Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

https://therepublicofletters.substack.com/p/calvin-and-hobbes-and-the-price-of

by pseudolus • 1 month ago

560 245 1 month ago

therepublicofletters.substack.com

Reminds me of why the lucky stiff for some reason...

aBioGuy• 1 month ago

Another anecdote (where it came from I do not remember) stuck in my brain was that Watterson's editor called him one day to tell him that STEVEN SPIELBERG was on the phone to talk with him about a Calvin and Hobbes movie. Watterson refused to take the call.

jameskilton• 1 month ago

Or how he was mailed a box of Calvin and Hobbes plushies to try to get sign-off on the quality of the toys.

He mailed back a picture of the box on fire.

IMO Calvin and Hobbes will always be special because of Watterson's integrity. It says everything it needed to say, and those comics will almost always be relevant.

all23• 1 month ago

The danger of "more" is that it dilutes the purpose and voice of the original. "Cowboy Bebop" fits in this same realm, I think. It had a single season. They did a movie. They said everything they needed to say and left it at that.

wincy• 1 month ago

So instead we ended up with the only Calvin and Hobbes items in the physical world being those vinyl bumper stickers of Calvin pissing on things, because those were cheap and easy for random unscrupulous printers to make. Some artistic vision. As someone born in the late 80s, I recall seeing those far more than the actual comics.

pseudalopex• 1 month ago

Watterson said It was only my head that burst into flames.[1]

[1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/53216/mental-floss-exclu...

dgritsko• 1 month ago

What a brilliantly written piece. Maintaining one's integrity is unfortunately rare enough that it makes Watterson's story so remarkable. I completely respect and admire his dedication to doing something for its own sake, for holding himself to the highest standards imaginable, and from walking away from it all for his own reasons - even if selfishly I'd rather him keep writing so that there would be more to enjoy. Time to go pull some old volumes of Calvin & Hobbes off the shelf for the hundredth time, I suppose.

all23• 1 month ago

I have so much nostalgia for Watterson's work. I occasionally will buy another of the hard bound 3 volume set. I always wind up giving them away and then buying another.

A worthy cause, I hope.

rbanffy8• 1 month ago

It makes everybody’s day a little bit more surreal. Certainly a worthy cause.

smithkl42• 1 month ago

I'm waiting until my kids are out of the house (just a couple of years now) to repurchase the 3-volume set. The first purchase didn't survive my kids' childhood - which, yes, I think Watterson would have approved.

snorremd• 1 month ago

The three volume hard-book bound set is one of my favorite possessions. It has been a little while since I read them, but I must have read them cover to cover twice. The print quality and feeling of the hefty books makes them feel like really high end comics in the material sense. I really respect Watterson in keeping the comic pure in the sense that the characters only exist in that one medium.

Cider99862• 1 month ago

It's great that he wasn't tricked or coerced. I imagine some artists have the integrity, but not the knowledge to prevent being taken advantage of.

echelon• 1 month ago

Was this the right choice, though?

Interest in Calvin & Hobbes has fallen off a cliff. I don't see any references to it in public anymore, and it used to be everywhere.

Kids today probably don't even know about it.

conception• 1 month ago

Rather than bombard children with advertising to buy plastic junk? Y…yes it was the right choice?

pydry• 1 month ago

I saw a little girl reading it on public transport just yesterday.

willis936• 1 month ago

I'm not a kid, but I asked for some calvin and hobbes books for my birthday. The postmodernism laid out in the first comic of each anthology gets the main thrust across. It's a timeless piece of art. It doesn't need boosting. It will be there for me to reach for if I have kids who might enjoy them.

https://youtu.be/P5ivZLTMhso

vohk• 1 month ago

I think that's just a natural part of the times changing and generations having their own icons. In contrast to the shambling undead of Mickey Mouse and other eternally recycled franchises, I think it's OK to for things to fade a little. If nothing else, it leaves things for future generations to rediscover and make their own.

nkrisc• 1 month ago

It’s still there in libraries and bookstores, and even online. It’s not going anywhere.

My son enjoys reading the collection I had when I was young.

alanbernstein• 1 month ago

I suggested it to my young kids and it became an instant favorite.

defen2• 1 month ago

I bought my 8 year old daughter the hardcover box set for Christmas. When she opened it her initial reaction was definitely "oh...thanks" (she was clearly not excited about it but wanted to be nice). Within a week it was borderline impossible to get her to put them down and go to sleep at night.

beAbU• 1 month ago

And that's perfectly fine!

It makes the accidental discovery of C&H all the more special. I remember the day a school friend showed me a C&H book he got from his dad. It was never in the newspapers where I grew up, so I would never have discovered it otherwise.

Not everything in this world needs to obtain global reach and fame.

biomcgary• 1 month ago

My teenage boys are hooked on Calvin & Hobbes.

jjulius3• 1 month ago

My wife and I take turns each night doing bedtime for our two girls, 4/6. I have the full C&H box set and, a whiiiiile back, my oldest asked what it was and if we could read it.

For over a year now, any time it's my time to do bedtime, we have to read C&H and cannot read anything else. We've been cruising through it from start to finish and are, within the next week or so, going to reach the end.

Both kiddos, especially my oldest, have been demanding that we start it over. I'll probably table it for a couple of years and then come back to it when they're just a bit older, but yeah... kids definitely know about it and really do appreciate/enjoy it.

Edit: To say nothing of the idea that, eventually, everything fades into obscurity. I feel like what you're lamenting is something that actually jives with Watterson philosophically.

prmoustache2• 1 month ago

My 7y old nephew inherited my complete collection and is a big fan.

cortesoft• 1 month ago

Is that the main goal, though? Making sure your characters stay in the public conciousness?

I am not sure that is the most important thing, or even that important at all. The characters matter a LOT to people of a certain age, and his decisions helped maintain that.

