Bill Watterson has released several
Calvin and Hobbes "
collections," that is, books filled with all of the strips that appeared in
newspapers. In addition, he has released several
treasury collections, each of which simply contain all of the strips from two of the books mentioned above, as well as featuring a new comic at the beginning. This
comic isn't a standard strip, but is usually a long story or poem (
The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, for example, is prefaced by
A Nauseous Nocturne, a poem that has incredible
watercolor art).
The books, in order of release, are:
The treasuries that have been released: (in order)
In addition, Watterson has released two other books that fit into different categories.
The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book is a collection of Sunday strips that covers most of the span of the first 5 or 6 books. It also includes special strip at the beginning, though it is short.
The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book was released by Watterson in order to try to explain things a bit. It includes many strips, accompanied by the authors explanation of how it affected the strip and why he drew it. It also explains the characters, and how they were created. It also is a fairly good indicator of the reasons for Bill Watterson's retirement.
One thing that should be noted is that beginning with the release of The Days are Just Packed, the books took on a new shape and size. Before, because of the way in which the sunday strips were created, the books were shorter in both height and length. They crammed three regular strips per page, and one Sunday strip on each page. Beginning with The Days Are Just Packed, however, he had won his fight with the syndicate, and was able to draw his Sunday strip just about any way that he wanted. This led to the bigger books that would fully show the new sunday strips. They only have two of the regular strips per page.