Yeah, but he didn’t follow it up with a stump speech like Johnny Hart would have, is my point. He let the strip stand on its own.
The little red-haired girl cartoons are gut-wrenchingly true to some people’s lives. If you have never been madly in love with someone that you knew that you had no chance with, that you couldn’t even manage to have a significant conversation with to find out if that person was remotely interested in you, then may I congratulate you? You have truly had a wonderful life if you’ve never experienced that sort of misery.
Opps! Upon a closer reading, Wikipedia actually claims that Peanuts “reached its peak in American pop-culture awareness” during that period; which is not necessarily the same thing. Rats!
Even before looking at your profile, I knew you were just too young to remember what it was like growing up in the Sixties. Peanuts came along at just the right time to resonate with the insecurities people were feeling about the Cold War, Vietnam, the Sexual Revolution. the Civil Rights Movement-- people were scared by change. Then they saw Charlie Brown, who never caught a break, yet never gave up, no matter how bleak life appeared.
It wasn’t just the gentle humor, it was the sense of identification with a character who shared the same feeling that life was turning upside down, yet found a reason to keep trying.
I think those old strips still evoke those feelings in those of us who are old enough to remember, while they don’t have the same context for a younger audience.
Beyond saying what’s funny is subjective, I really don’t have much to offer as an answer. I think “Peanuts” at its peak is funny in the same way that Woody Allen’s stand-up comedy routines and early movies, Rodney Dangerfield’s “I get no respect” jokes, or the cartoons of Jules Feiffer (whose humor also regularly mined such seemingly joke-free subjects like neurosis and depression). Of course, you may not find those things funny either in which case we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Peanuts captured its time, but for many it fails to stand up to the test of time. Charlie Brown in 1990 is doing pretty much the same stuff as he did decades earlier. If you like it, it makes you feel nostalgic. If you wanted him to evolve, it didn’t happen.
Humour and attitudes in North America were significantly different in the late 90s than they were in the late 50s. The strips mentioned in the OP reflect the end of the millenium, not the early years of the baby boom and the fear of the cold war.
Quite frankly, it seems unlikely that we would have a lot of the strips we have had over the years without Peanuts. Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes owe a great deal to the strip.
Taking an ordinary puppy and turning him into a World War I flying ace, helicopter pilot, championship tennis player, and even almost breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record before Hank Aaron did it - just brilliant.
Absurdities such as the snowman league, a talking school building, or Charlie Brown becoming a hero as a camp counselor (“Mr. Sack”) made the strip amazing. No strip was that daring or creative at the time. Think about Schulz’s contemporaries at the time - the people behind Family Circus, Blondie, and Hi and Lois couldn’t hold a candle to Sparky.
I don’t think Peanuts was that great in the 90s and 00s but Schulz drew the strip for almost 50 years! As a kid in the 1970s and 1980s I was obsessed with the strip, especially the late 60s. Even then I could tell that was the heyday of the strip.
I have to say that I never really cared much for Peanuts until this new book came out, and the context was explained. Now I understand it better. Still, since Schultz died, things are a lot different. I’m surprised how a comic like Dunesbury can stay so up-to-date, since it’s been around for such a long time.
FWIW, *Blondie *and has been around for almost 80 years. It started in 1930.
The October issue of Vanity Fair had a great excerpt from David Michaelis’ Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography about Snoopy. It gave a great answer to the OP’s question. It has everything to do with the time it was created. I wish I could link to it, but it isn’t online. It really made me remember how beloved Snoopy was and what a big part of my life that strip was. But it hasn’t aged well at all, and I was surprised to remember how much I used to like it.
Not if you see it in its larger context, as Siam Sam pointed out. The Baby Boom was the trigger for panic about the population explosion. Schultz is dismissing the conventional wisdom of the notion and couching that dismissal in the naivete of a young child. There’s a subtle brilliance there of the type that permeates Schultz’s best work. Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side are both brilliant, but neither approached Schultz’ subtlety.