LandoCalrissian2• 1 month ago

Everything comes to an end friend, not everything needs to go on forever. Maybe it is forgotten, left behind, but that's not really important. What's important is it ended on his terms and some of us had the privilege to experience it.

There will still be people that find Calvin for the first time, and they will get the same privilege. I'm glad he did it his way and I think most of his new fans will as well.

jamesfinlayson• 1 month ago

I haven't looked at the comics in a physical newspaper in a while but it was still there maybe 12 years ago (in Australia at least).

CM30• 1 month ago

Have to say, I've always admired Watterson's determination to keep Calvin and Hobbes a comic strip and not compromise on its vision for money/fame. As the article itself points out, it would have been very easy for it to become the next Peanuts or Garfield, and most artists probably would have taken that route the minute it became available. Heck, given the obsession with side hustles and grifting and get rich quick schemes, I don't think I could see any present day comic creator (or creator in general) making that sort of decision.

But yeah, it's admirable. Especially given how the average comic strip runs for decades on end with less and less humour or charm until its eventual cancelation.

Cider99862• 1 month ago

This is really well written, which is refreshing with all the AI.

Past:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32116184 Bill Watterson’s refusal to license Calvin and Hobbes (2016) 464 points July 16, 2022 311 comments

More on Calvin and Hobbes: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Tyr42• 1 month ago

Man, I always wonder what would have happened if Bill Watterson had been around for the era of webcomics. Much more creative freedom, and no editor or syndicate to tell you how to layout your panels. Would he have loved it?

Or would he have hated it? He certainly wouldn't have wanted to build a website for it.

blt• 1 month ago

For me, it's hard to imagine him giving up the printed newspaper strip's connection to the physical world. Calvin and Hobbes is filled with references to the basic elements of physical reality: dirt, rocks, water, snow, speed, collisions, temperature, light, sound. Webcomics exist in a world of pure information.

card_zero• 1 month ago

Webcomics exist in the physical world because they appear on screens, which are just as physical as paper. Neither newspapers nor screens usually come into contact with dirt, rocks, water, snow, or collisions. Newspapers make more noise than screens, but screens emit more light. Printed cartoons exist as pure information too, in the sense that they can be copied and printed on different things.

InitialLastName• 1 month ago

He's had more than 2 decades to reject that opportunity.

bena2• 1 month ago

Yeah. He's not dead. He could have gone into webcomics if he had wanted.

defen2• 1 month ago

There are some absolutely fantastic web comics out there but none of them have had the cultural impact of Calvin and Hobbes. I don't see how any of them could, to be honest. Even though the technical means of distribution are there at near-zero cost, there's no logistical way in practice to get a webcomic in front of a vast cross-section of society for an entire decade.

cogman104• 1 month ago

We can never go back to a pre-internet/streaming era.

While that means it's pretty isolating to find favorite media (hard to talk about something like "Solo Leveling" with anyone that's not into that sort of thing). What it also has meant is an explosion of new media to tickle almost anyone's tastes. It's as if everything has become "underground music".

kortilla• 1 month ago

The monoculture is dead for better or worse.

awbvious2• 1 month ago

See my other comment. Webcomic creators got their own problems that aren't much different than his were. Be it having to deal with Social Media algorithms, or working for a recently-public company that wants to force people to an app, or having to be both a web designer AND a comic writer/drawer (smbc-comics /still/ having problems with their commenting system on their website comes to mind).

sehugg• 1 month ago

FYI Berke Breathed (Bill's contemporary, occasional collaborator and pen-pal) is still posting new Bloom County comics on his Patreon.

WillAdams• 1 month ago

I think he would have enjoyed the creative freedom, run with it, and maybe even have managed to make some interesting new expression, say something along the lines of:

https://xkcd.com/1190/

(which won a well-deserved Hugo if memory serves)

I've been on something of a webcomic kick for a while now, and while I'd love to shill for _Girl Genius_ https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20021104 (oops, guess I just did), the artist whom I find most striking and who best epitomizes the evolution of webcomics (Kaja and Phil Foglio have their origin firmly planted in traditional print work) is "Tailsteak":

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6852154.Mason_Tailstea...

who has gone from: 1/0 https://www.undefined.net/1/0/?strip=1

to Leftover Soup: https://www.leftoversoup.com/first.php

and is now working on: https://forwardcomic.com/firstpage.html

where each is published once a week or so, with a story plotted out to run for 1,000 strips --- ~two decades each --- curiousity over what other such stories are out there has me searching/reading a lot, and a "Webcomics" browser bookmarks/favorites folder which is beginning to scroll....

Kotlopou2• 1 month ago

Oh my god, 1/0 is an absolutely brilliant piece of art and I recommend everyone here to check it out. It starts out unassuming, but that's part of the point -- it ended up becoming about the author's growth through talking to characters he himself made up (and the characters talking back in protest), and he also ended up meeting his wife through it :)

I guess if I had to sell the idea... in its own words: it's as far removed from the average sitcom as possible. It's not at all like anything else you have ever read. (https://www.undefined.net/1/0/?strip=961)

ShadowOfThePit• 1 month ago

I don't get the first one.

PebblesRox• 1 month ago

Thank you for the link to 1/0 — it had a link to Absurd Notions that I had been searching for to read again but couldn’t remember the name of!

hyperhello• 1 month ago

I show two versions of reality, and each makes complete sense to the participant who sees it. I think that’s how life works.

Not to spoil a beautiful joke by explaining it, but all of the strips are based on this. Two characters see things differently. Sometimes it’s because Calvin is in the grip of his (psychosis|childhood) and sometimes it’s a totally ex machina Watterson idea that they’re exploring, but there’s always two worlds colliding hilariously.

