Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. This is Unpacking Peanuts, the show where we look at comics from decades ago and still get a real kick out of them. I'll be your host for the proceedings. My name is Jimmy Gownley. I'm also a cartoonist. I did things like Amelia Rules, Seven Good Reasons Not to Grow up, and the Dumbest Idea ever. You can now, subscribe to my new comic, Tanner Rocks, over there on my substack gville comics.substack.com and it's free. It's a monthly comic. We'd love to see you there. Joining me, as always, are my pals, co hosts and fellow cartoonists. First, he's a playwright and a composer, both for the band Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast. He's the co creator of the original comic book price guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules, and the creator of such great strips is Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells and Tangled River. It's Michael Cohen.
Michael: Say hey.
Jimmy: And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation Sweetest Beast. It's Harold Buchholz.
Harold: Hello.
Jimmy: Well, guys, it's, great to be here starting, another year of Schulz strips. I think I picked a bunch of them that we're going to be discussing today, so I can't wait to get to those. Do you guys have any sort of preamble? Anything you want to talk talk about up front?
Michael: We do have one of the weirdest Peanuts strips ever coming up probably at the end of this episode.
Jimmy: Do you want to give any kind of clue or teaser?
Michael: it has something to do with something wet.
Jimmy: Okay, well, if that doesn't pique your curiosity, I think it will.
Harold: The only thing I'd like to say is I really enjoyed him playing around in the first four months of this year with his panels on the dailies, more so than he has since the beginning of these varied panels after he had got out of the four panel grid that he'd been in for most of the strip's run. There's a lot of creativity. It's almost like he's keeping it in mind as part of his storytelling and his humor like I hadn't seen before. It was like he was discovering, hey, I can find new ways to make people laugh and get people Engaged more, so than anything he's done up to this point. So, that'll come up, I'm sure, during, the strips as well.
Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely. I found this a more compelling year across the board than, say, 1990, or at least the first half of 1990. So I'm really excited about just getting into it.
Harold: Great.
Jimmy: Now, listen, if you guys wanted to, follow along with us, you can do that in a couple different ways. The first thing you need to do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread, and that will entitle you to one email a month from us here at Unpacking Peanuts, letting you know, what strips we're going to be covering in the next episodes for that month. And then you can follow along with us for free, because you could just go right over to GoComics.com, type in the dates, and away you go. And if you're feeling a little bougie, you want to treat yourself. The holidays coming up, you can buy maybe some of those Fantagraphics books and follow along in, in glorious black and white on paper, as it was always intended.
All right, so let's get to the strips.
January 6th, it's a Sunday, and we start out with one of those glorious, symbolic panels. It's a, piece of fruit on the desk, an apple. But, it is also the severed head of Peppermint Patty, or an apple with her face on it. It's hard to tell. And then she's sitting in her desk in the next panel, and she says, I'm next. I know I'm going to be next. then the strip starts up for real on the second panel or second tier, and we see Marcie and Peppermint Patty, sitting in their desks. And Peppermint Patty leans back to Marcie and says. So when I get up to the chalkboard, Marcie, you give me the signs. Peppermint Patty continues in the next panel. And she says, if the answer is George Washington, touch your head. If the answer is Lincoln, touch your shoulder like this. Okay. In the next panel, we see Peppermint Patty up in the front of the classroom, saying to the teacher, yes, ma'am. Well, I think the answer is. And then we see Marcie, who is rubbing, the front of her shirt. This sends Peppermint Patty out of the classroom and into the hall, where she seems shocked by what she herself has done. And then we see the two of them sitting outside the Principal's office where we've seen them before. And Peppermint Patty says, next time, Marcie, please don't give me the hit and run sign. To which Marcie says, I thought you could make it, sir.
Michael: Boy, this is, kind of an awkward little strip, isn't it? Yeah, it's. It's awkward, I think, for a couple of reasons. this. It's a problem I have with sitcoms. It's. The setup is improbable, and then the punchline or the payoff is also improbable.
Harold: I kind of don't get this one. So, she's asking for some help, and at the chalkboard, she's got to find. Find the right answer. First off, I'll just say this is the most genial strip, about cheating in school that you can possibly imagine. It. It's like it hardly even registers that they're doing something terribly wrong. but. But, you know, Marcie does go along with this sometimes, and sometimes she doesn't. But I don't understand. I mean, I get. I get the little baseball signals kind of thing, but number one, I don't understand why Marcie says hit and run. Second, I don't know what hit and run means. Hit what? And then I don't get that. I thought you could make it, sir. What did she think she could do?
