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tombert 5 hours 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.
wodenokoto 49 minutes 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.
cogman10 4 hours 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.
PaulHoule 1 hours 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.
cogman10 51 minutes ago [-]
Japan will certainly drive a property into the ground (Dragonball, Naruto) though at least they keep coming up with new/inventive stories to go along with it. I'd also say Japanese media isn't without it's tropes that it repeats ad nauseam if they are successful once.
But comparatively the US and most of the rest of the world is in a media dark age. The US seems to only manage to invent a new good property every decade or so. Everything else is rehashing existing ideas.
I really would like to know what Japan does differently to nurture new properties. It clearly works. It seems South Korea and China are also doing pretty well in that aspect.
nemomarx 38 minutes ago [-]
the publishers seem to have more interest in trying new writers and ideas and letting them sink or swim, basically. Like the same weekly magazine that publishers one piece might let your little idea get in there too, and if readers seem to like it they'll open up spots for you in the schedule, or it can die as a one shot or get cancelled after a few chapters.
Lots of new interesting stuff comes out and dies or doesn't survive, but it means they do have some constant incubation. The American version of this for comics is basically letting new writers try their hand at a big existing property to see if they're any good, but that means the new ideas are "fun spin on batman" or etc. (And of course the indie scene exists in both to different extents, but the publishers for non DC/Marvel stuff in the US are anemic.)
I hear scholastic is genuinely good, but they have a very specific audience ofc.
PaulHoule 26 minutes ago [-]
I hardly ever watch those anime which go on forever like Bleach.
I find 20% or so people in the general population in my town recognize who I am right away because they watched either Naruto or Demon Slayer and those are both in my queue so I can understand better what they know about me.
... but it is hard because there is Slayers and Futari Wa Precure and many many anime that have a few 12 epsiode seasons in my queue. And a lot of that is in the "so bad it's good category". One of my guilty pleasures is
which gets really good over time because the crazy overpowered protagonist and his Level 9999 friends almost meet their match and I never would have discovered the light novel and manga if I hadn't been willing to watch a truly atrocious J.C. Staff anime. Only in Japan can some ordinary person write a web novel, get a contract for a light novel, get a manga made, then get an anime, video games, etc. The "media mix" strategy lets their industry market test content with low risk and the anime doesn't even have to be profitable on its own if it convinces 10,000 or so obsessive fans to shell out $150 to buy all the books of the light novel and another $150 to buy the books of the manga.
The cost structure of the US media industry is a lot worse and divides between super-expensive prestige content and a tier of slop. It's all a gatekeeping-industrial complex and no wonder people are pissed about DEI, "woke" and all that because it's a zero sum game. The industry would love to get another J. K. Rowlings and we've probably had 10 of them who never got greenlit because of low risk tolerance.
cogman10 17 minutes ago [-]
> crazy overpowered protagonist and his Level 9999 friends almost meet their match
Is this the origin of that trope? I've seen a couple of anime/manga that use the same story as a jump off point. Character that doesn't know their own strength kicked out of the party for being "weak" only for us to later find out they are one of the strongest/most powerful individuals in the world.
PaulHoule 6 minutes ago [-]
Nah, that one is too new. Turns out this guy's power is only useful at the very bottom of the most dangerous dungeon which has dense enough mana that he can summon people and items stronger than the surface world. It's marketed as a crazy revenge fantasy and it is that, but it would be unfair it to compare it to the really mean-spirited revenge stories that come out of Korean and China.
fragmede 36 minutes ago [-]
Hilariously, Dragonball is a rehashing of a far older folktale.
rbanffy 3 hours 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.
mapontosevenths 46 minutes ago [-]
The world has no place for men like Waterson, and it is precisely when the world leaves no place for them that men like him are most necessary.
kemayo 5 hours 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 4 hours 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.
ghaff 4 hours ago [-]
Doing a daily anything is hard. Garry Trudeau sort of did a good compromise by pivoting to just a Sunday entry--that is still pretty solid. But my general observation is that it's really hard to keep things flowing day-in and day-out as a cartoonist/columnist/etc.
tombert 4 hours ago [-]
I didn't read the comics when they were new, but I started reading the daily rerun comics of Doonesbury, and I hadn't realized how funny they actually are.
