Talk:Calvin and Hobbes/Archive 7

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Offensive

Why is it that so many people have a ridiculous intolerance of Calvin and Hobbes strips? For example, Bill Watterson recieved a ridiculous amount of mail over a strip where Calvin asks his mom, "Was I adopted? Are you planning to put me to work in a cannery when I'm seven? You're not just fattening me up to eat me, are you?" People got so uptight over it because they thought he was "maligning adoption" by "placing it in the same context as child labor and cannibalism" (Watterson). And once, several years ago I repeated the strip where Calvin brings some flash cards to school and tells everyone, "Each card has a letter followed by several dashes. When I hold up a card, you yell the obscene, blasphemous or vulgar words they stand for." to my mom, and she took away all the Calvin and Hobbes books we have! Why are people so ridiculously ultra-sensitive to silly strips like that? There should be a category in the article that discusses certain people's ridiculous dislikes to certain quotes from Calvin and Hobbes. Scorpionman 02:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree that Calvin and Hobbes has been the target of overly sensitive criticism from countless nuts, but the same could be said about nearly any comic strip that has even an inkling of cereberal humour. Pearls Before Swine, The Far Side, Bloom County, Bizarro, and even Peanuts, just to name a few, have all been the target of "you went too far" letters. While it might make for an interesting topic of (brief) conversation here on the talk page, I think if we included it as part of the article, we'd have to try and add a similar section to at least a few dozen other comic strip articles, just to be fair. Because, let's be honest, unless a strip is completely tame and lame, like Family Circus, Garfield or Born Loser, it's going to piss off some kooks now and then.
On the other hand, if you can recall any specific instances of censorship (a strip being pulled from a newspaper, a town library removing C&H titles as opposed to just one household), then that might be a good addition to the article. Special interest groups missing the point and writing angry letters isn't quite the same thing as censorship, but any actual examples of censorship would be worth noting. - Ugliness Man 08:06, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Bill Watterson acctually stated in the Tenth Aniversary Book that one strip he wrote got C&H cancelled in one newspaper. He states: "Usually I was able to keep Calvin in newspapers for more than a week, but not this time." - Mike (talk) 20:40, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
That was one newspaper, and it was a matter of bad timing... the paper happened to pick up the strip just when Calvin did one of his disgusting food things in the cafeteria, and they must've thought that the strip would typically be like that. Isolated incident. - Ugliness Man 21:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The dialogue in some C and H strips was changed in the Complete Calvin and Hobbes to prevent people from being offended. Does that count as censorship?--FelineFanatic13talk

Can you give specific examples and/or cite a source? And remember that "um... I remember reading it in, like, one of the books" doesn't count as a source, you have to be able to actually quote the page in question to verify it. - Ugliness Man 21:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Challenged!

The very first book, Calvin and Hobbes, was recently challenged by parents of the Geneva, Illinois public school district. In other words, elementary school parents in that district did not feel that the book was appropriate to the collections of their elementary school libraries. It is the FIRST time any of Watterson's books have ever been challenged. The book is staying in the libraries, but will be limited to be checked out only by fourth and fifth graders (the schools are K-5). There is a possibility of an appeal. Source: [1] --JohnDBuell 14:14, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

People just take things too seriously these days. That joke was meant to make fun of the garbage on television. It's a joke for crying out loud! - Mike (talk) 16:53, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

You're preaching to the choir, here, Michael (at least in my personal case :). I'm waiting to hear if parents appeal this one.... --JohnDBuell 19:39, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

War on minor gags

Maybe my memory is fuzzy, but as I recall, Calvin's bike appeared in maybe ten or fifteen strips, if that. Why does it merit a multi-paragraph description in this already overlong article? jdb ❋ (talk) 22:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't, in my opinion. Repeating the jokes seems to be a common problem in articles like this. See 8-Bit_Theater#Running_gags for another example. Feezo (Talk) 23:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'm moving it here:

Calvin's bicycle

Calvin has an adversarial relationship with his bicycle. The bicycle typically tries to injure Calvin, usually with success. Calvin sometimes tries to counter this with acts such as chaining his bicycle to the tree in his yard, or by trying to persuade his father to purchase a bell that will alert him to its position.

