Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity

Posted by pseudolus 17 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by tombert 11 hours ago

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 if I felt like it diminished my vision of the comic. I would like to think I have integrity, and I think I do to some extent (there are certain types of companies I will not work for e.g. casinos), but Waterson is on another level.

And I have to say, it has made Calvin and Hobbes age a lot better for me. Garfield is almost more of a "brand" than a comic at this point, and it has made it such that I find the character and even the comics kind of (for want of a better word) "cheap" or "tacky". The same can be said for Dilbert (Scott Adams himself not withstanding...I used to genuinely like the comics).

C&H, on the other hand, reads about as well now as it did when I was a kid. The jokes still work, the art is appealing, and since there hasn't been this mass-marketing push for it, it has retained a purity unlike anything else.

I don't have the integrity or will power that Bill Waterson has, and I probably never will, but it can be something I strive to have some day.

Comment by cogman10 10 hours ago

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, and morals. And he loved causing newspapers headaches. 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".

The two are such polar opposites it's almost amazing they both ran comics in the same papers.

I wish we had more watersons running things in all forms of media.

Comment by vintermann 2 hours ago

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 suggesting the thing people feared most was loneliness, and thought it'd make for a good Halloween strip.

Not to go into an hour long Lasagna Cat speech here, but maybe Jim Davis isn't entirely sincere here?

To me it looks like he made the strip at first to laugh at himself (Jon) and his own cynical tendencies (Garfield). The "I thought becoming a cartoonist was a good way to make money" is an obvious joke at his own expense - it's a terrible way to make money, even with full Snoopy-level merchandising.

It's also notable that he's been very positive to people doing weird things like Garfield minus Garfield. He's not at all possessive to his creation. He accepted ages ago that as the comic became a phenomenon, it wasn't wholly his anymore.

Comment by evanelias 3 hours ago

Despite the mediocrity of the Garfield comic strip, I think a lot of Garfield's enduring popularity among late Gen X / early Millennials can be attributed to the late 80s Garfield and Friends cartoon [1]. It was actually funny, largely due to the writing by Mark Evanier. He's also known for his snappy dialogue on Groo the Wanderer, among other comic books.

And then in the late 00s, Garfield got an indie-cred boost from Garfield Minus Garfield [2], the surreal and often humorously bleak webcomic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield_and_Friends

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield_Minus_Garfield

Comment by kbenson 2 hours ago

Groo was always a favorite of mine as a child. The amazing art of Sergio Aragones and the sarcasm and double speak that pervade the comic always connected better with me. That came across in the Aragones panels in Mad much of the time as well.

Comment by PaulHoule 8 hours ago

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 and video games and merchandise and make tons of money.

Our media industry has to realize that it doesn't just have a cyclical problem but that it is stuck recycling the same old properties over and over again as it shrinks. It's got to give a chance to some new blood.

Comment by cogman10 7 hours ago

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 decade or so. Everything else is rehashing existing ideas.

I really would like to know what Japan does differently to nurture new properties. It clearly works. It seems South Korea and China are also doing pretty well in that aspect.

Comment by nemomarx 7 hours ago

the publishers seem to have more interest in trying new writers and ideas and letting them sink or swim, basically. Like the same weekly magazine that publishers one piece might let your little idea get in there too, and if readers seem to like it they'll open up spots for you in the schedule, or it can die as a one shot or get cancelled after a few chapters.

Lots of new interesting stuff comes out and dies or doesn't survive, but it means they do have some constant incubation. The American version of this for comics is basically letting new writers try their hand at a big existing property to see if they're any good, but that means the new ideas are "fun spin on batman" or etc. (And of course the indie scene exists in both to different extents, but the publishers for non DC/Marvel stuff in the US are anemic.)

I hear scholastic is genuinely good, but they have a very specific audience ofc.

Comment by PaulHoule 7 hours ago

I hardly ever watch those anime which go on forever like Bleach.

When I go out as

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116484198935085911

I find 20% or so people in the general population in my town recognize who I am right away because they watched either Naruto or Demon Slayer and those are both in my queue so I can understand better what they know about me.

... but it is hard because there is Slayers and Futari Wa Precure and many many anime that have a few 12 epsiode seasons in my queue. And a lot of that is in the "so bad it's good category". One of my guilty pleasures is

https://w1.backstabbedinabackwaterdungeon.xyz/chapters/1/

which gets really good over time because the crazy overpowered protagonist and his Level 9999 friends almost meet their match and I never would have discovered the light novel and manga if I hadn't been willing to watch a truly atrocious J.C. Staff anime. Only in Japan can some ordinary person write a web novel, get a contract for a light novel, get a manga made, then get an anime, video games, etc. The "media mix" strategy lets their industry market test content with low risk and the anime doesn't even have to be profitable on its own if it convinces 10,000 or so obsessive fans to shell out $150 to buy all the books of the light novel and another $150 to buy the books of the manga.

The cost structure of the US media industry is a lot worse and divides between super-expensive prestige content and a tier of slop. It's all a gatekeeping-industrial complex and no wonder people are pissed about DEI, "woke" and all that because it's a zero sum game. The industry would love to get another J. K. Rowlings and we've probably had 10 of them who never got greenlit because of low risk tolerance.

Comment by cogman10 7 hours ago

> crazy overpowered protagonist and his Level 9999 friends almost meet their match

Is this the origin of that trope? I've seen a couple of anime/manga that use the same story as a jump off point. Character that doesn't know their own strength kicked out of the party for being "weak" only for us to later find out they are one of the strongest/most powerful individuals in the world.

