Creative Snowmen à la Calvin and Hobbes: Monsters, Sharks and a Dalek

Some people roll three snowballs, add a carrot and call it a day. Others build snow monsters devouring their victims, a shark leaping out of the lawn or a Dalek from Doctor Who. These darkly funny snowmen recall the macabre snow sculptures of Calvin, the six-year-old hero of Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, and they show how much story a few lumps of snow can tell.

Calvin and Hobbes and the macabre snowman

Calvin and Hobbes ran in newspapers from 18 November 1985 to 31 December 1995. It started in 35 papers and at its peak appeared in more than 2,000 worldwide. Every winter, Calvin turned the front yard into a gallery of disturbing snowmen, and Watterson used these creations to poke fun at the art world: when criticised, Calvin would defend his work as cutting-edge avant-garde.

Snow was also how the strip said goodbye. The final Sunday strip shows Calvin and Hobbes sledding into a fresh, snowy forest, with Calvin’s line: “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy... Let’s go exploring!” The snowmen below share that playful spirit, though they were built by fans, not by Watterson.

Snow monsters, sharks and snowman crime scenes

The funniest scenes work with scale and placement. A snow monster looms over its victims, a very hungry snowman eyes its neighbours and a snow shark attacks while another snowman makes its escape. Several builders went further and staged mock homicides, a hit-and-run and a full snowman crime scene, turning the cheerful winter figure into a cartoon thriller.

Others play with the snowman’s own shape. A two-headed mutant, a deliberately lopsided “perfectly un-perfect” snowman and a furious “rage” snowman all work because everyone knows what a normal snowman should look like.

Pop culture in snow: zombies, an AT-AT and a Dalek

Film and television are a rich source of ideas. One group of snowmen re-enacts a scene from Shaun of the Dead, the 2004 zombie comedy. Another builder made the four-legged AT-AT walker from Star Wars, and another a Dalek, the famous villain of Doctor Who. Elsewhere, a whole snowman army stands ready for winter.

A short history of snowmen

Snowmen have carried jokes and messages for centuries. Researcher Bob Eckstein traced the earliest known image of one to the margin of a Book of Hours from 1380. In 1494, Piero de’ Medici commissioned no less an artist than Michelangelo to make a snowman in Florence. In the winter of 1511, Brussels held a snow festival during which residents built more than a hundred sculptures, many of them satirical, which Eckstein calls “an early form of political commentary”.

The tallest snowman on record is Olympia, a snowwoman built in Bethel, Maine, in 2008 and named after U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe. She stood 122 feet 1 inch (37.21 metres) tall.

How to build a better snowman

• Wait for packing snow. Moist snow close to its melting point sticks together; dry powder will not. A mild afternoon just after a good snowfall is ideal.
• Roll, do not pile. Roll a compact ball across the snow until it reaches the size you want. If the ball touches the ground beneath, it will pick up grass, gravel and dirt.
• Work fast. If packing snow freezes again, it turns into dense crust that is hard to shape.
• Tell a story. Props, footprints and a second figure placed nearby do more for a scene than detailed carving.

Related reading

• The Bartz Brothers’ 2014 Snow Shark and Earlier Sea Creatures
• a more family-friendly Frozen-inspired snowman
• Freaky the Snowman: A Costume With Comic Timing

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