… (actually quite a lot of them).
Today is as good a day as any to crack one open:
I thought this one would have been even better if Snoopy had delivered the letter (while wearing his signature bowler hat), but that would have dated the action to at least eight years ago.
… this one was rotten:
This “Bacön” comic (17-May-2024) was the third Friday in a row that Millsap attempted Peanuts-based satire (the other two weren’t much better). I never really liked Woodstock (nor the haphazard way that Schulz chose names for his newer characters), and it’s not the blood and gore that bothers me here. If a cartoonist is going to “borrow” characters for a gag, then it’s not enough duplicate the artwork: the characters need to retain their personalities, too. Snoopy never showed the slightest bit of hunting instinct in all five decades of Peanuts, so this comic is simply a dud.
… let’s eat these anyway (in no particular order):
Although not sophisticated, the joke is still quite good, in particular because the artwork is truly excellent.
It should be obvious that the gag can be reversed:
The rendering here is not quite as good as in the Brevity strip, but the motley collection of extras is nice addition, and the anger in the squirrel’s face is much better than having it utter one of those traditionally lame comments.
Then again, “…there was a third possibility that we hadn’t even counted upon…”:
… and they were all immediately eaten. Here again, the artwork in the first panel is extremely good, even if Charlie Brown’s head is a little bit lopsided.
One last crack at a real legume:
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I’ve never had any allergy problems with real peanuts, and I read and enjoyed the strip every day for decades (until it started to lose steam in the mid-1980s), but I had a major adverse reaction to the movie: it played far too much havoc with the character relationships (Schulz was lucky that they didn’t make that thing until 15 years after he had passed away). My kids never read the original strips, so they didn’t notice the alterations: they liked the movie just fine, and have watched it several times on DVD.
… Operations: As we have seen above, cartoonists periodically borrow Schulz’s characters to produce derivative material (which of course would never have worked within the context of the original strip). I have no idea how the executors of Schulz’s estate treat the concept of “fair use”, but they must be reasonably tolerant, since comics such as these keep appearing all the time.
This Off the Mark panel has already appeared at least twice at CIDU, Bill reposted it in December of 2018:
This Foxtrot strip was published while Schulz was still alive:
Lucy seems to be at least as popular as Charlie Brown for “guest” appearances and references:
…
The “50” was probably intended as a reference to his birth year.
… now we go to another place: These comics do not “borrow” from Peanuts; instead, they comment on the strip and its characters.
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Watterson once wrote (in the Calvin & Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book) about how surprisingly melancholy Peanuts was.
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Some running gags work better than others. Schulz may have occasionally re-used other jokes, but he made a special effort each Fall to ensure that each new “kickoff” strip was different from all the rest.
Even Ted Rall took a break from his usual political commentary to reflect on Schulz’s pending retirement:
I’m sure that Tom Wilson II composed this next comic as a friendly tribute before Schulz retired:
… but since it was published just four days after Schulz died, it was left with a strange aftertaste.
Peanuts in politics: I was very surprised to discover the following two Peanuts-themed gems in Herblock’s archive at the Library of Congress. The first one was published on Oct. 27th, 1967:
In his signature, Herblock describes himself as an “old Charles Schulz fan“.
The second one was published a year later, on Sept. 5th, 1968:
The dialog for “Hubert” Brown reads “All right now, gang — heads up — we can win this old ball game“, and Herblock noted below his signature “You’re a good man, Charlie Schulz“.
It’s worth noting that at the time when these these two cartoons were published, Peanuts was nearing the height of its popularity (and quality), even if its worldwide marketing and financial zenith were still to come. Just eight months after the second cartoon, when Apollo 10 was launched to orbit the moon, the callsign selected for the Command Module was “Charlie Brown“, and the Lunar Module was nicknamed “Snoopy“. If engineering problems had not delayed the fully functional Lunar Module (later used by Apollo 11), Thomas Stafford might have made history by reporting, “Houston… Snoopy has landed“.
Finally (saving my personal favorite for last):
P.S. With the exception of the “Mutts” tribute strip featured at the top of this post, all of the comics appearing here were “spontaneous”: none of them were composed for either of the two major events that were organized in honor of Charles Schulz and Peanuts.
The first of these tributes appeared on Saturday, 27-May-2000 (four months after Schulz’s death). It’s easy to find them: simply navigate back to that date in just about any syndicated comic available online. Alternatively, a footnote in Wikipedia provides a fan’s collection of links to many (but not all) of the tribute strips.
The second tribute appeared on another Saturday (26-Nov-2022), in honor of the 100th anniversary of Schulz’s birth. Simple navigation works here as well, but an “official” collection of these cartoons is available at the Charles M. Schulz Museum‘s website.
P.P.S. Comics Kingdom has an “Editors Dispatch” that offers all of the King Features strips that participated in the centennial tribute (and it also provides the Museum’s link to the non-KF strips).
Comics I Don't Understand 
As a bonus, a recent article in The Daily Cartoonist presents a fascinating collection of Peanuts and Charles Schulz rarities that is well worth reading.
“We were ahead of our time, but that time keeps getting farther away.” in Ted Rall’s comic is a nice turn of phrase.
It well describes startup companies that build a niche into the future, but ultimately can’t keep up. MySpace and AOL might be familiar examples.