Comment by PaulHoule 6 hours ago

Nah, that one is too new. Turns out this guy's power is only useful at the very bottom of the most dangerous dungeon which has dense enough mana that he can summon people and items stronger than the surface world. It's marketed as a crazy revenge fantasy and it is that, but it would be unfair it to compare it to the really mean-spirited revenge stories that come out of Korean and China.

Comment by fragmede 7 hours ago

Hilariously, Dragonball is a rehashing of a far older folktale.

Comment by hibikir 31 minutes ago

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

Comment by xandrius 1 hour ago

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.

Comment by telesilla 3 hours ago

Some viewers will remember growing up with the TV series Monkey, whose bizarre images and stories of Pigsy and the titular flying Monkey I shall never forget.

Monkey Magic theme song anyone? https://youtu.be/wddJnq-D3XM?si=J2xAgXoygreTD73w

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)

Comment by mekael 4 hours ago

Which one?

Comment by lazide 4 hours ago

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

Comment by jkestner 3 hours ago

I guess, but I’d just say it’s moved to other distribution models because who reads newspapers now? Mostly people who want to read Family Circus reruns (okay, that’s uncharitable).

I can’t speak to other countries, but we have a very healthy ecosystem in webcomics. I back several on Patron, buy the compilations of others on Kickstarter, and otherwise grab new issues at my local comic book store or library.

Comment by mcmoor 6 hours ago

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.

Comment by Forgeties79 1 hour ago

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.

Comment by rbanffy 9 hours ago

> 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.

Comment by mapontosevenths 7 hours ago

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.

Comment by Forgeties79 1 hour ago

> 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.

Comment by wodenokoto 7 hours ago

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

- Few, related jokes that can recur all the time (Love lasagna, hates mondays)

- No word plays - should be easy to translate

- No political jokes

- No deep jokes - should be accessible

- Lots of merchandise

I think it is super interesting that he set out from the start to build a "sell out"-brand and after reading this, I kinda respect the whole thing a lot more.

Comment by xandrius 1 hour ago

You respect someone who plans to be a sell-out more than someone who sells out later for whatever other reason?

Comment by kemayo 11 hours ago

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.

Comment by dmurray 10 hours ago

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 the comics, why should we get to enjoy reading them? And we'd just have the same complaint if he quit after eleven years instead of ten, or worse, we'd be saying how the last couple of years it was clear his heart wasn't in it.

Comment by vidarh 10 hours ago

One of my favourite comic artists, Mads Eriksen [1][2] basically "disappeared" in 2008-2009 and didn't start regularly publishing comics again for more than a decade (at a much slower pace) because of the pressure and burnout.

Maybe Watterson could have squeezed another year or two out of himself, but it's by no means a given it wouldn't have meant unreasonable personal sacrifice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mads_Eriksen_(cartoonist)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_(comic_strip)

Comment by ghaff 10 hours ago

Doing a daily anything is hard. Garry Trudeau sort of did a good compromise by pivoting to just a Sunday entry--that is still pretty solid. But my general observation is that it's really hard to keep things flowing day-in and day-out as a cartoonist/columnist/etc.

Comment by tombert 10 hours ago

I didn't read the comics when they were new, but I started reading the daily rerun comics of Doonesbury, and I hadn't realized how funny they actually are.

I guess as a kid I always thought it was the comic that "old people" liked, and never gave it much of a shot, but I kind of inadvertently found it recently and it actually pretty good.

Comment by bombcar 9 hours ago

The old ones vs the current ones really do hit different.

Comment by bombcar 9 hours ago

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.

Comment by tombert 8 hours ago

I respect it honestly.

The Simpsons used to be my favorite show, but I feel like the quality dropped dramatically after season ~13 or so. Part of that is because I got older, I'll admit, but even rewatching the older seasons, I still find them funny while season 13 and onward I simply don't.

I would have so rather they ended the show twenty years ago and use whatever budget they spent making it on new cartoons.

Comment by vintermann 2 hours ago

Schultz, who is still fairly universally beloved (including by Watterson I think?) went on forever. So did Johnny Hart (BC). The trick is that they're not really trying to get a laugh out of you every day. They're a slightly surreal setting with warmth, and a few recurring gags.

Larson and Watterson were high intensity in a way classic cartoonists weren't. That's not bad, but most people are probably going to burn out or worse (e.g. ending up like Scott Adams).

Comment by dhosek 6 hours ago

Berke Breathed should have taken their example more seriously.

Comment by CrazyStat 10 hours ago

I have similar feelings about TV shows. There are shows that I wish hadn’t ended after a couple of seasons, but there are also a ton of shows that dragged on for 6, 8, 15 seasons when it clearly would have been better to end them years earlier.

Overall I lean toward appreciating things that end early more than things that end late.

Comment by jandrese 6 hours ago

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.

Comment by esikich 4 hours ago

I don't think I've seen a newspaper in anyone's house in like 15-20 years.

Comment by thatguy0900 4 hours ago

Do any households with young children present even get the newspaper anymore? I would wager if I asked my nephews and nieces they would all say they've never actually read a newspaper comic strip. I don't think any amount of freshness would have saved that

Comment by imgabe 3 hours ago

I think the newspapers and books alone still probably made Waterson a decent amount of money. More than enough to live comfortably forever. I remember Scott Adams (of Dilbert) once saying his syndication deal was something like $6 million per year, I'm sure Calvin and Hobbes was at least comparable and the books certainly sold well. Newspapers used to be absolute cash cows.