I guess as a kid I always thought it was the comic that "old people" liked, and never gave it much of a shot, but I kind of inadvertently found it recently and it actually pretty good.
bombcar 3 hours ago [-]
The old ones vs the current ones really do hit different.
vidarh 3 hours ago [-]
One of my favourite comic artists, Mads Eriksen [1][2] basically "disappeared" in 2008-2009 and didn't start regularly publishing comics again for more than a decade (at a much slower pace) because of the pressure and burnout.
Maybe Watterson could have squeezed another year or two out of himself, but it's by no means a given it wouldn't have meant unreasonable personal sacrifice.
Watterson and Larson (both who retired at or near the "top" of their game) could easily have gone on for a year or two more - or three, or five, or twenty.
But they both knew that the font was running low, if not completely dry; likely triggered by starting a joke and realizing they'd done it before years ago.
Both have "come back" here and there to dabble, as appropriate for someone who actually knows how to retire.
tombert 1 hours ago [-]
I respect it honestly.
The Simpsons used to be my favorite show, but I feel like the quality dropped dramatically after season ~13 or so. Part of that is because I got older, I'll admit, but even rewatching the older seasons, I still find them funny while season 13 and onward I simply don't.
I would have so rather they ended the show twenty years ago and use whatever budget they spent making it on new cartoons.
CrazyStat 3 hours ago [-]
I have similar feelings about TV shows. There are shows that I wish hadn’t ended after a couple of seasons, but there are also a ton of shows that dragged on for 6, 8, 15 seasons when it clearly would have been better to end them years earlier.
Overall I lean toward appreciating things that end early more than things that end late.
selfmodruntime 3 hours 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.
wrs 2 hours 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”.
tombert 3 hours 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.
fragmede 3 hours ago [-]
There's like 100 of them on Etsy right now.
blindriver 4 hours 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.
dTal 10 minutes 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.
hackmack10 3 hours ago [-]
Bill Watterson is worth a hundred million dollars. He’s not hurting for cash.
jonstewart 60 minutes ago [-]
Citation? I’m sure he’s fine but $100M?
blindriver 2 hours ago [-]
He didn't license his characters, he's not worth a hundred million dollars.
Benlovescnn 2 hours ago [-]
The guy that never sold out won't have the island next to supreme sellouts, jared and ivanka.
bombcar 3 hours ago [-]
Bill Watterson is comfortable for life - even without merchandising he's easily a millionaire multiple times over.
dgritsko 8 hours 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.
all2 7 hours 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.
smithkl42 3 hours 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.
rbanffy 3 hours ago [-]
It makes everybody’s day a little bit more surreal. Certainly a worthy cause.
Cider9986 7 hours 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 5 hours 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.
defen 5 hours 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.
ericd 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, our boys read my old C&H collection more than almost any of their modern kids books. Downside, it's inspired all sorts of mischievous ideas.
Roald Dahl, too, and the Uncle series. These old books have more of an edge to them that our kids seem to light up at, and I've had a hard time finding modern equivalents. Most of the modern kids books seem too saccharine/sterile by comparison. Maybe it's just survivorship bias, these are just the old books that people bothered to keep reading.
wrs 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah. Ronald Dahl once said something to the effect that to make a good children’s book the first thing you have to do is kill off the parents!
ericd 6 minutes ago [-]
Sometimes by having an herbivore suddenly and unceremoniously gobble them up.
senordevnyc 3 hours ago [-]
Exact same story here. I got my father in law the box set as a gift, and when my daughter was about seven she started reading them when we were visiting them. So I bought her a set of her own. She still reads them all the time at 11.
jjulius 4 hours 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.
beAbU 5 hours 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.
conception 5 hours ago [-]
Rather than bombard children with advertising to buy plastic junk? Y…yes it was the right choice?
willis936 5 hours 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.