The song that this post alludes to in the title and here and there in transitions was NOT a fond part of my childhood. I don’t know for sure what turned me off, but I usually thought it creepy and gastroenterically scary.
The eBay one was especially clever, I thought. Once again, Lucy snatches the football away.
No comment other than what an excellent selection of strips and great commentary! Thank you, Kilby.
@ Targuman (5) – Thanks for the compliment – glad you enjoyed it!
Today’s Sam and Silo:
Really enjoyed this collection of strips. I disagree about the Bacon comic, though. I rather liked it; I interpreted it as Charlie Brown talking to an outsider, thus giving a glimpse behind the scenes that although Snoopy seems uninterested in hunting Woodstock, in reality he’s pretty bloodthirsty.
The Rubes comic is interesting since the Peanuts characters had been licensed for use in MetLife (Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.) commercials and packaging for many years until the practice was discontinued due to a change in marketing.
In an episode of Family Guy, (in a cutaway scene) Elmer Fudd hunts and kills Bugs Bunny in a gruesome manner never seen in the vintage Warner Bros. cartoons the scene mocks, so borrowed characters can indeed act a bit differently from their regular personas. The art style in this particular scene manages to blend both WB and Family Guy traits.
I just watched a video of clips from Family Guy either making references to Peanuts or utilizing characters in cutaway scenes. Some scenes seemed downright violent and mean spirited. I stopped watching FG years ago. Stop motion animated series Robot Chicken also included Peanuts characters in brief scenes, which looked rather odd in stop motion model form.
@ Mitch (7) – A long thematic post like this one is strongly affected by a certain amount of selection bias. All of the “Peanuts” related comics that I was able to find were located exclusively at GoComics, which provides “content” search facilities (although only for those features for which the dialog has been added to the GC search index). Hunting for “Peanuts” using Google & Co. wouldn’t help, because that only produces Schulz’s strips (50 years of original material effectively swamps out any occasional parody).
The “search” function at Comics Kingdom only works on feature titles (and not that well for them, either). It was simply not possible to locate any King Features comics that would have been appropriate for this post. Other than an “Editor’s Dispatch” (about the 26-Nov-2022 tribute), an external search using the “site:” parameter into the CK website produced exactly one comic (also from the tribute), and this was it:
P.S. The relationship between the ages is only approximate, the math doesn’t produce precise results. Family Circus was launched in 1960 (ten years after Peanuts). Billy may not have been seven at the beginning, but he doesn’t look as young as three in the earliest strips, either.
Of course! My comment was aiming solely at “Hey, here’s one I ran across just now! Cartoonists are still making callouts to Peanuts.” I knew it wasn’t a candidate for others you might have included.
@ Mitch – Still, it was a very useful example that such comics do exist at Comics Kingdom, even if they are not findable there.
Are those actual shrunken comic strips in that last Family Circle? It might be interesting to ID each particular one.
And is the one in the upper left hand corner Family Circus itself?
@ Grawlix (13) – The comics that Billy is reading have been (very) carefully drawn (rather than photo-reduced), but as far as I can tell, only two of them have recognizable features: the round one in the upper-left corner is The Family Circus, and the one directly below it (with the red dog house) is of course Peanuts. All the rest of the strips seem “generic”.
Seeing as Paul has established @8 that YMMV on the “Bacön” comic above, I think it’s only fair to offer the previous two comics, just to see what CIDU readers think. Of the three, the comic dated 10-May-2024 was perhaps the best joke:
…
Nevertheless, I didn’t think it was strong enough to include in the collection, partly because Charlie Brown’s head looks severely over-inflated.
P.S. Just like the “bloodthirsty Snoopy” gag, I think the Bacön for 3-May-2024 is another example of a “rotten” comic:
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I didn’t include this one for three reasons:
1. The artwork was just a little too disgusting.
2. The gag itself was already covered by Whamond’s “Peanuts Tell-All“.
3. The idea that (many!) comic characters always wear the same clothes (for recognizability) is not unique to “Peanuts”, so it seemed like a cheap shot.
Risking the wrath of Larson, here is a Peanuts homage, or at least allusion.
My family visited the Smithsonian’s Natural History museum in Washington last summer, and I was very surprised to discover a reconstruction of “Lucy”, which I didn’t remember having seen there before.
The description next to the display was a little unclear, but one of the Smithsonian’s guides confirmed that the “bones” were of course copies. In fact, during a 6-year world tour that began in 2007, the Smithsonian refused to host Lucy’s original bones, taking the position that they should remain in the country of origin.
P.S. I have no idea why Larson relocated his second “Lucy” to Uganda; the original was discovered in Ethiopia, and the Olduvai Gorge (one of the most famous locations for ancient hominid fossils) is in Tanzania.
Another sort-of-homage
This Garfield strip was published on the tenth anniversary of Schulz’s death:
Oh this cruel world!
As someone (ahem) noted in Comments, there will apparently be two free/nonsubscriber streams of ItGPCB.
There was a lot of criticism when Apple purchased the rights to all the Peanuts specials in 2018, and made them exclusive to Apple TV in 2020. PBS was allowed to show ItGPCB in 2021, but since then it has been only on Apple TV, albeit with one weekend free (to prevent more bad publicity).