Written so the greatest comic strip ever drawn will get a good writeup on Everything.

Before Peanuts... what was there? There were a few good strips, especially Thimble Theatre (the birthplace of Popeye) and Krazy Kat, but beyond that, really, what was there? The answer is, not much. Many deride Peanuts because they have not been exposed to what comic strips were like before. There were a few good strips, but for the most part everything good there is to find in the modern comic strip is there because of Charles Monroe Schulz.

Peanuts pioneered the idea that you could actually have intelligent content in a comic strip. Some sneer of a perceived tendency towards simple happy moralism, exemplified by the phrase "Happiness is a warm puppy." These people seem to have missed the darker undertones of the Peanuts environment, and have never read the series in which Snoopy discovered the birds he allowed to hold meetings in his doghouse were in fact evil. (The discovery: Snoopy eavesdrops in the third panel of one strip, and is grief-stricken in the fourth: "That's the most frightening thing I've ever heard!")

In brief: Peanuts is about a group of kids and a few animals and their incongruously mature outlook on the world. The main character, everyman Charlie Brown, is a constant failure, often mocked by his friends, but never gives up. In contrast, his dog, Snoopy, has a vibrant personality and inhabits a fantastic, surreal reality of his own. Charlie Brown's friends Linus and Lucy are an antagonistic brother-and-sister pair, Linus the quiet introspective one who can quote from the Old Testament and cannot survive without his blanket, and Lucy the ill-tempered, overbearing sister who makes his life hell. Other cast members include Charlie Brown's sister Sally, young Beethoven enthusiast Schroder, best-friends Peppermint Patty and Marcie and Snoopy's boon bird companion Woodstock.

Humor is a subjective thing, and yes, in its later years more and better laughs could usually be had by reading Calvin and Hobbes. But Bill Watterson himself admits the debt he owes to Peanuts, and C&H did not have to last for almost fifty years' worth of content. Few realize the immense creative drain a daily comic strip can be, and Peanuts was still funny and intelligent right up until the final days. How many other strips can last half a century and still make that claim?

Peanuts
1950 - 2000

Charles M. Schulz was drawing round-headed kids in The New Yorker long before they coalesced into a cartoon called Li'l Folks, which eventually spread beyond its native St. Paul, Minnesota and hit national syndication on October 2, 1950, taking on a new name: Peanuts.

Calling Peanuts the world's greatest comic strip is an understatement, as it has matured into something greater: a piece of Americana. Strips of Lucy pulling her football away from Charlie Brown's foot now hang in the Smithsonian Institution alongside Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington. Charlie Brown and Snoopy have gone into outer space as components of the Apollo 10 spacecraft. There's even a rapper named after the pooch. Did Schulz ever think that his little drawings would someday become a key part of America's national consciousness, and spread to an audience throughout the world?

He drew the first four-panel strip with just three characters: Charlie Brown, Shermy, and Patty. He soon added a beagle pup named Snoopy to bring the character count up to three and a half. But as the character of Charlie Brown emerged into a quintessenial loser, interacting with the prodigious Linus Van Pelt and his evil sister Lucy Van Pelt, the strip began to darken, almost turning into a philosophy tome.

Said Snoopy in one 1957 strip, "I think I'll just sit out in the rain until I catch pneumonia, and DIE! Nobody cares about me anyway!" Charlie Brown walked by and shouted, "HEY, STUPID! GET OUT OF THE RAIN!" As Snoopy ran through the downpour, he thought, "Gee, somebody cares..."

At the time, Schulz was going through a spell of loneliness, which manifested itself in Peanuts icons like the little red-haired girl, Charlie Brown's unrequited love, who first appeared in 1961. But then, as Schulz's comic began to see financial success, and as his personal life began to brighten, the strip lost its air of melancholy, gaining all sorts of whimsical characters like carefree Sally Brown, little birdie Woodstock, and the summer camp girls Peppermint Patty and Marcie. Snoopy's likeness changed so much during this period that his copyright had to be re-filed, and his lifestyle also changed to include a million and one journeys into imagination.