Michael: Well, she's not giving the sign. One of the two choices. Her head or shoulder.
Harold: Right.
Michael: She's touching her chest.
Harold: Yeah.
Michael: Which I. Is that like the universal hit and run sign?
Jimmy: Well, no, because that would make no sense because there is no universal signs there.
Michael: So, yeah, it doesn't make sense.
Jimmy: Well, it does make sense.
Harold: What does hit and run mean?
Jimmy: I mean, it might not be funny, but it makes sense. So basically what it is is, you know, Peppermint Patty gives her the two options. She goes up to the front. I'm assuming Marcie actually maybe does not know the answer, so she gives her basically the sign to split.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: To get out of there. But, then Peppermint Patty, and which Peppermint Patty does. Because she's in her baseball training, right?
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: And we have our punchline. And a hit and run in baseball is just that the batter or the, runner takes off as soon as the pitch goes because the batter swinging one way or the other, so the guy on the base or whoever is going to take off no matter what.
Michael: I never understood as a former baseball fan is hit and run should be run and hit.
Jimmy:, yeah.
Harold: Okay. So, I mean, I guess the thing that confused me is we don't really see Peppermint Patty in the context of where she stops looking kind of surprised. So do you think she stops herself while she's still inside the classroom, realizing that she's doing something stupid? And then the, fact that she ran in the classroom made the teacher send her to the principal's office, which now she's outside the classroom. Because if originally I thought when she left and she ran because we see they're outside the classroom at the principal's office with Marcie, maybe she did get outside of the classroom. But I don't get it.
Michael: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's very weak. I think she just ran because she's, like, conditioned, right. To see the hit and run time, which I guess, at least for their team, must be what Marcie's doing. And so when she sees that, she just runs. And then she stops herself inside the classroom, realizing that she shouldn't have done it, but still makes her-- But the teacher saw them, saw something funny was going on and…
Michael: Yeah. And, this is not a particularly good story.
Harold: Okay. So to the teacher even possibly could have seen what Marcie was doing. And that. Okay, all right. I will say that I love the drawing of Peppermint Patty running, past the blackboard and her foot in the sandal with her toe sticking out past it is just amazingly good cartooning.
Jimmy: Looks real cute.
January 9th, Snoopy is out, working construction. He's a flag man, and he's holding up the old stop sign. And he's thinking to himself, here's the world famous flag man standing in the road controlling traffic. And then the next panel we see, it must have been a car zipping by him as he turns on the slow sign. And he yells out, just trying to do my job, fella.
Michael: I also have a problem with this one.
Jimmy: Oh, I think you could have just stopped after Problem.
Michael: Well, but it's an interesting thing, these flights of fancy of Snoopy. I'm assuming they are all in his imagination, but I think anyone reading this strip would think he's actually out there doing this.
Harold: Yep, yep, I'd buy it.
Jimmy: I picked it because my dad, used to work road construction. He was a miner most of his life, a coal miner, but then, he upgraded to highway construction. And he said, although technically, physically, this job was the easiest, something he only did in his very earliest days there. He said it's actually the absolute worst job he could possibly get. Cause you're Standing there, you're literally taking your life in your hands. Everyone is mad at you, even though you're not controlling any of the situation at all.
Harold: Wow. that makes sense.
Michael: I wonder about those guys when I see them. It's gotta be boring. I mean, they didn't have headphones, and you couldn't listen to, like, podcasts in those days.
Jimmy: No, you see, you can't do it now anyway.
Michael: Well, maybe you can slip it in. No one will see. Cause it would be a fine job if you're listening to a podcast.
Harold: that expression of Snoopy with the big, loud, open mouth, even as he's thinking. If you just look at that second panel and you think of Peanuts, like, from 1960, it's like a totally different strip. It just looks so different. With the Zipatone, he's got some. He's. He's having a ton of fun with Zipatone. The last year, he started, like, not filling everything up to the edge of the lines, and he was, like, creating little shades, like, oh, this has a little sliver of light on it, because I didn't quite get this Zipatone all the way to the edge. So it looks like there's some shading going on within the shading, which I thought was really cool. And here he's got this really rough ground where the traffic is. And Schulz is cutting these really interesting shapes to represent, you know, the dirt that doesn't follow the line of the pen, that he's using. And I think it's pretty cool, but it sure doesn't. Doesn't make me think of Peanuts. It's just so different, so unique.
