The syndicates take the strip and sell it to newspapers and split the income with the cartoonists. Syndicates are essentially agents. Now, can you imagine a novelist giving his literary agent the ownership of his characters and all reprint, television, and movie rights before the agent takes the manuscript to a publisher? Obviously, an author would have to be a raving lunatic to agree to such a deal, but virtually every cartoonist does exactly that when a syndicate demands ownership before agreeing to sell the strip to newspapers.
Bill WattersonThe world of a comic strip ought to be a special place with its own logic and life... I don't want the issue of Hobbes's reality settled by a doll manufacturer.
Bill WattersonObviously the great thing about this job is the complete freedom of the schedule. So long as I meet the deadline, they don't care when I work or how I work.
Bill WattersonCalvin: Medically speaking:. That's love?!?..... Hobbes: Heck, that happened to me once, but I figured it was cooties!!
Bill Watterson