Dear Mr. Watterson Page #8

to this point?

Was it all B.S.?"

Something strikes you as false,

and you question the whole friendship.

And I think when a character

advertises, sells you insurance,

I think that hurts your relationship

to the character.

When Watterson did what he did

and he said no licensing whatsoever,

to the extent he meant I don't want

my characters speaking for everybody,

I don't want my characters to be

on every lunch box and every shirt,

I totally understand.

It makes a lot of sense because

it lessens the character.

Insofar as he took a stand,

there can't be a Hobbes doll,

I will never understand that.

If they made a Hobbes doll,

and he had control over it,

it looked exactly like

he wanted it to look,

every kid in the world

would have loved it.

Has there ever been a character

who was more built for licensing

than Hobbes?

It's a stuffed animal in the strip,

and the kid's imagination

can make it come alive,

you know, the whole bit.

What would the harm

have been in that?

And I can't see it.

This leads to my theory of what it is

that Watterson might be doing,

and I suspect that some

of it is about control.

Comic strips are

all about control.

It's the one art form

where you have full control.

It's not collaborative

like a film.

It's not collaborative

even like a book,

where your editor changes things.

I really don't have an editor.

It's just me.

It's not collaborative

like a TV show.

It's not collaborative

like a record album.

It's you.

It's just you.

When you wander into licensing,

it becomes a collaboration.

Somebody at your syndicate

has to approve it.

Somebody at your syndicate

gives suggestions.

Somebody at your syndicate says,

"you know, that's nice,

but it'd be better if he smiled

on the package."

Right?

Smiling sells more.

Then it gets in the hands

of the designer.

The designer has their own ideas

how the character should look.

The designer knows

what material sells.

The designer knows

what materials are safe.

Then there's the designer's boss

who may have different ideas

because they give it

to the salesman

and it didn't sell well.

So I've just introduced

seven people into my life

that weren't in my life before.

I don't particularly

like any of them.

They're not my kind of people.

They're commercial people,

and they make your stomach hurt

when you're with them.

So I've introduced an element into

my life of a whole bunch of people

I don't like.

I've got to overcome them all,

even if it's so much as just saying

"l don't think we should

do this" and they say "yes."

I still have to do that

to seven different people.

And that's all a loss of control,

a loss of control

that I never had before.

Right?

And imagine if he started licensing.

The first lunch box would've

sold nine billion, right?

The minute that happens,

everybody's going to be on him

for all the more, like this,

that, and the other.

All represents a loss of control.

Then they all sit in your head,

rather than go, as he probably did,

and walk through the forest

that day, he took six phone calls

that he didn't want to take.

They interrupted his day.

They're floating

around in his head.

That's all bad.

You know what I'm saying?

And that's control.

That's not about artistic purity.

That's about control.

You know, contractually,

we had the rights

to license Calvin and Hobbes

to anything and anyone in the world.

We had calls from people

like Steven Spielberg

and Disney Studios and George Lucas.

I can go right down the line.

The potential for products,

worldwide, internationally,

was again huge.

And we recognized that.

It certainly would have been

up there with licensing revenues

from Garfield and Peanuts.

That was not money just for us.

All the revenues would be split

50/50 with Bill,

so the fact that we were

turning down huge opportunities

also meant that he was turning down

huge opportunities too.

Everyone has a different opinion,

but I think the number

is all very, very high, depending on

who you're talking to

and what mood they're in.

I've heard many people say

$300-400 million dollars.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was...

Could be more depending on how far,

you know, Bill was willing to go.

Our discussions were very involved

and sometimes heated.

It weighed heavily on him,

and I think it became apparent

in some of the ways in which

the strip was being worked out.

Some of the story lines

that Bill employed

and the question of commercialism

versus art, and all this stuff,

it was clear that Bill was sending

some messages.

And we realized that we've got

to make a decision

as to are we going to try

to accommodate him and his interests

in a reasonable way within

the context of running a business?

Or are we going to,

in essence,

beat up the most important

cartoonist of his generation?

And we did what we could do

to try to work out

the business arrangement,

and the good news

was we got some more time.

But I do believe he did come close

to just calling one day

and saying that's it.

The clich of building

an entertainment franchise

in any medium is that

you have to merchandise it.

Since he wasn't going to do that,

he had to confront the notion

that people are going to be making

their own merchandise.

My friends and I made a personal

bootlegged Calvin shirt

just for ourselves

and then you started seeing

that Calvin being used in both

religious iconography

on the back of gang vehicles,

I guess, where it's Calvin,

like, mourning the cross,

pouring some out for my dead homies

or Calvin peeing on whatever

import car the driver doesn't like.

Ijust thought,

who has licensed this?

Of course, no one had.

I remember when I was younger

thinking I'm really kind of bummed

that there aren't any Calvin

and Hobbes toys that I can play with,

you know.

And I remember thinking,

"l'm a genius."

That would be, people could

actually make some money

if they made Calvin and Hobbes

action figures.

And I didn't, obviously,

at the time I didn't understand

that Mr. Watterson had made

a decision to not license

and market Calvin and Hobbes.

And as I've grown up,

I respected that, and I realized

that it would probably cheapen

it if Calvin and Hobbes's faces

were on my toothpaste

or whatever, because now, for me,

it exists solely in my books

and with me and my Hobbes

in the backyard.

I think that's one of my favorite

things, is that it's alive to me,

like Hobbes is alive to Calvin.

He made a point of letting

the comic stand on its own.

I know the colors.

I know the sounds.

I have that all in my head,

and I do really appreciate

that it's remained that.

It won't be in the public

consciousness,

particularly with younger people,

as much as we older folks

think it should, but it will

be remembered in the proper way,

which is based on the work

and not because

there are still Hobbes dolls for sale,

you know, at Target.

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