Comment by blindriver 10 hours ago

If I were a trillionaire like Elon Musk, Bill Watterson would be one of those people I would anonymous gift enough money so that the rest of their lives would be comfortable. We need more people like him, and he should be rewarded for it.

Comment by hackmack10 9 hours ago

Bill Watterson is worth a hundred million dollars. He’s not hurting for cash.

Comment by blindriver 9 hours ago

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

Comment by alex0015 4 hours ago

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.

Comment by Benlovescnn 8 hours ago

The guy that never sold out won't have the island next to supreme sellouts, jared and ivanka.

Comment by jonstewart 7 hours ago

Citation? I’m sure he’s fine but $100M?

Comment by esikich 4 hours ago

Sure, he's sold 10s of millions of books plus all the syndication money. Sounds about right.

Comment by bombcar 9 hours ago

Bill Watterson is comfortable for life - even without merchandising he's easily a millionaire multiple times over.

Comment by dTal 6 hours ago

Ah, I think it's safe to say you wouldn't. Nothing against you, but the personality required to acquire a trillion (!!!) dollars is incompatible with the kind of philanthropic thinking you clearly possess.

Comment by selfmodruntime 9 hours ago

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.

Comment by wrs 8 hours ago

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”.

Comment by vasco 1 hour ago

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.

Comment by tombert 9 hours ago

I mean, I think he was just afraid that the comic would become a merchandise machine instead of a comic, and I think he didn't want that.

Comment by fragmede 9 hours ago

There's like 100 of them on Etsy right now.

Comment by dgritsko 14 hours ago

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. Time to go pull some old volumes of Calvin & Hobbes off the shelf for the hundredth time, I suppose.

Comment by all2 14 hours ago

I have so much nostalgia for Watterson's work. I occasionally will buy another of the hard bound 3 volume set. I always wind up giving them away and then buying another.

A worthy cause, I hope.

Comment by smithkl42 9 hours ago

I'm waiting until my kids are out of the house (just a couple of years now) to repurchase the 3-volume set. The first purchase didn't survive my kids' childhood - which, yes, I think Watterson would have approved.

Comment by rbanffy 9 hours ago

It makes everybody’s day a little bit more surreal. Certainly a worthy cause.

Comment by Cider9986 14 hours ago

It's great that he wasn't tricked or coerced. I imagine some artists have the integrity, but not the knowledge to prevent being taken advantage of.

Comment by echelon 12 hours ago

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.

Comment by defen 11 hours ago

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.

Comment by ericd 8 hours ago

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 bias, these are just the old books that people bothered to keep reading.

Comment by sgarland 1 hour ago

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.

Comment by GJim 45 minutes ago

> 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!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

Comment by wrs 8 hours ago

Yeah. Ronald Dahl once said something to the effect that to make a good children’s book the first thing you have to do is kill off the parents!

Comment by ericd 6 hours ago

Sometimes by having a rhinoceros suddenly and unceremoniously gobble them up.

Comment by senordevnyc 9 hours ago

Exact same story here. I got my father in law the box set as a gift, and when my daughter was about seven she started reading them when we were visiting them. So I bought her a set of her own. She still reads them all the time at 11.

Comment by jjulius 10 hours ago

My wife and I take turns each night doing bedtime for our two girls, 4/6. I have the full C&H box set and, a whiiiiile back, my oldest asked what it was and if we could read it.

For over a year now, any time it's my time to do bedtime, we have to read C&H and cannot read anything else. We've been cruising through it from start to finish and are, within the next week or so, going to reach the end.

Both kiddos, especially my oldest, have been demanding that we start it over. I'll probably table it for a couple of years and then come back to it when they're just a bit older, but yeah... kids definitely know about it and really do appreciate/enjoy it.

Edit: To say nothing of the idea that, eventually, everything fades into obscurity. I feel like what you're lamenting is something that actually jives with Watterson philosophically.

Comment by beAbU 11 hours ago

And that's perfectly fine!

It makes the accidental discovery of C&H all the more special. I remember the day a school friend showed me a C&H book he got from his dad. It was never in the newspapers where I grew up, so I would never have discovered it otherwise.

Not everything in this world needs to obtain global reach and fame.

Comment by conception 12 hours ago

Rather than bombard children with advertising to buy plastic junk? Y…yes it was the right choice?

Comment by willis936 12 hours ago

I'm not a kid, but I asked for some calvin and hobbes books for my birthday. The postmodernism laid out in the first comic of each anthology gets the main thrust across. It's a timeless piece of art. It doesn't need boosting. It will be there for me to reach for if I have kids who might enjoy them.

https://youtu.be/P5ivZLTMhso

Comment by vohk 11 hours ago

I think that's just a natural part of the times changing and generations having their own icons. In contrast to the shambling undead of Mickey Mouse and other eternally recycled franchises, I think it's OK to for things to fade a little. If nothing else, it leaves things for future generations to rediscover and make their own.

Comment by LandoCalrissian 9 hours ago

Everything comes to an end friend, not everything needs to go on forever. Maybe it is forgotten, left behind, but that's not really important. What's important is it ended on his terms and some of us had the privilege to experience it.