I have no idea if a truly competent director could catch lightning in a bottle. The movie Fight Club has been correctly compared to Calvin and Hobbes. There’s no way for stuffed toys to capture this at all. Good for Watterson for allowing his genius not to be trampled.

rapind• 1 month ago

The movie Fight Club has been correctly compared to Calvin and Hobbes.

Bit of a tangent, but I recently watched Fight Club with my son. He was surprised he liked it because he'd gotten the impression it was a dog whistle for manosphere spazzes. I was like "exactly, Matrix is actually good too...".

tanseydavid• 1 month ago

the impression it was a dog whistle for manosphere spazzes

Everyone thinks this until they see the movie or read the book.

bigstrat2003• 1 month ago

Avoiding a work of art because of identity politics is no way to live life. That is true whether it is right wing or left wing identity politics. One should just give the work an honest go, and form one's own conclusions, without worrying about whether "those people" might have enjoyed it as well.

delis-thumbs-7e• 1 month ago

I remember when Fight Club came out and joke was along the lines of ”you mean the gayest movie like, ever?!” Palahniuk, the author of the book (the film changes very little) came out himself only years later. And it is so very very very queer coded, back in the early 00’s even straight people noticed it. And Matrix trilogy is of course made by two transwomen.

I don’t really understood why manosphere thinks these films as some tough guy films or something. Then again, I think I do.

FatherOfCurses• 1 month ago

"A few weeks later, the project is finished. Watterson probably takes a moment to stand in the middle of the room and look up, contemplating the months of work, the tins of paint he went through, the things he learned about technique, about the joy of a job done for its own sake, about himself. Then he opens a tin of whitewash, climbs up the bed-chairs-table one last time, and paints over his work. He leaves the ceiling white, empty, fresh."

Is it Zen where they do this with mandalas? The monks spend forever building intricate sand paintings and then wipe/blow them away in an instant. Love it.

I wish I could explain why, but this is the C+H comic I think of the most: https://i0.wp.com/www.thedockchurch.org/blog/wp-content/uplo...

helterskelter• 1 month ago

I believe those are the Tibetan Buddhists.

CamperBob22• 1 month ago

And boy, do they get sore when some tourists' kid runs through the sand, Calvin-like, the day before the big ceremony.

ToucanLoucan• 1 month ago

A lot of artists do this a lot of times. Especially work that pushes your boundaries is often not of the best quality, not suited for release. We finish it, we enjoy it, we share it perhaps with a small group of friends, and then it goes in the bin. It's just the way of it, and why I'm so skeptical of so many social media influencers who create stuff but the creation of that stuff becomes the media of their particular medium, not the thing they're meant to be making. Like game developers who post a lot about whatever game they're making, and get such engagement that the thing they're making and the quality of it almost takes a back seat to simply continuing the work for the sake of documenting it and posting about it.

It's also why despite using AI for work and for occasional brainstorming, it never, ever will find it's way into my actual artistic processes and works. The friction of creating is the point of creating, and where AI removes that friction, it renders the product pointless. An AI image feels empty precisely because there were, by definition, no long nights spent with it, no difficult to solve problems, no taste to reckon with: it was simply made with precision and perfection by a machine being told what to make. An achievement certainly, but not a human one.

robocat• 1 month ago

He leaves the ceiling white, empty, fresh.

Did anyone ever try and recover the painting/palimpsest?

rbanffy8• 1 month ago

Some things are meant to be made, not necessarily seen.

randallsquared3• 1 month ago

It looked like the syndicate’s warnings to Watterson were well-founded: Calvin and Hobbes was threatened with widespread cancellation.

Oh, that sounds bad.

It says something about the popularity of Calvin and Hobbes — not to mention Watterson’s pulling power as a cartoonist — that after all the outrage and arguments, only fifteen of the 1,800 papers running Watterson’s strip threatened to remove it from their pages. And only seven followed through.

What. This directly contradicts the first statement, does it not?

bryanrasmussen2• 1 month ago

I think the first threatened is from groups like moral majority or similar threatening we will get your papers to remove it, and then the second is the actual papers making the threat based on threats from moral watchdog groups. Anyway that is my interpretation of what happened.

duskwuff• 1 month ago

The threatened cancellation was over Watterson demanding an unmodifiable half-page for his Sunday strips, not over the content of his strips.

bluGill• 1 month ago

Remember his strip was popular enough that papers didn't have a choice. People were buying newspapers to get the latest Calvin and Hobbes. They may not like what he did but he had the power. Most cartoonists people read and sometimes laugh but if they get replaced nobody will care.

toss13• 1 month ago

>This directly contradicts the first statement, does it not?

It does not.

The former was threats in the before times, the latter was the lackluster result after the dust had settled.

randallsquared3• 1 month ago

The contrast between "Calvin and Hobbes was threatened with widespread cancellation." and "only fifteen of the 1,800 papers running Watterson’s strip threatened" is quite stark.

clutchdude• 1 month ago

Watterson was known for being very much a stickler for the format and color of the comic.

He'd eschew printing norms for the Sunday format and more or less force papers to either print it how he wanted or not get it at all.

The response was that the papers would just cancel the whole strip rather than give in to his artistic demands.

bornfreddy• 1 month ago

Only 7 out of 1800 cancelled, according to the article.

leephillips• 1 month ago

Sounds like you would be interested in the article linked at the top of the page.

philipallstar• 1 month ago

There's no art that can be stopped. You only need to convince someone else to print it if you want money.

alsetmusic2• 1 month ago

This is one of the reasons I have Stupendous Man on my forearm. It's the version of him running into his classroom on the back of one of the books (arms flexing triumphantly), only I had that artist style the costume based on how he appears in Calvin's imagination.

I can't imagine getting Garfield or Snoopy on my skin. CnH was massively important to me growing up. It had so much meaning.