As with several things, Calvin's parents do not understand Calvin's relationship with his bicycle. For instance, in one strip, it somehow gets into his closet and waits for Calvin to go to bed. When Calvin finds this out, he shouts for help, but when his mother comes up, she says, "Everything's fine, honey... but why did you bring your bike up to your closet?"

jdb ❋ (talk) 23:42, 30 March 2006 (UTC)


Susie Derkins

I think Susie should have her own page on Wikipedia. She is enough of a major character in the strip, plus nearly every Simpsons and Futurama character has his or her own article.

We recently had a long debate about this that you can see in this discussion. That should explain why we went about it the way we did. - Mike (talk) 01:18, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Ironically, Susie had previously survived two nominations for deletion. Her submergence into Secondary characters in Calvin and Hobbes was almost entirely the result of John oh's repeated removal of the AfD tags. Feezo (Talk) 01:37, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Gazillion

Does anyone know which comic a girl in Calvin's class tells him the answer to a maths questions is a gazillion? Does it also say how big it is? For the gazillion article. Thanks. Kernow 10:47, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Sure, answer is Suzie, see [2] or on the dodgy archive at [3] --Oscarthecat 15:41, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

An out rage!

they got rid of the discription of the alter ego charachters! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by PopiethePopester (talk • contribs) .

New ext link : C&H Album

Unsure whether this newly-added link should remain. It's a well designed site, with lots of info, but it also blatantly breaches Watterson's copyright, with dozens of C&G strips scanned in and made available there. --Oscarthecat 07:07, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

  • I would like to know which "dozens of C&H strips" you are referring to. The page with the most strips on it is being taken down for a new Reader's Favorites Page. You can read about it at the what's new page. (http://geocities.com/adamfishercox/whatsnew)
  • I've just removed another link to a page that contains all 1470 strips. I'm not the publisher, and it's not my responsibility to police copyright, but I don't think there's any justification for encouraging this behaviour by linking to it. Gid 13:14, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, the discussion is a moot point at the moment, as the site's unavailable : "Sorry, this GeoCities site is currently unavailable. The GeoCities web site you were trying to view has temporarily exceeded its data transfer limit. Please try again later.". Let's revisit this if/when the site pops back up again. --Oscarthecat 21:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
It's back up. As former GeoCities Free service user, I understand this problem. Sometimes when traffic gets high to the site, it overloads what little bandwidth is offered with the free plan. This downtime is only tempory, and the site is usually back up within 15-20 minutes. The "Your favorite page" has replaced the "#1 strips" page, and now the only comics available of the website are the first, last, and the one that was never printed in books, 3 on the seasonal page, and a few here in there in context with the character pages. It may be pushing the borderlines of fair use a bit, but I don't think that it's a flagrant violation, as I have counted about 10 strips on the entire site. - Mike (talk) 01:48, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Update : it's down again. I've marked it as such in the article. --Oscarthecat 20:58, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
It's back up. Downtime usually only lasts a few minutes. - Mike (talk) 21:11, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

The Wisdom of Wikipedia

This article is longer than the William Shakespeare article. - Xed 21:24, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

True, but on the whole, there's more info about him and his work than Calvin and his tiger, see [4] vs [5]. --Oscarthecat 21:29, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
And more on Calvin than John Calvin. Is this an encyclopedia? - Xed 22:37, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Does the length of an article really mean that much? I personally don't think so. It's not a commentary on whether or not one subject is more "important" or "significant" than another, and it's not a reflection on the quality of Wikipedia as an information source. It's simply a result of how much information Wikipedians have to offer on the given subjects, and how much of that information survives the numerous edits. Don't read too much into what simply comes down to meaningless numbers. - Ugliness Man 20:08, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
I notice Xed's user page only has two lines of text about him. Based on his logic, he must be really unimportant. ;-) Michael Dorosh 06:11, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

New Article Link

I don't know if any of you will want this, but I put up a link to Calvin and Hobbes .::dissected::., a little known but pretty good radio show that is I think affiliated with Calvin and Hobbes Album about C&H. I think it should stay, what about you all? - Abbybbster —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.78.145.54 (talk • contribs) .

