Peanuts

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Image:CharlieBrown.jpg Peanuts was a syndicated daily comic strip written and drawn by American cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, which ran from 2 October 1950 to 13 February 2000. The strip was one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium. At its peak Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 40 languages. It helped to cement the four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United States. Reprints of the strip are still syndicated and run in many newspapers.

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Charles M. Schulz

For details, see the main Charles M. Schulz article.

Born 26 November 1922 in Minneapolis, Minnesota and raised in St Paul, Minnesota, Schulz lived and worked for over 30 years in Santa Rosa, California (Sonoma County). Prior to moving to Santa Rosa, Schulz had had a studio in Sebastopol, California, but it was destroyed by fire in 1966. The Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa celebrates his life's work and art of cartooning. In 2000, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors renamed the "Charles M. Schulz Airport - Sonoma County Airport" in his honor. The airport's amusing logo features Snoopy in goggles and scarf, taking to the skies on top of his red doghouse. A bronze statue of Charlie Brown and Snoopy stands in Depot Park in downtown Santa Rosa..

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History

Peanuts had its origin in Li'l Folks, a weekly panel comic that appeared in Schulz's hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from 1947 to 1949. When his work was picked up by United Features Syndicate, they decided to go for the new comic strip he had been working on. This strip was somewhat similar to the panel comic, but it had a cast of characters, rather than different nameless little folk for each page. Maybe the name would have been the same, though, had it been less close to the names of two other comics of the time: Al Capp's Li'l Abner and a now-forgotten strip entitled Little Folks. To avoid confusion the syndicate settled on the name "Peanuts", a title Schulz himself disliked. 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".

The strip soon got an obvious main character, which Schulz would rather have named the strip after: "Good Ol' Charlie Brown", a character informed by some of the painful experiences of Schulz's formative years. In fact, the periodic collections of the strips in paperback book form typically had either "Charlie Brown" or "Snoopy" in the title, not "Peanuts"; and the Sunday panels eventually typically read, "Peanuts, featuring Good Ol' Charlie Brown".

Peanuts premiered on October 2, 1950 in seven newspapers nationwide: The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Minneapolis Tribune, The Allentown Call-Chronicle, The Bethlehem Globe-Times, The Denver Post and The Seattle Times. At first there was only a daily strip. The first Sunday strip appeared January 6 1952, in the half page format, which was the only complete format for the entire life of the Sunday strip. Most readers did not know that they often missed one or more panels, so their newspaper could save space.

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 an American football. In fact, most of the kids were initially fairly round-headed. Charlie Brown was unique in appearing to have virtually no hair. Though this is often interpreted as him being bald, Charles Schulz explained that he saw Charlie Brown as having hair that was so light, and cut so short, that it wasn't seen very well. Schulz described his style as "The Toothpick School," i.e., as though drawn with a toothpick.

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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 is Franklin's presence in a racially-integrated school and neighborhood. As illustrated right, 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. Schulz supported such interpretation but ultimately attempted not to align himself with it. Although he was a Christian who once taught Bible classes, and whose Linus character routinely quoted scripture, Schulz referred to himself more than once as a secular humanist.

Schulz could throw barbs at any number of topics when he chose, though. Over the years he tackled everything from the Vietnam War to school dress codes to the "new math". One of his most prescient sequences came in 1963 when he added a little boy named "5" to the cast, whose sisters were named "3" and "4", and whose father had changed the family surname to their ZIP Code to protest the way numbers were taking over people's identities. 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.

Peanuts probably reached its peak in American pop-culture awareness between 1965 and 1980; this period was the heyday of the daily strip, and there were numerous animated specials and book collections. During the 1980s some other strips surpassed Peanuts in popularity, most notably Doonesbury, Garfield, The Far Side, Bloom County, and Calvin and Hobbes, and the number of Peanuts books on store shelves dwindled. However, Schulz still had one of the highest circulations in daily newspapers, and because of licensing and marketing, Peanuts brought Charles Schulz a large income.

The daily Peanuts strips were formatted in a four-panel "space saving" format beginning in the 1950s, with a few very rare 8 panel strips, that still fit into the four panel mold. In 1975, the panel format was shortened slightly horizontally, and shortly after the lettering became larger to accommodate the shrinking format. In 1988, Schulz abandoned this strict format and started using the entire length of the strip, in part to combat the dwindling size of the comics page, and also to experiment. Most daily Peanuts strips in the 90s were three panels.

Schulz continued the strip for 50 years, with no assistants, even in the lettering and coloring process. Starting in the 1980s his artistic line started to shake. This became more noticeable in the 1990s, along with his format change; depending on one's view, the art deteriorated at this point, especially where character expression was concerned, however this is highly subjective and difficult to estimate.

