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Peanuts

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This article is about Peanuts, the comic strip by Charles M. Schulz. There is a separate article about the peanut, the edible nut.
Peanuts book cover

Peanuts is a syndicated comic strip written and drawn by American cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. The strip originally ran from October 2, 1950 to February 13, 2000. The strip is one of the most popular in the history of the medium, and helped establish the four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United States.

History

Peanuts had its origin in Li'l Folks, a weekly comic strip that appeared in Schulz's hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from 1947 to 1950. When the strip was picked up by a syndicate, however, the name had to be changed to avoid confusion with two other comics of the time: Al Capp's Li'l Abner and a now-forgotten strip entitled Little Folks. The syndicate settled on the name "Peanuts," a title Schulz himself was not particularly fond of. In a 1987 interview, Schulz said "It's totally ridiculous, has no meaning, is simply confusing, and has no dignity - and I think my humor has dignity." Schulz would rather have named the strip after its main character, "Good Ol' Charlie Brown", a character informed by some of the painful experiences of Schulz's formative years.

The strip's early years resembled that which it finally developed into, but with significant differences. The art was cleaner and sleeker, though simpler, with thicker lines and short, squat characters; for example, in these early strips, Charlie Brown's famous round head is closer to the shape of a football.

The initial cast was small, featuring only Charlie Brown, his beagle Snoopy, Shermy, and Patty (no relationship to the later character Peppermint Patty). From the start, the strip focused on Charlie Brown. His main characteristic is his self-defeating stubbornness: he can never win a ballgame, but continues playing baseball. He can never fly a kite successfully, but continues trying to fly his kite. Others see this as the character's admirable determined persistence to try his best in the face of all odds. Though his inferiority complex was evident from the start, in the earliest strips he also got in his own licks when socially sparring with Patty and Shermy. Some early strips also involves romantic attractions between Charlie Brown and Patty or Violet, the next major character added to the strip.

Over the next few years, Shermy and Patty appeared less often, while new major characters were introduced. Schroeder, Lucy van Pelt, and her brother Linus debuted as very young children--Schroeder and Linus both in diapers and pre-verbal. Snoopy began as a more or less typical dog who lacked thought balloons.

The Peanuts characters generally do not age, except in the case of infant characters who catch up to the rest of the cast, then stop. Linus, for example, is born in the first couple of years of the strip's run. He ages from infancy to Charlie Brown's age over the course of the first ten years, during which we see him learn to walk and talk with the help of Lucy and Charlie Brown. Linus then stops aging, and becomes Charlie Brown's classmate in third grade and his best friend.

In the 1960s, the strip began to focus more on Snoopy. Many of the strips from this point revolve around Snoopy's active fantasy life, in which he imagined himself to be (most famously) a World War I flying ace or an ice hockey star, to the amusement and consternation of the children who wonder what he is doing but also occasionally participate.

Schulz continued to introduce new characters into the strip, particularly including a girl named Patricia Reichardt, better known as Peppermint Patty. Patty is an assertive, athletic, but rather obtuse girl who shakes up Charlie Brown's world by calling him "Chuck," flirting with him, and giving him compliments he's not so sure he deserves. She also brings in a new group of friends, including the strip's first black character, Franklin, and Peppermint Patty's bookish sidekick Marcie Johnson, who calls Patty "Sir" and Charlie Brown "Charles" (all other characters call him "Charlie Brown" at all times). Some have speculated that Peppermint Patty and Marcie are portrayals of lesbians, but this may well be idle fantasy, especially considering the girls' mutual affection for Charlie Brown. Marcie resembles—and acts like—a younger version of Doonesbury's Honey Huan.

Other notable characters include Charlie Brown's younger sister Sally, who was fixated on Linus; Snoopy's friend Woodstock the bird, who spoke entirely in apostrophes; Rerun, the little brother of Lucy and Linus; and Spike, Snoopy's desert-dwelling brother.

