>>104050138I'd say "no" but the official answer is that there is no answer, and there are "different sides of reality."
If you try to look at the comic realistically, it doesn't work. For a six-year-old, Calvin would be some sort of freakish super-genius.
As the names suggest it's just a whimsical look at human nature through a "lite" philosophy lens, it critiques things like commercialism, the education system, religion, art, academia and that sort of shit.
Obviously, it has things to say about childhood and family life that resonates with people, but one thing that really stood out about it and that people liked was it didn't dumb itself down. Calvin makes a snowman art piece called "The Torment of Existence Weighed Against the Horror of Nonbeing" and Watterson didn't make sure the characters always used monosyllabic words and simple sentences and fart jokes. Calvin & Hobbes is not brilliant it's just normal and speaks to readers as fellow humans.
The comic was right next to shit like Cathy where the joke was always that Cathy's clothes made her look fat or some shit and the Family Circus where Billy walked farther than he needed to hyuk hyuk or Garfield squishing a spider. Kids just really appreciated a piece of entertainment that didn't go way out of its way to be retarded on purpose, talk down to, insult, belittle, and pander to them. It wasn't really that amazing but not much get put out there that isn't really fucking dumb, so people act like it's this incredible thing. And it was good and I enjoyed it, I just mean that in some ways what's sad is how rare simple matter of fact exploration of ideas and discussion of issues is in pop culture which for decades has been aggressively stupid because people assume stupid sells and they're right. And there's nothing wrong with stupid but it gets boring if that's all there is to consume.
