In the 10th anniversary collection of Calvin and Hobbes, Watterson stated that one of the key reasons he avoided licensing his characters for spinoffs and products was because their existence only makes sense/has meaning in the original comic strip they were created for. By putting these character in tv shows or holiday cards or boxer shorts, their identity would become diluted and less meaningful. He would be losing control of his creation and allowing a third party to strip it of context and repurpose it.
With this in mind, I present a thought experiment.
Watterson lived in a time before the internet.
Before forums and social media.
Before meme culture ever existed.
During his day the only way for information to spread on a mass scale was through television, and even then it was highly regulated.
But think of how many times a day you see spongebob repurposed for reaction gifs and image macros.
Or the simpsons
Or any of the looney tunes.
It is now easier than ever for third parties to recontextualize existing characters and for those recontextualizations to reach a mass audience.
Calving and Hobbes is no different. Hell, it's the reason rule 34 was established.
So what does one make of Watterson's philosophy in the digital age?
Does the idea of Calvin and Hobbes being meant to exist solely in comic strip form carry any meaning in an era where stripping an IP of context and repurposing it without the creator's consent is inevitable?