tl;dr: Bill Watterson spent six years fighting his syndicate to prevent Calvin and Hobbes from being licensed into merchandise, plush toys, or animated adaptations, viewing artistic integrity as inseparable from craft. He won that battle, secured two unprecedented sabbaticals, and forced newspapers to accept a non-standard Sunday strip format—but the cumulative creative toll led him to end the strip in 1995 after just ten years. Watterson has since maintained near-total silence about the work, giving only a handful of interviews and refusing to engage with fans about the comic.