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Comment by dgritsko | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

For those who do not know, this comment is itself a C&H reference.

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/09/27

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F4...

Good to see you here, Liam.

This is why I love this community.

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.

The three volume hard-book bound set is one of my favorite possessions. It has been a little while since I read them, but I must have read them cover to cover twice. The print quality and feeling of the hefty books makes them feel like really high end comics in the material sense. I really respect Watterson in keeping the comic pure in the sense that the characters only exist in that one medium.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

> 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

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

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

Sadly the same happened to modern publications of Enid Blyton. Best to find old editions.

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.

My teenage boys are hooked on Calvin & Hobbes.

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.

Hmm, where have I seen a story before where a kid wants their parents to read the same book over and over. I can't quite put my finger on it...

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

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.

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.

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).

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