There will still be people that find Calvin for the first time, and they will get the same privilege. I'm glad he did it his way and I think most of his new fans will as well.

Comment by nkrisc 11 hours ago

It’s still there in libraries and bookstores, and even online. It’s not going anywhere.

My son enjoys reading the collection I had when I was young.

Comment by jamesfinlayson 6 hours ago

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).

Comment by cortesoft 9 hours ago

Is that the main goal, though? Making sure your characters stay in the public conciousness?

I am not sure that is the most important thing, or even that important at all. The characters matter a LOT to people of a certain age, and his decisions helped maintain that.

Comment by pydry 12 hours ago

I saw a little girl reading it on public transport just yesterday.

Comment by biomcgary 10 hours ago

My teenage boys are hooked on Calvin & Hobbes.

Comment by prmoustache 9 hours ago

My 7y old nephew inherited my complete collection and is a big fan.

Comment by alanbernstein 11 hours ago

I suggested it to my young kids and it became an instant favorite.

Comment by Hugsbox 11 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by dhosek 6 hours ago

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 still believe that.

Comment by megaloblasto 2 hours ago

I hope you are joking. Calvin's dad is not supposed to be a role model father figure. Please don't trick your kids like that.

Comment by nargek 2 hours ago

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

Comment by reddalo 2 hours ago

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.

Comment by conartist6 6 hours ago

That last truck really shows off the engineering work

Comment by jeronimobomfim 10 hours ago

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/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html

Comment by frollogaston 8 hours ago

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 values, rules and rewards."

Comment by Folcon 5 hours ago

> 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

Comment by jfengel 7 hours ago

I take advice from rich people with a grain of salt. It's easier to praise the value of money over integrity when you have both. They don't ask starving artists to give graduation speeches.

Watterson appears to have genuine integrity and I applaud him. There is a point where you have enough money, and the ones who deserve the most scorn are those who cheat to get even more when they have orders of magnitude more than that. But don't forget that a lot of people really do have to choose between integrity and dinner, and I don't judge their decision.

Comment by sometimes_all 3 hours ago

It is my opinion that while you do not judge people who have to choose between integrity and dinner, you can definitely judge people who made decisions and structured their life in such a way that they had that choice, and not only did they choose money, but did it in such a way that what other people would call riches was subsistence for them because of the lifestyle they led.

> There is a point where you have enough money

You forego the option of choosing when you end up chasing a goal or living a standard of living which requires you to continuously choose money every time. It takes a lot of thinking to come to what "enough" means. For some, enough is a few hundred thousand dollars max. For some, even a billion is not enough. You can definitely appreciate the former when they reach that goal and stay there, but it becomes difficult to appreciate the latter (and they are the focus of most of the criticism here), because you do need to sacrifice more than a bit of integrity in that case.

Comment by LandoCalrissian 9 hours ago

That is a wonderful speech, I have never read it before. Thank you for sharing.

Comment by bear8642 9 hours ago

Thanks for sharing that!

Comment by Cider9986 14 hours ago

This is really well written, which is refreshing with all the AI.

Past:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32116184 Bill Watterson’s refusal to license Calvin and Hobbes (2016) 464 points July 16, 2022 311 comments

More on Calvin and Hobbes: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Comment by apparent 12 hours ago

The last Calvin and Hobbes strip [1].

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/6pig9h/hon...

Comment by ckw 3 hours ago

Sometimes I entertain the fantasy that Watterson continued writing Calvin and Hobbes as a hobby-- whenever a particularly good idea came to him he'd put it to paper. And someday he'll drop a collection that dwarfs the original strip.

Comment by rbanffy 9 hours ago

I can safely say the three biggest influences in my teens were Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, The Muppet Show, and Calvin and Hobbes. Sagan ignited my passion for learning and made me realise I a rare ability to understand complicated things visually.

The Muppets taught me that nothing in life should be beyond ridicule, and that I should be the first one to laugh at myself, and to never be afraid to do stupid things. Also that a touch of surrealism is key to a healthy life.

Calvin gave me a sense of belonging, and made me realise I was not as weird as I originally thought. If people enough like it to the point newspapers publish the strips, I would not be alone. The final strip really hit me hard. I miss those two.

Comment by jdblair 2 hours ago

When I was quite young I attended a lecture by Bill Watterson held at the Akron Art Museum. He spoke without notes, with an easel and a large pad of paper, describing his career. He illustrated his story with the pad, drawing his unsuccessful characters (I remember one looked like a short Hobbes) as he told his story about how he created Calvin and Hobbes. I was really struck by how much Watterson looked like Calvin's dad.

I stayed after the end of the lecture hoping that he would give me one of his drawings. He politely declined. As I recall, he said he had to be very careful about how his work was distributed. I don't know if this was b/c of his contract with the syndicate, or b/c he was already thinking about the legacy of the strip.

Comment by alsetmusic 13 hours ago

This is one of the reasons I have Stupendous Man on my forearm. It's the version of him running into his classroom on the back of one of the books (arms flexing triumphantly), only I had that artist style the costume based on how he appears in Calvin's imagination.

I can't imagine getting Garfield or Snoopy on my skin. CnH was massively important to me growing up. It had so much meaning.

I also remember Watterson writing, in the CnH retrospective anthology (on the topic of Moe, the school bully), that he didn't identify with people who were nostalgic for childhood because he remembered it being a very difficult time. Poignant and true.

