Why is he so insistent on not merchandising Calvin and Hobbes? Schulz proved you could license your comic characters without them becoming soulless.
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Why is he so insistent on not merchandising Calvin and Hobbes?
Personally belief. I don't fault him, Schulz or Davis for the variety of ways they handle licensing.
Maybe he didn't want anyone else using his characters, some creators are like that
Why does Jim Davis get shit on for selling out with Garfield? Why does nobody criticize Scott Adams for licensing Dilbert?
Scott didn't keep growing Dilbert's feet after years and years
He should’ve tho
Dilbert was not nearly as everywhere as Garfield. And largely Dilbert stuff was kept to office stuff like posbreasts and staplers. Garfield was merched to almost everything under the sun for a few decades.
Garfield was saturated enough to actually have the opposite effect. It caused people to not like the brad due to seeing it too much and too often.
Dilbert saturation in the workplace was a goddamn nightmare in the early 00s. Anyone who worked in an office situation from the mid 90s to 2007 or so definitely saw wall to wall Dilbert shit.
What about after?
cute display cabinet
i wish i had that Garfield phone 🙁
>It caused people to not like the brad due to seeing it too much and too often.
How come this wasn't the case for Peanuts and C&H? These were the talk of the town when they still did comics and no one bat an eye.
Peanuts marketing saturation came and went a lot earlier. Their big time period was the mid 60s to 70s. Everything after that was trying to get some of the old magic back but it never really happened. So Peanuts being a big annoying commercial empire was long dead before the internet came along for groups of people to make a lot of complaints about seeing it in places.
and even then Lil Abner was way worse about it in the 60s.
Nobody reads Dilbert
Dilbert was one of the big three when I was growing up, after C&H ended it was on the front page right under Peanuts and Garfield
Because Dilbert content was good in the last decades, Garfield had nothing but garbage comics, movies and cartoons because Jim Davis don't give a frick anymore.
Prettg if he just licensed a Hobbes plush (a real one and imaginary one) 99% of people would be happy.
He just personally didn't want to, nothing wrong with that
>Schulz proved you could license your comic characters without them becoming soulless.
Eh, I think they've become a tad.
While Schulz didn't sell out his comic strip, the fact is that through the merchandising, adaptations by other people, etc., he no longer controlled how the characters were seen. Probably more people know the Peanuts characters from adaptations and merchandise than from the strip. Plus some people found it undignified for the characters to be selling cars and life insurance.
Watterson was extreme on this point but what he achieved, which is rare, is a comic strip where the strip is the only form in which we know the characters and so the creator controls the way they're seen.
Part of the difference between Schulz and Watterson is just the difference between a Depression kid (never turn down money, always hoard as much as you can) and a Boomer (there are more important things than money, man). But mostly they're just different people and if Watterson claims that he needed the total control over the characters' images to do his best work, who am I to argue?
This. Those are his characters that he has created, shaped, and forged into what they are. Not some iterative cautionary tale about too much fanfiction degrading your original intent.
God Bless Waterson for iron-fisting creative control. If only more folks did, we wouldn't be plagued by endless sequels and reboots.
>he no longer controlled how the characters were seen
He had creative control over the animated specials.
I think when you license out your child characters to sell life insurance you've gone too far in a few places.
In theory he had control, in practice a creator doesn't have the time or the expertise to be in control in a different medium.
Which is how you get things like a TV special showing the Little Red-Haired Girl. Or in a different medium, Bernard Shaw showing up to a screening of "Pygmalion" and finding out the producer added his own ending with Eliza coming back to Henry Higgins. In those and many other cases they just kind of shrug and say, well, that's a different medium. But it does affect how their own work is seen.
I imagine book authors have the worst time with this since movie adaptations can often be a near completely different animal from their creation. Not just a bad adaptation, or get a few things differently, but sometimes a 99% different thing.
Better question is why he has a problem with fan works even if they aren't trying to profit off his comic
You "people" are really needy about your merchandise slop and adaptation cancer.
