The Four Color Media Monitor

Mental Floss found that Heritage Auctions has had success in selling early samples of Bill Watterson's famous Calvin & Hobbs comic strip:

It’s been 28 years since the last Calvin and Hobbes panels appeared in newspapers, but interest in the comic strip by Bill Watterson remains high. Proof: Two original dailies by Watterson just went for astonishing sums at auction.

Heritage Auctions held a comics art sale June 26 featuring a variety of original works by comic strip and comic book artists. The highlight for Watterson fans was undoubtedly two Calvin and Hobbes originals. One, which ran March 28, 1986, and features hyperactive Calvin going for a new look with sunglasses, fetched $174,000.

A second strip, this one from December 30, 1987, features Calvin engaging in what would become a signature: using snow to antagonize his father. It sold for $156,000.

Both works are inscribed with “best wishes,” indicating they were likely gifts from Watterson to their recipients. And while both secured impressive sums, a Watterson-colored Sunday strip remains the most coveted: One sold for $480,000 in 2022.

Seriously, this is even more head-shaking than the process of selling ancient pamphlets. What if those strips actually came from newspaper clippings? Does that really have value? Sometimes, I just can't believe the lengths some will go to in order to turn stuff more into commodities for money than artifacts for display at a museum. And these strips are being sold, possibly by the recipients, less than 4 decades since their publication, on a market that's not building on actual interest in reading, no matter how short the strips are. No wonder quality's declined so badly.

While we're on the subject, I also noticed this 2013 interview by the same site with Watterson, and he did have some interesting things to tell:

There is a tendency to rehash and regurgitate properties with sequels and remakes. You had an idea, executed it, then moved on. And you ignored the clamor for more. Why is it so hard for readers to let go?
Well, coming at a new work requires a certain amount of patience and energy, and there’s always the risk of disappointment. You can’t really blame people for preferring more of what they already know and like. The trade-off, of course, is that predictability is boring. Repetition is the death of magic.

Actually, that's the problem. If people can't try out something other than what they know, then they're not judging by merit, and lacking the courage to check out different products based on that approach, simply because they're unfamiliar with the product. That might even be one of the reasons why the Big Two plummeted along with movie franchises. Too many people put all their eggs into the Marvel/DC basket, no matter how dire the situation became, and the bad editors/writers practically became emboldened to go woke, until eventually broke.

Years ago, you hadn’t quite dismissed the notion of animating the strip. Are you a fan of Pixar? Does their competency ever make the idea of animating your creations more palatable?
The visual sophistication of Pixar blows me away, but I have zero interest in animating Calvin and Hobbes. If you’ve ever compared a film to a novel it’s based on, you know the novel gets bludgeoned. It’s inevitable, because different media have different strengths and needs, and when you make a movie, the movie’s needs get served. As a comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes works exactly the way I intended it to. There’s no upside for me in adapting it.

On this, he's absolutely correct, and even more so now, in an age where Disney's been turning out wokefests laced with political injections for the sake of it. The relentless forcing of PC agendas upon famous products has come at their expense, and look where it's getting Indiana Jones now, seeing how the 5th movie's floundering at the box office.

Your fight over protecting Calvin and Hobbes from licensing deals, and your battle to increase the real estate for your Sunday page comic, were notable—partially because they indicated your incredible autonomy over your work. Had you "lost" those battles, it appears you would have ended the strip. It reminds me of Howard Roark and his desire to blow up his building rather than see it molested by other hands. Was there a critical moment in your career that instilled such unwavering creative integrity?
Just to be clear, I did not have incredible autonomy until afterward. I had signed most of my rights away in order to get syndicated, so I had no control over what happened to my own work, and I had no legal position to argue anything. I could not take the strip with me if I quit, or even prevent the syndicate from replacing me, so I was truly scared I was going to lose everything I cared about either way. I made a lot of impassioned arguments for why a work of art should reflect the ideas and beliefs of its creator, but the simple fact was that my contract made that issue irrelevant. It was a grim, sad time. Desperation makes a person do crazy things.

Well today, the problem is that you have sources like the heirs to Roald Dahl selling off the rights to his writings to corporations that're now bowdlerizing them for PC's sake, not to mention people who very likely won't even read them after they're radically altered. The good news is that most independent creators today don't always have to risk the situation Watterson wound up in, and it wouldn't be surprising if comic strip syndication today is waning, as online options are more available.

Where do you think the comic strip fits in today’s culture?
Personally, I like paper and ink better than glowing pixels, but to each his own. Obviously the role of comics is changing very fast. On the one hand, I don’t think comics have ever been more widely accepted or taken as seriously as they are now. On the other hand, the mass media is disintegrating, and audiences are atomizing. I suspect comics will have less widespread cultural impact and make a lot less money. I’m old enough to find all this unsettling, but the world moves on. All the new media will inevitably change the look, function, and maybe even the purpose of comics, but comics are vibrant and versatile, so I think they’ll continue to find relevance one way or another. But they definitely won’t be the same as what I grew up with.

Nothing's the same now as what he grew up with, or even what I did. Disney, as owner of Marvel, and Time Warner, as owner of DC, have been making many notable comics unrecognizable, or changing them to suit woke agendas. And now, in recent years, it's finally taken a toll, financially as much as artistically.

Labels: animation, comic strips, conventions, exhibitions, history, msm propaganda, sales