In the 1980's, Schulz was getting old, and his strip began to reflect a more idyllic view of childhood. Gone were the dark philosophical pieces of the old guard: instead, Sallyisms and Snoopy's imagination carried the comic onward. Charlie Brown finally hit a home run in 1993, and Lucy finally caught a fly ball in 1994.

Some purists believed that Peanuts had strayed too far from what made it brilliant in the fifties and sixties. But Schulz, who had funneled his entire life into each set of four panels, had already decided that he would draw the strip until he died, even though his health was deteriorating, and his hands trembled so much by the early nineties that all of the strip's lines came out jagged. On December 14, 1999, he finally drew his last strip, and went into retirement.

Schulz died on the very night the last Peanuts strip, number 17,897, was going to press around the country. He was 77: his world on paper was just shy of fifty.

Reruns of Peanuts continue to run in thousands of newspapers. The characters come on our televisions every Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. And then, of course, there's all the merchandising, which made Schulz one of the wealthiest entertainers in the world.

Who makes it happen? Well, Charlie Brown and Snoopy are at the center of it all. CB's world is centered around his neighborhood, and all the kids within: his sister Sally Brown, and friends Shermy, Patty, Violet, Frieda, Linus Van Pelt, Lucy Van Pelt, Rerun Van Pelt, Schroeder, Eudora, and Pig-Pen. Then there are characters detached from the strip itself, but heavily involved in its plot, like Miss Othmar and the little red-haired girl.

Snoop's world mostly revolves around himself and a posse of birds—Bill, Oliver, Harriet, and Conrad—led by Woodstock. He also has an extended family of his own: Spike, Belle, Andy, Olaf, and Marbles, the children of the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. Then there are his many arch-enemies, like the cat next door, Manfred von Richtofen, and the entire publishing industry.

Finally, there are the kids across town, who entered the strip's world by being opponents of Charlie Brown's baseball team. Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Franklin are the main characters in this group.

Since A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered in 1965, Lee Mendelsohn and Bill Melendez, along with generation after generation of voice actors, have brought the gang to the small and big screens. Here's a list of all the Peanuts specials that have aired on television since then, in chronological order (significant ones are bolded):

Charlie Brown's All-Stars
It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
You're In Love, Charlie Brown
He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown
It Was A Short Summer, Charlie Brown
Play It Again, Charlie Brown
You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
There's No Time For Love, Charlie Brown
It's The Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown
It's A Mystery, Charlie Brown
Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown
It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown
What A Nightmare, Charlie Brown
It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown
You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown
You're the Greatest, Charlie Brown
She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown
Life's a Circus, Charlie Brown
It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown
Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown
This Is America, Charlie Brown (miniseries)
It's Magic, Charlie Brown
A Charlie Brown Celebration
What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?
Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown?
It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown
Snoopy's Getting Married, Charlie Brown
Happy New Year, Charlie Brown
It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown
Why, Charlie Brown, Why?
Snoopy's Reunion
It's Spring Training, Charlie Brown
It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown
You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown
It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown
It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown
A Charlie Brown Valentine
Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales
Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown
I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown
He's a Bully, Charlie Brown
Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown

CBS also experimented with airing Peanuts in a Saturday morning format called "The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show." This only lasted for one season in 1983, but was eventually picked up for reruns on The Disney Channel and Nickelodeon.

We can't forget Vince Guaraldi, the jazz pianist whose career was made by playing the soundtrack for these specials. The music of Peanuts was a great influence on modern-day jazz titans like George Winston and Wynton Marsalis.

Four feature films were also made: A Boy Named Charlie Brown in 1969, Snoopy Come Home in 1972, Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown in 1977, and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown in 1980.

Two musicals have been made based on the comic strip. You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, by Clark Gesner, is the more famous of the two, but Warren Lockhart's Snoopy!!! is equally awesome. Both have been released in animated form, which follow the originals fairly well.

Let's not forget Camp Snoopy, Snoopy One, or the Snoopy harp, little pieces of our world that owe their existence to a man named Charles, and a boy named Charlie who's every man in every town.

Rest in peace, Charles Schulz.
Live forever, Charlie Brown.

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