Schulz continued the strip until he was unable to, due to health reasons. He died the night before the final strip was published in newspapers. The final daily original Peanuts comic strip was published on January 3, 2000. The final original Sunday strip was published in newspapers a day after Schulz's death on February 12. Following its finish, many newspapers began reprinting older strips under the title Classic Peanuts.

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Cast

Peanuts did not have a lead character from the onset. Its initial cast was small, featuring only Charlie Brown, Shermy, Patty (not to be confused with Peppermint Patty), and a beagle, Snoopy. The strip soon began to focus on Charlie Brown, though. Charlie Brown's 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 against 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 involved romantic attractions between Charlie Brown and Patty or Violet, the next major character added to the strip.

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As the years went by, Shermy and Patty appeared less often and were demoted to supporting roles, 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, who began as a more or less typical dog, soon started to verbalize his thoughts via thought bubbles; eventually he adopted other human characteristics such as walking on his hind legs, reading books, using a typewriter, and participating in sports.

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 a bestselling suspense novelist, to the bemusement and consternation of the children who wonder what he is doing but also occasionally participate. Snoopy eventually took on more than 150 distinct personas over the course of the strip, from "Joe Cool" to Mickey Mouse.

Schulz continued to introduce new characters into the strip, particularly including a tomboyish, freckle-faced, shorts-and-sandals-wearing girl named Patricia Reichardt, better known as "Peppermint Patty". "Peppermint" 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, who calls Peppermint Patty "Sir" and Charlie Brown "Charles". (Most other characters call him "Charlie Brown" at all times, except for Eudora, who also calls him "Charles"; Charlie Brown's sister Sally, who usually calls him "big brother"; and a minor character named Peggy Jean in the early 1990s, who called him "Brownie Charles".) Some have speculated that Peppermint Patty and Marcie are portrayals of lesbians, but this may well be idle fantasy, especially considering both girls' admitted affection for Charlie Brown. Marcie resembles, and acts like, a younger version of Doonesbury's Honey Huan. However, from occasional references within the strip, it's clear she was modeled on Billie Jean King.

Other notable characters include Charlie Brown's younger sister Sally, who was fixated on Linus; Snoopy's friend Woodstock the bird as well as a few other birds such as Conrad, Oliver, Bill and Harriet, all of whom spoke entirely in vertical lines; Pig-Pen, the perpetually dirty boy who could raise a cloud of dust on a clean sidewalk or in a snowstorm; and Spike, Snoopy's desert-dwelling brother from Needles, California, who was apparently named for Schulz's own childhood dog.

After some early anomalies, adult figures never again appeared in the strip. Peanuts had several other recurring characters who were similarly absent from view. Some, such as the Great Pumpkin or the Red Baron, may or may not have been figments of the cast's imaginations. Others, such as the Little Red-Haired Girl (Charlie Brown's perennial dream girl), Joe Shlabotnik (Charlie Brown's baseball hero), World War II (the vicious cat who lives next door to Snoopy), and Charlie Brown's unnamed pen pal, were real. Schulz added some additional fantastic elements, sometimes imbuing inanimate objects with sparks of life. Charlie Brown's nemesis, the Kite-Eating Tree, is one example. Sally Brown's school building, that expressed thoughts and feelings about the students (and the general business of being a brick building), is another. Linus' famous "security blanket" also displayed occasional signs of anthropomorphism.

At one point, a character named Charlotte Braun entered the cast. She resembled a female Charlie Brown in appearance but was louder and ruder than Lucy, and quickly proved to be unpopular. She did not appear in more than ten strips.

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Ages of the Peanuts characters

The Peanuts characters generally do not age, or age very slowly, except in the case of infant characters who catch up to the rest of the cast, then stop. Rerun is unique in that he stopped aging in kindergarten. More typically, Linus was born in the first couple of years of the strip's run. He ages from infancy to right around 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 when he is about a year or so younger than Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown himself was four when the strip began, and gradually aged over the next two decades until he settled in as an eight year old (after which he is consistently referred to as eight when any age is given).

Over the years the birthdates of a few characters were mentioned.

These dates are established in the canon:

The canon provides conflicting dates for these characters:


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Books

Image:Completepeanutsvol15052.jpg Image:Peanutsbacktoschool.jpg 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 the entire run of the strip, almost 18,000 cartoons, published chronologically in book form. 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.

