Comments on: You’re Going Sadly Unrecognized In Certain Quarters, Charlie Brown

By: XIII

XIII — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:17:44 +0000

So many just don’t get it. They don’t have to find it funny, but one has to at least acknowledge Schultz’s strips inspired so many other cartoonists. It’s clearly there, if one looks. YOU ARE PREACHING THE GOSPEL ON THIS ONE. Thanks

By: JoAnne

JoAnne — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:57:07 +0000

I remember laughing until I couldn’t breathe over this early strip:

Linus reaches under a table and bumps his head. He writhes in pain; he screams and holds his head. Then Lucy arrives and asks one question after another: are you bleeding? Do you need a doctor? Do you want to go the hospital? What happened? Finally, Linus screams at her, “I bumped my head.” Lucy responds, “What a crab!”

By: Jack Norris (Ed)

Jack Norris (Ed) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:52:47 +0000

Well, I will say this much: while I agree that his peak lasted a lot longer than some of the doubters claim, the syndicate and his estate put me off in choosing to reprint starting from the milder, later-peak stuff (early 70s on), deliberately skipping over the period of increased weirdness of the mid (or so) 60s (Snoopy’s helicopter ears, anyone?). But that’s just because they’re snubbing my favourite Peanuts era.
(Followed by the super early everyone-looks-different era and lastly the currently being rerun 70s stuff that was coming out when I was a kid. For some reason I developed more affection for the stuff I read in paperbacks when I was home sick from school over the stuff appearing new in the paper.)

By: essrog

essrog — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:03:26 +0000

Something else: I just remembered that at a certain point Peanuts just seemed too preoccupied with Snoopy-is-cute gags … not a fan of that aspect of Peanuts, even if it did appeal to a lot of people

By: essrog

essrog — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:32:48 +0000

This is post makes a good case for Peanuts but not necessarily the strongest one. It’s true that the strip goes above and beyond the well-worn medium in its unexpected detours into philosophy and heartbreak, but it’s not always this heavy and eggheaded (sorry! I don’t mean that in a completely negative way).

For me some of the funniest Peanuts moments are about how children can be so cruel … Great examples in Martin’s page above, thanks for posting.

By: Tom Spurgeon

Tom Spurgeon — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:24:13 +0000

I really like that second drawing of Snoopy lying on Charlie Brown’s bed.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:12:40 +0000

bentarc- he noticed. He just didn’t know how to deal with it.

I remember one strip where Patty calls him and asks if he still loves her, the Marcie has Patty ask the same thing, then they show him, “I’m sorry, I’m not here right now, I’ve suddenly become a recording.”

By: bentarc

bentarc — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:04:15 +0000

I have to say my favorite parts of Peanuts were the fact that Patty had an inexplicably huge crush on Charlie Brown… and he never noticed.

And when he finally lost his shit at the Kite-Eating Tree and took a bite out of it–and then it turned out it was an endangered species and the EPA made him apologize to it. Not Schultz’s finest hour, but my personal favorite.

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:19:42 +0000

I’ve put together a page of some of my favorite Peanuts strips here (in chronological order):
http://www.rebas.se/temp/peanuts.html

By: Colin

Colin — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:12:39 +0000

I suppose I sort of come at the issue differently, but the fact that Peanuts often seemed out of place on the comics page always struck me as reflecting poorly on the comics page, rather than the reverse.

By: Rod McKie

Rod McKie — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:42:27 +0000

I don’t know why we don’t have a similar term to Mangaka, but we should and it would fit Schulz perfectly. Peanuts is the perfect comic strip, and whilst a strip like Calvin and Hobbes is ‘the Peanuts strip’ for that generation, it does not come close, as history will show, to capuring the iconic status of Schulz’s masterwork.

A repeated motif in Peanuts is Charlie Brown’s unshakeable belief in the goodness of the human race. Time after time he truely believes that Lucy will hold that ball in place, and time after time she pulls it away – and yet he never gives up believeing that she will change. It is the single greatest encapsulation of the doctrine of the triumph of hope over experiece in any literature. Peanuts should break your heart, or you don’t have one.

By: zippy8

zippy8 — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:25:38 +0000

Isn’t 1) just a subset of 2) ?

Mike.

By: RogerDNA

RogerDNA — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:42:03 +0000

Peanuts is subversive, melancholy, and funny in the ‘if you didn’t laugh at the world, you’d cry” vein that Schultz mined so well. Like many posting here, I remember laughing at Peanuts as a kid, or more accurately, feeling happy while reading along, but as an adult, feeling a little melancholy myself that I can’t quite recapture that same feeling now. This feeling is one of the experiences Schultz captured so well in Peanuts—a part of childhood which naturally “goes away” as we get older. Some people ignore that loss, others glaze over it with nostalgia, some forget it, but Schultz values the loss. Part of Schultz’ greatness is that he captured childlike wonder within an enduring and universal framework of sadness, joy, guilt, love, anger, and happiness, wrapped in a deceptively simple package that appealed to people, not just kids. It’s true that Bill Watterson captured the whimsy of strips like Peanuts in a way which appealed to a new generation, maybe better, maybe not, than others, but Schultz had a way of expressing the full range of human emotion and feelings in the dialog of children which rarely sounded forced or false.

While we are in the mood to think and talk about great cartoonists that laid the ground work for those that are popular today, we must remember another great Charles, Charles Addams, whose twisted panels, for a time, became a beloved part of Americana. Most people only know him from The Addams Family movies and television, but his cartoon collections are well worth buying, and much more macabre and subversive than his more “popular” work. Larson, Tim Burton, and many others owe and acknowledge a great debt to his work.

By: Katherine Farmar

Katherine Farmar — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 01:32:36 +0000

Lately I've felt kind of jaded about Peanuts. I loved it as a kid, but the deluxe collections and everybody -- and I do mean everybody -- talking about how AMAZING it is have been turning me off it lately. Pure Hype Aversion: nothing to do with the work in itself, just a desire to quiet the shrieking voices in my ear saying "Love this or be deficient as a human being!" I was reluctant to click on the "read more" link, but I'm glad I did. I'm glad to be reminded of why I loved the strip so much when I was younger. I don't want to join the chorus of "omg BEST EVAR" because... well, I don't like making comparisons between artworks like that. I've said it before and I'll say it again: art's not a horse race. "Best" is meaningless. But "good" -- hell, "great"? Yeah, I can join that chorus.

By: Ken B

Ken B — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:48:06 +0000

A lot has been said, two things I want to add.

1) Schultz’s artwork is deceptively simple. Try to draw Charlie Brown, it’s a lot harder than it looks.

2) No Schultz means no Kovalic. This would be a big hit to the geek community.