‘Calvin and Hobbes’: the Formative Years : Comics: While Bill Watterson takes a break from the rambunctious little boy and his tiger, reruns from strip’s early days will appear.

Calvin, the rambunctious, 6-year-old star of “Calvin and Hobbes,” is going away--but not as Spaceman Spiff, private-eye Tracer Bullet or any of his other imaginary guises.

Beginning today, cartoonist Bill Watterson is taking a nine-month leave of absence from his popular comic strip.

Until Watterson returns with new material on Feb. 1, 1992, the Universal Press Syndicate will distribute reruns from the first 14 months of “Calvin and Hobbes” to newspapers, including The Times.

Watterson, who maintains an almost Proustian seclusion in his home in the Southwest (he doesn’t give interviews, sign books or make speeches), issued a tongue-in-cheek statment explaining the reasons for his sabbatical:

“Had I imagined ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ would last this long, I would have paced myself. The strip requires a great deal of research, and I need to do more interplanetary exploration and paleontology work before I continue.”

Lee Salem, vice president/editorial director for Universal, explained that Watterson is not suffering from burnout, but wants to devote some time to painting and “just get away from the demands of ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ for a while.”

Since its debut in 1985, “Calvin and Hobbes” has become the fourth most widely distributed comic strip in America today, appearing in more than 1,800 papers. Each of eight paperback collections has topped the paperback bestseller list, selling more than 1 million copies within a year of publication. In addition, “Calvin and Hobbes” has consistently appeared at the top of newspaper readers’ surveys across the country.

The combination of fine drawing, original humor and visual storytelling in “Calvin and Hobbes” has also earned Watterson the respect of his fellow artists: He has twice received the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award for “Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.” (Charles Schulz and the late Milt Caniff are the only other cartoonists to receive two Reubens for a single strip, for “Peanuts” and “Steve Canyon,” respectively.)

In 1983, Garry Trudeau became the first syndicated cartoonist to go on sabbatical when he stopped drawing “Doonesbury” to pursue other projects for 20 months (January, 1983, through September, 1984). Gary Larson, the creator of “The Far Side,” followed in October, 1988, with a 14-month leave of absence that ended on Jan. 1, 1990.

Universal President John McMeel stated: “ Genius may be an overused word, but in the case of Bill Watterson, it is clearly warranted.”

But, noting that the artist has drawn 1,687 daily strips and 281 Sunday pages in the last 5 1/2 years, McMeel added: “A genius, too, needs time to recoup and regenerate his creative powers. Bill has asked for some time off, and in the best long-term interest of Bill, ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ and of existing and future readers, we are granting his well-deserved request.”