  • The entire run of Peanuts, covering nearly 50 years of comic strips, will be reprinted in Fantagraphics Books' The Complete Peanuts, a 25-volume set to come out over a 12-year period, two volumes per year. The final volume is expected to be published in 2016.
    • (April 2004) The Complete Peanuts: 1950 to 1952. ISBN 156097589X
    • (October 2004) The Complete Peanuts: 1953 to 1954. ISBN 1560976144
    • (October 2004) The Complete Peanuts: 1950 to 1954 Box Set. ISBN 1560976322
    • (April 2005) The Complete Peanuts: 1955 to 1956. ISBN 1560976470
    • (October 2005) The Complete Peanuts: 1957 to 1958. ISBN 1560976705
    • (October 2005) The Complete Peanuts: 1955 to 1958 Box Set. ISBN 156097687X
    • (scheduled for April 2006) The Complete Peanuts: 1959 to 1960. ISBN 1560976713
    • (scheduled for October 2006) The Complete Peanuts: 1961 to 1962. ISBN 1560976721
    • (scheduled for October 2006) The Complete Peanuts: 1959 to 1962 Box Set. ISBN
    • (scheduled for May 2007) The Complete Peanuts: 1963 to 1964.
    • (scheduled for October 2007) The Complete Peanuts: 1965 to 1966.
    • (scheduled for October 2007) The Complete Peanuts: 1963 to 1966 Box Set. ISBN

Each of the Fantagraphics books contains an index by subject for the comics reprinted within its volume. This allows users to find, for example, all strips containing Linus. Each volume features a picture of a single cast member on the front cover. These pictures generally look like mugshots. Another character appears on the book's spine.

Each of the volumes has an introduction written by a famous person. Authors and famous people who have created intros so far include Walter Cronkite, Garrison Keillor, Matt Groening, Jonathan Franzen, Whoopi Goldberg and Garry Trudeau.

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Television, film, and theater

In addition to the strip and numerous books, the Peanuts characters have appeared in animated form on television numerous times. This started when the Ford Motor Company licensed the characters in 1961 for a series of black and white commercials for the Ford Falcon. The ads were animated by Bill Melendez for Playhouse Pictures, a cartoon studio that had Ford as a client. Schulz and Melendez became friends, and when producer Lee Mendelson decided to make a two-minute animated sequence for a TV documentary called A Boy Named Charlie Brown in 1963, he brought on Melendez for the project. Before the documentary was completed, the three of them (with help from their sponsor, the Coca-Cola Company) produced their first half-hour animated special, the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning A Charlie Brown Christmas, which was first aired on the CBS network in 1965.

The animated version of Peanuts differs in some aspects from the strip. In the strip, adult voices are seldom heard, and conversations are usually only depicted from the children's end. To translate this aspect to the animated medium, Melendez famously used the sound of a modified trombone to simulate adult "voices". A more significant deviation from the strip was the treatment of Snoopy. In the strip, the dog's thoughts are verbalized in speech balloons; in animation, he is typically silent, his thoughts communicated through growls, laughs, and pantomime, or by having human characters verbalizing his thoughts for him. These treatments have both been abandoned temporarily in the past; they experimented with teacher dialog in She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown, and in the animated adaptations of the plays, Snoopy's thoughts were conveyed in voiceover. The elimination of Snoopy's "voice" is probably the most controversial aspect of the adaptations, but Schulz apparently approved of the treatment.

The success of A Charlie Brown Christmas was the impetus for CBS to air many more prime-time Peanuts specials over the years, beginning with It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Charlie Brown's All-Stars in 1966. In total, more than thirty animated specials were produced. Until his death in 1976, jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi composed highly acclaimed musical scores for the specials; in particular, the piece "Linus and Lucy" which has become popularly known as the signature theme song of the Peanuts franchise.

In addition to Coca-Cola, other companies that sponsored Peanuts specials over the years included Dolly Madison cakes, Kellogg's, McDonald's, Peter Paul-Cadbury candy bars, General Mills, and Nabisco.

Schulz, Mendelson, and Melendez also collaborated on four theatrical feature films starring the characters, the first of which was A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969). Most of these made use of material from Schulz's strips, which were then adapted, although in other cases plots were developed around areas where there were minimal strips to reference. Such was also the case with The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, a Saturday-morning TV series which debuted on CBS in 1983 and lasted for three seasons.

By the late-1980s, the specials' popularity had begun to wane, and CBS had sometimes rejected a few specials. An eight-episode TV miniseries called This is America, Charlie Brown, for instance, was released during a writer's strike. Eventually, the last Peanuts specials were released direct-to-video, and no new ones were created until after the year 2000 when ABC got the rights to the three fall holiday specials. The Nickelodeon cable network re-aired the bulk of the specials, as well as The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, for a time in the late 1990s under the umbrella title You're On Nickelodeon, Charlie Brown. Many of the specials and feature films have also been released on various home video formats over the years. After Schulz died many of the newer specials were based on comic strips Schulz had written.

