According to Laura Brown over on her weblog, the just-now-being-released Complete Calvin and Hobbes has at least one strip that has been altered for republication. The last two panels of the 11/25/88 strip read as above in the original appearance and in subsequent reprints. Now, the balloons read…
CALVIN: Hmph! I'll bet a good mother would've bought me a comic book and made me feel better instead of shunning me like you.
MOM: Kid, anyone but a good mother would've left you to the wolves long ago.
CALVIN: Yeah, right. Let's see your training certificate.
As Laura notes, this was presumably done because the original was deemed offensive to adopted kids (and their adopters) and must have been done with the approval of Bill Watterson, who drew the strip and fiercely protected it. Personally, I have no problem with him doing this. It's his strip and his decision and I only note it here for the record, and to wonder if this is the only alteration.
By the by: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes can be ordered from Amazon by clicking here. At the moment, it's $94.50 and it doesn't seem to be eligible for their free shipping plan, even for us Amazon Prime members, though I could be wrong. If you're a member of Costco, they'll let you order one for $86.99 plus shipping costs. At the moment, the cheapest price I see online is that Overstock.com has it for only $85.00 plus only $1.40 in postage, though that may mean sending it by burro or something.
I'm probably going to just wait until the next time I go to Costco after they get them in. I'll just grab one and toss it in my cart next to the fifty gallon drum of Liquid Metamucil and the half-ton box of Pringles…and by the way, if you ever eat that many Pringles, you'll need that much Metamucil. Or maybe I'll wait a few months, by which time the book will probably be quite available at a much lower tab. I'm actually in no hurry to dive into Watterson's strip again. I really liked it when it began but every time I go back and read a batch of them, I find myself mentally lowering it a notch or two on my list of All-Time Great Newspaper Strips. This is the opposite of the way it works for me when I revisit a run of Peanuts or Doonesbury or Pogo or vintage Segar Thimble Theater. Maybe this new collection will reverse the trend.