The Future of Charlie Brown

Panel 1: Charlie Brown: “I want to show you my new comic strip, Schroeder because I think you’ll appreciate it.”
Panel 2: Charlie Brown: “This one musician asks the other if he can play the ‘Hallelujah Chorus,’ See? And this guy says, ‘Oh, I guess I can Handel it!’”
Panel 3: Charlie Brown: “Get it? Get it? Pretty good, huh? Huh?!!’
Panel 4: (Charlie Brown alone, walking away): “It’s sort of sad when you think of a kid like that going through life without a sense of humor.”

One of the interesting byproducts of the demise of printed newspapers is the looming end of the Comic Strip. Once upon a time, the Comic Strip was a cultural landmark, the sort of thing everyone read. The Peanuts were as well-known as anyone could be.

Take the strip above, for example. What kind of piano is Schroeder playing? Why would Charlie Brown assume Schroeder would appreciate the Handel joke? Why didn’t Schroeder appreciate the Handel joke? What does Charlie Brown mean when he says “a kid like that”? The whole joke of the comic strip hinges on the reader knowing the answers to those questions. There is nothing in the strip itself that explains why it is funny.

The comic strip as an art form is actually quite amazing. Four panels on Monday through Saturday; a larger set of panels in three rows on Sunday. The Sunday one had an extra feature; the first row had to be detachable; it needed to relate to the second and third rows, but the second and third rows had to be standalone because not all newspapers printed all three rows.

Now do that every single day of the year. You can’t skip a day. Every day a new little story with a punch line. You can reuse punch lines if the setup is slightly different, but you can’t just reuse the whole strip. And, if you are serious about it, you never miss a day.

Over his career, Schulz created 17,897 comic strips. Think about that for a second.

That is a prodigious achievement. Stunning, in fact. There really isn’t anything like it. Calvin and Hobbes is probably the second most well-known comic strip. There are 3,160 strips in that series.

And, as noted above, with the demise of newspapers, it is a feat which will never be matched. There are on-line comics, but it simply isn’t the same. The newspaper imposed a structure on the form. It is much like the rules for creating a sonnet. There are other kinds of poetry, but to be a sonnet, it has to follow the rules.

Peanuts stands alone in this art form. Yes, there are other great comics which expanded the possibilities of the art form (e.g., Calvin and Hobbs, The Far Side, maybe Dilbert or Doonesbury). But, nothing had anywhere near the cultural reach of Peanuts.

Over the years, readers would get to know these characters. The present volume for example starts with Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Violet, Shermy, Patty (not Peppermint Patty) and Snoopy all as staple characters. Pigpen shows up. (So does Charlotte Braun, whom I had never seen before—thankfully, Schulz ditched her in 1955—a character whose sole features are that her name was similar to Charlie Brown and she shouted all the time. Zero potential there.)

All these characters are clearly in their infancy; later on they grow and change. Snoopy, for example, is an amusing and playful dog, but there is no hint here that he will develop an intense inner life and end up in battles with the Red Baron. Lucy has not yet opened her psychiatrist booth. Linus does not yet have his security blanket. Charlie Brown has not become fully Charlie Brownish. Sally and Woodstock and Peppermint Patty haven’t arrived. And yet, even here in the early years of the strip, the format is set. It is homey.

The odd part of reading a collection of comic strips is that it changes that homey feeling just a bit. It was quite different when every day you woke up and read the next installment in the life of the Peanuts. Collected together, you can breeze right through them, one after another. All the charm is there, but again, the form of the daily comic strip imposed its own way of reading. At the end of each strip, you necessarily had to pause for a whole day before moving on. That left a feeling that you were moving through life with these characters. You just can’t get that same feeling in a collection.

(The same thing is happening in TV these days. Binge watching means you don’t have to wait a week to see what happens next.)

All of this presents an interesting problem. I love Peanuts. I found this collection utterly charming. A marvelous book to read slowly, a few pages a night. But, if you didn’t grow up with Peanuts, would the book have anywhere near the same charm? Consider:

Charlie Brown sitting next to Violet on the curb
Panel 1: Charlie Brown, “Nobody loves me.”
Panel 2: Charlie Brown: “Nobody even Likes me.”
Panel 3: Carlie Brown: “In fact, nobody even Tolerates me”
Panel 4: Violet: “We do, too!”

That is funny. But imagine you had no idea who Charlie Brown or Violet are. Imagine you just saw that strip out of the blue as two kids sitting on a curb. Then, it is not funny at all; in fact, it is really mean and depressing.

So, will the next generation ever discover Peanuts? I asked a few students about it. One remarked, “Oh yeah, my grandparents read it.” Sigh. My own kids are no better. “Schroeder? Is he the one with the piano?”

Read some Peanuts today. Or at least watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special this year. This is a cultural heritage; it is incumbent upon us to ensure it is not lost.