Until its retirement in 1995 after a ten-year run, Calvin and Hobbes won numerous awards and drew tens of millions of readers from all around the world. The story of a boy and his best friend - a stuffed tiger - was a pitch-perfect distillation of the joys and horrors of childhood, and a celebration of imagination in its purest form. Michael Hingston mines the strip and traces the story of Calvin's reclusive creator to demonstrate how imagination - its possibilities, its opportunities, and ultimately its limitations - helped make Calvin and Hobbes North America's last great comic strip.