I was introduced to Calvin and Hobbes (as well as Sam and Max) as a kid by a taxi driver when on holiday in Florida in the 90s. Loved both. It’s been a delight to re read them with my son recently. I somewhat lament it’s not possible to by any merchandise though! I’d love to have a big print of the pair in their radio flyer crashing down the hill!
If the distasteful proliferation of the "Calvin peeing" bumpersticker is anything to go by, thank spaceman spiff Watterson sealed the floodgates of merchandising and marketing garbage.
I once read an essay about the idea of, if you have a successful artistic creation, should you exploit it financially, for example by selling rights for someone else to find new income streams (Bill Waterson famously never did.) The essay argued that even if you are primarily motivated by art and not money, you should for the reason that money being the motivating factor for so many activities in our society, doing so is the only way to keep your creation relevant in society, which would then mean that your creation would keep being exposed to new people, as opposed to live in the minds of ever older people and die with them. I would like to to find the essay and reread it, but I could never find it. It kind of rang true.
I believe that essay mistakes quantity for quality. I think most authors would prefer a small community that "gets" them than a larger one that doesn't.
I believe most artists care more about the message of their art than about its spread. And if you ask them to choose between "500 people that get it" and "50000 people who don't", the fact that the second number is bigger is not necessarily a better deal.
(Obviously there are considerations for "I need to pay rent", but that's a different issue)
I'm not convinced that merchandising would keep an artistic creation relevant in society. It'd be just as likely to reduce the artwork to the lowest common denominator and it'd become just another slogan/logo.
The idea you're conveying is very well known but in my opinion poorly argued for. This essay I mentioned on the other hand had a minority view and well argued for, which is why I was trying to find it in order to reread it.
Anecdotally let's look at one data point. Spider-Man is in comparison garbage, but it's everywhere to this day. Why, because some company calculated they could milk it. C&H in comparison is much better but virtually unknown for anyone under the age of 20. It's dying.
Hey! Listen, the abstract exactly matches what I described.
However, I believe that the essay I read specifically mentioned C&H as an example, which CTRL-F indicates your pdf doesn't. (On the other hand, it's also possible that I originally did read your pdf and in my mind used C&H as an example, and am now mis-remembering it haven been presented as example).
Now that I got your attention, let me (briefly) unpack (via cliche) what 082349872349872 might have meant with his HD.
"Prophets grow stronger when they die." --Villeneuve expressing his headcanon through Irulan, with B Herbert's approval.
My architect friends are not so in love with Jane Jacobs' <<Systems of Survival>> -- no mention of beauty, of quality!
Besides the Calvinist ancestor-worship, we might also consider the option of keeping the conversations flowing through non-survival. Heh. That's a lot of vanity, Bill.. but then, JJ could also have allotted Beauty* to the Guardians, especially since she handed the Merchants Truth. We left Heroism on the table..
I thought he eventually did start producing merch, because there was a growing amount of bootleg merch and he realised that it was better to have official high quality products than let C&H become associated with poor quality (or something like that)? Could be misremembering though.
Calvin and Hobbes was extremely mainstream. It only stopped being so because the creator stopped creating content for it.
Spider-Man, for all its merchandising and marketing, doesn't have people chasing down old content in dying formats. It is supported by new content in modern formats.
Old spider-man content sells for a lot more than old calvin and hobbes content.
> Calvin and Hobbes was extremely mainstream. It only stopped being so because the creator stopped creating content for it.
I think that's exactly the point. It stopped being mainstream. Spiderman continues to be mainstream because the original author passed on the rights and now it will live for longer than the original author. Calvin and Hobbes will continue to shrivel in how well known it is.
