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 syndicate
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, andwe 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'.
Source: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/2009-March/003015.html
