I thought it was bitter and cynical. It worked quite well on its own terms, which were savagely negative. But if you have seen the last Calvin and Hobbes Sunday, with its marvelous "let's go exploring" conclusion, you would have understood that Watterson, who often voiced bitterness and cynicism himself, had decided to vote for life and joy. The person who did this must be deeply unhappy. The Italian writer and patriot Giuseppe Mazzini once put it memorably: "Anyone who can deny God in front of a night sky full of stars must be either greatly unhappy, or greatly guilty". And I do not think that without its underlying sense of joy, energy and fun (which admittedly sometimes lay very under indeed) C&H would have been such a monumental hit and touched us all so much.