Childhood heroes
By Munawar Mobin
Red and Rover: Red and Rover is a comic strip by Brain Basset which first came out in the year 2000. Red is a 10 year old boy who loves rockets, baseball and wants to go to space. Red and Rover can both understand each other somehow and each knows what each the other is thinking. Their adventures always involve space and chasing squirrels.
Calvin and Hobbes: During the ten years between 1985 to 1995, the world was blessed with Bill Watterson's comic book strip called 'Calvin and Hobbes'. It followed the events in the life of Calvin, an adventurous six year old blonde boy and Hobbes, his stuffed tiger. These two were the dynamic duo back in the day, with trips all around the boy's imagination, where the strips would focus on his relationship with others around him; The ride was a fun one, and the fact that the tiger is was not stuffed, but rather very much alive to Calvin made it all the more hilarious.
Peanuts: Peanuts had been once deemed 'the longest story ever to be told by a human being; it had been published in over 2600 newspapers with followers from all over the world, whose number roughly stood around 355 million people. Charles M. Schulz is the proud author who penned this major success of a comic strip, and made it about a group of friends, with Charlie Brown, as the main protagonist and later, Snoopy(yes, the same one with the white body and black ears).
Nancy: In 1938, a little chubby girl named Nancy was a role model for many children. Nancy was a character cooked up by Ernie Bushmiller and the comic strip about this little smart girl, is still running. She was cute, funny and stubborn at times and at times she became her own worst enemy. She was a relatable character and the people back then loved her. Bushmiller was a classic laugh at that time; he came up with jokes so good that they catered to a large audience, taking into account the fact that it was a comic strip and not a joke book makes him all the more impressive.
Casper: Casper the friendly ghost is so renowned that there needs be no introduction. Torn between reality and the ghost world, Casper strives to make his friends smile, no matter how alive or dead he really is. From getting gifted a bike so scary that the paint itself ran away to almost everything else, Casper was the greatest friend to have. Seymour Reit is the man we thank for Casper, along with cartoonist Joe Oriolo.
All these children heroes in comics are as great as they could get, but as illogical as it sounds, at the end of the day, they do exist. Perhaps not as a definite physical form(especially Casper of course), but in the sense that these were the characters who taught each and every one of us a little something we needed to know in order to grow up properly and change the world.
