… (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.

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… 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.

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… 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.

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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.

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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.

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One last crack at a real legume:

…
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.

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… 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:

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This Foxtrot strip was published while Schulz was still alive:

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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.

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… now we go to another place: These comics do not “borrow” from Peanuts; instead, they comment on the strip and its characters.

…
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.

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Even Ted Rall took a break from his usual political commentary to reflect on Schulz’s pending retirement:

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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.

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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“.

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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“.

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Finally (saving my personal favorite for last):

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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).

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