Charles Schulz

[mmcirvin]

Zompist's "Bob's Comics Reviews" describes the appeal and essence of Peanuts perfectly. Another of my Christmas acquisitions was the nicely done coffee-table book Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, which contains ample reminders of how subtly brilliant he was in his best years (about 1955-1975, as the review says, though the strip was occasionally great well into the 1980s).

What happened after that? Why were the late Peanuts strips so uninteresting by comparison? The review suggests that Schulz, who seems to have been a deeply nice man, became increasingly unwilling to add the bit of cruelty that characterizes his best work. Others have said that the increasing focus on Snoopy's fantasy life and burgeoning extended family was the problem. I think that as he got older, Schulz was just getting further from the ability to empathize with the child's-eye view of the strip (which was also why it became more and more about the decreasingly doglike Snoopy and less about the crucial trio of Charlie Brown, Lucy and Linus). Keep in mind also that it's insanely difficult to keep any sustained creation fresh over almost fifty years; it's almost cruel to expect it. In any event, Schulz's golden period had a gigantic effect on the culture and on comics, and most people drawing comic strips today owe some debt to him.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Actually, looking at the early strips on the United Media site, I'm thinking the really good period may have begun slightly earlier, around 1953 or '54; the crucial innovations were the moment Lucy acquired her fully formed personality, and the appearance of Linus.

Charlie Brown was brought into the world fully evolved (at least in terms of writing), but his early foils were sort of generic characters named Shermy, Violet and Patty (not Peppermint Patty), of which only Violet (who I always saw as a slightly less vicious proto-Lucy) really had any staying power.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Actually, I guess Patty and Shermy did keep showing up as extras even much later... I think that's them on the far left and right of the big bottom panel in the "theological seminary" cartoon.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

The review was pretty good until i ran into "irregardless" and the whole thing came to a screeching halt. Ugh.

The latter-day Peanuts strips really ruined my memories of the stuff i'd read as a kid. I tried reading the Classic Peanuts that have been published since his death but they're not the same as i remember them. It seems a shame.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The reruns seem mostly to be from the late 1970s onward. I keep wishing they'd print more of the Sixties strips, but maybe they're worried that the visual style is too noticeably different from the late ones.