Shouldn’t use Watterson’s work. He fought long and hard against stuff like this…
He’s famously against all commercialization of the strip and I think he’d feel this similarly devalues it.
That seems to be mostly about monetization and commodification, which should already be absent from shitposting.
Here is a wiki source (insert error bars here) discussion of his stance on his work being officially licensed. He thought that use of his work outside of a comic strip would cheapen the value of the strip itself. This was frusterating as a child (who wouldn’t want a fucking Hobbes plushy) but now later I can see that it was at the very least a very defensible choice. Compare how people feel about C&H vs something that was commercialized to death like Garfield. Anyway, hope it’s useful.
I mean, not really though. He fought to keep companies from merchandizing C&H, mainly because he “wanted to keep the characters pure to every reader’s internal voice.” Basically to keep companies from turning it into a shitty profit center or bastardizing it with a cartoon, etc. I don’t think he really said anything or would have a problem with fans using the images to share stuff, y’know?
Becoming a meme format is a great way to strip all of the original context for most, just look at the point of this thread. Just because it’s C+H isn’t going to stop that.
Like we saw with the bumper stickers, it wasn’t just the stupid Ford v Chevy thing, it was that anyone wanting to make a stupid point on their bumper sticker was lending Calvin’s voice to their own stupid crusade.
Cancel Culture, Woke, Communism… When you don’t understand a lot about the modern world, you just start using words and phrases you also don’t understand to mean “I dislike this”
