[Commons-Law] Bill Watterson on not licensing Calvin & Hobbes

[S Rai]

Licensing Calvin & Hobbes

By Bill Watterson


Comic strips have been licensed from the beginning, but today the
merchandising of popular cartoon characters is more profitable than ever.
Derivative products - dolls, T-shirts, TV specials, and so on - can turn the
right strip into a gold mine. Everyone is looking for the next Snoopy or
Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes were imagined to be the perfect candidates.
The more I thought about licensing, however, the less I liked it. I spent
nearly five years fighting my syndicate's pressure to merchandise my
creation.

In an age of shameless commercialism, my objections to licensing are not
widely shared. Many cartoonists view the comic strip as a commercial product
itself, so they regard licensing as a natural extension of their work. As
most people ask, what's wrong with the comic strip characters appearing on
calendars and coffee mugs? If people want to buy the stuff, why not give it
to them?

I have several problems with licensing. First of all, I believe licensing
usually cheapens the original creation. When cartoon characters appear on
countless products, the public inevitably grows bored and irritated with
them, and the appeal and value of the original work are diminished. Nothing
dulls the edge of a new and clever cartoon like saturing the market with it.


Second, commercial products rarely respect how a comic strip works. A wordy,
multiple-panel strip with extended conversation and developed personalities
does not condense to a coffee mug illustration without great violation to
the strip's spirit. The subtleties of a multi-dimensional strip are
sacrificed for the one-dimensional needs of the product. The world of a
comic strip ought to be a special place with its own logic and life. I don't
want some animation studio giving Hobbes an actor's voice, and I don't want
some greeting card company using Calvin to wish people a happy anniversary,
and I don't want the issue of Hobbes's reality settled by a doll
manufacturer. When everything fun and magical is turned into something for
sale, the strip's world is diminished. 'Calvin and Hobbes' was designed to
be a comic strip and that's all I want it to be. It's the one place where
everything works the way I intend it to.

Third, as a practical matter, licensing requires a staff of assistants to do
the work. The cartoonist must become a factory foreman, delegating
responsibilities and overseeing the production of things he does not create.
Some cartoonists don't mind this, but I went into cartooning to draw
cartoons, not to run a corporate empire. I take great pride in the fact that
I write every word, draw every line, color every Sunday strip, and paint
every book illustration myself. My strip is a low-tech, one-man operation,
and I like it that way. I believe it's the only way to preserve the craft
and to keep the strip personal. Despite what some cartoonists say, approving
someone else's work is not the same as doing it yourself.

Beyond all this, however, lies a deeper issue: the corruption of a strip's
integrity. All strips are supposed to be entertaining, but some strips have
a point of view and a serious purpose behind the jokes. When the cartoonist
is trying to talk honestly and seriously about life, then I believe he has a
responsibility to think beyond satisfying the market's every whim and
desire. Cartoonists who think they can be taken seriously as artists while
using the strip's protagonists to sell boxer shorts are deluding themselves.

The world of a comic strip is much more fragile than most people realize or
will admit. Believable characters are hard to develop and easy to destroy.
When a cartoonist licenses his characters, his voice is co-opted by the
business concerns of toy makers, television producers, and advertisers. The
cartoonist's job is no longer to be an original thinker; his job is to keep
his characters profitable. The characters become "celebrities", endorsing
companies and products, avoiding controversy, and saying whatever someone
will pay them to say. At that point, the strip has no soul. With its
integrity gone, a strip loses its deeper significance.

My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the
specialness of certain friendships. Who would believe in the innocence of a
little kid and his tiger if they cashed in on their popularity to sell
overpriced knickknacks that nobody needs? Who would trust the honesty of the
strip's observations when the characters are hired out as advertising
hucksters? If I were to undermine my own characters like this, I would have
taken the rare privilege of being paid to express my own ideas and given it
up to be an ordinary salesman and a hired illustrator. I would have sold out
my own creation. I have no use for that kind of cartooning.

Unfortunately, the more popular 'Calvin and Hobbes' became, the less control
I had over its fate. I was presented with licensing possibilities before the
strip was even a year old, and the pressure to capitalize on its success
mounted from then on. Succeeding beyond anyone's wildest expectations had
only inspired wilder expectations.

To put the problem simply, trainloads of money were at stake - millions and
millions of dollars could be made with a few signatures. Syndicates are
businesses, and no business passes up that kind of opportunity without an
argument.

Undermining my position, I had signed a contract giving my syndicate all
exploitation rights to 'Calvin and Hobbes' into the next century. Because it
is virtually impossible to get into daily newspapers without a syndicate, it
is standard practice for syndicates to use their superior bargaining
position to demand rights they neither need nor deserve when contracting
with unknown cartoonists. The cartoonist has few alternatives to the
syndicate's terms: he can take his work elsewhere on the unlikely chance
that a different syndicate would be more inclined to offer concessions, he
can self-syndicate and attempt to attract the interest of newspapers without
the benefit of reputation or contacts, or he can go back home and find some
other job. Universal would not sell my strip to newspapers unless I gave the
syndicate the right to merchandise the strip in other media. At the time, I
had not thought much about licensing and the issue was not among my top
concerns. Two syndicates had already rejected 'Calvin and Hobbes', and I
worried more about the contractual consequences if the strip failed than the
contractual consequences if the strip succeeded. Eager for the opportunity
to publish my work, I signed the contract, and it was not until later, when
the pressure to commercialize focused my opinions on the matter, that I
understood the trouble I'd gotten myself into.

I had no legal recourse to stop the sundicate from licensing. The syndicate
preferred to have my cooperation, but my approval was by no means necessary.
Our arguments with each other grew more bitter as the stakes got higher, and
we had an ugly relationship for several years.

The debate had its ridiculous aspects. I am probably the only cartoonist who
resented the popularity of his own strip. Most cartoonists are more than
eager for the exposure, wealth, and prestige that licensing offers. When
cartoonists fight their syndicates, it's usually to make more money, not
less. And making the whole issue even more absurd, when I didn't license,
bootleg 'Calvin and Hobbes' merchandise sprung up to feed the demand. Mall
stores openly sold T-shirts with drawings illegally lifted from my books,
and obscene or drug-related shirts were rife on college campuses. Only
thieves and vandals have made money on 'Calvin and Hobbes' merchandise.

For years, Universal pressured me to compromise on a "limited" licensing
program. The syndicate would agree to rule out the most offensive products
if I would agree to go along with the rest. This would be, in essence, my
only shot at controlling what happened to my work. The idea of bartering
principles was offensive to me and I refused to compromise. For that matter,
the syndicate and I had nothing to trade anyway: It didn't care about my
notions of artistic integrity. With neither of us valuing what the other had
to offer, compromise was impossible. One of us was going to trample the
interests of the other.

By the strip's fifth year, the debate had gone as far as it could possibly
go, and I prepared to quit. If I could not control what 'Calvin and Hobbes'
stood for, the strip was worthless to me. My contract was so one-sided that
quitting would have allowed Universal to replace me with hired writers and
artists and license my creation anyway, but at this point, the syndicate
agreed to renegotiate my contract. The exploitation rights to the strip were
returned to me, and I will not license 'Calvin and Hobbes'.

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http://cabcalvinandhobbes.tripod.com/ch_licensing.htm
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