Today’s the day. Peanuts sings its final swan song. It was great because of its simplicity.
Not knowing where to go with this, I found a strange place for a tribute to Peanuts.
For a while back during January, the Weather Channel used some cuts from the Peanuts specials for its Local Forecast music. (Yeah, I notice these things.)
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.
I just heard on the local news that Schulz has died.
there was never any explosions in Peanuts so fuck that cartoon
You’re kidding, right?
Oh my god, you’re not kidding!! www.ap.org says he just died too.
Sorry to say, I’m not kidding.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Charles M. Schulz, the cartoonist who delighted the world with the adventures and adversities of Charlie Brown, his friends and a dog named Snoopy, died on Saturday. He was 77.
Schulz, who was diagnosed with colon cancer and suffered a series of small strokes during emergency abdominal surgery in November 1999 and announced his retirement a few weeks afterward, died in his sleep at about 9:45 p.m., his son Craig Schulz said.
If Charles M. Shultz is dead (The AP could be wrong, sometimes obits are accidently leaked out to the 'net.) that means newspapers can’t run the reruns of the strip in newspapers anymore. Shultz left that provision in his contract.
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.
kawliga, sorry for the quick comment. I was about to slap OJSimpson upside the head and apparantly I miss and hit your auto-quote. I immediately check-out the Associated Press site to see what it had to say. Right now I’m looking for articles (other than the AP java ticker). www.abcnews.com has it on their header site, but no article.
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.
Found a link. http://www.examiner.com/ap_a/AP_Obit_Schulz.html
Seems kinda weird that the strip ends on the same day he does. (1:45am here)
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.
Nooooo! Snoopy!
Also, I think its…creepy that on the day his final strip runs, he dies.
I have to say I am going to really miss him. I loved that strip.
I’m going to try to head off the realist whom are going to note that everybody will face death, eventually. I know. You know. We all know.
I’m going to attempt to say farewell to him. I admire him, and I admire his work. Peanuts were always at the top ten of my favorite strip list. There was a sweet innocence surrounding that world of dispair. Through parts of my childhood I lived in that world. When I was living in Detroit and all of my friends were in Virginia, and my faher was working himself to death, and my mom was working herself to death to try to be my friend, I read that strip. I had to become a philospher at 8 to keep from being bored to death in that bleak world, and that strip help.
I think I was 70% Charlie Brown and 30% Linus. They managed to give me hope. Not even God could do that, and for that I thank Shultz. Through my failures and my successes, it was Charlie Brown whom I held as my coat of arms.
I have an interest in drawing, thanks largely to him. I like the simple style of Shultz’s the most, the simple lines with the slight waver in them. Never is anything perfect.
Shultz, I have always wanted to meet you. I always wanted to say how much the Peanuts gang meant to me. Charlie Brown will always have a special place here, in my heart. I thank you.
Goodbye.
—SterlingNorth
2/13/2000 3:44am
OJSimpson, the door is that way.
It’s still sinking in. I know now that he made the right decision–to end the strip before he died, so people could adjust to the strip’s absence before mourning him.
I love you, Sparky.
Remember, I’m pulling for you; we’re all in this together.
—Red Green
I’d like to amend the above statement. I believe I heard this contractual on a national news program. However I’m not completely sure. Hower on the Associated Press wires, they state that “United Features Syndicate planned to continue publishing ‘Peanuts’ reprints.”
SterlingNorth
You’re a good man, Charlie Brown
GOOD GRIEF!
I don’t know what else to say. I’m speechless.
“Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’”
E A Poe
Sorry to see Schulz go. Peanuts was a classic.
Man, I’ll miss ol’ Chuck.
SterlingNorth, Schulz’s contract specified that the strip could not be continued with a different author/artist after he quit. Older strips where the syndicator owned the name and the publishing rights have often been kept in print for years by a series of artists. Schulz did not want that and had the power to prevent it.
However, the syndicate does own the rights to those strips they published. I think it would be neat if they started re-running the 50-year-old strips. His earlier humor was different than his later stuff. I’d like to see Shermy and Pig-Pen again.
(When Walt Kelly died, one group ran his 28-year-old strips for a while. Each 28 years the leap year cycle and day-of-the-week cycle repeat so that you can run a continuous strip with the Sunday strips running on Sundays and the release date tags matching the dates of the month. It was interesting how much of Kelly’s 28-year-old satire was still fresh.)
Tom~
As a child, Charlie Brown and his gang were always my favorite cartoon strips. I have seen all of the movies and, even to this day, still love them. I was already a little sad when I woke up this morning because I remembered that today was the day of the last original Peanuts cartoon strip. Then I get on the computer and one of the first things I see on the Netzero banner is that Charles Schulz has died. Shit! I hate it when I cry over celebrity deaths.
Shadowfox
Flee at once, all is discovered!
I’m a little confused, here. The newspaper here (which I do not subscribe to) ran his last strip back in January. But that was a daily strip. Were there more Sunday strips that continued to run?
It is really sad, though. I always liked Peanuts. I always wondered what the inside of Snoopy’s doghouse really looked like.
Changing my sig, because Wally said to, and I really like Wally, and I’ll do anything he says, anytime he says to.
Goodbye, Mr. Schultz.
I don’t remember a world without Charlie Brown. I think that was the first comic strip I ever started to read.
God rest him.
-Melin