Verbing weirds language.

The world isn't fair, Calvin."
"I know Dad, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?

Look! A trickle of water running through some dirt! I'd say our afternoon just got booked solid!

I have all these great genes, but they're recessive. That's the problem here.

I'm about to start reading it again, because what good is a story you only want to read once?

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.