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Startup - Bill Watterson, a cartoonist's advice

zenpencils.com

50 pointslinux_devil23 comments

Just to avoid any confusion: The words are Bill Watterson's. The artwork is Gavin Aung Than's, although clearly a homage to Calvin and Hobbes. What a beautiful combination!

Indeed, I'm getting all nostalgic just looking at the artwork. Damn I miss Calvin and Hobbes.

Me too. It's like looking at an alternate universe comic strip, where instead of becoming a recluse Watterson started afresh with a new title and new characters.

There's a beautiful boxed set available if you don't have it.

This whole thing, how most of the people in Reddit or Hacker News loves C&H, is kind of amazing. I love the comic when I was a kid and now I adore it. It really touches me, the characters and the ideas. And now I see the comic every day when I browse the internet...

It's an interesting contrast to Jim Davis's Garfield, which was created primarily for commercial licensing.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2013/03/26/is_garfield_supp...

This is an excellent read entitled, The Cheapening of the Comics. It was a speech given in 1989 by Bill Watterson. In it, he discusses his thoughts on merchandising, the business aspects and details of licensing, etc.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060210115506/http://hobbes.ncsa...

The above speech provides a lot of insight as to why he answered the following interview question the way that he did [1]:

Q: What led you to resist merchandising Calvin and Hobbes?

A: For starters, I clearly miscalculated how popular it would be to show Calvin urinating on a Ford logo... Actually, I wasn't against all merchandising when I started the strip, but each product I considered seemed to violate the spirit of the strip, contradict its message, and take me away from the work I loved. If my syndicate had let it go at that, the decision would have taken maybe 30 seconds of my life.

[1] http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/calvinandhobbes/index.html/pw_w...

Personally, this message speaks to me. I wish I could stay at home, write great software and be more active in the raising of my daughters. But when you're the primary breadwinner and benefits provider, it gets a lot more difficult.

Yes , that is true , situations are different for everyone.

Everything is difficult if you don't care enough. If you truly cared about writing your own software and taking a more active role in parenting, you would figure out a way to do it.

edit- I practice what I preach and am currently bootstrapping my own startup. I was able to move to Germany though where I don't have to pay an exorbitant amount for health care for me, my wife, or my daughter (who has a medical condition and would probably have bankrupted us had we stayed in the US). I readily admit that doing this type of thing in the US is infinitely harder because of health care.

>Everything is difficult if you don't care enough.

I don't agree with that. Some things are hard and have nothing to do with how much effort you put into it. It's a common misconception that people who succeed are those who care (or who had enough will power). There's much more to life than that, I think.

I didn't say if you care enough that it becomes easy.

To truly achieve something difficult (such as leaving a high paying career to focus on your hobby + family) you usually need to really want to do it and have a good plan on how to do it. You need both. Motivation + Perspiration.

I practice what I preach and am currently bootstrapping my own startup. I was able to move to Germany though where I don't have to pay an exorbitant amount for health care for me, my wife, or my daughter (who has a medical condition and would probably have bankrupted us had we stayed in the US). I readily admit that doing this type of thing in the US is infinitely harder because of health care.

I don't think you deserved the downvote. Very few people in the world are in as good a position to do this as software engineers. A common problem that I see in myself is getting sucked into a lifestyle and then the golden handcuffs are forged by a story we tell ourselves about how much money we need. But go look up the median income in your area and then tell me you can't make that money part time from home if you're a decent programmer.

This may work to a limited extent as motivational talk, but it isn't true. The truth is more like: If 100 people truly care about writing their own software, etc., then some percentage of them will figure out a way to do it. The rest will not find the right opportunity.

I saw this posted by some artist friends of mine. I think it makes sense in that context. I'm not sure what this has to do with startups in the Paul Graham sense though, except to say that you shouldn't do one, because the entire goal of a startup is to kill yourself working and sell out for megabucks. What matters is the exit, the IPO, the aquihire, the valuation, and the traction.

If anything, it's an argument for lifestyle businesses over startups.

i miss calvin and hobbes.

I love Calvin and Hobbes, and respect Bill Watterson but the following just is not true: "Watterson sacrificed millions (probably hundreds of millions) of dollars by never licensing and merchandising Calvin and Hobbes."

Sure, you cannot buy a licensed mug with Hobbes on it like you can with Garfield or Snoopy, but Watterson has surely made millions on the many book collections of his work. And book volumes are certainly merchandising.

Absolutely, he has given up the lucrative money that other cartoonists like Jim Davis have achieved by licensing/merchandising anything/anyhow, and still more by ending the comic after 'only' 10 years, but it's probably an easier decision to forgo the tackiness when the books have done as well as they have.

Watterson has surely made millions on the many book collections of his work.

Sure, but that hardly invalidates the fact that merchandising can bring in an order of magnitude more money. It may be salient to point out that Watterson made plenty of money, but I have no doubt that he had the opportunity to make Schulzean levels of money, easily. Hell, I hate merchandising and even I would have bought a stuffed Hobbes.

No. Book volumes are not certainly merchandising. Book volumes are selling his work, which was amazing.

His argument against the licensing (as I understand it) was that letting other people license it and create derivative works (e.g. mugs, shirts, and other merchandise) would dilute the integrity of Calvin and Hobbes by removing them from their context in his work.

This was something he had to fight for and I'm glad he did, because his work maintains the same potency and impact it had originally, having not been diluted by cheap merchandising over time.

This is truly remarkable. Unlike almost every other cartoon or comic character ever, there are no "good old days" or "golden years" with Calvin and Hobbes. There's just Calvin and Hobbes. 10 years of amazing work, and nothing else.

Unfortunately, it's so easy to print whatever the heck you want on a t shirt or a cup or sticker, so there's plenty of cheap C&H merchandise out there.

For me, knowing they are unsanctioned keeps the memories of reading calvin and hobbes completely pure: this isn't them as they were intended to be, but bastardized facsimiles for the purpose commercial gain. It's somewhat poignant; there were many a C&H comic concerning the evils of advertising and marketing - to see subject to it as well completes the message quit succinctly.

I don't think you're interpreting the claim correctly.

Someone can be a millionaire and sacrifice the opportunity to earn ADDITIONAL millions. That's what watterson did.

Merchabdising, in context, meant making a line of merchandise based on the comic street. This is a standard meaning in the comic world.

> And book volumes are certainly merchandising

Certainly not. Merchandising refers to income from products outside of the presentation of the art itself. Movies have box office receipts, television payments for rebroadcasting, and merchandising rights (figurines, happy meals, use of likeness in unrelated advertising, etc.). Under your novel definition, television payments would be merchandising. You'd be alone in that definition.

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