What is it with all this worship over this comic strip and its author, both now defunct?
Seems to me the strip was just-run-of-the mill. What sort of people are these who get turned on by a dog typing or chasing an air ace, from a war that occurred long before their time, while sitting on top of his abode. So, footballs withdrawn just prior to being kicked may be snickerish in realspace – but in a comic strip? And musical notes filling comic panels don’t really strike my chord either. Security blankets? Shrinks worth 5¢ a session? Birds speaking in illegible hieroglyphics? Great Pumpkin that doesn’t even use a sleigh? Ha ha ha, funniest thing Santa Rosa’s seen since Luther Burbank.
And Schulz himself – out there quite far right. Ever notice quite significant sexist themes in a number of his strips? And so egotistical he forbade anyone from drawing new Peanuts strips.
Ray (Bah, humbug! Well, it is funny that so many people got off on that drawing exercise.)
Have you no respect for a pioneer? Almost a half century ago this man created a set of characters with hopes, dreams, foibles and neuroses. He changed the world of comics from what were joke-driven gag strips to “slice of life” observations that people could identify with. Along with Walt Kelley and Al Capp, he was one of the most influential cartoonists of the post-WWII era.
If his work seems sentimental and sexist to you, it’s because you’ve grown up with it and take it for granted.
I suggest you go to a library and dig up a microfilm edition of any big city newspaper from 1950. Check out the comic strips. Then move up to 1970, 1990 and today. Which would you rather read every day?
Ask him (or her) what he thinks of Charles Schultz.
The odds are they will call him a genius. Those in the field all acknowledge Schultz’s genius.
Peanuts was a leader in the comic strip field. So many people have cribbed from it that it’s hard for younger people to realize just how innovative it was. You may think that the idea of Snoopy as a WWI ace is old hat, but Schultz invented the concept of an animal thinking and fantasizing. Schultz was one of the first to use a simple line; now you see it all over the place.
Scott McCloud discussed this phenomenon in Understanding Comics – the true innovators of the medium seem crude compared to the people who copied their concepts. As Bill Waterston (another Schultz admirer)pointed out, Peanuts doesn’t look quite as good not because Schultz had fallen behind, but because the rest of the comic strip world had begun to catch up. Art Spiegelman (the only person to win a Pulitzer Prize for a comic book) wrote a touching tribute to Schultz in this week’s New Yorker.
If you don’t get it, fine. But his genius was obvious to those in the know, and, more importantly, to the general public. This sounds like just a case of the old fallacy “if it’s popular, it can’t be good.”
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
Well, thank you for that bit of insight, [johnny**. :rolleyes:
Nano, I agree that Peanuts hasn’t been the most uproarious strip of late. But as mentioned, it was a seminal, phenomenally creative strip that tackled some very important issues in its day–race relations, Vietnam, politics–not to mention dealing with universals such as angst, isolation, love, fear, friendship . . .
And above all, childhood.
I don’t worship the strip–it’s a friggin comic strip. But I respect it, and Schulz.
And I sincerely doubt it was egotism which guided the decision to let the strip die with him. Why should he farm out his creation?
And I don’t get that at all–first you deride the strip and the man, then you want to know why the strip isn’t still being written by someoen else? Huh?
Another thing people may never have realized is that Schulz was the sole writer and artist for the strip. There aren’t a lot (if any)strips today that are solo efforts. Look at the way Bill Watterson burned out with Calvin and Hobbes. For 49 years he did that strip, I think he took one six-week break in the eighties, and the syndicate did ruruns.
It may not have been the funniest, but it was the greatest. Just like Ali.
Then we’ll turn our tommy guns
on the screaming ravaged nuns
and the peoples voice will be the only sound.
-P. Sky
NanoByte -
“And so egotistical he forbade anyone from drawing new Peanuts strips.”
i'm sorry, but i'm having a little trouble with that one. this man invented something and spent his entire life devoted to it. and *you* come along and tell him that he has no right to say what happens to it when he can no longer carry on?
hmmm....i must be missing something here.
He was a little zealous (sp) in his guarding of use of the characters. A retired farmer in Oneonta NY had put a representation of Snoopy, and maybe Woodstock, (it’s been awhile and I was in college then) on the roof of his barn using different colored shingles. Schultz (and/or his lawyers) sued the man to force him to remove it. It was visible from I-88, but he wasn’t making any money from the roof, he just did it because he liked the strip. Anyhow he reshingled the roof with the phrase ‘doggone’.
*johnnyharvard: I was also allergic to Charles Schulz. Whenever I would read the funny pages or see those kids on television, I used to always break out in hives. *
Sounds like an allergy to peanuts.
