Jump to navigation Jump to search Comic strip by Charles M. This article is about the comic strip. For the cacahuates legume, see Peanut.
The characters from Peanuts holding aloft Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Peanuts focuses entirely on a social circle of young children, where adults exist but are never seen and rarely heard. The main character, Charlie Brown, is meek, nervous, and lacks self-confidence. Peanuts was originally sold under the title of Li’l Folks, but that had been used before, so they said we have to think of another title. I couldn’t think of one and somebody at United Features came up with the miserable title Peanuts, which I hate and have always hated. It has no dignity and it’s not descriptive.
Peanuts had its origin in Li’l Folks, a weekly panel cartoon that appeared in Schulz’s hometown newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from 1947 to 1950. Elementary details of the cartoon shared similarities to Peanuts. The name “Charlie Brown” was first used there. He visited the syndicate in New York City and presented a package of new comic strips he had worked on, rather than the panel cartoons he submitted. UFS found they preferred the comic strip.
Schulz hated the title Peanuts, which remained a source of irritation to him throughout his life. He accused the production manager at UFS of not having even seen the comic strip before giving it a title, and said that the title would only make sense if there was a character named “Peanuts”. The first strip from October 2, 1950. Schulz decided to produce all aspects of the strip himself from the script to the finished art and lettering. Schulz did, however, hire help to produce the comic book adaptations of Peanuts.
Thus, the strip was able to be presented with a unified tone, and Schulz was able to employ a minimalistic style. While the strip in its early years resembles its later form, there are significant differences. The art was cleaner, sleeker, and 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 or rugby football. Most of the kids were initially fairly round-headed.
The 1960s is generally considered to be the “golden age” for Peanuts. Schulz threw satirical barbs at any number of topics when he chose. His child and animal characters satirized the adult world. Over the years he tackled everything from the Vietnam War to school dress codes to “New Math. One strip on May 20, 1962, even had an icon that stated “Defend Freedom, Buy US Savings Bonds.
Peanuts touched on religious themes on many occasions, especially during the 1960s. During the week of July 29, 1968, Schulz debuted the African-American character Franklin to the strip, at the urging of white Los Angeles schoolteacher Harriet Glickman. Though Schulz feared that adding a black character would be seen as patronizing to the African-American community, Glickman convinced him that the addition of Black characters could help normalize the idea of friendships between children of different ethnicities. In 1975, the panel format was shortened slightly horizontally, and shortly thereafter the lettering became larger to compensate. Previously, the daily Peanuts strips were formatted in a four-panel “space saving” format beginning in the 1950s, with a few very rare eight-panel strips, that still fit into the four-panel mold. Schulz drew the strip for nearly 50 years, with no assistants, even in the lettering and coloring process. In the late 1970s, during Schulz’s negotiations with United Feature Syndicate over a new contract, syndicate president William C.
Payette hired superhero comic artist Al Plastino to draw a backlog of Peanuts strips to hold in reserve in case Schulz left the strip. In the 1980s and the 1990s, the strip remained the most popular comic in history, even though other comics, such as Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes, rivaled Peanuts in popularity. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Final Sunday strip, which came out February 13, 2000: a day after the death of Charles M. The final daily original Peanuts comic strip was published on Monday, January 3, 2000. The strip contained a note to the readers of the strip from Schulz and a drawing of Snoopy, with his trusty typewriter, sitting atop his doghouse deep in thought.
Although Schulz did not draw any daily strips that ran past January 3, he had drawn five Sunday strips that had yet to run. On February 13, 2000, the day after Schulz’s death, the last-ever new Peanuts strip ran in papers. Three panels long, it begins with Charlie Brown answering the phone with someone on the other end presumably asking for Snoopy. Charlie Brown responds with “No, I think he’s writing. The next panel shows Snoopy sitting at his typewriter with the opening to a letter addressed to “Dear Friends”.