I also remember Watterson writing, in the CnH retrospective anthology (on the topic of Moe, the school bully), that he didn't identify with people who were nostalgic for childhood because he remembered it being a very difficult time. Poignant and true.

Edit: Btw, CnH lovers: See new book The Mysteries

https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=48560976

aqfamnzc• 1 month ago

You have linked to your own comment.

alsetmusic2• 1 month ago

Ha! What the eff. I don't know how that happened. Too late to edit.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Mysteries/Bill-Wa...

biophysboy• 1 month ago

Thats very interesting to me that Watterson remembers his childhood as a difficult time. Calvin’s moments of sadness/anxiety/anger are a big part of why I found those comics so relatable and endearing as a kid.

apparent• 1 month ago

The last Calvin and Hobbes strip [1].

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/6pig9h/hon...

ckw• 1 month ago

Sometimes I entertain the fantasy that Watterson continued writing Calvin and Hobbes as a hobby-- whenever a particularly good idea came to him he'd put it to paper. And someday he'll drop a collection that dwarfs the original strip.

lproven3• 1 month ago

Still brings a lump to my throat.

awbvious2• 1 month ago

Question: Imagine it is right after Watterson stopped working with Universal Press Syndicate and making Calvin and Hobbes. You know someone who can get you in touch with Watterson. What do you do?

I ask because I humbly think the closest we have in the last 30 years to Watterson is Shen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shen_(cartoonist) . So much of what he did mirrors Watterson. More specifically, so much of his evolution mirrors Watterson. He clearly had a style that was working, but he evolved and it worked (not everyone evolves and it works, Matthew Inman comes to mind--still does great stuff, his new style just doesn't resonate with me personally, could just be me). I mean, it's not a one-for-one comparison, Shen has a plushie, for example (not much else). But there's a spirit there that I feel resonates with people deeply.

He recently left Webtoon and his 3x-a-week Blue Chair. I wrote him an email that he responded to, which is how I know if someone has a good response here, I can probably get it to him. I mention in my email Smol Web (aka Small Web, other names as well, heavily mentioned here on Hacker News) and he said "I like the principles in it." But I get the impression he still feels he must pay fealty to the social media gods (relevant The Oatmeal https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people ) and everything else is secondary. the tricky part is creating something that will pay the bills. If anyone wants to lend him a hand in that, let me know and I'll pass it on. Like, how /does/ do Small Web and make money?

Here's nearly all of my email to him, if you are curious. One of the things I hated was that during Shen's tenure at Webtoon they got more and more hostile to users browsing without using their app. I don't know if it figured into his leaving, or even if it was 100% his decision, but I do rant a bit about it. I also mention "We Go Forward." That is referenced in the Wikipedia article. Sadly, can't link to it without linking to a social media site.

---

Anyway, Webtoon's loss. They went public, they thought that meant they should act like Big Tech and force people into apps. Presumably to harvest all that data, make all their users the product, and sell that data to data brokers. They then wipe their hands of what happenns [sic] as that data is sold to surveillance states or worse. Of course, it's all predicated on the fact they can act as monopolies, following the Peter Thiel handbook. But assuming they could even become the next Meta or Alphabet going the way they did, regardless that the very ickiness of it should repulse one, is just hubris. Maybe they thought the app numbers, and the app data it would mean, would be enough to merger into a Meta or Alphabet. But you can't get there by simply forcing users bluntly and harshly. Forcing users is a late-stage Meta or Alphabet move, and it never starts blunt or harsh.

I see nothing wrong with them going public, per se, provided they can convince the shareholders to not be short-sighted. But I don't think they could, thus, it probably was wrong to do a traditional IPO. Shareholders want "growth" at all costs. So they will hinge on app downloads and engagement numbers with every earnings report. And so the stock price will hinge on those numbers, to the point where unless the stock price is unrelated to decision making--e.g. a non-voting arrangement for retail buyers like Zuck got--stupid decisions will be made. If not by the original company, by the "activist investment company" that buys all the shares and makes the same stupid decisions. Assuming the activist investor doesn't just turn it private again and vampires the equity.

Yes, they right now should have an app. But a simple browser wrapper app for those younger people who think everything should be an app. The core product should support browser viewing first. At least at first. Then assuming there's enough moat (which there definitely isn't yet) it's a question of morals, do you stay on that path, or do start to force people to the app little by little? Hobbling this or that. You don't go to "can't view this webcomic except in the app" right away. That's definitely a much later Darth Vader move which, again, no one should do (but if you're Zuck, you will do anyway).

I'll be glad to see you go somewhere new. Have your own site! Use federated social media! Realize there are fans who remember We Go Forward when it came out! You know, over twenty years ago, I spent two weeks on a web comic [removed, just in case it goes afoul of this Guideline "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." This comment is about Shen after all]. I should have Gone Forward. I gave up. It had such charm in retrospect. Good for you! Keep at it! Web comics are genius, you never have to worry about handling large data or keeping systems secure. You just make a cool .png and throw it on a smol site. (Look up smol web as a concept, Smol Ghost would approve.)

"Don't stop" is what someone wrote to me once, and it meant a lot. The beauty of what you do is you /can/ Go Forward and not have to leave others behind. I think it's time for a reboot of that original comic. Like how they made a Diablo II remake with better graphics and toggles to go between old and new. You could start out new version of Go Forward with fancy graphics, then show a settings screen, toggle to old. Toggle back to new (people will get what's going on). Go all the way to the end and switch back to old. Then do some speed-runner type thing involving jumping on hidden objects and make the parents' house show up on the same screen and they can cheer him on to the end.

Don't stop, awbvious

tombert7• 1 month ago

I think about Bill Waterson a lot.