Does he?
>I’m assuming you’ve gotten wind of people animating your strip for YouTube? Did you ever mimic cartoonists you admired before finding your own style?
>Every artist learns through imitation, but I rather doubt the aim of these things is artistic development. I assume they’re either homages or satiric riffs, and are not intended to be taken too seriously as works in their own right. Otherwise I should be talking to a copyright lawyer.
Based Watterson.
Actually it's cringe. Japanese anime directors and authors don't give a shit about that sort of stuf
Nah, it's based.
Nips are just cucks.
Is that why Japanese anime, manga, cinema and video games becoming more and more popular than their American counterparts?
>cinema
Only kaiju and Kurosawa films
That sector's taken over by Korea otherwise.
That has to do with their industry being in excellent shape.
>cinema
Not really.
Anime is aimed at a larger audience than American cartoons. Most adults in the US would never admit to watching cartoons, just anime.
>Most adults in the US would never admit to watching cartoons, just anime.
Young adults maybe.
the way bill ran things his works wouldn't be raped with the modern cancer every mainstream is forced to represent today
>Japanese anime directors and authors don't give a shit about that sort of stuff
Their companies really do though.
https://www.cbr.com/one-piece-youtube-uncle-roger-copyright-toei-animation/
Of course the companies give a shit. I'm talking about individual creators and stuff - Hideaki Anno wrote Gundam doujins before he started directing
Japanese directors and mangaka rarely own their own works. You will never have someone like Bill in Japan telling his publisher to frick off with the merchandising.
and look how miserable they are
Fanworks are a frickton better than shit like this
I was fricking disgusted
He had to deal with the Calvin decall shit (which was many first kid's exposure to C&H, something he probably loaths) so I see why he would be suspicious towards any fan projects
But the comics aren't making any money off of his work
Reads like abject indifference to me.
Is it just me, or does it sound like he just doesn't like people just straight up copying his works, rather than having disdain for fan comics or tributes like pic related
That's the read I got from his words on it, which is more fair than assuming he's against any sort of derivatives of his work and style as a whole. The bit he says about "artistic development" is a little misleading given that he briefly mentioned imitation being part of the learning process beforehand. He probably means that artists shouldn't rely on unflatteringly copying their (popular) inspirations if they're looking for success in their art journey, but the tone of his message changes in his copyright remark.
There's that quote by, I want to say it was Oscar Wilde, that went "Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery" but it's always used without the latter half of "that mediocrity can pay to greatness." Inspiration needs to be a starting point, not an end point. If you wanted to say make a comic about a kid and their imaginary friend having adventures that's one thing but there's so much where people just blatantly copy the style and format of the original.
>Inspiration needs to be a starting point, not an end point.
Frankly, more people need to realize this.
How does it change with the copyright remark?
If you weren't trying to profit off his comic, you wouldn't be using his work
I mean that's sort of the thing. A few of the fanworks look nice and I'm sure they're from a place of genuine sincerity. But they're not really elevating the material or creating something interesting with it. They're just the same thing. A reused joke. maybe some weird shipping shit.
The world would be a better place if more artists were like Waterson TBQFH
>The world would be a better place if more artists could afford to be worth millions and not have to worry about shit like Waterson
ftfy
Because sometimes it's not just about money
Even if that were true, Watterson would just say he'd rather his strip be appreciated by a small minority than watered down for a huge audience.
As long as he's got enough money to live on (and I assume he has, because if he was really desperate all he'd have to to was start up the strip again) what does he care if it's relevant today? Half the strips in the last couple of years were him ranting about how much he hates modern life anyway.
>Watterson would just say he'd rather his strip be appreciated by a small minority than watered down for a huge audience.
He's actually kind of baffled the strip is as notable as it is:
>RICHARD WEST: How do you explain the popularity of Calvin and Hobbes?