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.
vohk 5 hours 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.
cortesoft 3 hours 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.
nkrisc 5 hours 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.
pydry 5 hours ago [-]
I saw a little girl reading it on public transport just yesterday.
biomcgary 4 hours ago [-]
My teenage boys are hooked on Calvin & Hobbes.
prmoustache 3 hours ago [-]
My 7y old nephew inherited my complete collection and is a big fan.
alanbernstein 5 hours ago [-]
I suggested it to my young kids and it became an instant favorite.
Hugsbox 5 hours ago [-]
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jeronimobomfim 4 hours 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:
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.
frollogaston 2 hours 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."
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.
srvmshr 41 minutes 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.
alsetmusic 6 hours 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.
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.
Tyr42 7 hours 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.
defen 6 hours 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.
cogman10 4 hours 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".
blt 7 hours 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 6 hours 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.
sehugg 4 hours ago [-]
FYI Berke Breathed (Bill's contemporary, occasional collaborator and pen-pal) is still posting new Bloom County comics on his Patreon.
InitialLastName 7 hours ago [-]
He's had more than 2 decades to reject that opportunity.
bena 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah. He's not dead. He could have gone into webcomics if he had wanted.
hylaride 5 hours ago [-]
I think he's a product of his time (pre-internet). He stopped because he felt he hit the limits of what he could create, and while a large part of it was the restrictions the newspapers put on him, it was also that he was running out of ideas. It's something he's specifically said in his very rare interviews, and he seems to enjoy living a very quiet life.
While webcomics are thriving, they don't quite have the same cultural impact that every kid growing up had for a few decades where the newspaper would be out on the kitchen table and the kids would nosedive for the comics. When I think about it, it was a brilliant move for newspapers. As I got older and closer to being an adult, I started reading the rest of the paper.
There were several excellent comics, but only C&H has stood the test of time and I am so proud that my 8 year old daughter recently pulled down the books are started getting lost in them. Sometimes the restrictions and limitations produce creativity in their own right, and I often wonder if something like C&H could even make it in today's cultural environment (both from a political point of view and in the modern social media landscape).
WillAdams 4 hours 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:
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":
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....
Kotlopou 3 hours 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)
awbvious 5 hours 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).
cogogo 4 hours 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.
pantsforbirds 1 hours 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
hyperhello 7 hours 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 7 hours 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 6 hours ago [-]
> the impression it was a dog whistle for manosphere spazzes
Everyone thinks this until they see the movie or read the book.
scubbo 6 hours ago [-]
I mean...they _are_. That doesn't mean that they doesn't have quality beyond what those dregs see.
rbanffy 3 hours ago [-]
A lot of them praised The Boys right up to the point they realised it was making fun of them. They took years of the TV series to get it.
jasonmp85 5 hours ago [-]
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bigstrat2003 6 hours 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.
Yeask 7 hours ago [-]
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PaulHoule 2 hours 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.
CamperBob2 48 minutes 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.
FatherOfCurses 7 hours 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.
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 5 hours ago [-]
> He leaves the ceiling white, empty, fresh.
Did anyone ever try and recover the painting/palimpsest?
rbanffy 3 hours ago [-]
Some things are meant to be made, not necessarily seen.
helterskelter 6 hours ago [-]
I believe those are the Tibetan Buddhists.
CamperBob2 46 minutes ago [-]
And boy, do they get sore when some tourists' kid runs through the sand, Calvin-like, the day before the big ceremony.
frollogaston 2 hours 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.
goolz 4 hours 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.
rbanffy 3 hours 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 hours ago [-]
A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.
randallsquared 7 hours 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?
bluGill 7 hours 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.
clutchdude 6 hours 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 5 hours ago [-]
Only 7 out of 1800 cancelled, according to the article.
leephillips 4 hours ago [-]
Sounds like you would be interested in the article linked at the top of the page.
toss1 6 hours 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.
randallsquared 15 minutes 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.
bryanrasmussen 7 hours 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 7 hours ago [-]
The threatened cancellation was over Watterson demanding an unmodifiable half-page for his Sunday strips, not over the content of his strips.
bryanrasmussen 6 hours ago [-]
ah sorry I had it confused in my mind with Berkley Breathed, should have read article first but I saw the cancellation thing and I thought oh yeah I remember that.
