Comments on: Halvin and Cobbes

Halvin and Cobbes

Evilspork — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:39:53 -0800

Joker and Lex. Lara and Mxy. Ozy and Buba. Peter and Mary Jane. Carmine and Selma. (Part 2.) Hobbes and Hobbes. Calvin and Holly. Calvin and Hobbes.

By: luftmensch

luftmensch — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:44:35 -0800

Some of these are so small that they're rather difficult to read...

By: nathancaswell

nathancaswell — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:49:55 -0800

these are not at all what I was half hoping/half dreading they would be

By: LSK

LSK — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:50:49 -0800

Sources? Imgur links, while clean, leave the author(s) woefully uncredited.

By: Evilspork

Evilspork — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:52:00 -0800

Ack, I linked the wrong ones from imgur. Here are the full-size ones (just take the "l" off the end of the URL): Joker and Lex. Lara and Mxy. Carmine and Selma. Hobbes and Hobbes. Calvin and Holly

By: Evilspork

Evilspork — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:52:30 -0800

And I looked for sources and linked them where I could.

By: DU

DU — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:56:50 -0800

"Part 2" wants me to sign up.

By: The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal

The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:58:10 -0800

...wait, what am I not getting? Why's that one called "Carmine and Selma"?

By: Old'n'Busted

Old'n'Busted — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 05:00:39 -0800

The part 2 goes to a spam signup page of some sort. And what, exactly, is the context of this? Aside from a C&H link dump?

By: bwg

bwg — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 05:03:05 -0800

Tiny fonts suck.

By: Foci for Analysis

Foci for Analysis — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 05:16:22 -0800

Not seeing any sources.

By: Evilspork

Evilspork — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 05:40:57 -0800

Any? Three of my links go to the original Deviantart pages, and the first original Carmine one was deleted as was explained in the second one. (screencap 1 and 2). A couple I tracked down only went back to Reddit or random "look what I found" blog pages. If you have sources for any of the others, kindly link them here.

By: clvrmnky

clvrmnky — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 05:42:27 -0800

Too Small & To Read.

By: tylermoody

tylermoody — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 05:42:32 -0800

You really shouldn't let your children play with Lobo.

By: Taft

Taft — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 05:58:57 -0800

Warning: Hobbes and Hobbes is a childhood killer if I ever seen one.

By: Wanderlust88

Wanderlust88 — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:06:56 -0800

I'll never look at Hobbes the same way again.

By: pts

pts — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:08:44 -0800

Wow, the Peter and Mary Jane one is dead-on.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:12:30 -0800

[changed images to go to larger pix, carry on]

By: Fizz

Fizz — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:22:45 -0800

By: Captain Cardanthian!

Captain Cardanthian! — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:24:06 -0800

I would have appreciated a heads-up about the Hobbes & Hobbes comic before seeing my childhood turned into what is basically furry porn.

By: Memo

Memo — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:26:50 -0800

I love these. It probably says bad things about my taste that I like fanart/fic and reinterpretations so much. Lex and Joker is from Superman/Batman #75. Lara and Mxy is from Adventures of Superman #638.

By: Maaik

Maaik — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:30:19 -0800

I would have appreciated a heads-up about the Hobbes & Hobbes comic before seeing my childhood turned into what is basically furry porn. Seconded. That being said, I quite enjoyed the Lara & Mxy one. That was a good homage to the style and spirit of C&H without being a direct reference to any specific comic. The Lex & Joker one was also pretty good. Though: not enough wagons, not enough snowmen.

By: SPUTNIK

SPUTNIK — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:40:17 -0800

I LIKED the Hobbes & Hobbes. GrrrrOOOWWWWLLLLL.

By: schroedinger

schroedinger — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:44:39 -0800

what the fuck was up with the Hobbes & Hobbes? The Peter & Mary Jane was awesome, though.

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:44:56 -0800

Wow, the Peter and Mary Jane one is dead-on. Do you mean dead-on to Spider-Man? Because it is.