Each of us, at some time in our lives, turns to someone - a father, a brother, a God - and asks, “Why am I here? What was I meant to be?”
Bill Watterston did exactly the same thing with CALVIN AND HOBBES: he took it with him when he decided to quit. And one reason he was able to was because of Shultz’s oft-mentioned wish that no one continue the strip once he quit. He didn’t want it to meet the fate of THE GUMPS.
For a hint of how important PEANUTS is to comics, take a look at DILBERT. The art is based on Shultz’s style. The fact that in so many strips, Dilbert ends up losing is directly based on Charlie Brown. Dogbert is merely Snoopy with a more cynical point of view. (It’s hard to understand how revolutionary the concept of a dog having opinions, thoughts, and fantasies was when Schultz invented it.) So no PEANUTS, no DILBERT. I’m sure Scott Adams is aware of how much a debt he owes to Schultz.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
The Calvin and Hobbes reference above reminds me of this GQ I’ve been meaning to ask: Are those Car Decals that show Calvin pissin’ on Ford or Chevy (or … etc.) copyright infringements that Waterson chooses not to prosecute, or has is getting royalties on that stuff? Anybody got the SD on this?
Tinker Grey: You were right the first time. Watterson never agreed to any merchandizing of his characters beyond the strip collections. No plush animals, no coffee mugs, no tee-shirts, and no car decals. Any time you see any of the above, you may rest assured that Watterson is getting no royalties whatsoever. Watterson is an intensely (almost pathologically) private person, and has chosen not to attempt to prosecute these copyright infringements. Most of this knock-off merchandise is produced by fly-by-night companies and sold through shady venues such as swap-meets and the like. Pretty hard to follow-up. My guess is that in a few years (especially in the absence of any publicity by Watterson) the whole Calvin & Hobbes knock-off industry will have fallen off. Most of the people who buy this stuff weren’t fans (fans know better) and the fad will peak and fade. When was the last time you saw the used to be ubiquitous Keep-on-truckin’ guy on someone’s tee-shirt or truck? For more information, read _ The Calvin & Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Collection_, Watterson speaks at length on his feelings about merchandizing.
Jess
Remember the Straight Dope credo: It’s all about wiping out ignorance, not coddling the ignorant.
I do think that we can say both that Peanuts was a tremendously important, seminal and (more importantly) funny strip and that it had not been at its peak for the past decade or so. (Of course, to me, even second-rate Peanuts was miles about first-rate Cathy.)
I personally think the strip had more than one high point: the original strip was great (and, if you’ve seen the often-reprinted-recently first strip, you can tell that it was quite different from what Peanuts became later, both in tone and art style) and it hit another high point, in a slightly different mode, during the late '60s through the early '80s. To my mind, a strip that not only lasted nearly 50 years but had several distinct periods of greatness shows a gifted cartoonist who never stopped tinkering with the strip and was always open to new ideas and approaches.
I mean, compare Peanuts of last year with some of the other long-running strips (I’d choose B.C., Cathy and Family Circus, but YMMV) and see who comes off best. In the elephants’ graveyard that is the funnies page, Sparky Schultz kept doing good work for five decades while his competition bought jokes, farmed out the art, and went golfing. I think the difference shows.
…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!
Nano, stick it in your ear! You’ve spent far too much time thinking like the archetypical engineer (no insult intended to engineers).
You may not think much of the man or his strip, but as is well covered in other posts, he was undeniably a pioneer.
I’m not a huge peanuts fan either, but the music written for it by Vince Guaraldi can instantly transport me back to childhood, and brighten my spirits.
Lighten up, please.
VB
I could never eat a mouse raw…their little feet are probably real cold going down. :rolleyes:
Jess: Thanks for the info. I rather thought that particular decal (in all its forms) was not in character with the strip. It is nice to know that he does not approve (of merchandising his stuff - I suspect, though, he wouldn’t approve of the nature of these decals), he just chooses to not prosecute.
Brief and fairly useless anecdote about Calvin and Hobbes knockoffs:
A few years ago I saw a t-shirt with C&H and Bart and Lisa Simpson. Hobbes and Bart were pitching back a few beers while Calvin was putting the moves on Lisa.
No more than necessary. The law is the law. If you don’t “aggressively defend” your trademark, you lose exclusive rights to it forever. A trademark owner is obligated to choose between chasing down everybody or nobody.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
I thought that was an odd comparison as Snoopy was never a mean spirited character while Dogbert is pretty much evil in fur. Snoopy had his fantasies there were never about ruling the world and he always depended on the round headed kid to get his supper.