It’s not as though every single strip was a winner, but Schultz set the bar high ovbr his career.
I just looked through the entire month in your link, and I found a number of gems. To each their own…
Doonesbury is an Op-Ed piece in strip form. All Trudeau has to do is look at the news and plug in the characters he’s created and developed over the decades.
OK, that’s a bit facile. Trudeau has skill and talent. But he also has jumping-off points handed to him on a platter every single day of his life.
It’s worth pointing out that pretty much none of the syndicated newspaper strips of the time (or the classic ones today) such as the Wizard of Id, Peanuts, or Hagar the Horrible every really gave the reader a belly laugh. That wasn’t the point.
They are still a step ahead of many of the more modern ones - Cathy for example, is just the same joke reworded every day.
I’m another child of the nervous 70s who loved Peanuts. I don’t know if you ever got Bristow in the States, but it was another seminal strip, especially for anybody who’s worked in an office. But again, it was almost never worth spitting Pepsi over.
Just a teensy hijack, Did Charlie Brown ever hit a home run?
He did win a game once, but I don’t believe he ever hit a home run.
I dunno about that, though. I think many of the strips were quite good for a laugh. I remember one where Snoopy, as the World War I Flying Ace, was shot down behind enemy lines and needed a disguise. The final panel depicted him in the same scarf and flying cap, but also wearing a ridiculously large handlebar mustache. “Wo ist der root beer hall?”
I believe the mustache returned later for the adventures of Blackjack Snoopy, World-Famous Riverboat Gambler. And who could possibly forget the World-Famous Grocery Store Clerk?
Another funny strip featured Linus sleeping over at Charlie Brown’s house, and expressing anxiety about burglars. Charlie Brown assures him that Snoopy is an extremely capable guard dog. After looking out the window, Linus remarks that he feels much safer, having seen Snoopy on guard. The last panel shows Snoopy on his doghouse with a Gatling gun.
One of my favorite strips went something like this
Linus: What if there was a beautiful and smart child in heaven waiting to be born, and his parents had two children and decided that was enough?
Lucy: Your ignorance of theology and biology is appalling.
Linus: Well, I still think it’s a good question!!
Schultz said it was just an example of children talking about things they know nothing about. He was surprised at the number of request he got from both pro-choice and anti-abortion groups to use it. He didn’t give permission to either group.
The Christmas special alone would have made Schulz and Peanuts (a name he hated, btw) noteworthy and deserving of a seat in the comic strip hall of fame–but he did so much more, much of it shared here. That special–with it’s sophisticated jazz, complex themes and message of love is a wonderful show. I am also a child of the 70s–OPEC, gas lines, energy crisis, Vietnam, Nixon–the world was one scary place. Charlie Brown and his “friends” made some of understandable on an emotional level for me. As kids, we had Peanut collections–hardbound books of comics, Snoopy stuffed animals, banners with Linus saying, “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand”, posters of Snoopy shouting “cowabunga!”; recipe books (I still make Charlie Brown’s cheese balls and Lucy’s Lemon Squares). We went to the musical (fantastic) and got the record (still have it). I even have a book of some of the strips auf Deutsch. The Red Baron, the Great Pumpkin, Sally and her teachers etc. Who can look at Woodstock and not like him? Happiness is …
Who can forget Lucy’s “the doctor is in”? This was current with The Bob Newhart Show (he played a psychologist–psychotherapy was where it’s at in the 70s). There is much more.
I found the strip unreadable in the 80s. I never did get into that desert cousin of Snoopy’s who had something to do with the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm–was he Sparky? He was terrible. IMO, Schulz kept the strip going too long, but in his heyday, he was amazing.
Spike.
ETA some content! I’ve got a load of Peanuts collections, some of which I’ve had since the 1970’s. They turn up all the time in charity shops. I think I like Peanuts because the characters are so well developed, and I like them.