Edit: Btw, CnH lovers: See new book The Mysteries

https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=48560976

Comment by biophysboy 12 hours ago

Thats very interesting to me that Watterson remembers his childhood as a difficult time. Calvin’s moments of sadness/anxiety/anger are a big part of why I found those comics so relatable and endearing as a kid.

Comment by aqfamnzc 13 hours ago

You have linked to your own comment.

Comment by alsetmusic 9 hours ago

Ha! What the eff. I don't know how that happened. Too late to edit.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Mysteries/Bill-Wa...

Comment by Tyr42 14 hours ago

Man, 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.

Comment by defen 13 hours ago

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.

Comment by kortilla 23 minutes ago

The monoculture is dead for better or worse.

Comment by cogman10 10 hours ago

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".

Comment by picofarad 5 hours ago

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

Comment by blt 13 hours ago

For me, it's hard to imagine him giving up the printed newspaper strip's connection to the physical world. Calvin and Hobbes is filled with references to the basic elements of physical reality: dirt, rocks, water, snow, speed, collisions, temperature, light, sound. Webcomics exist in a world of pure information.

Comment by card_zero 12 hours ago

Webcomics exist in the physical world because they appear on screens, which are just as physical as paper. Neither newspapers nor screens usually come into contact with dirt, rocks, water, snow, or collisions. Newspapers make more noise than screens, but screens emit more light. Printed cartoons exist as pure information too, in the sense that they can be copied and printed on different things.

Comment by InitialLastName 13 hours ago

He's had more than 2 decades to reject that opportunity.

Comment by bena 12 hours ago

Yeah. He's not dead. He could have gone into webcomics if he had wanted.

Comment by hylaride 12 hours ago

I think he's a product of his time (pre-internet). He stopped because he felt he hit the limits of what he could create, and while a large part of it was the restrictions the newspapers put on him, it was also that he was running out of ideas. It's something he's specifically said in his very rare interviews, and he seems to enjoy living a very quiet life.

While webcomics are thriving, they don't quite have the same cultural impact that every kid growing up had for a few decades where the newspaper would be out on the kitchen table and the kids would nosedive for the comics. When I think about it, it was a brilliant move for newspapers. As I got older and closer to being an adult, I started reading the rest of the paper.

There were several excellent comics, but only C&H has stood the test of time and I am so proud that my 8 year old daughter recently pulled down the books are started getting lost in them. Sometimes the restrictions and limitations produce creativity in their own right, and I often wonder if something like C&H could even make it in today's cultural environment (both from a political point of view and in the modern social media landscape).

Comment by reddalo 2 hours ago

TIL that Bill Watterson is still alive.

Comment by WillAdams 10 hours ago

I think he would have enjoyed the creative freedom, run with it, and maybe even have managed to make some interesting new expression, say something along the lines of:

https://xkcd.com/1190/

(which won a well-deserved Hugo if memory serves)

I've been on something of a webcomic kick for a while now, and while I'd love to shill for _Girl Genius_ https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20021104 (oops, guess I just did), the artist whom I find most striking and who best epitomizes the evolution of webcomics (Kaja and Phil Foglio have their origin firmly planted in traditional print work) is "Tailsteak":

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6852154.Mason_Tailstea...

who has gone from: 1/0 https://www.undefined.net/1/0/?strip=1

to Leftover Soup: https://www.leftoversoup.com/first.php

and is now working on: https://forwardcomic.com/firstpage.html

where each is published once a week or so, with a story plotted out to run for 1,000 strips --- ~two decades each --- curiousity over what other such stories are out there has me searching/reading a lot, and a "Webcomics" browser bookmarks/favorites folder which is beginning to scroll....

Comment by ShadowOfThePit 3 minutes ago

I don't get the first one.

Comment by Kotlopou 9 hours ago

Oh my god, 1/0 is an absolutely brilliant piece of art and I recommend everyone here to check it out. It starts out unassuming, but that's part of the point -- it ended up becoming about the author's growth through talking to characters he himself made up (and the characters talking back in protest), and he also ended up meeting his wife through it :)

I guess if I had to sell the idea... in its own words: it's as far removed from the average sitcom as possible. It's not at all like anything else you have ever read. (https://www.undefined.net/1/0/?strip=961)

Comment by sehugg 11 hours ago

FYI Berke Breathed (Bill's contemporary, occasional collaborator and pen-pal) is still posting new Bloom County comics on his Patreon.

Comment by awbvious 11 hours ago

See my other comment. Webcomic creators got their own problems that aren't much different than his were. Be it having to deal with Social Media algorithms, or working for a recently-public company that wants to force people to an app, or having to be both a web designer AND a comic writer/drawer (smbc-comics /still/ having problems with their commenting system on their website comes to mind).

Comment by bandrami 2 hours ago

This reminds me of an old piece I really love about Fred Rogers, who faced many of the same pressures with exactly the same integrity:

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-...

Comment by hyperhello 14 hours ago

> I show two versions of reality, and each makes complete sense to the participant who sees it. I think that’s how life works.

Not to spoil a beautiful joke by explaining it, but all of the strips are based on this. Two characters see things differently. Sometimes it’s because Calvin is in the grip of his (psychosis|childhood) and sometimes it’s a totally ex machina Watterson idea that they’re exploring, but there’s always two worlds colliding hilariously.

I have no idea if a truly competent director could catch lightning in a bottle. The movie Fight Club has been correctly compared to Calvin and Hobbes. There’s no way for stuffed toys to capture this at all. Good for Watterson for allowing his genius not to be trampled.