I certainly don't blame Jim Davis for "selling out". He made a marketable character, and I don't blame him for trying to make his money because of it. I don't have a ton of artistic talent but if I created a lovable comic character and someone offered me a dumptruck full of money to sell toys and t-shirts and cartoons, I'm pretty sure I would take it, and I might even take it even if I felt like it diminished my vision of the comic. I would like to think I have integrity, and I think I do to some extent (there are certain types of companies I will not work for e.g. casinos), but Waterson is on another level.

And I have to say, it has made Calvin and Hobbes age a lot better for me. Garfield is almost more of a "brand" than a comic at this point, and it has made it such that I find the character and even the comics kind of (for want of a better word) "cheap" or "tacky". The same can be said for Dilbert (Scott Adams himself not withstanding...I used to genuinely like the comics).

C&H, on the other hand, reads about as well now as it did when I was a kid. The jokes still work, the art is appealing, and since there hasn't been this mass-marketing push for it, it has retained a purity unlike anything else.

I don't have the integrity or will power that Bill Waterson has, and I probably never will, but it can be something I strive to have some day.

kemayo• 1 month ago

There's this quote from the 2010 interview with Waterson:

If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, ten, or twenty years, the people now "grieving" for Calvin and Hobbes would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.

dmurray• 1 month ago

But don't we all feel sure he could have rolled along for three or two or one more year? Surely it's not like his creativity ran out suddenly on Jan 1 1996 and he had no more comic strips in him. And it's not like the quality of the strips had started a slow decline, so... couldn't we have got one more year of cartoons?

I'm kidding really. Bill Watterson doesn't owe us anything; if he was no longer enjoying creating the comics, why should we get to enjoy reading them? And we'd just have the same complaint if he quit after eleven years instead of ten, or worse, we'd be saying how the last couple of years it was clear his heart wasn't in it.

jandrese• 1 month ago

Joke is on him. The comic section of the paper (if it even has one anymore) is filled with fossilized strips that weren't even fresh in the 80s. The comic cartel in the US basically killed off the medium.

cogman104• 1 month ago

Garfield was always about marketing. Davis was in it to sell merchandise. It was practically designed in a lab to be the ideal comic strip for moving product.

And as such, Garfield has never had any sort of message or meaning. It's just a cartoon that kids and some adults like.

Waterson, on the other hand, very obviously enjoyed his work and pushing boundaries. C&H was chock full of his personal beliefs, messages, and morals. And he loved causing newspapers headaches. He did things like purposefully making odd shaped vertical comics just to force the comics page editors to deal with and think about how they'd lay out the page. All to try and break people out of commercial thought, to make people question "why is the layout like this".

The two are such polar opposites it's almost amazing they both ran comics in the same papers.

I wish we had more watersons running things in all forms of media.

rbanffy8• 1 month ago

I wish we had more watersons running things in all forms of media.

The world needs Watersons now more than ever. And Calvins and Hobbeses.

PaulHoule5• 1 month ago

My understanding is that Davis quit drawing the strip pretty early on and has other people drawing it ever since.

Something I think a lot of people don't realize is that Japan has a much healthier media ecosystem in many respects. Like we just don't get new comic strips here and haven't in decades whereas in Japan they get new 4-koma like Bocci the Rock and The Demon Girl Next Door all the time and these get anime and video games and merchandise and make tons of money.

Our media industry has to realize that it doesn't just have a cyclical problem but that it is stuck recycling the same old properties over and over again as it shrinks. It's got to give a chance to some new blood.

evanelias2• 1 month ago

Despite the mediocrity of the Garfield comic strip, I think a lot of Garfield's enduring popularity among late Gen X / early Millennials can be attributed to the late 80s Garfield and Friends cartoon [1]. It was actually funny, largely due to the writing by Mark Evanier. He's also known for his snappy dialogue on Groo the Wanderer, among other comic books.

And then in the late 00s, Garfield got an indie-cred boost from Garfield Minus Garfield [2], the surreal and often humorously bleak webcomic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield_and_Friends

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield_Minus_Garfield

vintermann3• 1 month ago

That's what Jim Davis tells everyone. He always cheerfully said he decided to become a cartoonist in order to make money. When asked about anything related to Garfield, he basically always denies having any artistic ambitions. That surprisingly dark comic which suggested Garfield's entire life with Jon was just the hallucinations of him slowly starving to death alone, for instance? Oh, he saw a market survey suggesting the thing people feared most was loneliness, and thought it'd make for a good Halloween strip.

Not to go into an hour long Lasagna Cat speech here, but maybe Jim Davis isn't entirely sincere here?

To me it looks like he made the strip at first to laugh at himself (Jon) and his own cynical tendencies (Garfield). The "I thought becoming a cartoonist was a good way to make money" is an obvious joke at his own expense - it's a terrible way to make money, even with full Snoopy-level merchandising.

It's also notable that he's been very positive to people doing weird things like Garfield minus Garfield. He's not at all possessive to his creation. He accepted ages ago that as the comic became a phenomenon, it wasn't wholly his anymore.

Forgeties792• 1 month ago

He did things like purposefully making odd shaped vertical comics just to force the comics page editors to deal with and think about how they'd lay out the page. All to try and break people out of commercial thought, to make people question "why is the layout like this".

