The most magnificent thing about Calvin and Hobbes is ..... Calvin and Hobbes.
The second most magnificent thing is Calvin and Hobbes was never licensed.
The third most magnificent thing is it stopped whilst it was awesome instead of being wrung out for every penny.
There's no films, no sequels. You can't buy a licensed tshirt with Calvin and Hobbes on it. There's no licensed merchandise. No one has made it into a live action movie. Calvin and Hobbes are not available this month on MacDonalds cups if you buy a second whopper burger. You can't buy plush toys of Hobbes. There isn't a Christmas special TV show. Giant balloon figures of Calvin and Hobbes do not appear in city parades.
Imagine if Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit had been kept so pristine.
All that said, IMHO, having Peanuts characters on MetLife ads, or visiting Camp Snoopy doesn’t cheapen or weaken the original strips.
“Merry Christmas Charlie Brown” and “Great Pumpkin” are both pure, done by Schulz rather than handed off. It’s Schulz bringing his work to life how he wanted it done.
Did he have Guaraldi music in his head when he created the characters? Dunno. Do you think it really changed them for him? Dunno either, but seems unlikely.
I have the 4 volume C & H boxed set. I was there, mostly, reading it daily from the beginning to the end. I’m pretty sure I have the final strip saved from when it was published in a box somewhere. Mad respect for Watterson, his work, his vision.
That said, I’d be first in line for a Hobbes doll. I had a pirate Spaceman Spiff sticker on the back of my motorcycle helmet.
I don’t think an Opus the Penguin doll had any real impact on Breatheds work, but at the same time he stopped the licensing, so who knows.
The work stands on its own. I’ve never read LoTR. I don’t know if it’s impacted how people view the books. I do know that I’ve watched the trilogy at least once a year since its release.
Calvin is Calvin. Opus is Opus. Snoopy is Snoopy. And Waterson will do as he likes with his work. I just think his work is stronger than he, perhaps, thinks it is.
I'm not a huge objector to the continued outchurn of the Star Wars or Star Trek or MCU franchises, for example, because there's an academic sense in which the existence of bad stuff doesn't negate the existence of good stuff.
BUT...
I think restraint and scarcity can make things more special. Food is more enjoyable when we are hungry, absence makes the heart grow fonder, etc..
Narratively, it's good to leave some questions unanswered. A successful franchise leaves the fans wanting more, but actually giving them more can leave us over-satiated and uninterested.
There's no more magic or mystery left when every character has had their own mini-series to fully flesh-out every aspect of their arc.
It's not only about the sanctity of the work, but the opportunity for other artists to earn a living and for the audience to avoid monoculture. Consumerism facilitates a winner-take-all system where one creator's voice overrides all others. It's better for all when a number of moderately successful artists can have artistic dialogue with a larger number of audience segments, even when moderated by commerce.
If I write a book and it's good, me doing other stuff later, even with the same characters doesn't change the original book.
You want to feel like the subject is yours, and if it's too widespread, lots of people will learn about it, in an "inpure way" (scoff, learning about an amazing comic strip in a movie) and so it cheapens it. Only with this "hipster" view on things you could say that. I think it's impossible to cheapen something without changing it.
If the first edition was cool and the second edition changes the language for sensitivities for example, that can cheapen it, because it actually changed it. McDonald's offering a toy of a character from the first edition, changes nothing.
>If I write a book and it's good, me doing other stuff later, even with the same characters doesn't change the original book.
Only technically. In that the actual printed words wont change.
In how it's perceived in the culture, how it's read, how new readers relate to its characters, what it's seen as the start of, and so on, it does retroactively change the original.
Same how the horrendous 8th season of GoT tainted the previous seasons too. Now it's a journey to a pointless ending - and many people who haven't seen it are unwilling to get into it because they know that. Even someone rewatching the first season, now has a bad taste knowing the later plot of Danny for example, or how various things shown as prominent in the first seasons (the mysterious signs of the deathwalkers, or even the death walkers themselves) play no significant role, or are just skipped over later.
I don’t think I have to say anything more than “Game of Thrones” to prove you wrong in most people’s minds. The last episodes sullied the whole series, and I have no longer any desire at all to revisit any of the first seasons, even though I enjoyed them a lot when I watched them originally.
I'm reading Good Omens again right now, and I just got to the "whole damn sea full of brains" scene, and I keep hearing it in Doctor Who's voice. Plus the whole shipping reading from S1/S2 kinds bleeds back.
My favorite Peanuts ripoff is a ditty from Jeff Gilbert's "Brain Pain" circa 1989 or so:
kids: Trick or treat!
kid 1: I got a popcorn ball!
kid 2: I got a fudge ball!
kid 3: I got a pack of gum!
Charlie Brown: I gotta rock!
<heavy metal ensues>
Gawd I miss Jeff Gilbert's show. He should have been syndicated nationally, rather than just a local thing.
>Imagine if Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit had been kept so pristine.
I find it unlikely I would have heard about them, my local library was full of books from the 50's I had never heard of and was reluctant to read. Seeing the Hobbit cartoon gave me an interest in it that I followed up on in middle school.
On that note, the only way most children will hear of Calvin and Hobbes is if their parents were big fans or through the many unlicensed products available. Maybe that's fine, but people seem strangely proud that's the case.
Everyone knew about LOTR and read the books before the movies came out. It was in no way some obscure out of print lit, it was both pop and a cult classic, and it was very much front and center of any must read fantasy bookshelf. Hence the wildly profitable movies.
"Everyone" very much didn't. Most of the people in my life have seen the movies. Relatively few have read the book even now. Most of those close to me who have read the books did so after the movies came out as a direct result of hearing about or seeing the movies.
It wasn't obscure to fantasy fans, but very few fantasy books break through and sell well. Most genre fiction outside of romance, thrillers/crime sell ridiculously low numbers.
