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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

#201

Post by ghtbircshotbe »

xavdid wrote: post #198
ghtbircshotbe wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the one about bridges and weight limits? I remember the one about the sun being the size of a quarter.

There's a sign next to a bridge that says "Weight Limit: 10 tons". Calvin asks how they know the limit and his dad says they build the bridge, then drive progressively heavier trucks across it until it falls down. Then they rebuild it exactly how it was and put up the sign for the how heavy the last truck was. One of my favorites! https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/u3dqja/how...

Ah, I remember now. It's been too long, maybe I need to read them again :)

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#202

Post by vintermann »

lproven wrote: post #193
pseudohadamard wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That surprisingly dark comic which suggested Garfield If you think that's dark you should see all the Zalgo Garfield comics Davis did...

> Zalgo Garfield Those were a fan parody, and were nothing to do with Jim Davis.

Jim Davis did however write the script for that story in "Garfield: his 9 lives" (1984) where Garfield suddenly goes feral and is implied to kill his elderly owner.

So yeah, even imsorryjon-level Garfield isn't offensive to Davis at all

It's clear to me that he never loved his characters or were so defensive over his art as Watterson was - at least not in Garfield. But he also seems to have respected that his audience was more invested in his characters than he was, which was probably why he kept making it (and kept the right to the comic strip itself when selling everything to Viacom a few years ago).

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#203

Post by jurgenaut23 »

I didn’t know Calvin and Hobbes so well until recently. My wife recently got me the integral of Calvin and Hobbes and I read it in full in a few weeks. What a masterpiece!

What struck me the most is the magical balance between humor, philosophical tale, and ode to childhood. I have two kids and it helped me numerous time approaching their silliness in a more constructive and patient way.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#204

Post by mkovach »

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…

Whenever I read something about Bill Watterson, I end up thinking about how, during the '80s and early '90s, Watterson, Tom Batiuk, and Harvey Pekar were all producing some of their best work.

Three Northeast Ohio creators, working in different areas of the comics world, yet it's easy to imagine a shared universe where Calvin and Hobbes, Funky Winkerbean, and American Splendor all occupy the same map and interact.

They also had in common that the work itself was the product. The strips and stories came first; merchandising, branding, and other empires were either absent or beside the point.

That's probably a coincidence. Or it says something about what 1970s acid rain did to the water in Lake Erie. But Northeast Ohio did seem to have produced an unusual number of artists who were more interested in the work than in building a franchise.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#205

Post by krupan »

reddalo wrote: post #170
nargek wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't ever joke or trick your kids, they might develop a sense of humor

One thing is letting them develop a sense of humor; another thing is lying to them when they're clearly not able to distinguish between a lie and the truth.

I've pondered on this my whole adult life. Are we doing kids wrong with things like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, fairy tales, tall tales, etc.? I think not. I think kids come up with their own childish and wrong explanations for things on their own, whether or not other kids, parents, relatives tell them the world was black and white until the late 1950's or that Santa delivers presents down the chimney. Part of growing up is learning to question those childhood ideas and beliefs (misunderstandings) and move past them.

And really, it's something that shouldn't stop with childhood beliefs. There are a lot problems we have as adults because of stories we have been told and stories we tell ourselves that are not true.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#206

Post by TFNA »

dmurray wrote: post #64
kemayo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> And it's not like the quality of the strips had started a slow decline

We have had threads on HN before about C&H where people identify a slight but noticeable change in the strip in the last years. Watterson was naturally growing more ornery as he moved towards dad age, and that more dismal view of the world did grind against the strip’s basis in the wonder and magic of childhood.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#207

Post by krupan »

cogogo wrote: post #65

Great piece but definitely makes me even more annoyed by the obviously bootleg Calvin pissing stickers on pickups. And even further annoyed that my kids will never know the joy of a quality broadsheet newspaper, especially on Sunday.

Aw man, you just hit me with a wave of nostalgia. Looking back, the Sunday comics were such an indulgence! To just sit on the floor with huge sheets of paper covered in colorful illustrated jokes and enjoy each one slowly. I need to take time like that each week again.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#208

Post by PaulHoule »

lazide wrote: post #156
mekael wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one?

‘journey to the west’ [ https://collider.com/dragon-ball-journey-to-the-west/ ], about 400 years old.

Another Chinese classic is The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and I think that might be one of the oldest character-rich media franchises of all times. Drawings of Cao Cao and other characters have been identifiable for hundreds of years. They are still making video games (Dynasty Warriors) and TV shows based on it.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#209

Post by krupan »

shantnutiwari wrote: post #183

I dont know. I would have loved to buy a calvin t shirt or a hobbes toy for my son. All this means is: Calvin and Hobbes will die out, as hardly anyone in the new generation (kids born in 2000s) know about this comic. I can understand the art vs commercialism debate, but this is going too far in the other direction. And before people start lecturing me: Yes I know some corproations are evil. Tintin's new owners didnt…

Great works get shared and passed on to others, even without T-shirts and stuffies. Also, the copyright will expire at some point.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#210

Post by krupan »

PaulHoule wrote: post #115

Hate to advocate for the devil but, as somebody involved in fanart, people want objects for the media properties they love and if they can't get them legitimately they will make their own or get them from somebody who didn't license the property. And if Waterson didn't spend his own time and money sicing lawyers on the latter his syndicate wasn't going to do it for him if he didn't license it.

You are correct. Also, copyrights do expire eventually (takes longer than it should, but they still aren't perpetual)
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