Calvin and Hobbes animated

I love the idea of Spielberg getting involved. The man behind An American Tail and Animaniacs could be just about the only man to get the tone of Calvin and Hobbes right in animation.

Tom Ruegger created Animaniacs though I agree that’s a pretty solid starting place for C&H. Especially because it was a show with quality animation.

Spielberg was instrumental to getting it made but it wasn’t like an ongoing major time commitment or anything. Same role in this hypothetical C&H I imagine.
 
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Some final thoughts from me...

Has anyone seen the 2013 documentary Dear Mr. Watterson? It's worth viewing. It talks about Calvin & Hobbes having a big impact on readers and comics along with the battles Watterson fought over merchandising.

That does tie into this thread about a possible animated adaptation. A big reason why Watterson was against merchandising as discussed in that documentary? It was a loss of control. C&H was done by Watterson alone and was therefore very personal. When it comes to merchandising, it isn't so personal anymore because you have several people involved. Editors at the syndicate would have exerted control over how merchandise and artwork for merchandise will look. Designers are involved as they come up with the look of the merchandised product (poster, plush, action figure, lunch box, underwear, etc) and then the designers have supervisors themselves giving their input. With all these people saying "no, you can't do that" or "change this", Watterson would have lost control of his own creation by having others make choices involving C&H.

That's just for merchandising. When you think of all the people involved in animation (writers, storyboard artists, concept artists, etc), C&H is not so personal any more and that's definitely a loss of control for Watterson.

It does go back to what I said earlier in the thread: Watterson always wanted to leave it ambiguous whether Hobbes was real or just a stuffed toy. With merchandising, a stuffed Hobbes toy on store shelves would have given an obvious answer.
 
I could see it happening, but on one condition, and that's total creative control on the part of Watterson. For it to work, I think he'd be the only one allowed to write either the specials or the episodes of the TV show, maybe even going so far as to him being the only person allowed to storyboard them as well. Really, the only spot other people would come in are the animators, and that's because one man can't hope to animate weekly episodes of a TV show all by himself.

I think he could get total creative control, too--assuming it's near the end of the comic's lifespan, he had more than enough weight to throw around to get that to happen. Hell, he took almost a year-long break from making the strips and newspapers ran reruns they still paid full price for from his syndicate, something only possible with something as popular as Calvin and Hobbes. A cartoon studio would be willing to bend over backwards just for the notion of one holiday special, because of how astronomically high its ratings would be.
 
I've recently been thinking that maybe ITTL, they only make one C&H animated special, and Bill hates it so much he completely bans all future C&H adaptations, similar to what happened with Berkeley Breathed and A Wish for Wings That Work, and to a lesser extent, Walt Kelly and The Pogo Birthday Special.
 
I could see it happening, but on one condition, and that's total creative control on the part of Watterson. For it to work, I think he'd be the only one allowed to write either the specials or the episodes of the TV show, maybe even going so far as to him being the only person allowed to storyboard them as well. Really, the only spot other people would come in are the animators, and that's because one man can't hope to animate weekly episodes of a TV show all by himself.

I think he could get total creative control, too--assuming it's near the end of the comic's lifespan, he had more than enough weight to throw around to get that to happen. Hell, he took almost a year-long break from making the strips and newspapers ran reruns they still paid full price for from his syndicate, something only possible with something as popular as Calvin and Hobbes. A cartoon studio would be willing to bend over backwards just for the notion of one holiday special, because of how astronomically high its ratings would be.

I agree with all of this.

In fact, do you know what the one relatively mainstream case of total creative control working out for everyone happens to be?

Danny Antonucci and Ed, Edd, n Eddy.

So yeah, a C&H cartoon with Watterson getting full creative control, especially on the level of what you proclaimed, would be the only way to make it work.
 
I think something a lot of people are overlooking is that even if Watterson had complete creative control over an animated series he probably wouldn't enjoy it. He was a hard worker and a perfectionist who was always trying to experiment with the medium of comics, that work ethic lead to his infamous and very long sabbaticals, something unprecedented in the industry. A sabbatical is fine when you're a comic artist, but in animation a creator cannot take two nine-month-breaks from production in the span of four years! The network would not allow it.

Watterson adored old newspaper comics and pushed the limits of the medium. For me peak Calvin and Hobbes is 1992-1995, when he was at his most inventive with content like this:

0339895cc92d12f53d51b893f573af27.jpg


If he was working for television at the same time, I really don't think he would be able find the time to create strips as detailed as that.