In a 2003 interview, the project manager for Tolkien at Houghton Mifflin, who held the US rights, stated that they had at the time only had two million-copy bestsellers in the company's history: The Silmarillion in 1977, and LOTR in 2001 in the runup to the first movie.
By 2003 they'd sold 2 million copies of the one-volume trade paperback in the US.
Worldwide, combined sales went from 50 million copies in 2003, already massively boosted by the movies, to 150 million by 2007. In other words: Nearly half a century to get to 50 million, with a significant proportion of those 50 million in the last few years of that period, and then 100 million in the following 4 once the movies were well known.
The readers of "any must read fantasy bookshelf" are a small enough demographic that if they were the only ones who'd watch the movies, they'd have bombed spectacularly.
>"Everyone" very much didn't. Most of the people in my life have seen the movies. Relatively few have read the book even now.
Those aren't the people that read fantasy in the first place. If they haven't "read the book even now", it's not like it matters that they seen the movies. For them it could be any other movie in their place, and they would be just as satisfied.
The point was that the people that read fantasy in the first place other than when nudged by movies is a tiny little subset of people.
And the proportion of people who rarely read fantasy who went on to read LOTR multiplied it's total global sales several times over in a few short years after it'd been out for half a century because of those movies.
>It wasn't obscure to fantasy fans, but very few fantasy books break through and sell well. Most genre fiction outside of romance, thrillers/crime sell ridiculously low numbers.
is that still the case?
It seems that almost all media nowadays is some fantasy / scifi subgenre. As is often remarked the nerds won. It seems unlikely that the conventional wisdom about what sells would not have been changed somewhat by this state of things.
For the most part. There are outliers, especially in non-fiction the ones that makes it onto the bestseller lists at all are often very topical and so hard to predict runaway successes happen. And at least this year thrillers are also doing poorly.
Of the 20 best selling print books for adults so far in H1 2023 according to publishers weekly and Bookscan (so these are not total sales numbers, but they're pretty representative):
Romance: 11 out of 20. The 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 8th 9th, 11th, 19th were all romance by Colleen Hoover alone (2nd and 3rd sold 885k and 882k each).
Non-fiction: 3 out of 20, including the 1st (prince Harry's biography; about 1.8m until end H1)
Non-genre fiction: 3 out of 20
Historical fiction: 1 out of 20
The first and only fantasy novel is the 11th: A Court of Thorns and Roses, which at 350k until end H1 is a breakaway success in fantasy.
Thrillers: 1
The number for e-books could very well shift that somewhat, but if you follow some writers on social media, you'll see romance readers churn through romance novels at an absolutely ridiculous rate.
The thing is the key demographics for fantasy and scifi don't read many books. As part of that demographics who does read, it's very noticeable how much of an outlier I am, and I still read a tiny fraction of what a relatively typical romance reader reads.
EDIT:
> As is often remarked the nerds won.
This is true, but not in books: Bertelsmann owns Penguin Random House and has a market cap of ~15bn Euro, and that also includes e.g. RTL and a bunch of non-publishing assets.
Electronic Arts has a market cap of $35bn. Activision has a market cap of $74bn.
"We" won through scifi and fantasy in other media far outdistancing books.
The OP isn't talking about the megahit live-action movies. They're crediting LotR's popularity to the cartoon movies that came out between 1977 and 1980.
It's impossible to say how popular the series would have been in the late 90's without the cartoons.
It'd probably still be a fantasy classic, but I never actively searched out the fantasy genre. I read those books because of the cartoons.
LOTR is the gold standard of Fantasy, and if you got anywhere near that, it was always recommended. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so well after the novels were published, and they were still ubiquitous.
Which of course does not negate the introduction that the animated series or movies had on their continued popularity. Each experience can be different. All roads can lead to Rome.
I would say that there's a reason LOTR remains huge, while C&H is mostly nostalgia by an aging fan base. LOTR reinvents, C&H is locked in a decision point in time.
I guess in like 65 years it'll enter the public domain and we'll see if dome enterprising publisher decides its worth repeating.
It was the best-known and most influental fantasy fiction on Earth before the cartoons. Anyone with more than a passing interest in fantasy was at least aware of Lord of the Rings. I'm sure the cartoons helped, and I also loved the Hobbit movie, but I think you're making your own experience more universal than it really was.
Yes, but as sales numbers for genre literature will tell you, most people don't read fantasy (or sci fi, or pretty much any genre literature outside of romance and thrillers).
Being one of the best-known genre-work of all genres means the vast majority of people have still not read it.
Estimates worldwide sales were around 50m by 2003, and 150m by 2007.
Figuring out where they were at before the movies is hard, but the US 2001 edition of LOTR alone sold ~2m copies between 2001 and 2003, so it's pretty clear sales in 2001-2003 were far higher than the average for the preceding years of sale.
> but the US 2001 edition of LOTR alone sold ~2m copies between 2001 and 2003
do we have stats for sales in the 1980s etc. ? I would expect the 2m was replacement, new generation of readers sales because before extra market opened up by movies (which obviously must have happened) all the people who would buy that book, which was also probably a lot, had already bought one.
Not really. The earliest cumulative estimate I've found was the 50m number for 2003.
There are some earlier numbers:
First edition of the Fellowship of the Ring was printed in 1500 copies in the US, 3000 in the UK. Return of the King up to 5,000 in the UK and 7,000 in the US.
It's worth noting that those were good sales number for fantasy hardbacks, and still are. The vast majority of authors can only dream of selling even a few thousands hardbacks for genre fiction.
In the 1960's Ace published an unlicensed paperback copy of LOTR due to an issue with the US copyright that reportedly sold a combined 150k. Ballantine's subsequent authorised paperback supposedly sold at least 100k. Those numbers were astounding for fantasy, and still are.
Someone from Houghton Mifflin said the 2001 edition was their second book ever to sell over a million, with the 1977 edition of The Silmarillion the only other one in decades of publishing. It's pretty reasonable to assume there must have been quite a few million copies of LOTR out for there to be enough of a market for The Silmarillion to sell over a million in a US edition.