Adam - haven't you already got a link to your C&H fan site on the page?
I didn't put this up here. But hey. Um, Oscarthecat if you could just state where the "Breaches of copyright" are I'd be happy to change it. Obviously, the copyright thing can throw you off, and I've changed that, but any site with Calvin and Hobbes on it is braching copyright, but on the other discussion about The Calvin and Hobbes Album, you also said that It was a breach of copyright. Of course it is, but breach many times over?? There are, if you want to get technical, a total of 10 strips on my site right now, and about 20 pieces of Bill Watterson artwork. Where does the "HUGE" breach come in?? - Adamfc (By the way, I'll be on here as Adamfc, so don't confuse me with anyone)
Adam, just so you know you can sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~) - Mike (talk) 02:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Also, maybe a separate page or just a section about the internet, sites and Calvin and Hobbes conflicting with copyright would be in order since that is an issue. adamfc 14:59, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Adam, I'd like to just say I do like your album site, I'm a bit C&H fan : it's got some good content, but it is at the expense of Watterson's copyright. On the front page [6] I can see some 18 copyrighted images lifted from Watterson's works. Going to animations sub-page [7] appears to contain links to 27 copyrighted images. Going to the calvin-says sub-page [8] there's an unknown number of quotes lifted from copyrighted cartoons. Under seasonal sub-page, there's currently 3 copyrighted cartoon strips. Under your-favorites sub-page [9] there's currently 2 copyrighted cartoon strips. Under your "Historic strips" sub-page, there's 3 copyrighted cartoon strips. Couldn't check any further, as the site then went offline, some sort of over-usage of Geocities bandwidth.
I've had a read through the wikipedia policy on external links and it states Occasionally acceptable links : .... External sites can possibly violate copyright. Linking to copyrighted works is usually not a problem, as long as you have made a reasonable effort to determine that the page in question is not violating someone else's copyright. If it is, please do not link to the page. Whether such a link is contributory infringement is currently being debated in the courts, but in any case, linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on us (see Wikipedia:Copyrights and in particular Contributors' rights and obligations).. This suggests that linking to your site from wikipedia should not be performed. --Oscarthecat 15:46, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, but then shouldn't we also remove all the other fan sites listed under there? "The Calvin and Hobbes Hideout has 101 images alone, about 95% of them are strips, and there are four complete series here. The othjer sites are similar. I think tat if we wnat to follow these Wikipedia rules to the letter, we need to get rid of The Fan Websites section altogetheradamfc 16:52, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
Yep. Get rid of all of 'em with copyrighted images. Articles such as The Simpsons don't have fan sites showing copyrighted images. The one for Dilbert doesn't go linking to such sites either. How about putting the fan sites in dmoz, and give wikipedia a link to the dmoz category. I'm not trying to be obstructive in this : I just think that Bill Watterson ought to sell books if people want to read his strips. I hope you can appreciate this. --Oscarthecat 20:35, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
Of course, we can always choose to ignore a rule, as I think that the links build on the article. - Mike(talk) 00:31, 5 June 2006 (UTC) PS - Like the new sig??
That's what I was driving for, Mike. And yes, the new sig is great. ;) adamfc 00:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm with Oscarthecat on this one. If only there was a way to turn linkcruft into clean electricity. . . we'd have a renewable energy source which could power our entire global civilization and propel spaceships to Proxima Centauri. Anville 18:43, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Oscarthecat, but not may people want to go somewhere else (namely DMOZ) for links. I know I ate doing it, and almost everybody I've asked has sid it annoys them. The links really do build on the article.adamfc 21:43, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I am the administrator of the DMOZ category, and even I can say that it's easier just to put links to the good sites here rather than having to hunt through the average sites in the DMOZ directory. - Mike(talk) 23:26, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Radio Link

I'd be fine with taking the dissected link off of the page, as I didn't put it there, but I'll leave that up to you. - adamfc

The dissected site seems to breach copyright many times over, lots of scanned pics of C&H etc. On this site it even appears that you're claiming copyright for one of Watterson's pictures : [10] --Oscarthecat 20:56, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
That is a standard message at the bottom of each page claiming copyright for the site. However, it can cause confusion and you may want to change that to "This site (c) 2006 Adam Fisher-Cox. All C&H images are (c) Bill Watterson". I'm not entirely sure that an opinion radio show should be in the external links, and it violates NPOV, but I do think that the C&H Album should stay. - Mike(talk) 21:11, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

The Noodle Incident

I'm glad to see this section got cleaned up, but I noticed something I needed to comment on. The section has the following statement

It is perhaps the results of an earlier strip in which Calvin saved some cooked noodles in a paper bag for a report on the brain, researched on the school bus using a pocket encyclopedia.

