Was Bill Watterson right about merchandising?

Was Bill Watterson right about merchandising?

Other urls found in this thread:

iheartpicturebooks.blogspot.com/2010/04/bill-watterson-on-licensing.html
lmgtfy.com/?q=Why is the pissing Calvin allowed?
youtube.com/watch?v=9vFXRVlVIrM
youtube.com/watch?v=ONGJs1l19aU
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

What'd he say?

yes but we still hate him for it

...

Yes and no. That's one of the reasons this is probably one of the most disproportionally obscure compared to quality comic out there. You'll be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't know Garfield, but you can find people who don't know Calvin if you try.

What he should have done, is produce things, but retain full creative control.

/thread

Who cares?
no one will ever know.

iheartpicturebooks.blogspot.com/2010/04/bill-watterson-on-licensing.html

>Comic strips have been licensed from the beginning, but today the merchandising of popular cartoon characters is more profitable than ever. Derivative products - dolls, T-shirts, TV specials, and so on - can turn the right strip into a gold mine. Everyone is looking for the next Snoopy or Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes were imagined to be the perfect candidates. The more I thought about licensing, however, the less I like it. I spent nearly five years fighting my syndicate's pressure to merchandise my creation.

>In an age of shameless commercialism, my objections to licensing are not widely shared. Many cartoonists view the comic strip as a commercial product itself, so they regard licensing as a natural extension of their work. As most people ask, what's wrong with the comic strip characters appearing on calendars and coffee mugs? If people want to buy the stuff, why not give it to them?

>I have several problems with licensing. First of all, I believe licensing usually cheapens the original creation. When cartoon characters appear on countless products, the public inevitably grows bored and irritated with them, and the appeal and value of the original work are diminished. Nothing dulls the edge of a new and clever cartoon like saturing the market with it.

Smart merch? No, definitely not.
General merch? Yes. Pissing Calvin still gives me nightmares.

You tell me.

I respect the hell out of that stance. Not to say I wouldn't like C&H merchandise, but it takes next level artistic integrity to refuse to market something that would earn yourself millions.

Do you also agree with Alan Moore's stance against adaptions? I feel there are a lot of similarities

Besides those two, has any other creator come out and spoken against commercialization?

>I believe licensing usually cheapens the original creation. When cartoon characters appear on countless products, the public inevitably grows bored and irritated with them, and the appeal and value of the original work are diminished. Nothing dulls the edge of a new and clever cartoon like saturing the market with it.
That's dumb. If the original truly has value than it can be appreciated purely on its own merit. I'd understand if he wanted to preserve the quality of the derivative works but in that case he could take creative control himself and decide what should be put out. But he seems to just want to be a fucking hipster.

Yes and no.

He had a legitimately heart-warming, thought provoking, and overall comfy comic that stands strong to this day.

However, I don't think that merchandising would have necessarily cheapened the work itself. Paraphrasing Grant Morrison on the film adaptation of Watchmen and it "ruining his comic", his response was "nothing was ruined; all the old comics are still there, still available to be read and enjoyed".

Why can't he just make a new book, he used to make like a shit ton of comics a week, I bet he can release some new material on his own

>Grant Morrison
>Watchmen
I know that it's probably a typo, but still

I can deepthroat an entire ferret.

Oh damn. I respect him for holding that stance but as you've seen here: It's just going to happen anyway.
You'd just open the door for anyone to step up and undercut your own idea. It's admittedly great that we haven't had a terrible cash grab C&H films or animated series but if you kept supplies limited and everything released go the greenlight from you, I don't think it would be a bad thing.

Not the best example but China made more on Minions products than the US did because they fucking stole it. And Minions was CREATED to be profitable.

>Paraphrasing Grant Morrison on the film adaptation of Watchmen

Man, he can't stop trolling Alan Moore, can he.

Bill Waterson is always right

Why is the pissing Calvin allowed?

>Paraphrasing Grant Morrison

People who write superheroes comics should not be taken as a authority on this subject, their whole field is based on writing a character made by a different authors decades who got rewritten and modified by many other writers for years and years. The idea of a character/story being the singular vision of its creator is a alien concept to them.

lmgtfy.com/?q=Why is the pissing Calvin allowed?

They're creators of original works too. Having a different perspective doesn't invalidate their opinion.

>not realizing that was a typo
>not realizing both Grant Morrison have both done superhero and creator owned work
>they both even did shit for Doctor Who Magazine
What I'm saying is, you're a total faggot.

