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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

#231

Post by ericd »

sgarland wrote: post #175
ericd wrote: post #114

Earlier 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.

Ah yeah, I heard about that, I think we have the older edition. I think it's fine to just stop and provide some parental commentary about it - it can be a good forcing function for talking about that stuff.

Hopefully they didn't take out the Oompa Loompa's judgemental songs, the kids find those hilarious. The humor's the sugar that makes the moral tale about how to be and not to be in the world go down - don't be a glutton, don't be greedy, try to be humble, kind, and empathetic like Charlie. It's not actually about superficial traits.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#232

Post by TeMPOraL »

xandrius wrote: post #177
wodenokoto wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Obviously. You're not a "sell-out" if you are honest up front about your work being commercial.

I find both doing it for money, and doing it for personal or benevolent reasons to be good. What I find despicable is claiming you're doing something for selfless reasons, but actually doing it for profit. That's what dishonest and shows ill will towards other human beings.

(Doesn't have to be strictly about money either. The amount of voices you could hear saying they won't be writing blog articles or OSS because it'll become training data for LLMs, and that this thus deprives the world of their pro bono work, clearly shows there's plenty of such dishonest attitudes in OSS circles too.)

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#233

Post by TeMPOraL »

alex0015 wrote: post #154
blindriver wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't license his characters, he's not worth a hundred million dollars.

In 2023 his publisher said that his printed collections had sold 50 million copies worldwide, and that the strip had appeared in 2,400 newspapers. That's at least tens of millions of dollars over many years, and with little spending and risk-averse investments, it's not unreasonable to conclude $100M for the total net worth figure.

Yes, but what fraction of that money ever reached him?

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#234

Post by tombert »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #233
alex0015 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2023 his publisher said that his printed collections had sold 50 million copies worldwide, and that the strip had appeared in 2,400 newspapers. That's at least tens of millions of dollars over many years, and with little spending and risk-averse investments, it's not unreasonable to conclude $100M for the total net worth figure.

Yes, but what fraction of that money ever reached him?

I think a hundred million is probably a bit optimistic.

That said, I would be surprised if he's not at least a multi-millionaire.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#235

Post by tombert »

vintermann wrote: post #164
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…

That's what Jim Davis tells everyone. He always cheerfully said he decided to become a cartoonist in order to make money. When asked about anything related to Garfield, he basically always denies having any artistic ambitions. That surprisingly dark comic which suggested Garfield's entire life with Jon was just the hallucinations of him slowly starving to death alone, for instance? Oh, he saw a market survey suggesti…

I always kind of thought that the "it was meant to be marketable, not funny" thing was a cope, in the same way that Tommy Wiseau says that The Room was always meant to be a comedy.

People would say that the cat who hates Mondays and loves lasagna isn't very funny, so he responds with "uhh, it wasn't ever meant to be that funny anyway!!!".

Regardless, I do really respect how cool he's been with stuff like Garfield Minus Garfield.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#236

Post by iamtedd »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #128
rbanffy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish we had more watersons running things in all forms of media. The world needs Watersons now more than ever. And Calvins and Hobbeses.

The world has no place for men like Waterson, and it is precisely when the world leaves no place for them that men like him are most necessary.

Only men?

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#237

Post by youainti »

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…

Another example of retiring at the top was Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary. A 20 year run of daily comics with about 16-17 years of that being a reasonably consistent storyline.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#238

Post by Izkata »

krupan wrote: post #205
reddalo wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gr…

> Part of growing up is learning to question those childhood ideas and beliefs (misunderstandings) and move past them.

Yeah, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy were all a sort of mini rite-of-passage when I was a kid, with everyone figuring it out at different times. Made us feel a little more grown up, especially among other kids who hadn't figured it out yet. And for some reason I don't remember us spoiling it for them - instead we were in on the secret to make the holiday more fun.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#239

Post by mapontosevenths »

iamtedd wrote: post #236
mapontosevenths wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world has no place for men like Waterson, and it is precisely when the world leaves no place for them that men like him are most necessary.

Only men?

Women who dress like Marlene Dietrich are also acceptable, but that's where I draw the line.

More seriously, I should have capitalized the "M" to make clear that it was Men, as in Mankind, but this is the internet in 2026 and most people are only semi-literate. I'm not certain it would have helped.

Especially if someone wants to be offended. You just can't stop them if that was their goal going into it.

Re: Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

#240

Post by randallsquared »

toss1 wrote: post #223
randallsquared wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>>quite stark Yes it is. If you are running a paper and are already under stress and trying to streamline operations and now some cartoonist demands you use a format that requires significant extra work, you'd probably complain too, even threaten to drop that content. Threats are free, and they might work, especially if a lot of papers made similar complaints and threats. But, when it came right down to the actual de…

My comment was not about what happened, which does not need to be justified, in my opinion, especially at this late date.

My comment was about the contrast between "widespread" and the actual number that threatened, which was immediately stated to be 15/1800. The actual number that canceled was even smaller, but the characterization of one one-hundred-twentieth as "widespread" was interesting.

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