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Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

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Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#141

Post by dhosek »

bombcar wrote: post #103
dmurray wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But don't we all feel sure he could have rolled along for three or two or one more year? Surely it's not like his creativity ran out suddenly on Jan 1 1996 and he had no more comic strips in him. And it's not like the quality of the strips had started a slow decline, so... couldn't we have got one more year of cartoons? I'm kidding really. Bill Watterson doesn't owe us anything; if he was no longer enjoying creating…

Watterson and Larson (both who retired at or near the "top" of their game) could easily have gone on for a year or two more - or three, or five, or twenty. But they both knew that the font was running low, if not completely dry; likely triggered by starting a joke and realizing they'd done it before years ago. Both have "come back" here and there to dabble, as appropriate for someone who actually knows how to retire…

Berke Breathed should have taken their example more seriously.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#142

Post by conartist6 »

dhosek wrote: post #140

I model my parenting style on Calvin’s dad. I actually had almost the identical conversation with my kids about why old pictures are in black and white. When they were in fourth grade my daughter came home from school angry at me about having let her and her brother believe for four years that the world used to be in black and white. They haven’t brought up bridges and weight limits yet so I can only assume they stil…

That last truck really shows off the engineering work

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#143

Post by mcmoor »

PaulHoule wrote: post #118
cogman10 wrote: post #71

Earlier 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…

Heh I never expect to see Demon Girl Next Door in public let alone in HN of all places. Seems like I'll have to see that backstabbed whatever too eventhough I never touched any work of that genre.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#144

Post by jamesfinlayson »

echelon wrote: post #40
dgritsko wrote: post #5

What a brilliantly written piece. Maintaining one's integrity is unfortunately rare enough that it makes Watterson's story so remarkable. I completely respect and admire his dedication to doing something for its own sake, for holding himself to the highest standards imaginable, and from walking away from it all for his own reasons - even if selfishly I'd rather him keep writing so that there would be more to enjoy. T…

Was this the right choice, though? Interest in Calvin & Hobbes has fallen off a cliff. I don't see any references to it in public anymore, and it used to be everywhere. Kids today probably don't even know about it.

I haven't looked at the comics in a physical newspaper in a while but it was still there maybe 12 years ago (in Australia at least).

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#146

Post by jandrese »

kemayo wrote: post #61
tombert wrote: post #50

I 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…

There's this quote from the 2010 interview with Waterson: > If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, ten, or twenty years, the people now "grieving" for Calvin and Hobbes would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.

Joke is on him. The comic section of the paper (if it even has one anymore) is filled with fossilized strips that weren't even fresh in the 80s. The comic cartel in the US basically killed off the medium.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#147

Post by Folcon »

frollogaston wrote: post #113
jeronimobomfim wrote: post #77

I once posted Bill Watterson's speech to the 1990 graduating class of his alma mater, but it never got to the front pages. I think I tried posting it again, no go. I just made this account so I can try it a third time. More than any comment I could write to some HN post, I wished people would click on the link and read it. Here's hoping some of you will do it, before it's wiped out from the net: https://web.mit.edu/j…

Great speech. I appreciate how he talked about not selling out, but only after he described how tough it is to earn money in the real world. Especially because Kenyon is one of those places you would hear "I don't care about money" from people who already got it the easy way. A quote that stood out: "Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of va…

> A quote that stood out: "Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards."

This quote more than ever seems like taking the road less travelled by in this day and age

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#148

Post by picofarad »

cogman10 wrote: post #79
defen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We can never go back to a pre-internet/streaming era. While that means it's pretty isolating to find favorite media (hard to talk about something like "Solo Leveling" with anyone that's not into that sort of thing). What it also has meant is an explosion of new media to tickle almost anyone's tastes. It's as if everything has become "underground music".

Hipsters got jobs in tech and now every band is a band no one has heard of?

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#149

Post by bronson »

randallsquared wrote: post #135
toss1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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.

The contrast between "Calvin and Hobbes was threatened with widespread cancellation." and "only fifteen of the 1,800 papers running Watterson’s strip threatened" is quite stark.

Yeah, so? Turns out the papers were bluffing/complaining. This sort of thing happens in many parts of life.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#150

Post by bronson »

frollogaston wrote: post #111

"licensing usually cheapens the original creation by saturating a market with characters until readers are bored of seeing them" makes the most sense to me out of this. When I think of Shrek, I don't even think of the movies, I think of all the random stuff like Burger King that licensed it. Also, now that I've read this, I'm kinda sad about the bootleg peeing Calvin truck decal.

> Owing to spite or just a foul mood, have you ever peeled one of those stupid Calvin stickers off of a pickup truck?

I figure that, long after the strip is forgotten, those decals are my ticket to immortality.

(from the Mentalfloss article linked a few comments down)

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