Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's had more than 2 decades to reject that opportunity.
Yeah. He's not dead. He could have gone into webcomics if he had wanted.
TIL that Bill Watterson is still alive.
Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity
171–180 of 251 posts
Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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”.
Having a toy representation of the tiger doesn't mean anything about what the tiger is or represents. I'm with the downvoted OP, it's a holier than thou position and many people would've had even extra joy compared to just having the comic books. Plus, people make their own anyway.
Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity
#173I 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 i…
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, an…
> 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".
In his defense, this was also partially because they kept shrinking the space he had so he was trying to work with what he had while also forcing their hands into giving him more room to work with.
Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, an…
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 an…
It’s healthy in that there is a lot of interesting stuff constantly going on, but the actual work conditions are incredibly unhealthy for a lot of those creators.
Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
And Dahl’s foundation or whatever it’s called had the audacity to try to rewrite the books; removing references to people as ugly, or fat, etc.
You don’t get to rewrite books because they make you feel uncomfortable. Don’t read them. Even Disney has had the common sense to not alter the problematic parts of its films, they just issue a warning at the beginning that it doesn’t represent their current values.
Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 deca…
Hilariously, Dragonball is a rehashing of a far older folktale.
Rehashing and inspired by are different things.
There are certain elements of Journey to the West found in DB but not even Goku is similar to Wukong. Yes, monkey-like features, extending stick, perhaps a couple of early characters but everything else is not even close. So I don't think it's fair to say that is a rehash.
Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity
#177I 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 i…
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 -…
You respect someone who plans to be a sell-out more than someone who sells out later for whatever other reason?
Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
And Dahl’s foundation or whatever it’s called had the audacity to try to rewrite the books; removing references to people as ugly, or fat, etc. You don’t get to rewrite books because they make you feel uncomfortable. Don’t read them. Even Disney has had the common sense to not alter the problematic parts of its films, they just issue a warning at the beginning that it doesn’t represent their current values.
> Even Disney has had the common sense to not alter the problematic parts of its films
True, Disney don't merely alter them..... they bury them!
Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 deca…
Hilariously, Dragonball is a rehashing of a far older folktale.
The very beginning was. Most japanese comics are designed to be serialized for a long time, and are built to change direction if needed: Getting serialized is difficult, and low enough reader scores get you kicked out of the magazines, so it's common for a story to be built to swerve. Early Dragon Ball is a light thing like Dr Slump but a little more some fighting, but anything related to the old folk tale was dead and gone by, say, the second time there's a martial arts tournament. Most of what most people think about regarding dragon ball is past the moment where we randomly learn, through the power of retconning, that our main character was an alien all along, and people of his race are invading earth. Not quite the kind of thing from Journey to the West
Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity
#180Man, 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.
The monoculture is dead for better or worse.