💬 Matt Groening on licensing and merchandising, from The Comics Journal 141, April 1991
GROENING: I respect Bill Watterson’s resistance to all the offers to exploit Calvin and Hobbes, but I don’t think it would compromise him personally, and certainly not financially. I think people love his comic strip so much that they just want to participate in it in a greater way. And in our culture that means wearing your favorite cartoon character on a T-shirt. To me, a cartoon strip is merchandise, anyway, in and of itself.
GROTH: Just by virtue of the fact that it’s sold?
GROENING: Yeah. I don’t think that a comic strip is innately superior to a T-shirt.
[It would be difficult to find a statement about comic strips that I disagree with more.]