In his defense, this was also partially because they kept shrinking the space he had so he was trying to work with what he had while also forcing their hands into giving him more room to work with.

blindriver2• 1 month ago

If I were a trillionaire like Elon Musk, Bill Watterson would be one of those people I would anonymous gift enough money so that the rest of their lives would be comfortable. We need more people like him, and he should be rewarded for it.

hackmack10• 1 month ago

Bill Watterson is worth a hundred million dollars. He’s not hurting for cash.

bombcar4• 1 month ago

Bill Watterson is comfortable for life - even without merchandising he's easily a millionaire multiple times over.

dTal• 1 month ago

Ah, I think it's safe to say you wouldn't. Nothing against you, but the personality required to acquire a trillion (!!!) dollars is incompatible with the kind of philanthropic thinking you clearly possess.

selfmodruntime• 1 month ago

Eh. There is one thing I don't agree with in the name of integrity: Waterson didn't allow sales of a stuffed pet tiger akin to Hobbes, which millions of children (me included) must've dreamt of. He could've made it affordable and so keep his integrity.

tombert7• 1 month ago

I mean, I think he was just afraid that the comic would become a merchandise machine instead of a comic, and I think he didn't want that.

fragmede2• 1 month ago

There's like 100 of them on Etsy right now.

wrs2• 1 month ago

As the article points out, the reason for that particular lack of merchandise is even deeper.

Watterson insisted that if he wasn’t going to settle the question of Hobbes, then he definitely wouldn’t let some toy manufacturer settle it by turning Hobbes “into a stuffed toy for real, and deprive the strip of an element of its magic”.

wodenokoto2• 1 month ago

I think it was on the front page here a few weeks ago about the creation of garfield.

Apparently Davis had been struggling with a previous comic strip and when an editor told him that his characters just weren't what people wanted to see, he rethought his entire strategy and decided to emulate the success of Snoopi:

- Cute character, but instead of going for dog lovers, there was a hole in the market for cat lovers

- Few, related jokes that can recur all the time (Love lasagna, hates mondays)

- No word plays - should be easy to translate

- No political jokes

- No deep jokes - should be accessible

- Lots of merchandise

I think it is super interesting that he set out from the start to build a "sell out"-brand and after reading this, I kinda respect the whole thing a lot more.

xandrius2• 1 month ago

You respect someone who plans to be a sell-out more than someone who sells out later for whatever other reason?

imgabe• 1 month ago

I think the newspapers and books alone still probably made Waterson a decent amount of money. More than enough to live comfortably forever. I remember Scott Adams (of Dilbert) once saying his syndication deal was something like $6 million per year, I'm sure Calvin and Hobbes was at least comparable and the books certainly sold well. Newspapers used to be absolute cash cows.

badpun• 1 month ago

but if I created a lovable comic character and someone offered me a dumptruck full of money
would like to think I have integrity, and I think I do to some extent (there are certain types of companies I will not work for e.g. casinos)

What if a casino offered you a dumptruck full of money?

tombert7• 1 month ago

If I were offered a dump truck full of money from a casino in order to help the casino optimize their gambling, then I think I would have enough restraint to say no.

I say this because I did turn down a very lucrative job opportunity at an online casino recently. It wasn’t as much money as Bill Waterson almost certainly turned down, but it would be a very significant bump in my salary.

mkovach• 1 month ago

Whenever I read something about Bill Watterson, I end up thinking about how, during the '80s and early '90s, Watterson, Tom Batiuk, and Harvey Pekar were all producing some of their best work.

Three Northeast Ohio creators, working in different areas of the comics world, yet it's easy to imagine a shared universe where Calvin and Hobbes, Funky Winkerbean, and American Splendor all occupy the same map and interact.

They also had in common that the work itself was the product. The strips and stories came first; merchandising, branding, and other empires were either absent or beside the point.

That's probably a coincidence. Or it says something about what 1970s acid rain did to the water in Lake Erie. But Northeast Ohio did seem to have produced an unusual number of artists who were more interested in the work than in building a franchise.

_the_inflator• 1 month ago

I totally agree.

BW got thrown under the buss for taking a stance, his stance. He is a nonconformist and really, he puts in his comics a one of a kind mixture of childish silliness, questions, statements, and philosophical topics.

There is no politics other than being a nonconformist who gets bullied today now, which not even ironically proves his point as well reinforces it.

It is like he is simply protecting the purity of his characters, not the other way around. He appears to be a medium, not so much an artist.

He is a treasure, and a singularity. I ordered all of his comics back then and to this day hold them dearly and the books are treated with so much decency, they appear as never opened. I for example never fold the book cover, nothing. It is a weird thing of mine, but it is out of respect for an author with whom I have a conversation.

mrhottakes• 1 month ago

What an excellent piece. Watterson is one of the greats and I have the utmost respect for people that do things because they enjoy it.

slowhadoken• 1 month ago

Sometimes things are black and white. The syndicate needs people like Watterson and without them they’re broke. The Cartoon Network fell apart not heeding this law and its great artists continue on.

cogogo• 1 month ago

Great piece but definitely makes me even more annoyed by the obviously bootleg Calvin pissing stickers on pickups. And even further annoyed that my kids will never know the joy of a quality broadsheet newspaper, especially on Sunday.

krupan6• 1 month ago

Aw man, you just hit me with a wave of nostalgia. Looking back, the Sunday comics were such an indulgence! To just sit on the floor with huge sheets of paper covered in colorful illustrated jokes and enjoy each one slowly. I need to take time like that each week again.

andrepd• 1 month ago

Absolutely incredible writing! Loved every word.

ChrisMarshallNY• 1 month ago

I think I remember reading this, some time back.

Watterson had (still has) a great deal of Personal Integrity.

I dig Personal Integrity. People like him, are kind of mythic heroes, to me.

NKosmatos• 1 month ago

Very well written! Now let’s wait to see what happens with the rights to Calvin and Hobbes when Waterson is not around. I’m sure we’ll see a reboot/re-run with merchandise, series and perhaps a movie, when the heirs take the rights.

jjulius3• 1 month ago

Knowing Watterson, I'd wager he's taken certain paths to prevent this from happening.

prmoustache2• 1 month ago

I don't think he has the power to do anything.