No not really.

He drew this when he was awarded the Grand Prix at Angoulême last year

could you imagine Calvin and hoobes funko pop figures

See

Is there anything that impedes you to type "Alan Moore"?

So I fucked up. Big whoop.

I respect his view on the issue, but no. If there's demand for it, I don't see the sin in supplying it. It doesn't make the strip any more "soulless", that's just nonsense. It doesn't even have to be much merch, just a Hobbes plush and some coffee mugs with Calvin's dad on it would be enough.

He's still got it.

praying calvin was always the one that seemed more off to me.

That's freakin' hilarious. He's still got it.

That's just straight-up Ms. Wormwood isn't it?

As George RR Martin said when he was asked to make a ASOIaF's movie in the 90's " The most sexy word you can say to Hollywood is No."
Watersoon in the comics strips have few competitors if you compare how much he will fight to find a space in some shelves. in the newspapper he has a name that brings people to his work while in toys he has to compete against Disney' stuff, video games and Lego.
Keeping in newspapers narrows the number of competitors.
It's like asking why Pixar don't make live action movies. The answer is the same, they have less competitors in Animation and a structure that exploits its niche

>We'll never get a Calvin and Hobbes christmas because of his readdit opinions

The biggest problems with adaptions is that, and no matter what mediums are involved, the adaption can't capture exactly what people love about the original. Forrest Gump is a fantastic movie, but it is a terrible adaptation. You have to somehow keep the spirit despite all the changes you're going to inevitably make.

Bah gawd you're right

People often cite Garfield as the example of merchandising run amok, but there's also Peanuts and no one thinks Charles Schultz's masterpiece lost its value because Snoopy is the face of an insurance company.

This assumes that the audience is smart enough to TAKE the work on it's own merits; remember, Calvin and Hobbes is meant, primarily, for children. I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to think of something good from 20+ years ago that most of the current 24 and younger crowd remembers from a shitty adaptation.

It's fair to say that nothing will change inherently in the original work, but if your #1 goal as an artist is for people to remember your work as it originally was then selling licensing rights is just going to get in the way.

thank god

I do get a little disappointed when I see excess Peanuts crap. Or crappy pieces of merchandise, like those "thug" Looney Tunes shirts.

But I still love the things they came from. I can respect Watterson's opinion, though.

Did he not think the characters were strong enough to sell life insurance or something?

youtube.com/watch?v=9vFXRVlVIrM

>hating good television

An interesting side effect of zero non-Watterson material is that the characters/artstyle always looks wrong when it's imitated.

There's a reason C&H is still loved and respected decades later.
The Mouse might be more famous, but he's definitely not more loved.

If he doesn't want himself or his work to be associated with merchandise that's his prerogative and that's fine. I've never actually wanted any Calvin and Hobbes stuff beyond the comics themselves even before I learned what his stance on it was, though, so maybe that's just me.

I do think him freaking out when people sold books he'd secretly signed on ebay was kind of ridiculous and weird, because (a) what did he think was going to happen when he went around covertly drawing and writing his name in SOME of his books in SOME bookstores, and (b) aren't the people actually buying those books just fans who might want to feel closer to the creator anyway? Also secretly signing the books was weird in the first place.

But again, his prerogative, whatever.

How do you differentiate between good and bad merchandising?

This. I think a nice middle of the road solution could have been small batches of high-quality merch. Maybe some coffee mugs or something else that wouldn't make it pushed into the public space. If Watterson could be in creative control of the prints, he could make sure they were interesting so nobody tried to make 'Calvin pissing on brand of truck I don't like' stuff.

>Was Bill Watterson right about merchandising?

Yes, but maybe for the wrong reasons:

Watterson should be applauded and respected for his integrity and his -quite commendable- personal motives towards preserving his art, but in not buying into or participating in the merchandising "scheme" he loses control over how things will be merchandised and they WILL be eventually merchandised.

So now there's probably more people who know calvin as "that kid wot pisses on the backs of trucks" because Watterson didn't want to buy into himself.

a) probably thought people would like having a signed copy of C&H 'cause ebay wasnt that huge yet b) it cheapens the idea if you buy it instead of getting it by luck/chance

But nerds would still ruin it, and buy 'em and just put them in vacuum bags n shit

>If there's demand for it, I don't see the sin in supplying it
I disagree because people are stupid and don't know what they really want.

Seems like his gut should be ripped open from the glass. still good though.