Peanuts is remarkable for its deft social commentary, especially compared with other strips appearing in the 1950s and early 1960s. Schulz did not explicitly address racial and gender equality issues so much as he assumed them to be self-evident in the first place. Peppermint Patty's athletic skill and self-confidence is simply taken for granted, for example. As illustrated above, Robert L. Short wrote several books in which he claimed he detected theological messages in the strips. Additionally, he used them as illustrations during his lecturing about the gospel. This was verified by Schulz in interviews, who was a lifelong and devout Christian.

However, Schulz could throw some barbs when he chose. One memorable sequence featured a little boy named "5," whose sisters were named "3" and "4," and whose father had changed the family surname to their ZIP code as a protest. Another sequence lampooned Little Leagues and "organized" play, when all the neighborhood kids join snowman-building leagues and criticize Charlie Brown when he insists on building his own snowmen without leagues or coaches.

However, the story Charles Schulz was most proud of was in the early 1970s, when Charlie Brown came down with a strange ailment that made him see every round and spherical object as a baseball, like the sun and ice cream scoops. This condition soon worsens to the point where he develops a strange rash on his head that precisely resembles the stitching pattern of a baseball. Charlie Brown is sent to summer camp to recuperate, wearing a paper grocery bag on his head at all times. The other kids dub him "Mr. Sack," treat him with unaccustomed respect and even elect him camp president. Eventually, Charlie believes his condition is easing and goes out to see the sunrise hoping not to see it as a baseball. As it turns out, he does not, but what he does see indicates, to his frustration, that his condition has simply become even stranger than before.

The final original Peanuts comic strip was finished on January 3, 2000 and published in newspapers a day after Schulz died on February 12. Following its finish, many newspapers began reprinting older strips under the title Classic Peanuts.

Books

Peanuts strips have been reprinted in many books over the years. Some represented chronological collections of strips, while others were thematic collections, such as Snoopy's Tennis Book. Some single-story books were produced, such as Snoopy and the Red Baron. In addition, most of the Peanuts television animated specials were adapted into book form.

Charles Schulz always resisted publication of early Peanuts strips, as they did not reflect the characters as he eventually developed them. However, in 1997 he began talks with Fantagraphics Books to have all Peanuts strips published, including every strip from the early years. The first volume in the collection, The Complete Peanuts: 1950 to 1952, was published in April 2004. Peanuts is in a unique situation compared to other comics in that archive quality masters of most strips are still owned by the syndicate. The following books publish much of this previously-unreproduced material.


Television, film, and theatre

Aside from numerous books of or about the comic strips, the Peanuts characters have appeared in animated form on television many times. This started when the Ford Motor Company licensed the Peanuts characters in 1959 for black and white television advertisements for the Ford Falcon. This commercial was animated by Bill Melendez who worked at Playhouse Pictures, a cartoon studio that had Ford as a client. Schulz and Melendez became friends, and when then documentary producer Lee Mendelson decided to make a short film called A Boy Named Charlie Brown, he brought on Melendez to work on the animated sequences. Before this project was completed, the three of them produced their first television special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, first broadcast in 1965 on CBS, which featured the music of Vince Guaraldi. The success of A Charlie Brown Christmas was the impetus for CBS to air a long-running, celebrated series of prime-time Peanuts TV specials over the years, including It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown; It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown, and many others. In total, more than thirty animated specials were produced. These were also memorable for their jazz-inspired and piano-led theme tunes, written by Vince Guaraldi. In particular, the piece, Linus and Lucy has become popularly known as the signature theme song of the Peanuts franchise.

During the early 1980s, Peanuts was adapted to a weekly Saturday morning animated series, entitled The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show. This series failed to gain the acclaim and the audiences of the prime-time specials, and it was cancelled after two seasons.

Schulz and team later collaborated on other television specials and full-length feature films, the first of which was A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1968). (Again, note the absence of the word "Peanuts" in the title.) Most of these made use of material from Schulz's strips, which were then adapted. The Peanuts characters even found their way to the theatre, appearing in the musicals You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Snoopy!!!. You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown was originally an extremely successful off-Broadway musical that ran for four years (1967-1971) in New York City and on tour, with Gary Burghoff as the original Charlie Brown. An updated revival opened on Broadway in 1999.

Filmography

Feature films

Animated TV specials

Peanuts characters

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