Side note, but every time I DON'T see a Hobbes plushy, a Calvin bauble head, the Calvin and Hobbes TV series, etc. I'm so thankful that Watterson grimly held onto the merchandising rights of his characters.
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.
I have immense respect for Watterson. He's the only artist I can think of to achieve that level of fame and success and not sell out. Selling out is barely even a concept any more because it's simply assumed, and Watterson is still out there in a cabin in the woods, communicating only by mail and refusing every corporate offer that comes his way.
I respect his decision, but for many people "selling out" is actually code for "financial security and stability for themselves and their families," which is not nothing and not necessarily worth scoffing at.
Watterson did get financial security and stability from the success of the comic, he wasn't distributing it for free. The point after that is where you find selling out, and that's where he drew a line.
I remember Far Side calendars, I think that many people knew the comics more from the calendars than from print. I even once compiled a Nature's Way calendar, and thought about sending it off to Gary.
It was successful enough that social media is full of bot accounts claiming to be "the far side" posting stolen/ai comics that may or may not be actual TFS.
Thomas Pynchon has as well but I guess he’s not as famous. But certainly extremely successful.
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.
Pynchon is great, but avoiding the creation of commercializable art is a different tactic that never has an inflection point-there's no moment of "If I sign this paper and give my creations to vultures, I will become rich on the spot."
Yeah, although honestly you're paying for the art created by John Kascht. The story is compelling but very, very short. I bought it in hardback right when it came out.
This was my first big purchase after I finished my Masters. Absolutely loved it. I would often pick a random volume out of the collection, open it to a random page and read. Delightful books, good memories.
I do wonder what will happen when it enters public domain. Will it have been too long, so nobody will bother creating merchandise and derivative works? Or will there be an explosion of Calvin and Hobbes material? I can’t think of a comparable test case.
That won't be for another 70+ years since Watterson is still alive and it was created after 1977. I can't imagine there'll be that much demand for C&H merch by then
Whenever the topic of copyright comes up on HN, the prevailing view in comments section is that copyrights should be relatively short and cultural artifacts should be available to everyone to use as they please.
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.
Well, life is incredibly nuanced, there's no black and whites and we often have to deal with double-edged swords. :)
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 don’t revile Disney for not letting us make
Mickey Mouse slash fiction.
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.
Watterson is motivated by integrity, I have no doubt of that.
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.
My point is that stewardship of corporate IP bestowed by the long-dead founder is different than ownership of art you yourself (an individual) created.
A living artist exercising creative control is different from an immortal corporation repeatedly lobbying governments to extend copyright beyond an artist's lifetime.
It's disingenuous to suggest people are mainly interested in Watterson's ability to control the profits of C&H during his lifetime. No, it's because we cherish C&H's purity and are protective of it. I claim it's a purely emotional thing.
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.
As one of those people I guess I can just say: I'd prefer that people respect Watterson's opinion about merch and knock-offs but that I'd also prefer the government not enforce that beyond 14 or so years.
I recently got that boxed set for my son’s birthday. I think I’ve spent more time reading it than he has, though I’m sure he’ll get into it eventually.
You're definitely right that children would love that sort of thing.
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!
Probably unapproved third-party merch, like those bumper stickers where Calvin is pissing on something. Watterson is famous for having always been anti-merchandising.
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...