Calvin receives another hated assignment - a collection of fifty leaves due in two weeks. As usual, he procrastinates until the last minute. However, the arrival of two space aliens, Galaxoid and Nebular, looking for the planet's leader provides an unusual option to make sure his project gets completed.
This arc includes examples of the following tropes:
- Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Calvin has aliens collect fifty alien leaves for him. However, to everyone else, it just looks like fifty maple leaves cut into weird shapes, and Calvin fails his leaf collection assignment.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Calvin tries to find a shortcut to his assignment by pawning it off on some aliens, but they don't arrive until late at night, getting him in trouble with his dad. Furthermore, his teacher doesn't believe that what looks like maple leaves cut in weird shapes really came from outer space and flunks him.
- Completely Off-Topic Report: Downplayed; Calvin is assigned to find and label fifty leaves, and he does turn in an assignment of fifty labeled leaves. However, he sold the planet to invading aliens to get fifty of their leaves instead, which look like maple leaves cut in weird shapes. Naturally, he fails.
- Fiction Isn't Fair: When it comes to schoolwork, Calvin's bad luck frequently outmatches his good luck. Mrs. Wormwood assigns her students projects that would be more appropriate for a high-school class (or at least a junior high-school one) than a first grade one. Then again, Rule of Funny. Sometimes he also makes it hard for himself. Case in point, the leaf project:Hobbes: You just need three or four leaves a day.Calvin: I'm not working on weekends.Hobbes: All right, five leaves a day.Calvin: And my weekdays are booked solid until next Thursday at 6:00 P.M!Hobbes [rolling his eyes]: So you need 50 leaves an hour.Calvin: See? It's impossible!
- Hypocritical Humor: When Galaxoid and Nebular haven't returned by bedtime, Calvin rails at them for procrastinating. Hobbes is clearly aware that his friend is Oblivious to His Own Description; Calvin isn't.
- Ignored Aesop: Calvin has to collect fifty leaves for school, and is given two weeks to do it, but puts it off until the evening before it's due. He is able to get two aliens to collect the leaves for him, but to everyone else the "alien" leaves just look like maple leaves cut into weird shapes and he flunks the project. He complains it was a totally pointless project anyway because identifying leaves is completely useless knowledge, picking up a random leafy branch for emphasis. Then Hobbes points out the plant he's holding is poison sumac.Calvin: What makes you say that?
- Know Your Vines: After Calvin utterly fails a report on plants, he angrily asks what good it does to identify plants while holding a branch. Hobbes then replies, "I believe that's poison sumac you're holding."
- Last-Minute Project: Calvin is given two weeks to make a leaf collection, but intentionally puts it off until the very last night. He complains that his mom isn't "flexible" when she won't take him to the arboretum at the last minute. He's able to pawn off the project to two aliens, but Miss Wormwood doesn't believe they're actually extraterrestrial leaves (according to Susie, they just resemble maple leaves cut into weird shapes) and she fails him.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The reader sees Calvin and Hobbes encounter two aliens, who give Calvin a leaf collection in exchange for the planet. However, no one besides Calvin and Hobbes actually sees them and the collection of fifty "alien leaves" is seen by everyone else as just fifty maple leaves cut into weird shapes.
- Never My Fault:
- Calvin has two weeks to complete the project but doesn't ask for his mom to take him to the arboretum until the evening before it's due. He blames his mom for not being "flexible" enough to drop her dinner preparations to help with a last-minute idea.
- When the aliens are late in getting back to him, he blames them for procrastinating, failing to see the hypocrisy.
- When his teacher fails him because she doesn't believe the leaves he handed in are actually from another planet, he blames her for making him have to do such a dumb, pointless assignment in the first place. Right as he says this, he picks up a random branch to make a point, only for Hobbes to tell him it's poison sumac.
- Ridiculous Procrastinator: Calvin is given two weeks to collect fifty different leaves for a school project, but he outright refuses to work on it until the evening before the day it's due. He then gets mad at his mom for not taking him to the arboretum twenty minutes before it closes, while she's busy preparing dinner. When he gets the chance to pawn the project off to a pair of aliens, he gets upset at them for arriving at the very last minute late at night.
- People Zoo: When Susie criticizes his project (noting that the leaves look like cut-up maple leaves), Calvin retorts that he told Earth's new alien owners that girls make good zoo exhibits.
- Take Me to Your Leader: Calvin encounters two aliens who demand to be taken to "the Supreme Earth Potentate". Calvin, to Hobbes' shock, tells the aliens that they're speaking to him. The aliens are gullible enough to believe it.
- Weird Currency: When Calvin tells space aliens he'll give them the Earth for 50 different kinds of alien tree leaves, the aliens thought it meant "these primitive fools [Earthlings] use leaves as currency."
