If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, shouldn’t those who practise it be known as “flattery-cats”?

     Well, I guess the fact that you can see Sparky and Count Boguslav Boguslavsky having this discussion on narratological verisimilitude means that we haven’t been shut down yet. Those of you who follow this blog—I have it on good authority that our regular readership has grown in recent months by 50%, so this goes out to all three of you—anyway, you’ll have seen that, in his latest naïve and misguided attempt at humour, Mr. Cousins uploaded an old, unpublishable cartoon of his, which bore a distinct resemblance to something you’d see in Calvin and Hobbes:

     Before we touch off an internet firestorm of the kind the fellow who draws The Oatmeal starts whenever he gets out of the wrong side of bed, we wish to offer an abject and cowardly third-party apology to all those who hold Calvin and Hobbes near and dear, especially to all those who hold its intellectual property rights near and dear, and even more especially in this respect to its creator, Bill Watterson. Mr. Watterson is justifiably protective of his legacy…although not so much so that people (if Sparky is enough of a representative sample to base that assumption on, and of course he isn’t) don’t get him confused with another famous person with a similar name:

      Now that we know which Wat’s what, we want to stress that our mea culpa (“nostra culpa”, for you Latin majors) doesn’t really have anything to do with the originality of the material in question. There are only so many jokes out there, so it’s not when you do them, but how well. The trouble is that Bill Watterson was the Michelangelo of snowman sight gags, so they almost qualify as his personal trademark. What we’re doing, then, is grovelling out of self-interest, since Watterson’s attitude towards the authorized use of all things Calvin and Hobbes has less to do with the letters “TM” than the letters “OCD”. Plus, his father was a patent lawyer, so copyright statutes may have figured in young Bill’s bedtime reading.  

(Ya brot this kinda ribbin’ on yerself, Billy-o. All ya hadda do was license a lousy t-shirt er coffee mug, like Gary Larson, and ya’d have nipp’d all them obseen knock-offs in th’ bud. It ain’t a question’a who owns whut an’ gets ta do whut wit’ it, itza question’a nobuddy likes a spoilsport. –Sparky.) 

    Er, yes, well…no matter what’s at issue as far as Sparky’s razor-sharp legal mind is concerned, I will hedge our kowtowing with the caveat that the idea of pairing a boy with an anthropomorphic stuffed tiger is hardly anything new…

     Maybe this is why Mr. Watterson has been laying low all these years. Conspiracy theorists whisper in darkened corners about a secret “cease and desist” order delivered to him by hired muscle for the House of Mouse.

     As with so many other things in this confusing world of ours, the appropriateness of intellectual property appropriation is in the eye of the beholder.

     This could make backstage at the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony a very interesting place to be.  

Uncle Fun