So by fantasy standards it certainly was one of the biggest successes ever already at that point.
I really want to know what the worldwide sales were for the last few years before the movie marketing started and from they were launched and until 2003, though. It's clear the movies effect were massive, but it'd be interesting to see just how massive.
> Someone from Houghton Mifflin said the 2001 edition was their second book ever to sell over a million, with the 1977 edition of The Silmarillion the only other one in decades of publishing.
Wow. Very strange that The Silmarillion outsold any of the Lord of the Rings books.
Think multiple editions and multiple publishers. By the time The Silmarillion came out, LOTR had been out for more than 20 years in multiple editions. The individual early editions sold less, but gradually ramped up over the years, and at least two of the biggest selling early editions in the US were not Houghton Mifflin but Ace and Ballantine who were the first to publish paperback versions in the US - Houghton Mifflins earlier versions had been only hardcover as far as I know. The 1965 Ballantine edition alone had been reprinted nearly a dozen times by 1967.
Everyone in a certain generation did, yes. But it didn’t carry over to their children as such, unless you were a member of fantasy communities I think it’s largely positive that you haven’t heard about them. This is obviously anecdotal, but I grew up in the 80/90ies, played dnd and was a general fantasy nerd and nobody in our community had read them before the movies. Even after the movies a lot of us never made it through all the running around in the second book, which was a staring point for a lot of us after having watched the first movie. Our younger siblings never got into it, they got into Harry Potter instead. For todays youngsters LOTR is basically non-existent.
While anecdotal like I said, none of the “fantasy” stores around my city sell anything LOTR related while some of them have entire floors dedicated to Harry Potter merc.
But you’re absolutely right about what we call the 57’ generation. They all ate it right up. Everyone in my parents generation read it during their early university years, and I do mean everyone.
I grew up in a family of fantasy nerds and it still took a while for me to get around to LOTR. My main interest was I vaguely remembered a WIRED interview with the creators of Riven (the sequel to Myst) where they said it was an inspiration. I don't remember in what way since the setting is very different, although looking at it now I can see some thematic similarities (a formerly pristine world set on a doomed path by an evil figure with a god complex).
Anyway, I did read the trilogy and the Hobbit and held them in high regard. The movies (mainly the Return of the King) actually did _significantly_ "cheapen" the idea of the LOTR in my eyes at least because the "Return of the King" movie left out plot points that I felt were vital to the message of the books. Primarily that even after the "big bad" was defeated, people were still evil (see the Scouring of the Shire). Much like the real-world war that must have inspired Tolkien given his participation in it, it was a major victory to celebrate but nevertheless not the end of every struggle.
Tangentially I'd also say that even the original Harry Potter brand is cheaper than LOTR because although it's fun and palatable, it doesn't have as much to say about the real world or challenge us in how we live our lives.
A major theme throughout the book trilogy had been that everyone, even Gandalf, has a "shadow" that corrupts their good intentions, except for hobbits which made them ideal ring bearers since the Ring would twist ambition/pride/etc to its own ends. It's basically a morality play for the post-WW2 generation, where the demons are not just external monsters but internal temptations. The movie trilogy's ending was much "neater" and also much less true to life.
But on the other hand, the RPG "The One Ring" does right by the source material by making the shadow a mechanic in the game that mirrors the theme in the books.
So LOTR seems like an excellent example of licensing gone both right (The One Ring) and wrong (admittedly the movies weren't all bad, but most could probably agree the Hobbit movies did cheapen the source material).
I honestly didn’t know anything about LotR, only the hobbit because the cartoon came on tv once. I didn’t even know it was part of a bigger story until someone in the movie mentioned Bilbo Baggins and I was like “wait, I know him!”
The animated Hobbit cartoon movie is a freaking treasure. It got me into fantasy as a kid and led me to reading the Tolkien books. I have passed it on to my daughter and the opening scene where Thorin & Gandalf talk about the Dragon while reading direct quotes from the book still gives me chills and was probably my first real experience with poetry.
>I find it unlikely I would have heard about them, my local library was full of books from the 50's I had never heard of and was reluctant to read
Millions read LOTR and Hobbit before the movies, and they had very active communities all the way to the 90s. Like millions have read HGTTG before the movie (who didn't even do that well) and millions continue to do so -- including millions worldwide who never heard the radio show ever.
Is h2g2 still on the minds of people that age? When I got into it, to the eyes of a teen it seemed as if it had been there forever (1). Not quite as much as LoTR but well established nonetheless. But actually it was still in its increasingly inaccurately named phase, so it would still get an attention refresh from time to time. Decades passing with the only attention refresh being a not terribly well received movie, I suspect that much of the awareness we are prone to take for granted simply does not exist in people who only know the 20th century from hearsay (which brings us back to Watterson I guess, the topic of absent "attention refresh").
((1) and already established in book form, its radio origins already relegated to fan trivia - it was years after reading the books that I realized that I had actually heard quite a bit of it in radio form before, enjoying it to the point of deliberately tuning in each week, without committing the name of the show to memory. Not the original radio show buy a german language production, would be interesting to see where on the spectrum between original show and "radiofication" of the books those episodes were, I don't think they made that show before the books became a radiant success)
> Not the original radio show buy a german language production, would be interesting to see where on the spectrum between original show and "radiofication" of the books those episodes were, I don't think they made that show before the books became a radiant success.
Wikipedia claims the German audio version was based on first six episodes of the UK radios series, and I do remember noticing that some plot points differed somewhat from the books (and then when I finally listened to the original radio series, I somewhat recognised those differing plot points again).
> my local library was full of books from the 50's I had never heard of and was reluctant to read.
Ok but whose loss is that? Tolkien did not write for people who were afraid of old books. If he had wanted to reach the largest audience possible whatever the means, he would have written differently. It happenede that a rather large audience did appreaciate his works in their original form, apparently also to the surprise of Tolkien himself.
