He maintained such a high standard for his comic right unto the end.
Not everything in this world needs to be commoditized to death. "But how will new generations learn about Calvin and Hobbes without Calvin and Hobbes: Gacha game for iOS?". They can experience it the same way that we all did - in syndicated comic form.
https://www.abebooks.com/9780740748479/Complete-Calvin-Hobbe...
Gary Larson of The Far Side comes close but never touched the highs of Calvin and Hobbes
I respect him because a theme of Gravity’s Rainbow is the observation that capitalism will absorb anything that is useful and you can’t fight it as the fight against it will be commodified and sold. That you can only fly under the radar and avoid it - to just not create a market potential.
He’s certainly lived by that.
"Watterson lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio as of January 2024"
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Mysteries/Bill-Wa...
I think I read the story in about five minutes.
I'm always kind of bummed about it, instead of quality official merchandise there are a bunch of peeing calvin stickers on lifted pickup trucks.
https://theonion.com/peeing-calvin-decals-now-recognized-as-...
You can also buy the entire series in a single collection. I've got it, it's great, and my kids love reading it with me.
So I find it interesting ("interesting") how people seem to universally appreciate that Calvin & Hobbes are protected from any 3rd-party use, meanwhile they universally revile Disney for not allowing people to do what they want with (and to) Mickey Mouse.
To me, there's a bit of a difference between the two. In one instance, you've got a single corporation owning all the rights to a property and getting all of the cash from the sale of goods related to that property. This is a single party who gets to decide what to do with the IP, and often times this can irk fans and rub them the wrong way.
In another instance, you've got C&H released from copyright. Nobody owns the rights, so anybody can do anything with it - assholes can make cheap merchandise for the sake of fast cash the way Disney might with its own IP, but now that there are plenty of other vendors making like-products, we have choices and don't have to buy from one person. The alternatives available are also likely to be made by actual fans with a passion for the project. Broadly speaking, fans can't get irked the way they do when Disney makes a change, because whatever is out there by a third-party is just their creative take on it, not the single rights holder going, "This is the way the IP's universe is now, and what has been canon for thirty years is no longer so, please keep giving us cash".
You're right - one decision impacts another in a less than ideal way. But there's a balance and we have to find the right balance. :)
We revile them because in order to protect a 90 year old mouse cartoon they’ve made it so no English teacher below high school can teach any literature that is younger than 100 years old, because it’s too expensive to reprint it.
Disney's motivation seems to be to preserve their profit margins on hyper commercializing the creations of others.
But Disney is also motivated --at least partly-- by integrity. Yes, they want to control profits, clearly. But I have no doubts they want to preserve the integrity of their character also.
> the creations of others
Others? Even after Walt's death, Mickey Mouse has been overseen by a continuous line of people who care about the character's integrity.
In this case, Disney Inc is staffed by people who care deeply about the Disney legacy. You’ll be hard pressed to find a single employee who was not awe-struck walking the halls on the first day.
1. If copyright lasted 40 years, then C&H would still be under copyright, and the first 46 years of Mickey would be not; The first C&H strip is closer to today than it is to the first Mickey cartoon.
2. There is a difference between picking the rules and picking the preferred behavior under existing rules; if someone thought copyright should only last 20 years, then one reasonably believe both that C&H ought not be under copyright and respect Watterson's anti-merchandising point of view. Plenty of people who say that "Every billionaire is a policy failure" may also laud the donations of particularly philanthropic billionaires.
or if you go to https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes they cycle through them daily, as I do.
You can merchandise things without going overboard and losing your soul.
My perspective, as a parent of a 2 and 4 year-old, is that it would just be another stuffed animal. Both of my kiddos have their own massive pile of stuffed toys that people have given to them over the years. Much of them are forgotten about, and new stuffies are replaced after a short amount of time when a new one comes along or when they get bored of it. I can't tell you how many character stuffies my kids have been excited about only to all but forget about two days later.
My kids would love it, sure, but for them it's just the security of a soft cozy friend that seems to be the most important thing. What it looks like/who it is seems to be secondary and entirely mood dependent. There's never been a moment where there's felt like a void because Hobbes isn't in bed with us, and he wouldn't be accomplishing anything that the rest of their stuffies aren't doing already, save for padding Watterson's retirement - which I think is part of his point.
But everyone's different, so YMMV.
Edit: I suppose if one of my kiddos asked for one and it was super important to them, it would be kind of fun for us to make one from scratch!
In lieu of Hobbes™, sellers offer many choices.
https://www.amazon.com/hobbes-stuffed-tiger/s?k=hobbes+stuff...
None of them reach the meta level of social/theological commentary that C&H did, but they're still really, really good on their own, doing their own things.
I also think Bloom County deserves to be on the list of all-time greats.
Is there a better word for it?
It is sad that Watterson no longer makes these comics, but I've scratched my itch by reading "Phoebe and her Unicorn". You can read it free online I think, but my daughter and I read the paperbacks. It's not quite the same (the unicorn is real), but shares a lot in common. I just thought I'd add this for any fellow Calvin and Hobbes fans on here.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Mysteries/Bill-Wa...
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2014/06/04
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2014/06/05
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2014/06/06
And the story: https://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/ever-wished-t...
"Nah, the art form is dying"
Absolutely hilarious meta-commentary!
Even with a million Opus dolls, I don’t think any of it has chained him down or held him back.
No matter which decisions we make, we must live with them.
The entire collection opened a window into Watterson's evolution. He became a bit more cynical as time passed. I loved it.
Reading about his respect for his work, his refusal to sell out and his restraint made so much sense. You could feel it, the way these characters came to life. The essence ever intact.
Forever changed, forever grateful
Here's the Archive.org link for anyone who stumbles across it later: https://web.archive.org/web/20210918034921/http://timhulsize...
He also got the Complete Far Side and Bloom County as well. Both our teenagers have read them both.
It's funny hearing them know how Bill the Cat's brain was switched (?) into Donald Trumps brain. Ack-thpptt!
I only read them in the newspaper and in a couple of treasuries, but never completely, as our kids have.
What a remarkable blessing for them to be able to read those strips beginning-to-end.
> Blocked because of application
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How?
> Watterson: I'd like to, yeah, if the market will bear it.
It would be interesting to see the state of Calvin and Hobbes had Watterson decided to keep running the strip.