Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

therepublicofletters.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 251 posts

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#21

Post by bluGill »

randallsquared wrote: post #14

> 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 pag…

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.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#22

Post by duskwuff »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #18
randallsquared wrote: post #14

> 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 pag…

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.

The threatened cancellation was over Watterson demanding an unmodifiable half-page for his Sunday strips, not over the content of his strips.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#23

Post by tanseydavid »

rapind wrote: post #16
hyperhello wrote: post #12

> 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…

> 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...".

> the impression it was a dog whistle for manosphere spazzes

Everyone thinks this until they see the movie or read the book.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#24

Post by alsetmusic »

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.

Edit: Btw, CnH lovers: See new book The Mysteries

https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=48560976

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#25

Post by defen »

Tyr42 wrote: post #11

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.

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.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#26

Post by hiccuphippo »

all2 wrote: post #9
jameskilton wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

And I guess the live action remake of Cowboy Bebop is the box on fire in this analogy?

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#27

Post by aqfamnzc »

alsetmusic wrote: post #24

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 wri…

You have linked to your own comment.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#28

Post by helterskelter »

FatherOfCurses wrote: post #13

"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 ceil…

I believe those are the Tibetan Buddhists.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#29

Post by toss1 »

randallsquared wrote: post #14

> 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 pag…

>>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.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#30

Post by ToucanLoucan »

FatherOfCurses wrote: post #13

"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 ceil…

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.

Post reply on HN