Watterson himself was inspired by comic strips from the early 20th century. There were no cartoons or film adaptations of those around, but nevertheless they remained around for him to discover through books.
>(Calvin and Hobbes) borrows several elements and themes from three major influences: Walt Kelly's Pogo, George Herriman's Krazy Kat and Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts.
Pogo ran until ten years before Calvin and Hobbes started, and had several animated adaptations, including one in 1980.
Krazy Kat had ~100 cartoons made between 1916 and 1965.
And Peanuts has been marketed to death.
I wouldn't be surprised if he read more early 20th century comics without adaptations, but that likely happened after he already had a deep interest in the medium. People that get really into comics can independently discover Calvin and Hobbes, but they're going to be a minority
I can't stress enough how unheard of it is for a comic strip artist to just walk out on his creation. Usually there are only two possible ends: either the strip gets cancelled when its popularity drops, or the author works on it until they drop dead (happened to Charles Schulz with Peanuts and will probably happen to Jim Davis with Garfield). Some strips are even continued by other artists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blondie_(comic_strip)).
Reminds me of R.E.M. (one of my favorite bands) who also decided in 2011 to call it a day and split amicably, thus escaping the fate of all other rock bands who either implode because their members can't stand each other anymore or go on until they, well, drop dead.
I know IP laws like copyright and trademarks are vilified because of how companies like Disney and Nintendo weaponized them but I appreciate how the spirit of the law is still kept intact when protecting things like Calvin and Hobbes.
Allowing an artist to control their own art for justice/purity/authenticity reasons is not the spirit of the law. The stated purpose of IP law is to incentivize useful things. Calvin & Hobbes is an example of the law being used contrary to its intended purpose.
> “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
The current law is also against the spirit of the constitution. When it was written, the "limited" was taken to mean something like 14 years. Allow for the fact that in these times publications took forever to circulate, without trucks or interstate highways.
> In Congress’s first Copyright Act of 1790, as under the Statute of Anne, copyright persisted for 14 years, with the possibility of a 14-year renewal term.
> Under current law, copyright in a work created by an individual author lasts for the life of that author, plus an additional 70 years.
Yeah, we should've been shortening terms as technology eased production/distribution rather than lengthening them. For patents too, though at least those didn't end up as outlandishly long as copyright.
Someone else's definition of progress could include a heightened respect for comic strips as art, rather than base fodder for merchandise and commercial exploitation. Watterson's stance did help with that, at a time (late '80s) when it was still a very niche position in the US.
It's not my definition "progress". It's what the word is understood to mean in this context. The text can mean anything if you take "progress" to mean "whatever makes the world better by my lights".
With all due respect to Warhol and friends, IMHO a tin of soup is a tin of soup. A cereal box featuring C&H is something we can all live without.
This is particularly true for comics, which have historically been seen as fodder for other industries in the US and need all the attention they can get as an art-form in their own right.
DO NOT CLICK this link! It contains Leonard Nimoy singing a horrible song about Bilbo Baggins, accompanied by an even worse music video. It's like the "Fichtl's Lied" video, if it ruined your entire childhood and everything you hold dear.
Or it's a dumb catchy novelty song about Bilbo Baggins. How can you survive on an internet containing rule 34 if this song is enough to ruin your childhood?
Personally I find the films far more approachable than the books. There's too much goddamned singing in LOTR and the prose doesn't feel nearly as dark and serious as the films
As a Germanicist who was also enchanted by Finnish, Tolkien’s inspirations lay in things like the Icelandic sagas and the Kalevala, which are replete with singing or composition of poems. (The Kalevala was sung, and in works like Egil’s Saga the prose narrative is frequently interrupted to present an intricate poem.) After all, there was a close link between song, poetry, and magic in ancient northern Europe.
Huh. That’s exactly the opposite of the impression I got. The books seemed properly solemn when it counted, more so than the movies, and I found that the poems really added to the atmosphere. (I’m particularly fond of the ones sung by Gimli and Galadriel; as sad and wistful as they were, they managed to convey a lot of mood and emotion in just a few carefully-chosen words.)
Yeah, I definitely would never describe the prose in LOTR as not serious. In The Hobbit absolutely (and to be fair it was a children's book), but not LOTR. One of the things that the book LOTR does best compared to the movies is the prose!
For example, compare the book and film versions of the scene in Return of the King when Eowyn confronts (and kills) the Witch-King. In the book it goes like this:
"Then out of the blackness in [Merry's] mind he thought that he heard Dernhelm speaking; yet now the voice seemed strange, recalling some other voice that he had known.
"'Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!'
"A cold voice answered: 'Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.'
"A sword rang as it was drawn. 'Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.'
"'Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!'
"Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. 'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.'"
Now compare the movie version of this scene. Obviously there's no narration, but the dialogue is significantly compressed and loses all its flavor.
"I will kill you if you touch him!"
"You fool! No man can kill me!"
(Eowyn removes her helmet) "I am no man!"
I don't blame Peter Jackson for the change. His movies got a lot wrong when adapting the book, but this wasn't one of those things. The original dialogue, even if condensed, would not work very well for a movie. But even though the change was necessary, it still reduces the dialogue from something epic (in the literal sense of the word) and beautiful, into just a generic action hero moment. The book version is just so much better.
And this is not an isolated incident, either. Throughout the movie trilogy, scenes which were written with beautiful prose in the book have most of their beauty taken away due to the need to write dialogue in a way that works better in a movie. It's necessary, for sure! Even so, however, it means that I can't agree with the claim that the LOTR movies handle such things better than the book's prose does.
It's the "thees" and "thous" that break the immersion for me. It feels like reading the Bible. I just can't relate to characters who talk like that. They don't talk like real people
That's the whole point. The prose in LOTR is deliberately written to be in the vein of ancient epics such as the story of Gilgamesh. Tolkien's goal in writing LOTR was to write a mythology for England, which he felt was lacking. Saying they don't talk like real people is kind of like saying that vegetable soup doesn't taste like chocolate - true, but not really the point of the work.
