The Spirit Of ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Gets Channeled In ‘It’s A Good Life’

Remember that hole in your heart created when “Calvin and Hobbes” ended? Timothy Lim and Mark Pellegrini are putting a band aid over it with their comic strip, “It’s A Good Life“.

Timothy Lim’s chameleonic ability to mimic artistic styles is remarkable and gives the comic a wide range of art options that just aren’t available to most webcomics. Most impressive is his ability to inhabit the style created by Bill Watterson in “Calvin and Hobbes”. Like pretty much every comic book reader alive during Watterson’s 1985-1995 run, “Calvin and Hobbes” is probably my all time favorite comic strip. As a result, it is basically impossible for me to look at “It’s a Good Life” and not feel a flush of pleasure from recognition. It doesn’t hurt that “It’s a Good Life” also lifts some of Watterson’s best Sunday comic storytelling techniques, for example, in the strip below when he shifts styles to indicate playing make believe Ghostbusters is definitely indepted to Watterson’s strip of Calvin and Susie playing house.

Pellegrini’s writing is much more along the lines of a “Foxtrot,” the strip firmly resides in pop culture commentary, sex jokes and the occasional racial humor joke (so far always Asian jokes about Timothy Lim). The pairing of these two styles seems like an Internet goldmine and I can’t wait to see more strips.

Check out some of our favorites here or see more of “It’s a Good Life” on Timothy Lim’s Deviant Art page.

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