NKosmatos 4 hours 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.
jjulius 3 hours ago [-]
Knowing Watterson, I'd wager he's taken certain paths to prevent this from happening.
prmoustache 3 hours 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.
aBioGuy 8 hours 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 8 hours 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.
pseudalopex 8 minutes ago [-]
Watterson said It was only my head that burst into flames.[1]
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.
annzabelle 5 hours ago [-]
Firefly is an interesting example of that. If it had not been cancelled so quickly, would anybody remember it these days? A lot of shows start out strong and then completely fall apart.
hiccuphippo 6 hours ago [-]
And I guess the live action remake of Cowboy Bebop is the box on fire in this analogy?
rbanffy 3 hours ago [-]
I actually like it better, but it’s because I prefer live action over animation.
neogodless 5 hours ago [-]
I watched a few episodes of it.
It wasn't so bad that I couldn't wait to stop watching it but... it wasn't good enough that I couldn't help but finish it. I still want to finish it...
all2 6 hours ago [-]
I think so, yes. I didn't hear great things about that. Eventually I'll probably watch it. But also maybe not.
wincy 5 hours 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.
jjulius 3 hours 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...
... and, of course, all of the various collections of the comics in print form, up to and including the full box set, that everyone can check out from libraries or purchase and keep in perpetuity. Ya know, the actual thing, the meat of it, the heart, the soul - not tangential merchandise.
>Some artistic vision.
Talk about completely missing the point.
WalterBright 3 hours ago [-]
I'm always amazed at how a cartoonist can turn out 6 cartoons a week, every week, every month, every year.
ChrisMarshallNY 4 hours 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.
mrhottakes 5 hours 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.
CM30 7 hours 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.
everyone 3 hours ago [-]
I saw this video recently, about Bill Waterson and 'Robotman'
There's no art that can be stopped. You only need to convince someone else to print it if you want money.
recursivedoubts 8 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of why the lucky stiff for some reason...
andrepd 4 hours ago [-]
Absolutely incredible writing! Loved every word.
slowhadoken 5 hours 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.
awbvious 5 hours 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But comparatively the US and most of the rest of the world is in a media dark age. The US seems to only manage to invent a new good property every decade or so. Everything else is rehashing existing ideas.
I really would like to know what Japan does differently to nurture new properties. It clearly works. It seems South Korea and China are also doing pretty well in that aspect.
Lots of new interesting stuff comes out and dies or doesn't survive, but it means they do have some constant incubation. The American version of this for comics is basically letting new writers try their hand at a big existing property to see if they're any good, but that means the new ideas are "fun spin on batman" or etc. (And of course the indie scene exists in both to different extents, but the publishers for non DC/Marvel stuff in the US are anemic.)
I hear scholastic is genuinely good, but they have a very specific audience ofc.
When I go out as
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116484198935085911
I find 20% or so people in the general population in my town recognize who I am right away because they watched either Naruto or Demon Slayer and those are both in my queue so I can understand better what they know about me.
... but it is hard because there is Slayers and Futari Wa Precure and many many anime that have a few 12 epsiode seasons in my queue. And a lot of that is in the "so bad it's good category". One of my guilty pleasures is
https://w1.backstabbedinabackwaterdungeon.xyz/chapters/1/
which gets really good over time because the crazy overpowered protagonist and his Level 9999 friends almost meet their match and I never would have discovered the light novel and manga if I hadn't been willing to watch a truly atrocious J.C. Staff anime. Only in Japan can some ordinary person write a web novel, get a contract for a light novel, get a manga made, then get an anime, video games, etc. The "media mix" strategy lets their industry market test content with low risk and the anime doesn't even have to be profitable on its own if it convinces 10,000 or so obsessive fans to shell out $150 to buy all the books of the light novel and another $150 to buy the books of the manga.