In the scene above, it’s just one character who talks like that: the one who was born a very long time ago, and still speaks with archaic diction. It may break your personal immersion, but real people actually did talk like that in Early Modern English, and it makes in-universe sense for a Ringwraith to hold on to old speech patterns.
Same issue with Dune, the movie. You just cannot translate the writing technics used by Herbert into movie language.
Does it diminish Villeneuvés artwork?
Definitely [imho].
But let’s accept that reality and move on.
I guess he addressed that by having very little dialogue, relying instead on visual storytelling as much as possible, which I think worked pretty well.
>Imagine if Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit had been kept so pristine.
It kind of was until fairly recently with the Jackson films. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s we basically just had the books. Yes, there were animated versions of The Hobbit and LOTR in the late 1970s, but they were fairly obscure and before VCRs became common in the 1980s, it was difficult to even see them.
I just wanted to add that Calvin & Hobbes was a huge part of my childhood and something that I've yearned to get more of, but there's none more to be had.
I recently discovered "Phoebe and her Unicorn" is pretty amazing as well and although a different comic, has a lot in common and there are many strips to read.
All depends what Watterson does with his estate when that time comes. Watterson has shown to have a greater resolve for his position on this than most others and it wouldn't surprise me that he has this figured out to prevent anything until the copyright runs its course.
J.R.R. Tolkien himself sold the film rights to United Artists.
Also, for what it's worth, it's hard to imagine a better executor than Christopher Tolkien. He basically spent his entire life serving his father's artistic interests.
I don't think it's sad at all, I think it's a touching act of love. To spend your life caring for the work someone else left behind is generous and something I find admirable.
You had me until that last sentence ;) Additionally, one of my most cherished t-shirts is an homage to C&H that is instead Rey and Chewie in the same style.
I understand aversion to over commercialization. But I don't think world would have been a better place without Jackson's movies and Batman/Spiderman animated.
In the end, it is creator's choice and no choice is better/worse.
>There's no films, no sequels. You can't buy a licensed tshirt with Calvin and Hobbes on it. There's no licensed merchandise. No one has made it into a live action movie. Calvin and Hobbes are not available this month on MacDonalds cups if you buy a second whopper burger. You can't buy plush toys of Hobbes. There isn't a Christmas special TV show. Giant balloon figures of Calvin and Hobbes do not appear in city parades.
Hopefully, by the time there are new copyright owners (after Watterson) and want to do all of the above, it wont be a possibility anymore, because the Gen Alphas wouldn't know or care what Calvin and Hobbes was, and wont be able to follow such "heavy literature" anyway.
>Imagine if Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit had been kept so pristine.
My daughter is six (so gen alpha) and she latched on to my old calvin and hobbes books and has read them all repeatedly. Not saying you're wrong but the appeal seems to go across generations.
What I really notice is that Calvin roams freely outside, and is her age. I don't really feel comfortable letting my own kid do that :-\.
I bought a big pile of C&H books and my kids are devouring them with as much appreciation as I did when I was their age. I see no reason why my grandkids won't do the same
It's bittersweet to me that there isn't more Calvin and Hobbes. I understand the "quit while you're ahead" mindset, but I read some fan-made webcomic where Calvin and Susie were now adult parents, and it felt great to read some C&H again in some shape or form.
The whole thing feels very pre-internet, I have a feeling that the arc of Calvin and Hobbes would look different today if Watterson hadn’t had to bitterly fight the syndicate for so long and had a Patreon instead
I think my childhood would’ve been enhanced by having one, but I agree on your other points. Perhaps the answer is that licensing in moderation can be done thoughtfully? It doesn’t have to be a Garfield-esque free for all.
Why do people care so much about...I don't know if there's a word for this...I wanna say serial integrity as in integrity of the series? If I like a general premise and cast I have zero issue with them doing dogshit if they're having fun and it simply produces more content on a quantitative basis that can add to the binge rewatching duration value? Maybe I'm just weird like that.
I tried to vibe with this POV. What's wrong with more content? But it really does cheapen the art/media you used to adore. Even if you try to ignore it, i.e. you don't have to watch / read all the Star Trek content that has been produced in the last 20 years, and after picard season 1 I completely checked out of all of it, but it just kind of makes everything you loved seem so empty. It was all about generating positive cash flows...the whole time.
> I completely checked out of all of it, but it just kind of makes everything you loved seem so empty
As someone who really agrees with the previous poster, this may be the crucial point. I can "disbelieve" the stuff that I think is stupid cashgrab sequel crap, specially if it was not made by the original author.
Because think about it, if someone somewhere made a bad fanfic, would it ruin the previous media? Obviously not, right? So why is it different when it's a billion dollar media company that bought the right to slap the "official" name and logo on their fanfic*? If you don't like it, ignore it. If you like it, then great more media of the franchise you enjoy!
* Assuming the people writing it are fans and not 100% just there for the money.
I dont know if this comprehensively addresses my issues with the topic but its pretty damn close :) Like this is more an issue of revisionism than it is...I don't even know how to formally refer to the opposing argument and I would rather let everyone else chime in and speak for me here
I wanna emphasize the part about the actors having fun. That in some sense is a tricky thing since actors profession and main task is to conceal what they are and take on whatever role—or at the very least, to sublimate their personal qualities into their subject. Having said that, I feel like even a famous and highly-skilled actor is not going to be able to perform at their best if they are really just in contract-fullfillment mode for a money-grubbing production...
It would seem that no matter how well they were technically perceived, it would slip through somehow and thus violate my condition that the actors are mostly having fun and voluntarily performing, particularly if its with a group of their actor friends that appear in each others' films. I don't worry about the money-grubbing so much cuz chances are the actors are in on it and to some degree inclined to do well and make it enjoyable for themselves and their audience.
Parts of Discovery are good, more-so if you look at it from a 'home team' perspective where you'll take any win. OTOH It's only re-watchable to a certain point.