>BILL WATTERSON: Really, I don’t understand it, since I never set out to make Calvin and Hobbes a popular strip. I just draw it for myself. I guess I have a gift for expressing pedestrian tastes. In a way, it’s kind of depressing.
https://www.tcj.com/the-bill-watterson-interview/
>I guess I have a gift for expressing pedestrian tastes. In a way, it’s kind of depressing.
Damn, that's brutal.
So he hates the strip now?
No, he just discovered that he was a normie (before the word was used, I think).
He made the most personal strip he could, normies loved it, therefore he is a normie when he thought he wasn't.
>Watterson thinks you're a pleb if you like Calvin and Hobbes
wtf what a douche
>As long as he's got enough money to live on (and I assume he has, because if he was really desperate all he'd have to to was start up the strip again)
He does, he's a pretty rich man. He always bring up in interviews and shit that he made more money on the strip than he knows what to do with, so why on Earth would he see a need to license the characters out just to get even MORE money?
>there's a timeline where Watterson shilled the frick out of Calvin and Hobbes
>and Garfield is the strip that ended early, maybe still getting those Lorenzo Music specials, and never lasting long enough to give us Gorefield and other Garfield memes
You do know the comics will last forever, right? They're all already readily available across the net in various forms. And once Watterson is gone, I'm sure there'll be some attempt to franchise the characters, unless the man has got some kind of ironclad contract that will prevent people from abusing his works for a period of time after his passing. Calvin and Hobbes ain't going anywhere
It's way easier to say this when you're in a position where your comic made enough money you could retire wealthy without having to prostitute out to corporate.
Another thing: If he did have all that insane merchandise money, would he be able to live the life he wants if he had to be locked behind an expensive gate for his safety? The guy still is spending his life 10 miles out from his Ohio hometown, he doesn't want to leave where he's from
>People still getting buttmad they can't consoom C&H
Why does it need merch? It's okay for a book to be a book anon. The characters are charming and the comics are fun. He wanted to make a comic and he did. What's wrong with that? If you want a hobbes go make one, that'll have more meaning than one you bought in a store. If you want to give your kid a toy go buy them a mickey mouse doll.
Seriously. I can imagine there have been loads of kids who got their moms or nanas to make them a Hobbes doll, and those things will have more sentimental value than something made in a fricking sweatshop by some Asian slave kids
My Nana made me a stuffed crocodile I used to drag around everywhere. I called him Jammers. He was my friend. I still have it somewhere but it's uh... well we had some adventures, let's just say.
Please tell me you didn't cum on the stuffed crocodile your Nana made.
I had a perfectly good set of sofa cushions for that.
Why does he even need the merchandising money? He's already rich. What's it going to give him?
>inb4 the "copyright stifles originality!" monkeys show up
That's because Charles Shultz basically signed the papers, took the check, ignored EVERYTHING on the market.
All these people who marketed Peanuts merchandise basically ripped him off.
What I want to know is if he's a millionare just based on selling the compilation books. He hasn't done much of anything since Calvin and Hobbes ended decades ago. It's like he disappeared off the face of the planet.
Yes, he obviously has more then enough to retire based off newspaper and compilation sales which had to be plenty of millions
If he didn't have enough he'd be saying a different tune regarding merchandising his characters
Definitely. C&H is an evergreen seller at this point like Watchmen and Bone
Boomer comic
>Why are people so insistent on merchandising Calvin and Hobbes? Schulz proved you could license your comic characters and make them become soulless.
>the Bill Melendez specials Schultz worked on were soulless
You say so.
>Schulz proved you could license your comic characters without them becoming soulless.
What's wrong with Arbor Day?
It's more that they did some really good specials and then they had to keep grinding them out even after they were out of ideas.
And by this time the specials were doing things that Schulz openly said he would never do in the strip, like showing the Little Red-Haired Girl and giving her a name. Which affects the way they read the strip.
Everyone makes their own decisions about what they will and won't do (eg I don't think it would have been so terrible if Schulz had used assistants in his old age who could have inked/lettered better than him, but he would almost literally rather die than let anyone else touch his strip), and Watterson happens to be the kind of artist who feels he can't live with a large portion of the audience knowing his characters from the "wrong" medium.
