Censorship and PC-ness

Basically, I have been really looking forward to the Calvin and Hobbes Complete set release. I had intentions of buying it. No longer. I loved Calvin and Hobbes, it and Bloom County were the best comic strips to ever run in the papers. Apparently, Watterson has done some revisions to his old strips, making them more PC and less offensive.

I fully support the right of an artist to change their work, after all it belongs to them. I was disappointed in the way Lucas changed things in Star Wars, but I never disputed his right to make those changes or that they were as much of an outrage as fans made them out to be. The only thing that really upset me was changing the Han / Greedo scene because I feel that Han shooting first was a character defining moment. You knew what kind of person he was and how he operated from that one scene. The change takes some of that away, but thankfully there is plenty of additional screen time to develop Han.

Watterson has gone back to some of his old strips and changed the dialogue. The best example is the classic (and one of my personal favorites) strip where Calvin is having a bad day, storms in and the dialogue runs like this:

CALVIN: Watch out, Mom. I'm in a bad mood.
MOM: Be in a bad mood somewhere else, OK? I'm busy.
CALVIN: Hmph! I'll bet my biological mother would've bought me a comic book and made me feel better instead of shunning me like you.
MOM: Kid, anyone but your biological mother would've left you to the wolves long ago.
CALVIN: Yeah right. Really, how much did you pay for me?

I find that hilarious. I empathize with that strip from when I was younger and always felt like I must have been adopted because it seemed like I was treated less that my own siblings (which wasn't true). Of course I realize now that the Mom is right, but you can't help seeing and agreeing with Calvin's point of view at the same time. The edited dialogue goes like this:

CALVIN: Watch out, Mom. I'm in a bad mood.
MOM: Be in a bad mood somewhere else, OK? I'm busy.
CALVIN: Hmph! I'll bet a good mother would've bought me a comic book and made me feel better instead of shunning me like you.
MOM: Kid, anyone but a good mother would've left you to the wolves long ago.
CALVIN: Yeah right. Let's see your training certificate.

I guess Watterson was worried about offending adoptive parents, or perhaps he (or his family / friends) has had to deal with an adoptive child situation. The change is most disappointing because it simply isn't funny. It will be coming off my Amazon list, and I will start adding all the old anthology books in its place.