damn watterson went hard

WATTERSON: [...] I think to license Calvin and Hobbes would ruin the most precious qualities of my strip and, once that happens, you can’t buy those qualities back.

WEST: Well, what about something like a doll? That’s not a product like a coffee mug, which would be there whether the strip characters were printed on it or not. Why doesn’t a doll fit into your definition of appropriate licensing?

WATTERSON: A doll communicates even less of the strip than the things mentioned before. A doll only cashes in on the recognizability of the character. Products like that take the character out of the world for which he was intended. If you stick 30 Hobbes dolls on a drugstore shelf, you’re no longer talking about a character I created. At that point, you’ve transformed him into just another overpriced knickknack. I have no interest in turning my characters into commodities. If I’d wanted to sell plush garbage, I’d have gone to work as a carny. The idea of a Hobbes doll is especially noxious, because the whole intrigue of Hobbes is that he may or may not be a real tiger. The strip deliberately sets up two versions of reality without committing itself to either one. If I’m not going to answer the question of who or what Hobbes is, I’m certainly not going to let Dakin answer it. It makes no sense to allow someone to make Hobbes into a stuffed toy for real, and deprive the strip of an element of its magic.

WEST: I’m sure some of the readers will say to all this,  “Come on. The comic strip is a popular art form.” What’s wrong with indulging the public’s interest?

WATTERSON: Nothing, so long as it doesn’t compromise the art itself. In my case, I’m convinced that licensing would sell out the soul of Calvin and Hobbes. The world of a comic strip is much more fragile than most people realize. Once you’ve given up its integrity, that’s it. I want to make sure that never happens. Instead of asking what’s wrong with rampant commercialism, we ought to be asking, “What justifies it?”

Popular art does not have to pander to the lowest level of intelligence and taste.

- The Bill Watterson Interview (aka creator of Calvin and Hobbes)