The problem with asking this question of Sup Forums (and I say this as part of Sup Forums myself), is that our hobby is especially consumerist in nature. Modern comics and cartoons, like all of modern media, but in some ways especially so, relies upon a large body of acculturated consumers. And that's what Sup Forums is: a group of cultural consumers, not cultural producers.

Watterson, on the other hand, is not only a producer, but also belongs to an older generation, when consumerism, while present, did not exist on the scale which is does today. We accept this sort of merchandising as a fact of existence in the modern culture, and for Watterson to, in one sense, withhold it from us, seems backward and arrogant from him. But to him, the sort of mentality that is perpetuated by merchandising is unequivocally distasteful to him, and he doesn't think that he's depriving us, his fans, of anything of worth. This is pretty clear when you consider some of the statements he makes in his strips.

Anyhow, that's my attempt at cultural analysis of the situation.

>hate him for it
Yeah, nah. This actually just makes me like him even more.
That's a solid artist right there.

youtube.com/watch?v=ONGJs1l19aU

>Nothing dulls the edge of a new and clever cartoon like saturing the market with it.

Honestly, I was thinking Undertale. Sans and Papyrus are a lot less interesting now that they have become literal memes. Dark Souls as well

You realize there is nothing stopping people that want to make them for themselves doing so yeah?
Basically only real fans would have their own items and if they have skill they might be quite nice.
Hes speaking purely on the format of creating things for public consumption, I doubt he would care one whit if you make your own item and didn't sell it.
The demand is there surely, but the will is lacking, he gave people his creativity and he demands theirs in return.

I never got the feeling that Watterson was in it for the money, didn't he leave a much more lucrative job to do comics?

>After threat of a lawsuit alleging infringement of copyright and trademark, some of the sticker makers replaced Calvin with a different boy

Never post again.

>if your #1 goal as an artist is for people to remember your work as it originally was then selling licensing rights is just going to get in the way.
Sure maybe he doesn't want to have an animated christmas special but making plush toys or coffee mugs or some shit would hardly get in the way of people's perception of the original comic.

No. Here are my thoughts. Basically exist the necesity of promoting your product. Not all the world have the right to keep that level of integrity as R. Crumb or him.

>>After threat of a lawsuit alleging infringement of copyright and trademark, some of the sticker makers replaced Calvin with a different boy
That has what to do with my point? They were selling the things, which he explicitly didn't want.

Bill Watterson used to go into book stores near where he lived. He went inside to autograph the inside of his collection books. So people that bought his books would find a nice surprised.

Then ebay types found out about it. So they started stalking the book stores. Waiting for Watterson to go in and do the deed. Then they would go and buy up all the books and flip them online for a huge mark up.

Watterson found out about this and got upset about it. So he just stopped doing it.

I once got the 10th anniversary collection from a used book store and found a newspaper clipping of the last printed strip inside of it. Finding surprises in books is fucking awesome and people who ruin that for others can go to hell.

...

For something like Calvin and Hobbes? Pretty much. While I don't think it would have hurt things to allow some shirts and plushies, it's understandable that he didn't want to turn them into commercial whores who were only meant to push merch and have the merch push the books. For him, it was about delivering clever social commentary through the eyes of a kid.

In many cases, having merchandise is good because it means revenue that can be fed back into the production of a major work, like a cartoon series.

Seriously, people who do, and the scalpers who buy special editions of books and games are the literal worst. Oh sure, you can trick gullible shitstains with too much money on their hands into buying shit you practically stole at inflated prices, but you're still a piece of shit for ruining what makes those things special by taking them away.

the amount of effort put into the product
for example, a coffee mug with original art or a coffee-related joke would be good, while a coffee mug that just had a stock drawing of calvin on it would be bad
i saw goddamn Frozen fishing poles once, which were just normal child-sized fishing poles but with elsa's face pasted on. this is a perfect example of "bad merchandising"

Shit I didn't even realize. At least Sup Forums is smart enough to recognize simple mistakes.

>"nothing was ruined; all the old comics are still there, still available to be read and enjoyed".

I wish more people were intelligent enough to realize this.

Yes, a bad film/game/remake book or whatever of a popular thing can sour the opinions of newcomers and leave a blemish on the popularity of something, but I can't fucking stand how some people go full retard and act like if a film adaption flops they aren't allowed to enjoy the original source material anymore.