Lower Decks, I do like as far as escapism goes but frankly has a lot of 'Yeah this is licensed parody' moments.
Sometimes, things should end. Sometimes they end too soon (Farscape comes to mind [0], thankfully it did get a finale at least,) but when you keep adding on 'the additional adventures of' the risk of winding up in some form of everyplot, or just breaking canon, gets wayyyyy tooo damn high.
As a counterpoint to that, Picard Season 3 is incredibly watchable, (even RLM thought so,) I hope you try it if you haven't. It somehow does a pretty dang good job with things.
[0] - It really is a benchmark for a lot of sci-fi despite the fourth wall tapping.
I feel like you're so close to getting to the point of realization that this fixation on duration and quality is ultimately arbitrary and, in my view, harmful. How else do you explain reboots besides the money part? There's clearly demand for it since people like what they know and their millions+-strong population must in some sense agree with me
I don't mean offense but it seems almost as arbitrary as complaining that additional purchased game content or whatever the acronym is destroys whatever game it extends when you had all that fun along the way, maybe even to the extent that players/you wanna play a little longer.
Harmless doesn't even begin to cover that outside of complaints that its unfair socioeconomically to extend the cost of playing such that kids who were "lucky" to even be able to afford merely the game are being discriminated against economically or whatever either in isolation or with reference to their more fortunate peers. Im getting a bit sidetracked here so I won't be taking notes on this, unfortunately :( but I do think its pretty much analagous in my opinion.
I appreciate you succinctly boiling down what I am trying to address here. I obviously disagree with this position strenuously but in my own way and for the purpose of really "putting a name" to that which I am advocating against, you have done both sides a great service.
I hate this opinion, but even accepting it at face value, it doesn't apply to comic strips. A TV show is a mishmash of dozens of visions from the start, so it's easy to let the Ship of Theseus continue on with new writers or sequels or spinoffs. An author-drawn comic is the work of one person. It doesn't have a cast, it's just them. Letting corporate greed machines get it removes the whole appeal by default.
How would it not apply even moreso to comic strips? Comic strips are even less accounted for in terms of the general body or oeuvre of that series. Like who can name every single comic strip "episode" relative to who can do so for its syndicated or movie counterpart(s) and also does it even have `seasons`?
I don't understand what you're getting at. I'm talking about the number of people involved, not the length. I know a few comic strips that were handed off to new creators after the original died or retired, and they're very, very obviously different pieces, appealing to different audiences. It usually takes a single strip to notice.
ALL of them, seriously? Never missed one or went on vacation and the paper got thrown out (assuming that was the predominant medium)? Can all of you populate a spreadsheet by heart and argue in good faith with due accuracy as to each one out of the likely 1,000s?
Sorry but I doubt that. But even so, it still doesn't lend itself to your point. You're saying 1,000s are perfection but + one new strip would immediately or at least in some historically-tainting way destroy everything? Is everything really that fragile?
For comparison, there are about 900 Star Trek episodes (including the animated ones).
I don't find it hard to believe someone can know all of them, because I am one of those people for Star Trek, and comic strips are so much shorter. I couldn't populate a spreadsheet from scratch, but name an episode and reference the plot somehow, I'm fairly sure I'll remember it and be able to fill in some details without looking it up.
> Never missed one or went on vacation and the paper got thrown out (assuming that was the predominant medium)?
K thats my bad on the quantity, that was reckless but it doesn't change the nature of my conjecture and you avoided the primary question: does n + 1 = 0 with regard to an arbitrary number of "new" comics/works? What if there was a "vault" of undiscovered or arbitrarily retained C&H works? You're seriously gonna say "nah" to that?
Edit: I edited my response, thanks for correcting me on that point. There really was no excuse for me to not pull that up real fast
Yes, all of them. They might’ve missed newspapers, but they read them in published collections and re-read them in the complete omnibus. I’m confident they’d recognize a fake strip. Your general point about comics might hold but C&H is something else.
As for being displeased with continued low quality publishing, yes, that would be dismaying. If it continued on and was really good, obviously that wouldn’t be but Watterson’s point was that the odds of that working out well were low, even if he tried to retain creative control. I understand from your other posts that quality isn’t important to you once you’ve started following the characters; fans of C&H are not like you.
Can you give your thoughts on the notion of how hypothetical "lost episodes" or "vault" would be rejected consistent with your suggestion that the corpus of readers all feel exactly as strong as you on the matter even if it literally meant that there was a risk of rejecting precious canon material simply because you all consider C&H "done" and have no room for additional content?
I realize this example is super contrived and I legitimately hope I'm not mischaracterizing your fundamental position but I don't know you've really given me a basis to understand how you or the typical fan would approach such a dilemma...and it seems relevant to the overall questions of at least authenticity, continuity, currency etc that are inherent to the broader discussion despite the fact its likely never gonna happen.
You are mischaracterizing the position. It's not "Calvin and Hobbes is done," it's "Calvin and Hobbes is Bill Waterson and he's done with it." If lost strips came out or he announced a continuation, fans would be excited. If some MBA pit got their claws on it and made their own continuation, fans would hate it.
This is why Watterson's new book is at the front of every bookstore in the country, despite having nothing to do with C&H and being impossible to market. Despite the ongoing poison of franchises, people do still care about stories from authors they trust.
Thank you, I understand and actually sort of agree with you now that I understand where you are coming from. I feel very similarly and perhaps I was not dilligent enough in fleshing out that I also want the author/creative force behind it to be involved and for it to more or less continue at their pleasure.
My issue was merely with the notion that something that was "finished" or ended previouslu could never be continued or elaborated on due to what I perceived as an obsession with the "sanctity" of a completed or discontinued creative work.
I don't know if this resonates at all but I feel the deep need to keep things open and I just can't thumb my nose when a series I enjoyed offers to continue that experience and pick back up where "we" last left off and that I so enjoyed prior.
