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.
They haven’t brought up bridges and weight limits yet so I can only assume they still believe that.
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...
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.
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.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/6pig9h/hon...
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
Or would he have hated it? He certainly wouldn't have wanted to build a website for it.
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.
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.
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...
Mr. Bill Watterson ... thank you!
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-...
Also, now that I've read this, I'm kinda sad about the bootleg peeing Calvin truck decal.
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?
Watterson had (still has) a great deal of Personal Integrity.
I dig Personal Integrity. People like him, are kind of mythic heroes, to me.
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.
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
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.
I’m 44 and I have this dream every few months about high school and university. Something deep inside.
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