I really love C&H and would definitely buy merch if it was available, but I think the fact it isn't everywhere adds to the charm so much. It means that when you read the strip it becomes its own little world and (particularly for a Briton) it seems personal.

I guess that makes sense. Though I don't see how a few plush toys would have devalued that "world". A cartoon certainly would have had a lot to live up to, especially the themes and topics the comic tackled. While things like mugs, bedsheets, and tshirts would have just been empty promotions.

This guy is fucking awesome.
Markets are the reason why artists starve. Artistic integrity means shit in the face of profit. This guy is taking a stance against the bullshit.

yes.
hes no bitch.

Maybe I would have wanted a Hobbes plushie as a kid, but I respect Watterson more than almost any other artist for turning away the chance at maybe tens of millions for what he believed in and thought was right. That takes an amount of artistic and personal integrity that is rare.

I think most comic artists would kill to have their work be so successful that they would never have to mass-merchandise it.

I imagine Jim Davis could have pulled that off with Garfield, though it probably means the orange fuck would have ended long ago.

Different user here, but I kinda like Charlie Brown.

Its nice to go back and read some strips about his struggles and triumphs and shit.

I'm living in Japan now, where Snoopy merchandise is everywhere. It just makes it look stupid.

Peanuts isn't sacred or anything, but there's a contrast between Chuck sucking at everything and still trying, and Snoopy staring at you from a pencil case.

>These characters that almost internet exclusive in presence in such a small pocket of time as their games' release date is about the same as multimedia marketing and merchandising at the hands of one of the biggest media conglomerates.

Nah.

Pissing Calvins multiplied on the backs of trucks like ten fold after 9/11.

Yeah, I don't know whether it's just human nature or if I'm just an annoying hipster shite but I could tell you before I'd even read the comic that Snoopy was my least favourite character.

Well when someone is overdone, sure. But really, having a plush Hobbes wouldn't hurt someone's ability to appreciate the world of the comics.

Meant "something".

I seem to recall him saying that he particularly didn't want toys of Hobbes around because if they were "official" Hobbes toys and still simply just toys, it would take the magic away from some of it. Hobbes would always just be a toy now, and nothing else.

He also was against an movie or cartoon made about it for somewhat similar reasons, they would have to voice the characters and suddenly certain people's inner voice for Calvin, or Hobbes, or even the Dad would wrong. And sure many adaptations have done just that and people have been wrong but this seemed to be particularly important to Watterson.

The magic of the imagination never being truly spoiled, it's something I can respect.

I just don't quite agree with that. While I can get that it would mean that there's an "official" voice to the characters, I never got the impression that a plushie would make it impossible for people to still debate if Hobbes was real or just a figment of Calvin's young imagination.

Thinking more on the Hobbes plush, a lot of kids have stuffed animals, with some of those being they're favorites. To me, the best ones are the generic ones, because those kids come up with their own unique names and lives for those animals. There's a profound imagination there.

If Hobbes was a plush, kids would get Hobbes because he's famous, and he would be Hobbes, and his back story would be the same as in the comics. It removes that sense of imagination and creativity.

For Watterson to prevent that loss at his own detriment makes me respect him even more.

How long until Watterson dies and we get a Calvin and Hobbes movie?

...

I suppose that's true. Though it's not like you couldn't have imagined Hobbes having adventures with you. I mean, plenty of people probably imagined dorky shit like Goku being there to cheer them on while they pretended to fight in their back yards, or doing exercises.

A long time i hope.

I don't think he's asking because he wants one, but because it's highly likely someone will try to pounce on the rights the moment Bill dies.

Too bad you can't sign a contract that says something can't be messed with after you're dead. And trying to hold it off until it hits public domain wouldn't do squat since anything that's PD can go back into copyright.

I gave that user the benefit of the doubt in my head, but this is one of those "knock on wood" things. It's dangerous to even mention it in a universe as uncaring as ours.

I would imagine Bill has something in mind, probably his wife taking over the rights and keeping them away for as long as she can. Though I can only imagine that'll be it after she's gone. Pretty sure you can't play "keep away" with rights just because you have family to pass it to. Really though, I don't get why a person can't do something to ensure their own creations can't be misused/abused by others. It's not like it would hurt the economy if a lot of people were able to say "My book can't be made into a film or tv show or anything else of profit"

The one thing I wanted more than anything else as a child was a Calvin and Hobbes lunchbox, and it never existed.

I did have pic related though.

Only five people on the planet know who that is, and I'm not one of them.