Comment by rapind 13 hours ago

> The movie Fight Club has been correctly compared to Calvin and Hobbes.

Bit of a tangent, but I recently watched Fight Club with my son. He was surprised he liked it because he'd gotten the impression it was a dog whistle for manosphere spazzes. I was like "exactly, Matrix is actually good too...".

Comment by tanseydavid 13 hours ago

> the impression it was a dog whistle for manosphere spazzes

Everyone thinks this until they see the movie or read the book.

Comment by scubbo 12 hours ago

I mean...they _are_. That doesn't mean that they doesn't have quality beyond what those dregs see.

Comment by rbanffy 9 hours ago

A lot of them praised The Boys right up to the point they realised it was making fun of them. They took years of the TV series to get it.

Comment by jasonmp85 12 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by bigstrat2003 12 hours ago

Avoiding a work of art because of identity politics is no way to live life. That is true whether it is right wing or left wing identity politics. One should just give the work an honest go, and form one's own conclusions, without worrying about whether "those people" might have enjoyed it as well.

Comment by Yeask 13 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by cogogo 10 hours ago

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.

Comment by FatherOfCurses 14 hours ago

"A few weeks later, the project is finished. Watterson probably takes a moment to stand in the middle of the room and look up, contemplating the months of work, the tins of paint he went through, the things he learned about technique, about the joy of a job done for its own sake, about himself. Then he opens a tin of whitewash, climbs up the bed-chairs-table one last time, and paints over his work. He leaves the ceiling white, empty, fresh."

Is it Zen where they do this with mandalas? The monks spend forever building intricate sand paintings and then wipe/blow them away in an instant. Love it.

I wish I could explain why, but this is the C+H comic I think of the most: https://i0.wp.com/www.thedockchurch.org/blog/wp-content/uplo...

Comment by ToucanLoucan 12 hours ago

A lot of artists do this a lot of times. Especially work that pushes your boundaries is often not of the best quality, not suited for release. We finish it, we enjoy it, we share it perhaps with a small group of friends, and then it goes in the bin. It's just the way of it, and why I'm so skeptical of so many social media influencers who create stuff but the creation of that stuff becomes the media of their particular medium, not the thing they're meant to be making. Like game developers who post a lot about whatever game they're making, and get such engagement that the thing they're making and the quality of it almost takes a back seat to simply continuing the work for the sake of documenting it and posting about it.

It's also why despite using AI for work and for occasional brainstorming, it never, ever will find it's way into my actual artistic processes and works. The friction of creating is the point of creating, and where AI removes that friction, it renders the product pointless. An AI image feels empty precisely because there were, by definition, no long nights spent with it, no difficult to solve problems, no taste to reckon with: it was simply made with precision and perfection by a machine being told what to make. An achievement certainly, but not a human one.

Comment by robocat 11 hours ago

> He leaves the ceiling white, empty, fresh.

Did anyone ever try and recover the painting/palimpsest?

Comment by rbanffy 9 hours ago

Some things are meant to be made, not necessarily seen.

Comment by helterskelter 13 hours ago

I believe those are the Tibetan Buddhists.

Comment by CamperBob2 7 hours ago

And boy, do they get sore when some tourists' kid runs through the sand, Calvin-like, the day before the big ceremony.

Comment by frollogaston 8 hours ago

"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.

Comment by bronson 4 hours ago

> 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)

Comment by srvmshr 7 hours ago

Calvin & Hobbes have always been such a joy. In childhood, it was a reflection of all the naughtiness you could come up with. As a middle aged adult today, I look at the bigger meanings of those simple adventures. Reading a few stories is a reminder that happiness could be found in simple things & vivid imaginations.

Bill Watterson's dedication to not commercialize it preserves the charm about 'simple life, simple joys' of our childhood. He could have raked in the money, but his integrity is admirable. It isn't easy to be in his position & make such difficult choices to preserve the ethos of his art.

Comment by randallsquared 13 hours ago

> It looked like the syndicate’s warnings to Watterson were well-founded: Calvin and Hobbes was threatened with widespread cancellation.

Oh, that sounds bad.

> It says something about the popularity of Calvin and Hobbes — not to mention Watterson’s pulling power as a cartoonist — that after all the outrage and arguments, only fifteen of the 1,800 papers running Watterson’s strip threatened to remove it from their pages. And only seven followed through.

What. This directly contradicts the first statement, does it not?

Comment by bluGill 13 hours ago

Remember his strip was popular enough that papers didn't have a choice. People were buying newspapers to get the latest Calvin and Hobbes. They may not like what he did but he had the power. Most cartoonists people read and sometimes laugh but if they get replaced nobody will care.

Comment by clutchdude 12 hours ago

Watterson was known for being very much a stickler for the format and color of the comic.

He'd eschew printing norms for the Sunday format and more or less force papers to either print it how he wanted or not get it at all.

The response was that the papers would just cancel the whole strip rather than give in to his artistic demands.

Comment by bornfreddy 11 hours ago

Only 7 out of 1800 cancelled, according to the article.

Comment by leephillips 10 hours ago

Sounds like you would be interested in the article linked at the top of the page.

Comment by toss1 13 hours ago

>>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.

Comment by randallsquared 6 hours ago

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.