I get attached to the franchise/show/whatever and crew and its hard to accept the notion that at some point they go away with any finality or that they will necessarily remain frozen in time where nobody can move forward or I don't feel like we can grow and abstractly interact anymore.
This probably sounds really stupid and maudlin but there you have it. I'm sorry and I'm glad we could get to this point :)
I don't think I was explicit enough in saying I also want the author to be running the show or at least heavily involved and that is usually (in my mind) a useful heuristic or proxy for quality in some sense if they have self-respect and are interestef not only in capitalizing on the work but also to see their creation actually come to life in live action or whatever the format and be enjoyable for themselves, their families, and the rest of their audience (us).
I do care about quality and fortunately with the smaller typical season size nowadays (8-10 episodes) it seems like that flows pretty naturally. Having to write like 30 episodes per season is insane , I'm glad how its going now although it necessarily results in longer turnarounnd times. But its worth the wait :)
Ackshually, I've further insulated myself from the advertising industry's influence or ROI far more than you could ever know and likely replicate personally. This is just so glib and lovechild-of-terse-and-misguided on so many levels I can't even get to the bottom of the pile. Lets just disagree to agree on this.
Edit: Also you stay away from my miniature son and never come back ;)
Also, I feel like people who in some sense watch the same materials on repeat to varying extents are—dunno, maybe less valuable to ads than someone who's constantly perusing new shows (diversifying their ad profile). Its intuitive but im not certain i can logically defend it sufficiently robustly. "You know wat I mean"
All I care about is hanging out with "my friends" more, I guess I develop enough of an emotionally-compelling connection with shows/works + the characters/actors I like that I kinda never want it to end and its moot to consider the welfare of the characters or overall quality because its all abstract or academic anyway and I derive such sustained benefit or enjoyment from it continuing in perpetuity. Nothings getting solved or done or any progression truly achieved anyway so who gives a fuck? Film critics be damned, if Im happier and my mental health is better and I enjoy mysef on account of this, I really could care less about critical acclaim. Its the actors' job(s) to worry about consequences like typecasting or regret or whatever
You seem to be saying that you are a "non-discerning customer" when it comes to this type of work, and that's fine if it works for you. Others find works produced only for money to be lower quality or heartless. Maybe you similarly care about stuff in some other aspect of life (food? clothing? music? personal relationships?), just not for movies/comics.
I mean, I am discerning in that I have expectations that if I don't like the characters or topics or "moral tenor" (like in that it cares too much about being a moral bullhorn as opposed to faithfully representing that which it handles or has an opportunity to push the envelope further) or various other intangibles, I don't like+watch it.
In my view, your position is a tad elitist and I don't particularly care for the way it places you on an implicitly superior level of comprehension but also fundamental worth in the context of this discussion.
Arguably, I both in real-time and through the aformentioned repetition get to know the show and its constituent parts far better than you single-viewing "discerners" ever could. But yeah, you notice more even though you technically notice less.
I'm inclined to suggest that you are literally the quantity over quality viewer (ie: non-discerning) and I am in fact the quality over quantity since I view less discrete works but notice and derive a more refined level of enjoyment and recognition of the subtleties present in any given artistic production (and the artistic part is not something I'm going to argue with you about; its intangible and as worthlesz or priceless as the viewer subjectively evaluates)
I would argue that your discernment angle is literally just that in a similar sense with how critical theory folks approach works from various sociological and literary angles to the extent you could say those are component to the same work rather than ever possibly definitive or representative, much less appraisable objectively as implicitly superior. Like dividing by zero. Its not answerable and also discernment seemingly is axiomatic to the point its basically no different from religion or palate/taste.
> This section does not cite any sources. (October 2020)
Is there an actual article with more substance illustrating what you mean or what this section (#Kritik) was derived from? Also, I'm having a little bit of difficulty in parsing out your overall position with respect to what I've said (do feel I'm doing a bad job of it or what do you mean, exactly?)
I definitely was using that (critical theory) as more of an example and only briefly analogizing rather than me trying to seriously argue from that vantage point specifically.
Edit: are you saying "heard" as in you were there, or you know the details of the case through reading or maybe both? Whatever the case, is there an actual source available?
Honestly, I haven't the faintest clue what you're talking about in any of the comments in this thread. I was just trying to say that I haven't felt so bamboozled since the one time I tried doing policy debate, which was different from the usual form of debate I participated in (Lincoln-Douglas). I was a decent debater, but policy debate was entirely inscrutable. Gish galloping was the name of the game - trotting out as many arguments, as quickly as possible, in as little time so as to trip up the opponent on some minor point they missed. I linked to Kritik because your seemingly random inclusion of critical theory reminded me of this convoluted type of argument which, if not responded to, will lose you the entire round.
Everything you said in this thread reminded me of that experience. Good day to you.
Could you critique my sort of closing argument just below where I mention the Gish-Galloping thing? I wonder if that is a bit more explicit and clarifying with respect to what I've been discussing here. I feel as if I wrapped up decently there and I am actually intellectually interested in your assessment of that and if you feel in any sense that I perhaps cleaned up my thinking to where you can at least parse the conclusion I come to. Genuinely would appreciate
The first paragraph of your closing remarks, beginning with "I think this was a bit tricky..." made sense. The first sentence was a bit of painful run-on, but I think the argument you're trying to make is that it's impossible to prove that "enshittification" doesn't destroy the product in it's entirety.
> Why don't we just normalize ex post facto law while we're at it?
This really puzzled me...I re-read it half a dozen times. I know what ex post facto law is. The connection to an excessively long-running television series (e.g.) defeats me.
Finally, you claim that a quote from earlier in this thread corroborates/provides evidence that "enshittification is inevitable and ultimately good" (which I think is your thesis?). But the quote you provide proves the exact opposite - that "more content cheapens the art/media you used to adore".
In only a handful of paragraphs, you flip-flopped positions entirely.