The best special was the cancer one
I think he said in an interview it was less to do with merchandising the strip out than it was for the creator to have the right to decide whether or not he/she wanted to merchandise their strip and not the syndicate. He also said he thought about the possibility at one point, but concluded that he felt it would go against the spirit of the strip
why should he
The ultimate blackpill is no matter what you stand for, your spouse/children/whoever inherits the work are just going to cash in once you're gone
The Grinch fricking shilled for WalMart this year
Would seem that way, unless the guy has written up something that will prevent his wife from doing jack shit with the characters until a good while after his death, by then which she'd be on her way out too. Though, is Watterson's wife known for expressing such interest in rolling in the dough?
Is it at all possible to completely hamstring your creation after your passing? Do rights by default become an inheritable assist or otherwise go beyond your control? Like if someone said flat out, outside reprints of the books, nothing can ever be made of my creation would that work?
There must be something. If companies like Disney can constantly keep their grubby mitts on shit like Mickey for nearly a damn century, I don't see why a person can't write up something like "my works cannot be monetized for x amount of years following my passing"
Disney basically has half the companies income paying for lawyers and lobbying, and given that they are the largest media company in the world, they can do practically anything they want.
BTW, has Mickey Mouse become public domain yet, or did they lengthened the time period for that again?
Every time Mickey or some popular mainstream money printer is close to ping PD yet they find a new way to change the law.
Last I read steam boat willy was coming up. And I believe Micky is PD in kola land.
A coworker of mine said they apparently filed another delay or whatever, but they might not be able to secure it since Disney is bleeding money and DeSantis is reaming them over the coals for the land stuff they were pulling
Big copyright holders, disney the biggest among them took a swing at it. And disney still has their trademark. But they don't have the juice for another big copyright extension.
They blew a HUGE amount of political capital on other shit...like fighting with Florida Man.
It's the whole Tolkien estate that really chaffs me. You people didn't need the money.
The Grince Walmart commercial was so weird that it almost seems like it was blatantly intentionally trying to be the opposite of the original message. Like a Family Guy or South Park sketch
it was 100% a false-flag operation from anticapitalists who want a state-run monopoly. it's really sad how many people can't pick up on that immediately
this is a good question, because he could easily have just said "no merchandise unless I approve it personally" which... yknow, that might end up meaning no merchandise. but it makes you look like less of a homosexual.
Most likely it was an animation studio that got a big fat contract from Walmart to make a commercial with the Grinch license. The animators seeing Grinch+Walmart as absolute fricking dogshit of a project that made everyone involved feel sick to their stomach that they were making a Grinch cartoon advertising the world's greediest store chain. So they made a 100% straight faced parody and handed it in to the Wally World suits who never once suspected a thing.
I imagine the Walmart executives never would have suspected a damn thing from the commercial that the studio delivered. Those types would never see anything suspect if it pretended to be genuine enough about how cool free stuff and buying delivery trucks is. That basically is their whole world view in the first place.
>but it makes you look like less of a homosexual.
You have to be hard sometimes. Better to just cut out the possibility for something that goes against your belief. Any savvy lawyer wouldn't just accept "Unless I approve of it" and would worm some legal jumbo in there that he would have to acquiesce too. A solid hard no kills all discussion.
I considered Watterson to be the emotinal opposite of Davis. While Davis was all too willing to slap a Garfield face on absolutely anything and sell it. Watterson wanted his work to speak for itself.
But honestly I never saw the problem with merch, people like a character and a franchise, they would love a tshirt or a plushie. People like the stuff, it helps keep the franchise known in the public eye, it funds future work. One does not have to go full Garfield with it.
>it helps keep the franchise known in the public eye
Calvin & Hobbes still sells.
>it funds future work
Watterson appears to be good for cash.
Ehhhh, honestly I can't agree with that. Calvin and Hobbes is only really known to people who were alive in the 90s and remember it. Everyone else only knows it as the angry kid from all the flea market bootleg redneck crap that pees on truck logos.
