Right. Watterson had no issue with making money; the strips ran in tons of papers and he signed off on lots of retail items: books, calendars, posters, etc. Bu

Right. Watterson had no issue with making money; the strips ran in tons of papers and he signed off on lots of retail items: books, calendars, posters, etc. But none of the retail items took the characters out of the context of the comic. They all presented the full strips that Watterson drew. That was his ethic: the strip is the object, the whole piece of art. To him, selling a stuffed Hobbes would be like selling a commemorative plush “left eye of Mona Lisa.”