Look at what happened to Frida Kalho. Her face has sadly become a synonymous for cheap stuff sold anywhere.

goolz• 1 month ago

Dang man, C & H taught me so much as a young lad. Unconditional love, amor fati, the importance of being yourself. I think the way he left it all was perfect. We were robbed of future delights but in the end it could not have been more in character. I hope Mr. Watterson is enjoying his final sebatical.

rbanffy8• 1 month ago

I hope he’s secretly drawing Calvin and Hobbes and that, somehow, the two are enjoying their adventures. As long as they are drawn, they are alive.

vkou• 1 month ago

A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.

jeronimobomfim• 1 month ago

I once posted Bill Watterson's speech to the 1990 graduating class of his alma mater, but it never got to the front pages. I think I tried posting it again, no go. I just made this account so I can try it a third time. More than any comment I could write to some HN post, I wished people would click on the link and read it. Here's hoping some of you will do it, before it's wiped out from the net:

https://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html

bear8642• 1 month ago

Thanks for sharing that!

LandoCalrissian2• 1 month ago

That is a wonderful speech, I have never read it before. Thank you for sharing.

frollogaston2• 1 month ago

Great speech. I appreciate how he talked about not selling out, but only after he described how tough it is to earn money in the real world. Especially because Kenyon is one of those places you would hear "I don't care about money" from people who already got it the easy way.

A quote that stood out: "Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards."

Folcon• 1 month ago

A quote that stood out: "Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards."

This quote more than ever seems like taking the road less travelled by in this day and age

smallerize• 1 month ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38751452

jfengel• 1 month ago

I take advice from rich people with a grain of salt. It's easier to praise the value of money over integrity when you have both. They don't ask starving artists to give graduation speeches.

Watterson appears to have genuine integrity and I applaud him. There is a point where you have enough money, and the ones who deserve the most scorn are those who cheat to get even more when they have orders of magnitude more than that. But don't forget that a lot of people really do have to choose between integrity and dinner, and I don't judge their decision.

sometimes_all• 1 month ago

It is my opinion that while you do not judge people who have to choose between integrity and dinner, you can definitely judge people who made decisions and structured their life in such a way that they had that choice, and not only did they choose money, but did it in such a way that what other people would call riches was subsistence for them because of the lifestyle they led.

There is a point where you have enough money

You forego the option of choosing when you end up chasing a goal or living a standard of living which requires you to continuously choose money every time. It takes a lot of thinking to come to what "enough" means. For some, enough is a few hundred thousand dollars max. For some, even a billion is not enough. You can definitely appreciate the former when they reach that goal and stay there, but it becomes difficult to appreciate the latter (and they are the focus of most of the criticism here), because you do need to sacrifice more than a bit of integrity in that case.

wrongtrousers• 1 month ago

Inspiring and thoughtful! Thanks for sharing

everyone• 1 month ago

I saw this video recently, about Bill Waterson and 'Robotman'

https://youtu.be/gP01pIB99ws?si=rnUOUom_MRYQcPkP

WalterBright• 1 month ago

I'm always amazed at how a cartoonist can turn out 6 cartoons a week, every week, every month, every year.

rbanffy8• 1 month ago

I can safely say the three biggest influences in my teens were Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, The Muppet Show, and Calvin and Hobbes. Sagan ignited my passion for learning and made me realise I a rare ability to understand complicated things visually.

The Muppets taught me that nothing in life should be beyond ridicule, and that I should be the first one to laugh at myself, and to never be afraid to do stupid things. Also that a touch of surrealism is key to a healthy life.

Calvin gave me a sense of belonging, and made me realise I was not as weird as I originally thought. If people enough like it to the point newspapers publish the strips, I would not be alone. The final strip really hit me hard. I miss those two.

frollogaston2• 1 month ago

"licensing usually cheapens the original creation by saturating a market with characters until readers are bored of seeing them" makes the most sense to me out of this. When I think of Shrek, I don't even think of the movies, I think of all the random stuff like Burger King that licensed it.

Also, now that I've read this, I'm kinda sad about the bootleg peeing Calvin truck decal.

bronson2• 1 month ago

Owing to spite or just a foul mood, have you ever peeled one of those stupid Calvin stickers off of a pickup truck?

I figure that, long after the strip is forgotten, those decals are my ticket to immortality.

(from the Mentalfloss article linked a few comments down)

PaulHoule5• 1 month ago

Hate to advocate for the devil but, as somebody involved in fanart, people want objects for the media properties they love and if they can't get them legitimately they will make their own or get them from somebody who didn't license the property. And if Waterson didn't spend his own time and money sicing lawyers on the latter his syndicate wasn't going to do it for him if he didn't license it.

CamperBob22• 1 month ago

Then there's the fact that anyone who wants more C&H comics can now just ask for them. I hate to think about how Watterson will feel the first time he sees that happen.

krupan6• 1 month ago

You are correct. Also, copyrights do expire eventually (takes longer than it should, but they still aren't perpetual)

pantsforbirds• 1 month ago

I would have loved to buy my children some small C&H figurines or, especially, a stuffed tiger, but I do respect Waterson's decision

srvmshr• 1 month ago

Calvin & Hobbes have always been such a joy. In childhood, it was a reflection of all the naughtiness you could come up with. As a middle aged adult today, I look at the bigger meanings of those simple adventures. Reading a few stories is a reminder that happiness could be found in simple things & vivid imaginations.

Bill Watterson's dedication to not commercialize it preserves the charm about 'simple life, simple joys' of our childhood. He could have raked in the money, but his integrity is admirable. It isn't easy to be in his position & make such difficult choices to preserve the ethos of his art.

dhosek2• 1 month ago

I model my parenting style on Calvin’s dad. I actually had almost the identical conversation with my kids about why old pictures are in black and white. When they were in fourth grade my daughter came home from school angry at me about having let her and her brother believe for four years that the world used to be in black and white.