By: misha

misha — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:17:44 -0800

Yeah, the Peter and Mary Jane one was the best of the lot! I took my cue from the other commenters and did not read Hobbes & Hobbes. I liked the Lex vs the Joker, too, though there were some extraneous panels he obviously just needed to fill with dialogue to make it work. And the last Calvin one made me smile, too.

By: DU

DU — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:17:46 -0800

[changed images to go to larger pix, carry on] "Part 2" is still a link to a signup page.

By: zamboni

zamboni — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:18:48 -0800

Dalek & Cyberman.

By: zombieflanders

zombieflanders — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:20:18 -0800

Copyright and Infringement. Parody is covered by protected by copyright law.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:22:25 -0800

"Part 2" is still a link to a signup page. The OP can send me a link to a non-signup version of that image, I have no idea what goes there.

By: IAmBroom

IAmBroom — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:26:02 -0800

How to get shitpiled on Metafilter: 1. Find something Mefites almost universally love. (This is the hardest part.) 2. String together a series of links lampooning it. 3. Screw up the links to those cartoons.

By: flatluigi

flatluigi — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:28:29 -0800

S/he hasn't been 'shitpiled' at all, though, IAmBroom? The worst thing in the thread is people justifiably complaining about the really questionable inclusion of the Hobbes porn parody.

By: lodurr

lodurr — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:40:35 -0800

i count more copyright infringement complaints than porn complaints. some kind of a warning about hobbes & hobbes would have been nice, but it was dead on re. the character. squicky a little, but still very much at the 'oh come on you're an adult you can deal with this' level for me. no furry genitalia, for example.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:44:01 -0800

Copyright and Infringement. Parody is covered by protected by copyright law. But.. but... but what about everyone's legal degrees!? When will they get to practice law if not on the internet!?!?

By: ymgve

ymgve — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:00:43 -0800

Calvin and Susie...10 years later (Don't worry, completely safe for work and mind)

By: Fizz

Fizz — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:07:09 -0800

Copyright and Infringement. Parody is covered by protected by copyright law. But.. but... but what about everyone's legal degrees!? When will they get to practice law if not on the internet!?!? Apparently I forgot to add the tags. Apologies.

By: Fizz

Fizz — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:07:29 -0800

[Sarcasm] tags. Damn.

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:08:06 -0800

BTW the Peter & Mary Jane strip is a direct reference/redrawing of this C&H strip.

By: idiopath

idiopath — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:14:08 -0800

If you are logged in at deviantart that "part 2" link leads to a repeat of the first Carmine and Selma, but aged to about 70 (not at all NSFW). The backstory: dude draws Calvin and Susie as older and making out, this gets flagged as "child porn", since they are child characters reimagined in a sexual situation. Artist responds with elderly version of the characters, as if to say "I dare you to call this depiction of senior citizens kiddy porn".

By: jedicus

jedicus — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:18:37 -0800

Parody is protected by copyright law. That's a tricky area. What's being parodied here? Some of these are pretty straightforward parodies of Calvin & Hobbes. But others are really more parodies of, for example, The Joker and Lex Luthor via the Calvin & Hobbes style and tropes. The former is pretty strongly protected, the latter less so. "The parody must target the original, and not just its general style, the genre of art to which it belongs, or society as a whole (although if it targets the original, it may target those features as well). ... '[A] humorous or satiric work deserves protection under the fair-use doctrine only if the copied work is at least partly the target of the work in question.' This prerequisite confines fair use protection to works whose very subject is the original composition and so necessitates some borrowing from it." Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 597 (1994) (Kennedy, J., concurring). I'm not saying any of these are unprotected by fair use, but some of them definitely skirt closer to the edge than others. Although one does begin to question the sanity of the law when Hobbes & Hobbes (blech) is more clearly protected than Joker & Lex.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:21:53 -0800

But others are really more parodies of, for example, The Joker and Lex Luthor via the Calvin & Hobbes style and tropes. Except, as Memo pointed out, the strips that use DC characters were published by DC Comics. There's not exactly an infringement issue going on when you're using characters you already own.

By: lodurr

lodurr — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:23:47 -0800

i read most of the up-thread copyright complaints as being about lack of artist attribution, not whether or not the parody is protected.

