Usually this would indicate that they’re looking to add additional media, like a movie or show, but c&h is exceedingly unlikely to get any of that. What an odd move.
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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I guess they want you to read the comics on their website? A quick search leads me to "gocomics." Top comment on the first C&H page:
"This'll be the last comment I ever leave on GoComics. For those who don't know, they just closed down r/calvinandhobbes due to copyright striking. Really lame and unnecessary perversion of fair use, especially in conjunction with the paywalling. Cancelling my subscription."
GoComics seems like a fine enough place to read comics. They have a lot of comics on there- aaaaaand a paywall. Yeah idk about that.
- Paywall sucks, but it seems like if you read them daily as though it were a newspaper it won't bite you. It's owned by the Syndicate that published C&H in the first place, so I'm not surprised they're glomming onto an old business model.
- They never had a chance at fair use. They were literally posting multiple strips every day, the exact product that Gocomics wants to monetize and owns the rights to distribute. This is not the same as lifting 15 minutes of a Marvel movie to punctuate an hour-long commentary video.
- As noted, Reddit is increasingly a very prominent web destination, at least while its human-submitted content outweighs AI slop, and Google is sending searchers there as a first listing. You cannot be under the radar on a public subreddit any more.
I mean, fuck 'em and all, and get your comics wherever you can -- while he was no fan of derivative works I doubt Bill Watterson would care very much about ensuring Gocomics makes any money -- but the redditors' naive indignation is misplaced.
What are you talking about, isn't this Watterson's income you're trying to "work around"?
Maybe, but we don’t know how much residual income it’s bringing him, he had a famously contentious relationship with his syndicate, he refused other streams of ancillary income for the both of them, and he ended the strip at the height of its popularity.
"was"? Watterson is still alive.
I know. “Was” was more meant to describe the era in which Bill Watterson was making public comments of any kind. Sorry for the confusion.
It appears GoComics has become more aggressive. I used to follow Garfield through a third-party RSS feed that was just a mirror of GoComics, but it recently got shut down due to DMCA.
I mean GoComics clearly has some online licensing deal worked out to host Calvin And Hobbes. It probably wasn't free.
Reddit now is not just some private community, it's a publicly traded company stepping on their license and the traffic they should be seeing.
Also the cross IP stuff that people love to post probably doesn't help things. It's a complete legal quagmire and I've a feeling Watterson probably isn't a fan of it either.
One of the benefits on being such a small place is that the big players dont know we exist so we get MUCH less DMCAs, legal action, etc...etc.... plus its the same issue of p2p but with media. Its easy to shut down one site, much harder to/force/fine one site. Much harder on instances.
Fewer DMCAs
Being able to get away with something doesn't change the ethical equation.
Why would that be unlikely? Calvin & Hobbes seems like a prime piece to milk nostalgia money out of.
Creator’s vehemently against it. Has been for 30 years
I don't find this surprising.
I bet AI is a factor. Their actions are too little, too late, but they’re probably worried the works they hold copyright for are being scraped through 3rd party access like these subreddits. It’s good content because it’s culturally relevant and it’s clean black and white line art (mostly) with witty dialog that’s easy to ocr. As a result they paywall everything
We all get fucked over because ai bros are unethical shitheads and they’re fighting against “we own a license to some work we didn’t create” bros who will milk a work in perpetuity while the creator gets pennies (if anything). 30 year old comics should be free at this point and copyright is fucking stupid. The AI bros will just use libgen and download the books without seeding, far more efficient than scraping a subreddit and higher definition.
Bill don't care anymore.
Bill never cared. That's why there is so much knock-off merch and no official merch.
Quite the opposite, Bill was adamantly opposed to merchandising because he cared a whole lot. He fought tooth and nail with the syndicate to shoot them down every time they tried to pressure him into accepting merchandising deals.