They haven’t brought up bridges and weight limits yet so I can only assume they still believe that.

conartist6• 1 month ago

That last truck really shows off the engineering work

megaloblasto• 1 month ago

[flagged]

nargek• 1 month ago

Don't ever joke or trick your kids, they might develop a sense of humor

BrokenCogs• 1 month ago

It's clear from the comics that Calvin's dad is just having a bit of fun with his son by telling him funny lies about how the world works. It's not about tricking kids, it rather about playing a mostly harmless prank on them.

ghtbircshotbe2• 1 month ago

What was the one about bridges and weight limits? I remember the one about the sun being the size of a quarter.

xavdid• 1 month ago

There's a sign next to a bridge that says "Weight Limit: 10 tons". Calvin asks how they know the limit and his dad says they build the bridge, then drive progressively heavier trucks across it until it falls down. Then they rebuild it exactly how it was and put up the sign for the how heavy the last truck was.

One of my favorites!

https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/u3dqja/how...

forgatmachine• 1 month ago

thank you for sharing this. It was a lovely read!

bandrami• 1 month ago

This reminds me of an old piece I really love about Fred Rogers, who faced many of the same pressures with exactly the same integrity:

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-...

jdblair• 1 month ago

When I was quite young I attended a lecture by Bill Watterson held at the Akron Art Museum. He spoke without notes, with an easel and a large pad of paper, describing his career. He illustrated his story with the pad, drawing his unsuccessful characters (I remember one looked like a short Hobbes) as he told his story about how he created Calvin and Hobbes. I was really struck by how much Watterson looked like Calvin's dad.

I stayed after the end of the lecture hoping that he would give me one of his drawings. He politely declined. As I recall, he said he had to be very careful about how his work was distributed. I don't know if this was b/c of his contract with the syndicate, or b/c he was already thinking about the legacy of the strip.

shantnutiwari• 1 month ago

I dont know. I would have loved to buy a calvin t shirt or a hobbes toy for my son.

All this means is: Calvin and Hobbes will die out, as hardly anyone in the new generation (kids born in 2000s) know about this comic.

I can understand the art vs commercialism debate, but this is going too far in the other direction.

And before people start lecturing me: Yes I know some corproations are evil. Tintin's new owners didnt allow the original country Belgium to host a Tintin event because they wanted more money.

Corporate greed can totally kill art; but this is the other extreme, and will also lead to a slow death by people just forgetting about it

krupan6• 1 month ago

Great works get shared and passed on to others, even without T-shirts and stuffies. Also, the copyright will expire at some point.

jurgenaut23• 1 month ago

I didn’t know Calvin and Hobbes so well until recently. My wife recently got me the integral of Calvin and Hobbes and I read it in full in a few weeks. What a masterpiece!

What struck me the most is the magical balance between humor, philosophical tale, and ode to childhood. I have two kids and it helped me numerous time approaching their silliness in a more constructive and patient way.

krupan6• 1 month ago

Some interesting discussion here about Bill Watterson and Jim Davis and it makes me wonder about this word, "integrity," that's being used. In my mind, integrity is to be honest and to do what you promise to do (unless we are talking about physical structures, which we aren't here, are we?). When an artist "sells out" is that really showing a lack of integrity? I guess it depends on what promises they made to... themselves? To others? What if things have changed since they made those promises? We aren't talking about moral absolutes like "thou shall not kill," here (if even that is an absolute). I feel like "integrity" is possibly the wrong word to use for all this, but as someone who grew up very religious and who strives to maintain his own integrity, I can see why people might use the word here. I think my concern is for when other artists who make different decisions than Bill Watterson are ridiculed for not having integrity, as if they have broken some moral code. They haven't.

steve_adams_863• 1 month ago

I agree. Davis intended to do what he did all along.

If Watterson deviated and sold the merchandise he would have lacked integrity, sure. But someone like Davis is acting according to their ideals and intentions and so on; there is a lot of integrity present in the matter.

People use it to mean “they did something I disagree with” which doesn’t inherently overlap with integrity concerns.

I suppose you could argue that art isn’t meant to be commercialized in such a way, and so Davis lacked integrity to the discipline and trade. Some comic artists might say his approach takes away from comic artistry and lacks integrity in that manner. I’m not sure if that’s true or reasonable to say at all. Someone can make a comic for any reason they want as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t know what Davis is like personally, but from the outside and looking only at Garfield, it doesn’t appear that he lacked integrity.

krupan6• 1 month ago

I think I'm taking it a step further even and asking that if Watterson decided that he would never merchandise Calvin and Hobbes and then 10 years later saw things differently and changed his mind, would that be an integrity violation? I don't think so.

testing22321• 1 month ago

Watterson has a recurring dream about his old college where he doesn’t know what class he’s taking or where he’s meant to be. He roams the grounds, growing more flustered with each confused step. Right before he wakes, he thinks, “How many more years until I graduate…? Wait, didn’t I graduate already? How old am I?”

I’m 44 and I have this dream every few months about high school and university. Something deep inside.

chrisgd• 1 month ago

I think about Bluey a lot in these situations. Fantastic show but because of the contract the Australian entity has sold licensing for everything. I wish they didn’t do sugary foods and a few other items. But it would be hard to turn down generational wealth

mireg• 1 month ago

Another good reason to buy the collection. again.

NoSalt• 1 month ago

I, like so many others, LOVE Calvin and Hobbes! I started loving it as a kid, a boy against "the establishment" (a.k.a., parents and school). Today, I am loving it as a parent with a little Calvin of my own running around the house. The wife and I are constantly laughing at how much our son reminds us of Calvin. We try to encourage his imagination as much as we can, and hope it never leaves him. It is absolutely amazing how this one comic can have such an effect on my during two completely different times of my life.

Mr. Bill Watterson ... thank you!

wondergato• 29 days ago

I highly recommend Bill Watterson's speech at his alma mater. https://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.
To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble. Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.

Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

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