Dear Mr. Watterson Page #7

where it was uninterrupted,

unbreakable half pages.

That was amazing to watch

because it really allowed him

to work in a way that just freed up

his creativity.

- Every three years

at Ohio State University,

the Cartoon Library & Museum

hosts the Festival of Cartoon Art,

which brings together scholars,

cartoonists, fans,

and industry professionals

from around the world

to celebrate comic creators

and their work.

In 1989, Bill Watterson was

a featured speaker at the festival,

and he took the opportunity

to talk about the power

and possibilities of comics

and how the current climate

for cartoonists was failing

the art form.

He gave a speech titled

"The Cheapening of the Comics,"

which was really his way of drawing

a line in the sand and saying,

if we are to take

this art form seriously,

if we are to serve it best,

these are the things

that we should do.

And it was sort of a series

of seven or eight or nine points

that says, look, you cheapen

the comics when you commercialize it.

You cheapen the comics when you

take the artist out of the equation.

You cheapen the comics

when you let it go on a life

beyond what it was intended to do.

You cheapen the comics

when you give the syndicate,

which is sort of the publisher and

the distributor, too much power.

And if we are to truly serve

this art form,

the artist has to come first.

Their voice has to come first.

And the art before commerce

has to come first.

He was essentially throwing down

the gauntlet and said, look,

we've lost something from

the early part of the 20th century,

where the art was

beautifully displayed,

the artists were given

this truly unique voice,

and we need to go

back to a different time,

to a different way of cartooning.

- I think he took a very lofty,

at times even philosophical, look

at the art form.

There's nothing wrong with that

because he held himself

to those own standards,

and I have a lot of respect for him

for doing that.

- I think it was kind of

a brave speech

because Mort Walker took it

very personally,

you know,

of Beatle Bailey fame,

and a few other

bigger names in cartooning

took it personally because

they viewed it as a shot

across the bow of the way

they handled their business,

the way they handled

their cartooning.

Within the crowd, my recollection

was that there was a strong split

among those who were,

"yeah, go get them,

go tell them the way it is,"

and the other side which was,

"who is this kid to tell me

how to do my art

and do what I want with my life

and my business?"

- Watterson was coming more out

of the artistic tradition of,

look, we can raise this art up.

And others were coming from,

look, it has always been

this intersection of art and commerce,

so you cannot deny that.

You know, I've talked to Jeff Smith

of Bone about it.

And he said he literally

walked out of that hall and said,

"l realize that Bone cannot be what

I want it to be in a comic strip form.

I have to forge my own path.

I have to take Bone elsewhere."

My relationship with Bill was

one of letters,

and it's not unique to cartoonists

that we draw in our letters

to each other.

But it's unique that he would

spend as much time as he did

on his drawings,

which is just like him.

He didn't do anything like I did,

which is by the seat of the pants,

extremely quickly.

The source of much of the energy

with the letters and the drawings,

to me, was at my expense.

He and I were the yin and the yang

of the comic strips in the 80s

because I was making these

and he was not.

And as he would draw me,

I was taking the money

and buying gasoline with it,

pumping it into my speed boat,

which he used to put on the bottom

almost of each of the letters

he wrote me.

And the person handing me

the money was the syndicate boss

who he had no appreciation for.

So that's how he saw me,

and that's how he saw the syndicate,

and that's how he saw the

exploitation of one's characters

in a comic strip, all nicely

personified in one drawing.

- We realized that Calvin and Hobbes

was going to be huge in licensing.

We could just tell by the signs,

the response from the public,

but Bill made it clear

that he was not going to do it.

Watterson obviously had

very strong feelings

about merchandising

and the commerce side of comics.

He participated in a way,

just being in the newspaper

is part of that, but he clearly

had very specific ideas

about how merchandising

can change the characters

or change the art

or change the creator

and what their vision is.

The idea of, you know, a stuffed

Hobbes sitting on a shelf somewhere

would basically answer that question

that's always hanging over the strip.

You know, is Hobbes real?

Is he a stuffed toy?

Well, there's a stuffed toy,

you know.

- We've seen many comic strip

characters go from being,

you know, figures you see

in the paper that may give you a laugh

to being kind of a national blight,

in the case of something like

Garfield that at one point was on,

I think, 5,000 different products,

and the character becomes ubiquitous

and begins to feel like a pest,

or something you can't escape,

rather than something you look

forward to encountering.

In a society that is as media

obsessed and money obsessed

as ours is and was then,

his decision seemed strange,

if not almost un-American.

He walked away from literally

tens of millions of dollars

in merchandising because

everything that Snoopy was on,

I'm sure he was offered for Hobbes.

Sparky did feel protective

about being criticized for licensing

because he said people

don't realize, you know,

how it all started,

and that everything was

somebody coming to me

wanting to use the characters.

I drew it for them, and it had

an aspect of kind of fun

and entrepreneurialism about it

that was not to do with business.

It was to do with extending your art,

extending your sentiments.

- When Sparky did what he did,

Sparky had no template,

and I'm talking about the licensing.

Like Percy Crosby had

licensed Skippy,

and Blondie had been licensed,

but nobody had been licensed

anywhere close before or since.

You know, you're talking

$40 million a year empire.

Insofar as that includes

a Snoopy plush that a kid can hold

that looks like Snoopy and doesn't

have sort of a bullshit smile

that Snoopy doesn't have,

it's great.

Insofar as the Peanuts characters

speak for MetLife or any corporation,

I always cringe.

It just strikes me wrong.

I don't want to see Snoopy

selling me insurance.

It's sort of like a cousin who got

really close to you

and you spent all this time together,

and you think you really know them.

And then you're fishing with him

one day, and he says, you know,

"l never said this to you before,

but I sell life insurance."

And your stomach would just drop

because you'd say,

"God, has my whole relationship

been based on that?

Like, were you building

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