Loki Loreday: Kablooie’s CALVIN & HOBBES Connection
Welcome to the inaugural Loki Loreday, a weekly column exploring all things Loki lore. Yes, we’ll eventually get to Loki’s Kinky Boots and the time they decided to become the King of London.
In a Tweet sent on Sunday, June 27th, 2021, Loki writer Michael Waldron revealed that the “Kablooie” gum we saw in the first and second episodes of the ongoing Disney+ series was a homage to the classic newspaper comic Calvin and Hobbes:
A little morsel for the Loki IMDB trivia section: Kablooie was a nod to my favorite writer, Bill Watterson. Bill, if you’re out there, you’re not reading this because there’s no chance you have Twitter pic.twitter.com/9NBQG0Ld6z
— Michael Waldron (@michaelwaldron) June 27, 2021
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes was a daily newspaper strip by Bill Watterson that ran from 1985 through 1995. In one strip, Calvin and his dad have an argument over whether or not Cavlin’s bedtime story will be Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie, which Calvin’s dad argues is the same story they have heard a million times before.
Kablooie! Photo: Bill Watterson
Plus, Calvin is a huge bubble gum enthusiast: he even has a subscription to “Chewing,” a gum magazine, so naming a brand of gum after a reference to the comic makes a lot of sense.
Kablooie Gum Episode 1. Photo: Marvel
There are plenty of comparisons to be made between Loki and Calvin and Hobbes. For one thing, both involve time travel: Calvin would often hop in a cardboard box labeled “dinosaurs” and travel backward through time. And for another, both involve philosophical discussions about the creation of the universe, aka the horrendous space kablooie!
The Horrendous Space Kablooie. Photo: Bill Watterson
But perhaps the biggest commonality between Cavlin and Loki is their shared disdain for institutions and authority – for me, it’s to the point where it’s the defining characteristic for each character. Whether it’s Cavlin’s teach, Mrs. Wormwood, or Mobius M. Mobius at the TVA, neither of these protagonists are a big fan of being told what to do by authority figures!
The only authority Loki can stand is Kate Herron on set. Photo: Marvel Studios
Loki Goes Kablooie
In addition to working on Loki, Waldron has also been hard at work on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Could the two stories be connected? I can’t help but think of the Miss Minutes propaganda video about multiverses (see Loki 103 for more)!
So… is Mobius M. Mobius just another Loki Variant? Photo: Marvel Studios/Titmouse, Inc.
And Waldron’s resume also includes Community, a show with significant impact on the MCU, and Rick and Morty, a Adult Swim show that includes several connections between the dimension-hopping animated series and the Marvel Cinematic Universe!
What do you think of the connection between Calvin and Hobbes and Loki? Let us know your reaction in the comment section, Marvel Blog True Believers!