The Peanuts characters even found their way to the live stage, appearing in the musicals You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Snoopy!!! — The Musical. 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. It was also adapted for television twice, as a live-action NBC special and an animated CBS special.

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Feature films

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Animated TV specials

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Other media

The Peanuts characters are currently spokespeople in print and television advertisements for the MetLife insurance company. Over the years, they have also appeared in ads for Dolly Madison snack cakes, Butternut Bread, Friendly's restaurants, Cheerios breakfast cereal, and Ford automobiles. The characters were licensed for use as atmosphere for the national Cedar Fair theme park chain as well as the Camp Snoopy attractions in Minnesota and Southern California. Pig-Pen appeared in a memorable spot for Regina Vacuum Cleaners.

"Snoopy on Ice", a live Ice Capades-style show aimed primarily at young children, has had many touring productions over the years. A giant helium Snoopy balloon has long been a feature in the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.

The characters have been featured on Hallmark Cards since 1960, and can be found adorning clothing, figurines, plush dolls, flags, balloons, posters, Christmas ornaments, and countless other bits of licensed merchandise.

Peanuts has also been involved with NASCAR. In 2000, Jeff Gordon drove his #24 Chevrolet with a Snoopy-themed motif at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Two years later, Tony Stewart drove a #20 Great Pumpkin motif scheme for two races. The first, at Bristol Motor Speedway, featured a black car with Linus sitting in a pumpkin field. Later, at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Tony drove an orange car featuring the Peanuts characters trick-or-treating. Most recently, Bill Elliott drove a #6 Dodge with an A Charlie Brown Christmas scheme. That car ran at the 2005 NASCAR BUSCH Series race at Memphis Motorsports Park.


In the LT Comics series Captain Amazing, Principal Charles Brown (also called Mr. Brown) is the principal at Amazingville High. He is much older than he was in the Peanuts strip but has the same hair.

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Legacy, Influence and Critical Acclaim

Image:PeanutsTimeMagazine.jpg Peanuts is often regarded as one of the most influential and well-written comic strips of all time. Schulz received the National Cartoonist Society Humor Comic Strip Award, for Peanuts in 1962, the Elzie Segar Award in 1980, the Reuben Award in 1955 and 1964, and the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999. A Charlie Brown Christmas won a Peabody Award and an Emmy; Peanuts cartoon specials have received a total of 2 Peabody Awards and 4 [[Emmy Awards}Emmys]]. For his work on the strip, Charles Schulz is credited with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a place in the the William Randolph Hearst Cartoon Hall of Fame. Peanuts was featured on the cover of Time Magazine on April 9, 1965.

In 1999, a jury of comics scholars and critics voted Peanuts to be the second-greatest comic strip of the 20th century — second only to George Herriman's Krazy Kat, a verdict Schulz himself cheerfully endorsed. A poll in 2002 found Peanuts to be one of the most recognizable cartoon properties in the world, recognized by 94 percent of the total U.S. consumer market and a close second only to Mickey Mouse (96 percent), and higher than other familiar cartoon properties like Spider-Man (75 percent) or the Simpsons (87 percent). In TV Guide's "Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All-Time" list, Charlie Brown and Snoopy ranked #8.

Cartoon tributes have appeared in other comic strips since Schulz's death in 2000. In May of that year, many cartoonists included a reference to Peanuts in their own strips. Originally planned as a tribute to Schulz's retirement, after his death that February it became a tribute to his life and career. Similarly, on 30 October 2005, several comic strips again included references to Peanuts, and specifically the It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown television special.

A series of statues were erected in St. Paul, Minnesota (Schulz's hometown) which represented a different character each year. The "Peanuts on Parade" tribute began in 2001 with Snoopy statues, followed by Charlie Brown in 2002, Lucy in 2003, Linus in 2004, and Snoopy and Woodstock lying on top of Snoopy's doghouse in 2005.

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See also

  • The Peanuts Characters category, for a list of Peanuts characters who have their own articles.
  • The Apollo 10 Lunar module was nicknamed "Snoopy" and the command module "Charlie Brown".
  • Numerous parodies of the Peanuts gang have appeared, one of the most significant ones being a miniseries in an anthology comic called Deep Fried, with a slightly extended 'director's edition' one shot comic book called Weapon Brown.
  • "Linus and Lucy", the most famous piece of music from the series of TV specials

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External links

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