To bring up Peanuts, I think Schulz' output regressed as the result of overseeing and approving all the marketing and the animated specials. A lot of Peanuts content from the early 70s onward artistically suffers as the pathos of the world is lost, less exploration on Charlie Brown, childhood, and societal isolation, in exchange we get a glut of cutesy stuff with Snoopy. I think Watterson's work would decline in parallel.
 
Garry Trudeau, Berkeley Breathed, and Bill Watterson all were very much opposed to the merchandising of their creations with the limited exceptions of some products for certain causes.
Besides the 1977 animated The Doonesbury Special, there was no other projects that would have brought their creations to either television or movie screens.
Compare and contrast that to Charles M Schulz who allowed for the merchandising of his creations and having movies and television specials produced.
Peanuts is still relevant to today's audience while Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County are not growing their audience and are fading in memory, Doonesbury is a Sunday only strip with past strips being rerun during the week and it has lost the impact that it once had.

I have to disagree.

Calvin and Hobbes has an impact far beyond Peanuts or Garfield. It was a strip that made you think, that really had an impact and that really tackled some seriously moving subject material. Peanuts did at times, but always in a heavy-handed way and Garfield was just all safe, all the damn time.

Calvin and Hobbes is the Fawlty Towers of comics. It stopped, but by God it was Art.
 

MatthewB

Banned
Knowing Watterson he would shut the whole thing down the instant he saw the first footage. It would take a drastically different Watterson to have this get past his radar.
I felt that way when I saw the first Dilbert cartoons and thought that’s not what these characters sound like.
 

MatthewB

Banned
So yeah, a C&H cartoon with Watterson getting full creative control, especially on the level of what you proclaimed, would be the only way to make it work.
Often the creator's estate or family sell the rights after the creator's demise.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/the-exemplary-narcissism-of-snoopy/407827/

"It really was a dark and stormy night. On February 12, 2000, Charles Schulz—who had single-handedly drawn some 18,000 Peanuts comic strips, who refused to use assistants to ink or letter his comics, who vowed that after he quit, no new Peanuts strips would be made—died, taking to the grave, it seemed, any further adventures of the gang."

"The arrival of The Peanuts Movie this fall breathes new life into the phrase over my dead bodyThe Peanuts Movie (written by Schulz’s son Craig and grandson Bryan, along with Bryan’s writing partner, Cornelius Uliano) is a computer-generated 3-D-animated feature. What’s more, the Little Red-Haired Girl, Charlie Brown’s unrequited crush, whom Schulz promised never to draw, is supposed to make a grand appearance. AAUGH!!!"
 

Driftless

Donor
I felt that way when I saw the first Dilbert cartoons and thought that’s not what these characters sound like.

Back in the 90's, I worked with a network engineer, who looked very like Dilbert. My cohort was himself a fan of Dilbert and was self-aware of their similarities. He was very laid-back, but with a subtle and often wickedly funny sense of humor. That's the guy I hear when I read the newspaper strips.
 
Assuming that such a special or even a full series, which network does it ultimately air on, and who will be the corporate parent? This is not a trivial question, as this fundamentally impact how future generations think about the show.

Is this a Warner Bros production that eventually finds its way to Cartoon Network, either in its initial run or reruns? Kids of that generation will forever associate Calvin and Hobbes with Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, Courage the Cowardly Dog and the full Hannah-Barbera and Looney Tunes canon.

Nickelodeon? Then it will be Ren and Stimpy, Rugrats, Rocko’s Modern Life, Hey Arnold!, and, eventually, SpongeBob Squarepants, The Fairly Oddparents, and Jimmy Neutron.

Somehow under the Disney mantle during the Michael Eisner era? On second thought, I do not even want to think about that option...
 
The question is, which giant media conglomerate is most likely to try to wrest some large portion of the rights to his characters away from Watterson?
 
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The only way we'd get Calvin and Hobbes merchandise was through the total control for the most part though I reckon Watterson could probably do so now if he wanted to. Heck, even things like maybe calendars or whatnot he could've done years ago. It's not like it would've diminished the strip.

Calvin and Hobbes now would be interesting to say the least. The philosophical tones of the strip would resonate to some extent with the younger generation though also probably raise some questions on relevancy in the New 10s. Easy for us to say as adults, but Calvin and Hobbes I read since I was a kid. I was around 6 or 7 when my dad gifted the Essential Calvin and Hobbes and I just read through the thing.
 

MatthewB

Banned
The philosophical tones of the strip would resonate to some extent with the younger generation though also probably raise some questions on relevancy in the New 10s.
My girls are 16 years old and I don't think they or their friends are very familiar with C&H, any more than I am with Popeye.
 
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