Comment by bronson 5 hours ago

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

Comment by bryanrasmussen 13 hours ago

I think the first threatened is from groups like moral majority or similar threatening we will get your papers to remove it, and then the second is the actual papers making the threat based on threats from moral watchdog groups. Anyway that is my interpretation of what happened.

Comment by duskwuff 13 hours ago

The threatened cancellation was over Watterson demanding an unmodifiable half-page for his Sunday strips, not over the content of his strips.

Comment by bryanrasmussen 12 hours ago

ah sorry I had it confused in my mind with Berkley Breathed, should have read article first but I saw the cancellation thing and I thought oh yeah I remember that.

Comment by goolz 10 hours ago

Dang man, C & H taught me so much as a young lad. Unconditional love, amor fati, the importance of being yourself. I think the way he left it all was perfect. We were robbed of future delights but in the end it could not have been more in character. I hope Mr. Watterson is enjoying his final sebatical.

Comment by rbanffy 9 hours ago

I hope he’s secretly drawing Calvin and Hobbes and that, somehow, the two are enjoying their adventures. As long as they are drawn, they are alive.

Comment by vkou 7 hours ago

A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.

Comment by PaulHoule 8 hours ago

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.

Comment by CamperBob2 7 hours ago

Then there's the fact that anyone who wants more C&H comics can now just ask for them. I hate to think about how Watterson will feel the first time he sees that happen.

Comment by pantsforbirds 7 hours ago

I would have loved to buy my children some small C&H figurines or, especially, a stuffed tiger, but I do respect Waterson's decision

Comment by aBioGuy 14 hours ago

Another anecdote (where it came from I do not remember) stuck in my brain was that Watterson's editor called him one day to tell him that STEVEN SPIELBERG was on the phone to talk with him about a Calvin and Hobbes movie. Watterson refused to take the call.

Comment by jameskilton 14 hours ago

Or how he was mailed a box of Calvin and Hobbes plushies to try to get sign-off on the quality of the toys.

He mailed back a picture of the box on fire.

IMO Calvin and Hobbes will always be special because of Watterson's integrity. It says everything it needed to say, and those comics will almost always be relevant.

Comment by all2 14 hours ago

The danger of "more" is that it dilutes the purpose and voice of the original. "Cowboy Bebop" fits in this same realm, I think. It had a single season. They did a movie. They said everything they needed to say and left it at that.

Comment by annzabelle 11 hours ago

Firefly is an interesting example of that. If it had not been cancelled so quickly, would anybody remember it these days? A lot of shows start out strong and then completely fall apart.

Comment by hiccuphippo 13 hours ago

And I guess the live action remake of Cowboy Bebop is the box on fire in this analogy?

Comment by neogodless 12 hours ago

I watched a few episodes of it.

It wasn't so bad that I couldn't wait to stop watching it but... it wasn't good enough that I couldn't help but finish it. I still want to finish it...

Comment by rbanffy 9 hours ago

I actually like it better, but it’s because I prefer live action over animation.

Comment by all2 12 hours ago

I think so, yes. I didn't hear great things about that. Eventually I'll probably watch it. But also maybe not.

Comment by pseudalopex 6 hours ago

Watterson said It was only my head that burst into flames.[1]

[1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/53216/mental-floss-exclu...

Comment by wincy 12 hours ago

So instead we ended up with the only Calvin and Hobbes items in the physical world being those vinyl bumper stickers of Calvin pissing on things, because those were cheap and easy for random unscrupulous printers to make. Some artistic vision. As someone born in the late 80s, I recall seeing those far more than the actual comics.

Comment by jjulius 10 hours ago

>So instead we ended up with the only Calvin and Hobbes items in the physical world being those vinyl bumper stickers of Calvin pissing on things...

... and, of course, all of the various collections of the comics in print form, up to and including the full box set, that everyone can check out from libraries or purchase and keep in perpetuity. Ya know, the actual thing, the meat of it, the heart, the soul - not tangential merchandise.

>Some artistic vision.

Talk about completely missing the point.

Comment by NKosmatos 10 hours ago

Very well written! Now let’s wait to see what happens with the rights to Calvin and Hobbes when Waterson is not around. I’m sure we’ll see a reboot/re-run with merchandise, series and perhaps a movie, when the heirs take the rights.

Comment by jjulius 10 hours ago

Knowing Watterson, I'd wager he's taken certain paths to prevent this from happening.

Comment by prmoustache 9 hours ago

I don't think he has the power to do anything.

Look at what happened to Frida Kalho. Her face has sadly become a synonymous for cheap stuff sold anywhere.

Comment by CM30 14 hours ago

Have to say, I've always admired Watterson's determination to keep Calvin and Hobbes a comic strip and not compromise on its vision for money/fame. As the article itself points out, it would have been very easy for it to become the next Peanuts or Garfield, and most artists probably would have taken that route the minute it became available. Heck, given the obsession with side hustles and grifting and get rich quick schemes, I don't think I could see any present day comic creator (or creator in general) making that sort of decision.

But yeah, it's admirable. Especially given how the average comic strip runs for decades on end with less and less humour or charm until its eventual cancelation.

Comment by ChrisMarshallNY 10 hours ago

I think I remember reading this, some time back.

Watterson had (still has) a great deal of Personal Integrity.

I dig Personal Integrity. People like him, are kind of mythic heroes, to me.

Comment by WalterBright 9 hours ago

I'm always amazed at how a cartoonist can turn out 6 cartoons a week, every week, every month, every year.

