<story><title>Life After “Calvin and Hobbes”</title><url>https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/the-mysteries-bill-watterson-book-review</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ImprovedSilence</author><text>Everyone knew about LOTR and read the books before the movies came out. It was in no way some obscure out of print lit, it was both pop and a cult classic, and it was very much front and center of any must read fantasy bookshelf. Hence the wildly profitable movies.</text></item><item><author>boomboomsubban</author><text>&amp;gt;Imagine if Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit had been kept so pristine.&lt;p&gt;I find it unlikely I would have heard about them, my local library was full of books from the 50&amp;#x27;s I had never heard of and was reluctant to read. Seeing the Hobbit cartoon gave me an interest in it that I followed up on in middle school.&lt;p&gt;On that note, the only way most children will hear of Calvin and Hobbes is if their parents were big fans or through the many unlicensed products available. Maybe that&amp;#x27;s fine, but people seem strangely proud that&amp;#x27;s the case.</text></item><item><author>andrewstuart</author><text>The most magnificent thing about Calvin and Hobbes is ..... Calvin and Hobbes.&lt;p&gt;The second most magnificent thing is Calvin and Hobbes was never licensed.&lt;p&gt;The third most magnificent thing is it stopped whilst it was awesome instead of being wrung out for every penny.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no films, no sequels.  You can&amp;#x27;t buy a licensed tshirt with Calvin and Hobbes on it.  There&amp;#x27;s no licensed merchandise.  No one has made it into a live action movie.  Calvin and Hobbes are not available this month on MacDonalds cups if you buy a second whopper burger.  You can&amp;#x27;t buy plush toys of Hobbes.  There isn&amp;#x27;t a Christmas special TV show. Giant balloon figures of Calvin and Hobbes do not appear in city parades.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit had been kept so pristine.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vidarh</author><text>&amp;quot;Everyone&amp;quot; very much didn&amp;#x27;t. Most of the people in my life have seen the movies. Relatively few have read the book even now. Most of those close to me who have read the books did so &lt;i&gt;after&lt;/i&gt; the movies came out as a direct result of hearing about or seeing the movies.&lt;p&gt;It wasn&amp;#x27;t obscure &lt;i&gt;to fantasy fans&lt;/i&gt;, but &lt;i&gt;very few&lt;/i&gt; fantasy books break through and sell well. Most genre fiction outside of romance, thrillers&amp;#x2F;crime sell ridiculously low numbers.&lt;p&gt;In a 2003 interview, the project manager for Tolkien at Houghton Mifflin, who held the US rights, stated that they had at the time only had two million-copy bestsellers in the company&amp;#x27;s history: The Silmarillion in 1977, and LOTR in 2001 in the runup to the first movie.&lt;p&gt;By 2003 they&amp;#x27;d sold 2 million copies of the one-volume trade paperback in the US.&lt;p&gt;Worldwide, combined sales went from 50 million copies in 2003, already massively boosted by the movies, to 150 million by 2007. In other words: Nearly half a century to get to 50 million, with a significant proportion of those 50 million in the last few years of that period, and then 100 million in the following 4 once the movies were well known.&lt;p&gt;The readers of &amp;quot;any must read fantasy bookshelf&amp;quot; are a small enough demographic that if they were the only ones who&amp;#x27;d watch the movies, they&amp;#x27;d have bombed spectacularly.</text></comment>
<story><title>Life After “Calvin and Hobbes”</title><url>https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/the-mysteries-bill-watterson-book-review</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ImprovedSilence</author><text>Everyone knew about LOTR and read the books before the movies came out. It was in no way some obscure out of print lit, it was both pop and a cult classic, and it was very much front and center of any must read fantasy bookshelf. Hence the wildly profitable movies.</text></item><item><author>boomboomsubban</author><text>&amp;gt;Imagine if Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit had been kept so pristine.&lt;p&gt;I find it unlikely I would have heard about them, my local library was full of books from the 50&amp;#x27;s I had never heard of and was reluctant to read. Seeing the Hobbit cartoon gave me an interest in it that I followed up on in middle school.&lt;p&gt;On that note, the only way most children will hear of Calvin and Hobbes is if their parents were big fans or through the many unlicensed products available. Maybe that&amp;#x27;s fine, but people seem strangely proud that&amp;#x27;s the case.</text></item><item><author>andrewstuart</author><text>The most magnificent thing about Calvin and Hobbes is ..... Calvin and Hobbes.&lt;p&gt;The second most magnificent thing is Calvin and Hobbes was never licensed.&lt;p&gt;The third most magnificent thing is it stopped whilst it was awesome instead of being wrung out for every penny.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no films, no sequels.  You can&amp;#x27;t buy a licensed tshirt with Calvin and Hobbes on it.  There&amp;#x27;s no licensed merchandise.  No one has made it into a live action movie.  Calvin and Hobbes are not available this month on MacDonalds cups if you buy a second whopper burger.  You can&amp;#x27;t buy plush toys of Hobbes.  There isn&amp;#x27;t a Christmas special TV show. Giant balloon figures of Calvin and Hobbes do not appear in city parades.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit had been kept so pristine.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>devjab</author><text>Everyone in a certain generation did, yes. But it didn’t carry over to their children as such, unless you were a member of fantasy communities I think it’s largely positive that you haven’t heard about them. This is obviously anecdotal, but I grew up in the 80&amp;#x2F;90ies, played dnd and was a general fantasy nerd and nobody in our community had read them before the movies. Even after the movies a lot of us never made it through all the running around in the second book, which was a staring point for a lot of us after having watched the first movie. Our younger siblings never got into it, they got into Harry Potter instead. For todays youngsters LOTR is basically non-existent.&lt;p&gt;While anecdotal like I said, none of the “fantasy” stores around my city sell anything LOTR related while some of them have entire floors dedicated to Harry Potter merc.&lt;p&gt;But you’re absolutely right about what we call the 57’ generation. They all ate it right up. Everyone in my parents generation read it during their early university years, and I do mean everyone.</text></comment>