Calvin and Hobbes

Why Calvin and Hobbes stands head and shoulders above almost all other newspaper comic strips:

And it's really a shame that it's so difficult to quantify this strip's greatness. I can confidently state that Calvin & Hobbes outclasses the rest of the comic strip world more than anything else has ever outclassed the rest of its medium. Sans this strip, the industry is characterized by guys sitting on rocks making stupid puns, a Family Circus kid misunderstanding the meaning of a word, or an overweight father playing golf while telling jokes such as I LIKE GOLF and GOLF IS HARD. It's a medium that doesn't really deserve something as good as Calvin & Hobbes, but it got it anyway, and the newspaper-reading world was made a better place by it.

You really have to admire a comic strip author in the U.S.A. who has his six-year-old protagonist describe himself thusly:

He's one of the old gods! He demands sacrifice!