While this is a perfectly valid theory, Watterson has stated unambiguously in the Tenth Anniversary Collection that we don't know what "The Noodle Incident" is, that he prefers to leave it to the reader's imagination. Therefore, it's safe to say that it's not something which ever actually happened in a strip, and I think this statement needs to be revised. Should the theory be removed entirely, or ammended to point out that it's an assumption some have made but is most likely incorrect? - Ugliness Man 20:19, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Stupendous Man

I feel Stupendous Man needs an entry on the Calvin and Hobbes page. I understand that it's not feasible to outline every single one of Calvin's adventures, like running to the Yukon, pushing the car out of the driveway, etc., but for Stupendous Man not even to have been mentioned is a crime. I feel that a short paragraph, maybe 7 or 8 sentences, on both Stupendous Man and Spaceman Spiff is needed. DajoKatti

We can probably add a brief section about all of the alter egos, but they are discussed in depth at Calvin's article. - Mike(talk) 16:10, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I added a couple lines about the alter egos to Calvin's section, and I provided a link to the main description of them. Anville 18:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
There was an entry about im just yesterday!! Did someine take it down? adamfc 21:45, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Miss Wormwood

The article states "She is waiting to retire, takes a lot of medication, and is apparently a heavy smoker and drinker." Do we really know any of that, or is it just one person's speculation? I never thought of her as a smoker and drinker. -BeboGuitar 23:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Watterson states as much in the Tenth Anniversary Book. I don't have the page number, but it shouldn't be hard to find. Calvin has said, "I wonder if her doctor knows she mixes all those medications", as well as "Rumor has it she's up to two packs a day, unfiltered." Anville 13:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
The "two packs a day unfiltered" strip as well as Bill Watterson's verbatim comment is accessible here adamfc 19:58, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Article Link Not Worthy

The following article seems to me to be rather out of place on the wikipedia page. It is more of a self-promotional biased essay than something that contributes to a reader's undersatnding of Calvin and Hobbes. I am going to replace it with this article, which offers a very informative look into the merchandising argument with Calvin and Hobbes. I think that this article is a much better addition to the page. My word is not the last, though, so please put in your thoughts on this. I'm going to leave the code for this link right under this post so we have it if we decide to put it back up.

I am glad you did this, for reading through the "Calvin & Hobbes Revealed" article turns up enough phrases which have been lifted directly from Watterson's writing that I'd call it plagiarism. Examples include the following:
  • "get old without growing up"
  • "a dim view of human nature" (with reference to Thomas Hobbes)
  • "good-natured, intelligent, friendly, and enthusiastic [...] in a sneaking-up-and-pouncing sort of way"
  • "There are two versions of reality, and each makes complete sense to the participant who sees it"
  • "Calvin's mom is the daily disciplinarian, a job that taxes her sanity."
  • "Susie, who is earnest, serious and smart. Calvin has a mild crush on her."
  • "We see hints that Wormwood is waiting to retire, that she smokes too much, and that she takes a lot of medication. She seriously believes in the value of education"
Look up the character descriptions in the Tenth Anniversary Book and see how closely these lines match the original. And nary a quotation mark in sight! Kaavya Viswanathan got roasted for just this sort of phrase-lifting. Anville 16:29, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Joke submission

Just to show I am not entirely without humour, I have moved the joke submission by 202.6.138.34 (talk • contribs) to BJAODN. --RobertG ♬ talk 09:44, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Noodle Incident

Is it necesarry to have the entire strip depicting the noodle incident? Apparently someone thinks so, who keeps reverting my edits to show only the panel with the noodle incodent reference. If you would please voice youre opinions one way or another that would be good. --[adamfc] 00:39, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

It's neccessary because it puts The Noodle Incident into context, and therefore better explains it. - Mike(talk) 13:57, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Scratch my own statement, I happened to come accross this quote on the UPS's reprint site.[11]

Calvin and Hobbes cartoons cannot be used on web pages, on-line, email, internet or intranet - NO EXCEPTIONS.

So, I'll have to put it up for deletation. I am currently working on removing all of the C&H comics from my site. One of these statements in kind of contradictory however, as they send out dail C&H e-mail free of charge, and it can be subscribed to by newsgroups. Still, I don't think this is a case of copyright paranoia. As rediculous as the policy is, it's pretty clear.

Could somebody tell me how to put the image up for deletation? - Mike(talk) 03:25, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Never mind. I have put the image up for deletation and restored the panel instead. - Mike(talk) 03:46, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

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