But Watterson is definitely not going to be making any future work either,
>Calvin and Hobbes is only really known to people who were alive in the 90s and remember it.
I don't think the publisher is making up the sales figures. Someone's buying the books, and it isn't just nostalgic fans.
>But Watterson is definitely not going to be making any future work either
My point was he doesn't need to. He's made enough money that he can do what he likes, like putting on an exhibition of paintings or publishing a book if he prefers (he's done both).
I think that first anon's point was that there is nothing inherently wrong with merching a series. At least do it with some element of moderation, but they do not see anything outright bad with okaying merch for their work.
>I think that first anon's point was that there is nothing inherently wrong with merching a series.
I get that. But he also said that merching is needed to keep a series in the public eye and fund new projects, so I pointed out that not doing so hasn't hurt Watterson any (because it hasn't).
>I think that first anon's point was that there is nothing inherently wrong with merching a series. At least do it with some element of moderation,
It's a slippery slope, anon.
I kind of wonder if there is going to be a Rings of Power kind of situation where the second Watterson dies, someone in his estate is going to cash in and sell merch rights and we will be seeing official Spaceman Spiff stuff everywhere.
Peanuts is soulless.
nah you are
you can't help yourself, can you o/p?
The moment you give someone else control, the moment you lost most of your power
>peanuts
>not souless
Compared to the classic stuff, its just a puppet wearing a skin.
I fear for the day Watterson dies because you just know he has some vulture of a relative or publisher or other such executor who is gonna drive directly to Hollywood and anyone else who will answer the door.
man i remember when prince the singer died i thought his legacy would be untouchable. Then a few months later his songs got used in a bank commercial
Literally the entire reason he changed his name to the "The Artist formally known as..." was because his contractors screwed him over like a porn star. The words "in perpetuity" are more damning than making a deal with Mephistopheles.
disgusting israelites
>Schulz proved you could license your comic characters without them becoming soulless.
Look at new Peanuts and say it again.
Anyone find it funny that's it's almost universally agreed upon that these two get together as adults?
Well the comics did tease that she had feelings for Calvin, and that Calvin, in a roundabout way, felt the same. Whether Watterson cared that they do end up together is or just had it to make Calvin relatable, who knows. The lack of a proper conclusion to it is what appeals to a lot of people, same with the unanswered nature regarding Hobbes just being imaginary or something more.
I mean it's such a popular theory that fricking Robot Chicken goes with them being married as adults, and happy aside from the piss fetish
>Well the comics did tease that she had feelings for Calvin
Wasn't that really early on and retconned?
I find it more depressing than anything else. It annoys me to no end how no matter what you create morons will try to make it about shipping. They're six.
Watterson literally stayed that Calvin has a crush on Susie, plus Hobbes constantly teases the shit out of Calvin over him possibly having a crush on her, and Calvin unpromptly discounting romantic stuff with Susie like asking her out on a date or taking her to the prom, not to mention everything involving her and good Calvin. It's not out of nowhere
Meanwhile I bet you think shipping in South Park is just fine despite them being ten
No, I think South Park is moronic. Almost as moronic as people who start arguments with "Meanwhile I bet you...." You're an idiot.
Let the corps use your characters.
I hope those cars are at least eco friendly. Otherwise there's some tragic irony afoot here. Good lord that movie was a crime.
why you are insistent on making the same thread every day? Anons proved you could make an interesting thread without repeating yourself constantly
he didn’t need the money
But they already did an animated adaptation of Calvin and Hobbes anon
looking at how modern mainstream comics are i would go as far to say he is a visionary
oh wow he's still alive i just assumed he was long dead like most creators of old
He's only 65. Actually younger than my dad by a few years.
He's 65
What's everyone's favorite Calvin and Hobbes fanfic?
For a guy who does a strip with a kid and talking stuffed toy, he sure is a stuck up c**t
Cry more, suit. This is one IP you'll never get to exploit.