In the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Caldwell argues that the revered Calvin and Hobbes was America's most profound comic strip. He quotes the late political scientist James Q. Wilson, the inventor of the Broken Windows Theory of policing, who stated that Calvin and Hobbes expressed an Aristotelian worldview:
The late political scientist James Q. Wilson described “Calvin and Hobbes” as “our only popular explication of the moral philosophy of Aristotle.” Wilson meant that the social order is founded on self-control and delayed gratification—and that Calvin is hopeless at these things. Calvin thinks that “life should be more like TV” and that he is “destined for greatness” whether he does his homework or not. His favorite sport is “Calvinball,” in which he is entitled to make up the rules as he goes along.
Day-in, day-out, Calvin keeps running into evidence that the world isn’t built to his (and our) specifications. All humor is, in one way or another, about our resistance to that evidence.
-via Joe Carter