Comment by mrhottakes 11 hours ago

What an excellent piece. Watterson is one of the greats and I have the utmost respect for people that do things because they enjoy it.

Comment by philipallstar 13 hours ago

There's no art that can be stopped. You only need to convince someone else to print it if you want money.

Comment by recursivedoubts 14 hours ago

Reminds me of why the lucky stiff for some reason...

Comment by everyone 10 hours ago

I saw this video recently, about Bill Waterson and 'Robotman'

https://youtu.be/gP01pIB99ws?si=rnUOUom_MRYQcPkP

Comment by slowhadoken 11 hours ago

Sometimes things are black and white. The syndicate needs people like Watterson and without them they’re broke. The Cartoon Network fell apart not heeding this law and its great artists continue on.

Comment by forgatmachine 6 hours ago

thank you for sharing this. It was a lovely read!

Comment by andrepd 10 hours ago

Absolutely incredible writing! Loved every word.

Comment by awbvious 11 hours ago

Question: Imagine it is right after Watterson stopped working with Universal Press Syndicate and making Calvin and Hobbes. You know someone who can get you in touch with Watterson. What do you do?

I ask because I humbly think the closest we have in the last 30 years to Watterson is Shen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shen_(cartoonist) . So much of what he did mirrors Watterson. More specifically, so much of his evolution mirrors Watterson. He clearly had a style that was working, but he evolved and it worked (not everyone evolves and it works, Matthew Inman comes to mind--still does great stuff, his new style just doesn't resonate with me personally, could just be me). I mean, it's not a one-for-one comparison, Shen has a plushie, for example (not much else). But there's a spirit there that I feel resonates with people deeply.

He recently left Webtoon and his 3x-a-week Blue Chair. I wrote him an email that he responded to, which is how I know if someone has a good response here, I can probably get it to him. I mention in my email Smol Web (aka Small Web, other names as well, heavily mentioned here on Hacker News) and he said "I like the principles in it." But I get the impression he still feels he must pay fealty to the social media gods (relevant The Oatmeal https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people ) and everything else is secondary. the tricky part is creating something that will pay the bills. If anyone wants to lend him a hand in that, let me know and I'll pass it on. Like, how /does/ do Small Web and make money?

Here's nearly all of my email to him, if you are curious. One of the things I hated was that during Shen's tenure at Webtoon they got more and more hostile to users browsing without using their app. I don't know if it figured into his leaving, or even if it was 100% his decision, but I do rant a bit about it. I also mention "We Go Forward." That is referenced in the Wikipedia article. Sadly, can't link to it without linking to a social media site.

---

Anyway, Webtoon's loss. They went public, they thought that meant they should act like Big Tech and force people into apps. Presumably to harvest all that data, make all their users the product, and sell that data to data brokers. They then wipe their hands of what happenns [sic] as that data is sold to surveillance states or worse. Of course, it's all predicated on the fact they can act as monopolies, following the Peter Thiel handbook. But assuming they could even become the next Meta or Alphabet going the way they did, regardless that the very ickiness of it should repulse one, is just hubris. Maybe they thought the app numbers, and the app data it would mean, would be enough to merger into a Meta or Alphabet. But you can't get there by simply forcing users bluntly and harshly. Forcing users is a late-stage Meta or Alphabet move, and it never starts blunt or harsh.

I see nothing wrong with them going public, per se, provided they can convince the shareholders to not be short-sighted. But I don't think they could, thus, it probably was wrong to do a traditional IPO. Shareholders want "growth" at all costs. So they will hinge on app downloads and engagement numbers with every earnings report. And so the stock price will hinge on those numbers, to the point where unless the stock price is unrelated to decision making--e.g. a non-voting arrangement for retail buyers like Zuck got--stupid decisions will be made. If not by the original company, by the "activist investment company" that buys all the shares and makes the same stupid decisions. Assuming the activist investor doesn't just turn it private again and vampires the equity.

Yes, they right now should have an app. But a simple browser wrapper app for those younger people who think everything should be an app. The core product should support browser viewing first. At least at first. Then assuming there's enough moat (which there definitely isn't yet) it's a question of morals, do you stay on that path, or do start to force people to the app little by little? Hobbling this or that. You don't go to "can't view this webcomic except in the app" right away. That's definitely a much later Darth Vader move which, again, no one should do (but if you're Zuck, you will do anyway).

I'll be glad to see you go somewhere new. Have your own site! Use federated social media! Realize there are fans who remember We Go Forward when it came out! You know, over twenty years ago, I spent two weeks on a web comic [removed, just in case it goes afoul of this Guideline "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." This comment is about Shen after all]. I should have Gone Forward. I gave up. It had such charm in retrospect. Good for you! Keep at it! Web comics are genius, you never have to worry about handling large data or keeping systems secure. You just make a cool .png and throw it on a smol site. (Look up smol web as a concept, Smol Ghost would approve.)

"Don't stop" is what someone wrote to me once, and it meant a lot. The beauty of what you do is you /can/ Go Forward and not have to leave others behind. I think it's time for a reboot of that original comic. Like how they made a Diablo II remake with better graphics and toggles to go between old and new. You could start out new version of Go Forward with fancy graphics, then show a settings screen, toggle to old. Toggle back to new (people will get what's going on). Go all the way to the end and switch back to old. Then do some speed-runner type thing involving jumping on hidden objects and make the parents' house show up on the same screen and they can cheer him on to the end.

Don't stop, awbvious