On October 2, 1950, Charles Schulz published the first Peanuts comic strip.
Could there possibly be a more perfect opening? The four panel timing – the three panel build-up and the final panel pay-off – is comics at their essence. Over the next nearly 50 years the same dogged cheerfulness juxtaposed with cruel reality would play out in countless ways as Peanuts became a beloved institution. No great artist ever surpassed Charles Schulz in his refusal to do the thing everyone wanted. Charlie Brown never kicked the football. We never saw the little Red Haired Girl. Schulz was interested in the eternal struggle, not the radiant victory.
I have looked at this comic strip hundreds of times (I used to have a copy over my desk at one of my jobs) but it never fails to give me joy.
This comic strip is so perfect that somehow one wishes to somehow expand the perfection, to dive into it like a dolphin. While Karasik and Newgarden have yet to do another book length study of a single strip, there is a way to somehow be drawn IN to the world of this masterpiece.
Here Comes Charlie Brown! A Peanuts Pop-Up came out last year from Abrams. Designed by comics historian Gene Kannenberg, Jr., it contains a scant 12 pages. Each panel of the strip is presented as a pop-up crafted from thick cardboard, allowing us to see inside it and around it. The finished volume is sturdy and feels nice to hold. A copy sits near my desk right now and gives me joy whenever I look at it. It would make a fine present for anyone who likes comics, or pop-ups or both.
Charles Schulz died on February 12, 2000, after a few months of severely declining health. A final Peanuts comics strip, saying good-bye, had been scheduled to run the very next day Sunday, February 13. Schulz’s timing, as always was impeccable.
(CBR has a run down of the final months of Peanuts, written many years before its current state.)
A rumor circulated after Schulz died that Donna Mae Wold, the real life inspiration for the Little Red Haired Girl, had died soon after. Wikipedia tells us that she actually died on August 8, 2016. Perhaps the rumor started because people wanted to have that closure – soulmates who were never together in life leaving the world together. It’s a closure that I think Schulz himself would have rejected. He knew that life is full of regrets and disappointments, missed connections and cold rejections, but we find joy where we can. 75 years later, Peanuts continues to give us joy.
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