At first glance, today’s strip looks like Bill Watterson has taken a page right out of Charles Schulz’s book. Here is Charlie Brown, way back in 1951:PeanutsNevertheless, I don’t think Bill Watterson ever tried to plagiarize another cartoonist’s work. All cartoonists, artists, writers, composers, etc. have the work of others stored away in their memories; and all are influenced by their predecessors, sometimes consciously, but often subconsciously. Nobody lives in a vacuum. (If they did, it would be so dark and dusty inside there, that it would stifle most of their creativity anyway.)Charles Schulz drew this Peanuts strip seven years before Bill Watterson was born, but it was reprinted in Schulz’s first paperback book, which was available in stores when Bill was growing up. So it is possible that Bill had read the Peanuts strip and was remembering it subconsciously when he drew his own version.But it is also possible that Bill Watterson created his own version independently. This sort of thing happens a lot with editorial cartoons, where two cartoonists have the same idea on the same day and clearly weren’t influenced by one another. This particular strip involves a simple idea, based on something that most of us would remember from our early childhoods – struggling with adjusting the temperature of the bath water, with help from a parent. And both Charles Schulz and Bill Watterson had excellent memories of their own childhoods.Those are my original thoughts for today. At least, I think they are. Even though Bill Watterson was not a plagiarist, my personal feeling is that the problem of plagiarism has been widespread ever since at least four score and seven years ago. But don’t quote me on that.
At first glance, today’s strip looks like Bill Watterson has taken a page right out of Charles Schulz’s book. Here is Charlie Brown, way back in 1951:PeanutsNevertheless, I don’t think Bill Watterson ever tried to plagiarize another cartoonist’s work. All cartoonists, artists, writers, composers, etc. have the work of others stored away in their memories; and all are influenced by their predecessors, sometimes consciously, but often subconsciously. Nobody lives in a vacuum. (If they did, it would be so dark and dusty inside there, that it would stifle most of their creativity anyway.)Charles Schulz drew this Peanuts strip seven years before Bill Watterson was born, but it was reprinted in Schulz’s first paperback book, which was available in stores when Bill was growing up. So it is possible that Bill had read the Peanuts strip and was remembering it subconsciously when he drew his own version.But it is also possible that Bill Watterson created his own version independently. This sort of thing happens a lot with editorial cartoons, where two cartoonists have the same idea on the same day and clearly weren’t influenced by one another. This particular strip involves a simple idea, based on something that most of us would remember from our early childhoods – struggling with adjusting the temperature of the bath water, with help from a parent. And both Charles Schulz and Bill Watterson had excellent memories of their own childhoods.Those are my original thoughts for today. At least, I think they are. Even though Bill Watterson was not a plagiarist, my personal feeling is that the problem of plagiarism has been widespread ever since at least four score and seven years ago. But don’t quote me on that.