Gish-galloping is a cool word, thanks for introducing that to me. I genuinely had never heard that or would have ever stumbled upon that but for you so props. Its quaint
I think this was a bit tricky in the sense its such a qualitative matter essentially and the heart of the the opposing position seems not really falsifiable (the longer a series runs = crappier a series "becomes" -> the more it dilutes the overall qualitative artistic and intangible entertainment value+prestige of not only the series as a whole but also the individual episodes that precede such enshittification and with which one could hypothetically have previously expressed and documented satisfaction. Regardless of whether this was said outright, the logic here seems to be such.
Why don't we just normalize ex post facto law while we're at it?
I feel like we all might have gotten a bit lost in the plot here but I will leave you with this quote that I feel corroborates the encapsulation I have presented here:
> I tried to vibe with this POV. What's wrong with more content? But it really does cheapen the art/media you used to adore. Even if you try to ignore it, i.e. you don't have to watch / read all the Star Trek content that has been produced in the last 20 years, and after picard season 1 I completely checked out of all of it, but it just kind of makes everything you loved seem so empty. It was all about generating positive cash flows...the whole time.
I mean, it is fiction, so of course you can just pick and choose what you engage with. But, it is pretty common to leave hints of backstory and future stuff. It is nice because you can fill in the blanks. “Happily ever after” can be as nice as you imagine.
Or the author goes off the deep end and starts getting better known for political rants. Subsequently it may be hard to enjoy their older works as you are looking for signs of what will develop…
It will be past 2060. Chances are, by then, the mainstream won't care. Do you still care about Little Nemo, Yellow Kid, the Spirit...? The few names from Golden age strips that you actually care about (Flash Gordon, Tarzan...) had already been exploited well before the time IP expiration entered the picture.
There was a Swedish comic like this, "Bamse". Probably the most popular comic for children in the 70s-80s. It's creator had socialist leanings and had no interest in licensing the IP. He passed a way quite a while back, and suffice to say, his children did not see it the same way. Now there are plenty of opportunities to buy Bamse merchandise, meet him in special parks or buy his meal at the burger chain.
> The third most magnificent thing is it stopped whilst it was awesome
The last couple of years of C&H featured increasing criticism of modern society (e.g. modern art, advertising) that seemed rather grumpy and “old man yells at cloud”. Sure, Watterson stopped before the strip could have gone in an overtly sociopolitical direction like some of its peers, but the strip was no longer quite as timeless and innocent as it had been.
I was a kid when the series finished, and got my first comic “The Indispensable Calvin & Hobbes” when I was 6. Granted I was young, but the “political” stuff was what made it funny. Young me found the storylines totally puzzling, yet hilarious. Even after I got older and started understanding the “political” comics more, it didn’t really bother me. Calvin and Hobbes explore philosophy more than politics, in my view.
The main characters are named after 17th century philosophers John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes, after all
Rocky and Bullwinkle, ostensibly a kiddie cartoon, had quite a bit of sly political humor tossed in (and even sex humor). It would also break the 4th wall now and then.
If you visit Wilsonville, OR or Tukwila, WA, you can go to an arcade / go-kart / mini-golf center that's Rocky & Bullwinkle themed. When I was a kid I thought R&B were on the same level as like Disneyland as every birthday party or event was hosted at one of them.
What a bizarre reaction to my post. Watterson’s complaints about modern art, for example, are conservative, and it is people on the other end of the divide who might be turned off by that. Watterson in the mid 1990s was an aging Midwestern white male, and some traits of conservatism are exactly what one would expect from that demographic.
The political views in Calvin and Hobbes, where they exist at all, are much more in line with 60's counter-culture: anti-consumerism, distrust of authority figures, labor issues. Where there are right-leaning references (e.g. "Commies") they are mocking. Think Colonel Flag in MASH.
My reaction was not bizarre, I live in a deeply red place where at least once in every social gathering I get to hear some harp about "the media" or political correctness, so I know it when I see it. It is amusing because it is so enshrined in "modern" conservative culture (well, not so modern, it started in the early 90s...) to complain about this that it creeps into everything.
Ironically now with AI art tech the fans themselves can now carry on the series as they like (including making animated flicks). Not saying this wouldn't violate C&H's IP protections nor that the resulting product will have the same essence but a creative+technically inclined fan tinkering in spare time now has the power to create an all new 'Calvin & Hobbes book' of their dreams. Even if they want to just do it for fun on their own.
Of course, if you were to put in enough effort to make a complete book (ie- 100+ page Sunday comic collections) that could stand among the rest in the original series probably best to adjust your art style, theme and content enough away from the original to make what you are doing essentially a spiritual successor - enabling you to comfortably share it with the outside world.
> Goblins steal a mother’s child and replace it with a ravenous changeling. When the woman asks a neighbor for advice on how to get her child back, she is told to make the changeling laugh, because “when a changeling laughs, that’s the end of him.”
The older I get, the more I tend to see literal meaning instead of metaphor. This is pretty good advice for a mother dealing with PPD/derealization/cabin fever.
The last CyB vignette it's the best symbolism to Nietzche's opus.
The old values died, here's a blank space to create something new. It's up to you to define those values.
When Calvin was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. Until one day, rising with the rosy dawn, he turned to his stuffed animal and spoke to it thus:
"Oh, thou great tiger! What would thy happiness be, had thee not those for whom though roars!"
If he cared, he would transfer the rights into a trust for the benefit of some charity with some strict constating documentation that prevents misuse. But this is only good until the rights naturally expire.
The second and third paragraphs mention 6 events Watterson has been involved in since 2013 which is 6 more appearances than Nakamoto in the same time period.
if i could go back 6 months i would name my adopted shelter cats Calvin and Hobbes instead of Kendall and Shiv but alea iacta est and they are more needy than 16th century philosophical
My favorite references in Kurt Vonnegut's world are two family members: his early-deceased sister, who taught him that "nobody HAS to use their talents;" and his Uncle Alex, who taught him that "if this isn't nice, I don't know what is" [suitable to be said at any time, any moment].
Your world is nothing more than your perception(s).
