strips (when we see the backyard in later strips, it's simply a grassy area that leads to the woods)

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