By: jedicus

jedicus — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:30:43 -0800

Except, as Memo pointed out, the strips that use DC characters were published by DC Comics. There's not exactly an infringement issue going on when you're using characters you already own. So in that case there's no issue that Joker & Lex is a fair parody of those DC characters, and if it had been done by a third party it would still have been protected from a claim by DC. But whether DC authorized the use of its characters or not, Joker & Lex is not really a parody of Calvin & Hobbes, and so Watterson (or whoever owns the characters) might have a claim. Yes, one could argue that it also parodies Calvin & Hobbes, but I think we can agree that the primary targets of the parody are the DC characters, not Calvin & Hobbes. It would be easy to make a reasonable argument that the artist simply appropriated the Calvin & Hobbes style and tropes but didn't actually parody the strip. Now, one could also argue that the fair use doctrine needs to be expanded to include things like mash-ups, but I don't think that's happened yet.

By: straight

straight — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:33:03 -0800

"I'm selling our marriage to the Devil!" Only a true Spider-Man fan can understand how hilariously cathartic that is. Thank you Evilspork. The Joker & Lex one is also beautiful.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:34:41 -0800

It would be easy to make a reasonable argument that the artist simply appropriated the Calvin & Hobbes style and tropes but didn't actually parody the strip. In which case it's called a pastiche, and (unless you're actually committing fraud, of course) there's never been a law against creating art in the style of another artist.

By: zombieflanders

zombieflanders — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:36:32 -0800

I think we can agree that the primary targets of the parody are the DC characters, not Calvin & Hobbes. Yes, but it is also parodying the theme of C&H, i.e. Calvin coming up with some crazy scheme, and Hobbes simplifying or mocking it, or Calvin and Susie having arguments over how they want to play grown-ups.

By: KingEdRa

KingEdRa — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:47:39 -0800

That last panel of Lara & Mxy is pure gold, with Lobo braiding Wonder Woman's hair.

By: oneswellfoop

oneswellfoop — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:19:15 -0800

You think you remember some much better C&H parodies/pastches/mashups? You do. It even included the exact same ultimate "Calvin and Hobbes" link. And "Lex and Joker" in the comments. To replace some broken links in the original, here are "A Star Wars/Calvin & Hobbes mashup t-shirt", "James Hance did it first" and "Calvin and Jobs" (rescued from Gawkerformat)

By: jedicus

jedicus — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:51:45 -0800

In which case it's called a pastiche, and (unless you're actually committing fraud, of course) there's never been a law against creating art in the style of another artist. For better or worse, pastiche is not part of the established legal analysis in the US. Merely copying another artist's style likely doesn't rise to the level of copyright infringement, but these strips adopt a lot more than the style alone. Some of them could conceivably meet the substantial similarity test. Again, I'm not condemning these works or saying that the C&H copyright holders have an ironclad claim. I only wanted to explain that "parody" has a fairly specific meaning and that not all of these strips would be treated the same way from a legal point of view.

By: Alexandra Kitty

Alexandra Kitty — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 11:24:16 -0800

And people complain that Hollywood recycles and doesn't have any original ideas...

By: Lovecraft In Brooklyn

Lovecraft In Brooklyn — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:24:26 -0800

We can argue about the legal issues. Or we can enjoy the cute mash-ups. Wasn't the 'Joker and Lex' part of a story that also included a great Little Nemo parody?

By: davextreme

davextreme — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:25:52 -0800

Here is a source for Joker and Lex (no pun intended). It originally appeared in Superman/Batman 75 along with a few other short vignettes at the end of the issue, as credited on The Source's page.

By: charlie don't surf

charlie don't surf — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:16:39 -0800

You know, these are all cute and clever and whatever, and they had since 1995 to come up with a clever parody or references to the strip.. but none of these are even close to Watterson's level. It just makes me miss his work all the more.

By: Rhaomi

Rhaomi — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 04:37:06 -0800

You included that creepy Hobbes slash but missed probably the best C&H fan art ever? For shame.