The cost structure of the US media industry is a lot worse and divides between super-expensive prestige content and a tier of slop. It's all a gatekeeping-industrial complex and no wonder people are pissed about DEI, "woke" and all that because it's a zero sum game. The industry would love to get another J. K. Rowlings and we've probably had 10 of them who never got greenlit because of low risk tolerance.
Is this the origin of that trope? I've seen a couple of anime/manga that use the same story as a jump off point. Character that doesn't know their own strength kicked out of the party for being "weak" only for us to later find out they are one of the strongest/most powerful individuals in the world.
The world needs Watersons now more than ever. And Calvins and Hobbeses.
> 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.
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.
I guess as a kid I always thought it was the comic that "old people" liked, and never gave it much of a shot, but I kind of inadvertently found it recently and it actually pretty good.
Maybe Watterson could have squeezed another year or two out of himself, but it's by no means a given it wouldn't have meant unreasonable personal sacrifice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mads_Eriksen_(cartoonist)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_(comic_strip)
But they both knew that the font was running low, if not completely dry; likely triggered by starting a joke and realizing they'd done it before years ago.
Both have "come back" here and there to dabble, as appropriate for someone who actually knows how to retire.
The Simpsons used to be my favorite show, but I feel like the quality dropped dramatically after season ~13 or so. Part of that is because I got older, I'll admit, but even rewatching the older seasons, I still find them funny while season 13 and onward I simply don't.
I would have so rather they ended the show twenty years ago and use whatever budget they spent making it on new cartoons.
Overall I lean toward appreciating things that end early more than things that end late.
> 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”.
A worthy cause, I hope.
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.
Roald Dahl, too, and the Uncle series. These old books have more of an edge to them that our kids seem to light up at, and I've had a hard time finding modern equivalents. Most of the modern kids books seem too saccharine/sterile by comparison. Maybe it's just survivorship bias, these are just the old books that people bothered to keep reading.
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.
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.
https://youtu.be/P5ivZLTMhso
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.
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.
My son enjoys reading the collection I had when I was young.
https://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html
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.
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."
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...
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/6pig9h/hon...
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.
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.
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
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Mysteries/Bill-Wa...
Or would he have hated it? He certainly wouldn't have wanted to build a website for it.
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".
While webcomics are thriving, they don't quite have the same cultural impact that every kid growing up had for a few decades where the newspaper would be out on the kitchen table and the kids would nosedive for the comics. When I think about it, it was a brilliant move for newspapers. As I got older and closer to being an adult, I started reading the rest of the paper.
There were several excellent comics, but only C&H has stood the test of time and I am so proud that my 8 year old daughter recently pulled down the books are started getting lost in them. Sometimes the restrictions and limitations produce creativity in their own right, and I often wonder if something like C&H could even make it in today's cultural environment (both from a political point of view and in the modern social media landscape).
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....
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)
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.
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...".
Everyone thinks this until they see the movie or read the book.
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...
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.
Did anyone ever try and recover the painting/palimpsest?
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?
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.
It does not.
The former was threats in the before times, the latter was the lackluster result after the dust had settled.
Look at what happened to Frida Kalho. Her face has sadly become a synonymous for cheap stuff sold anywhere.
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.
[1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/53216/mental-floss-exclu...
It wasn't so bad that I couldn't wait to stop watching it but... it wasn't good enough that I couldn't help but finish it. I still want to finish it...
... and, of course, all of the various collections of the comics in print form, up to and including the full box set, that everyone can check out from libraries or purchase and keep in perpetuity. Ya know, the actual thing, the meat of it, the heart, the soul - not tangential merchandise.
>Some artistic vision.
Talk about completely missing the point.
Watterson had (still has) a great deal of Personal Integrity.
I dig Personal Integrity. People like him, are kind of mythic heroes, to me.
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.
https://youtu.be/gP01pIB99ws?si=rnUOUom_MRYQcPkP
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