I was browsing the local B&N bookstore and came across a compendium of ancient and contemporary Peanuts strips.
Why did Charles Schultz (sp?) change his style? In the 50’s, the Peanuts were really smoothly drawn and symmetrical. Then, in the strips I would have seen growing up in the 70’s through now, the Peanuts are all squiggly-wiggly and unfinished looking.
I am solely used to the squiggly drawing style, so I found it very striking when I saw the retro comic strips.
What happened? Was this change voluntary on the artists’ behalf or just a side effect of his aging and health?
Why should he have had a perfectly consistent style over his decades-long career? In a more serious vein, this is a problem of many successful artists. If they don’t conform to the strict style of the first successful pieces for their entire lives, eventually someone is going to accuse them of selling out or betraying his early vision, or some nonsense like that.
There’s no reason to be rude. MSK asked a legitimate question that wasn’t insulting to anyone here or to the late C. Schultz. She didn’t say he “had” to have the same style over his career. She was just curious as to why there was an apparant change.
MSK I don’t know why there was a change. Hopefully someone without a stick up their bum will answer your question.
If you look at the runs of various long-running comic strips (e.g.Peanuts, you’ll find changes in style are a common feature. Most of the time, I think these changes are gradual and unintentional.
After all, I don’t think our handwriting remains the same all during our lives.
I also don’t think there was any particular reason for the
change - Mr. Schulz was drawing that comic for 40 or fifty years, after all. Look at how much Bloom County changed over a much shorter period of time.
Perhaps it was due to the age change. In the early Peanuts Lucy looks like she’s 2, in fact I remember some big deal about her speaking and such. And Charlie himself was probably around 5. But by the 70s he aged them all, Sally now was probably around 6 and Charlie around 9 or 10.
It might also be part of who his audience was. 50s audiences were quite different from the 70s. I would wager newspapers in the 70s were much more tolerant of wierd looking cartoons and other more risque things. I mean thing of all those gaudy colo0r patterns!
Anyhoo, those are my theories, a need to express a difference in the ages and a more open time period.
I think both played a part: I’ve got the (unreprinted, dammit) first Peanuts collection from the '50s, and as Osiris says, Lucy was maybe 3 and Linus was an infant (and Charlie Brown was a smart-ass! :eek: )
Shultz used a very heavy…“line” for lack of a better word. Very compelling style and I wish someone would properly reprint the early Peanuts stuff complete (the book I have does NOT reprint all the early material) and in sequence. As important to the gernre as Peanuts is it’s abominable that such a wonderful, important strip has never been fully repr…ahem. I’ll stop ranting now.
Anyway, there was a major change of style and tone within a year or two. Snoopy’s look had changed tremendously (towards the character we’re familiar with) and Shultz was using a much lighter line. He was also doing some interesting things with perspective and panel compostition. To me, this is the way I think of the characters as looking.
Shultz strenghtend and improved upon that style until the (late?)'70s. IIRC, Shultz had some health problems (eyesight problems, perhaps?) and the “shakey” style started. Frankly, I also feel that he began to run out of ideas as an endless stream of Snoopy relative began to emerge. I remember at the time people were complaining (in Comics Journal or The Comic Reader or Comic Buyers Guide) about Shultz’s new style, but within a few years, people got used to it and Shultz had found a way to make it work for him.
Most comic artists’ styles change over time, although they tend to settle into a groove after a while. Look at early Garfield strips – he’s not as “cute”. Or compare early and later Beetle Bailey or Hi and Lois.
Schultz’ style changed quite a few times over the years. In the sixties, Snoop’s muzzle narrowed down as it approached his head. It looked as if it was being pinched off. Earlier (and more recently), it gets larger as it approaxhes his head.
The change may also be caused by “streamlining” the strip. Writing a full strip to be published daily is very time consuming. With a ‘heavy’ style this would take longer and one mistake would blow a LOT of work. By lightening the style it may have been faster to draw and easier to replace if a mistake were made.
From Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz, by Rheta Grimsley Johnson, p. 225 and 226.
"The hand shakes.
"It is startling to see the coffee cup waggling wildly in the artist’s unsteady right hand, the hand so many have come to depend upon for a daily fix of laughter.
“It started trembling noticeably after his heart sugery in 1981 and has worsened with each succeeding month. Sometimes the tremble is worse than others. It especially gives him trouble with his lettering. And now, the arthritis in his right thumb is a companion pain.”
“But then he stits down behind the drawing board… and steadies the palsied hand against the surface of the table. And he draws, not without difficulty, another installment…”
My favorite quote regarding this change is from a letter to me written by one of my relatives, who was actually a professional cartoonist (He did a strip called Wipe Your Feet, later renamed Oscar):