Jimmy: It's very current for 1991, though. I think when you think of a lot of cartoons from that time in the newspaper, things like, you know, Frank and Ernest.
Harold: Yes.
Jimmy: I think Mutts also was using Zipatone like this at that point.
Harold: Oh, really?
Jimmy: Or maybe not 91, but. But, like, the Ninja Turtles had this sort of gritty, you know, screen tone look to it. To me, it seems like it's very current with that time.
Harold: Interesting. Yeah. And Schulz was always looking at other people's stuff. We know that he was very much a student of what the people out there, were doing in his field. So, yeah, it's just a really, really new look. he's constantly evolving.
Michael: So what do you guys think? Is he just really just sitting on his doghouse?
Jimmy: I don't think it matters.
Harold: Well, yeah, it's funny. I don't question it. Like, what Jimmy's saying, I just don't question it anymore at this point. The world famous flagman. I guess if I think about it. No, it's not happening, but it does feel real, and we're in Snoopy's imagination, and so maybe it should feel real. Right?
Michael: Yeah. I mean, his earliest when he was impersonating animals, he was actually impersonating animals and people could see.
Harold: Right. And he was in the context of the kids and other people.
Michael: Yeah.
Harold: But, you know, the World War I flying ace or the famous checkout person at the register,
Michael: he generally saw him m. Sitting on top of the doghouse.
Harold: Yeah. So the thing that's maybe throwing you is that he genuinely is in a space with a prop that looks like it would be used with a hat and possibly the little tie behind vest. He has all the accoutrements, and he's in a space that genuinely looks like it could be a real thing. Right? Yeah.
Michael: I mean, the funny thing in this strip, of course, is the world famous flag man.
Jimmy: Right?
Harold: Yeah. The thing it reminds me of, Michael, is, back when he's going back behind enemy lines, they used it in the Halloween special. But he's kind of crawling through these weeds and the dust and the dirt, and you kind of get the feeling like, oh, yeah, this could be in France. And he's actually in a war zone, even though it also could be somebody's garden, you know?
Michael: Yeah. Well, the mystery lingers.
January 15th. It's, one of those done in one panoramic panels with possibly, the greatest lineup of comic strip characters of all time. In one panel, it's a Tiny Tots concert. And we start off with Sally, who's asking her big brother, what are we doing here? And Charlie Brown replies, it's another Tiny Tots concert. Lucy looks over to her brother Linus and asks what's on the program. But Linus doesn't get a chance to answer because Peppermint Patty, says, if they play Peter and the Wolf again, I'll go crazy. And then, of course, Marcie says, that's what they're playing, sir. And then we close off with Snoopy on the end who thinks to himself, I hope the wolf eats him.
Michael: Well, you are right. This is the All Star team. I don't think anybody. I mean, is there anyone who else could be in here?
Jimmy: Woodstock.
Michael: Yeah, that's true. I mean, he could be sitting with little.
Liz: He could play the little bird in Peter and the Wolf
Michael:. But anyway, this is clearly his best characters.
Harold: I love this strip this is the first one I picked this one. talking about playing with the panels in one way you could say this is the first seven panel daily because you have a black background behind the dialogue balloons and then you have the chairs that they're sitting in that are just white. And so each of the chairs and their dialogue kind of looks like it's a panel. And so you're following down the row like you would typically a panel, but it's also just a single panel.
Harold: And you got your punchline at the end with Snoopy, which is kind of a surprise. Had Snoopy get in there. That. I just love that they're all having this conversation. They're all trying to figure it out together. And then you've got the punchline at the end in seat number seven. I think that's very creative for Schulz. He's not done something quite like this before and he's, you know, again, we're 40 plus years into the strip.
Liz: I do have to mention, and I've probably said it before, Peter and the Wolf was my first major role. When I was in first grade, I played the duck.
Harold: And I think I've mentioned before that the reason I picked up the oboe was because I listened to Peter and the Wolf,
Liz: of course.
February 7th, Charlie Brown and Sally are hanging out, waiting for the school bus to come along. And Sally says to her big brother, who are all those people driving by in those cars? Which Charlie Brown answers, those are people going to work. To which Sally replies, work? Charlie Brown says, they used to wait for the school bus like we're doing now. They have to go to work every day for the rest of their lives. To which Sally replies, good grief, whose Idea was that?
Michael: A thought I've had many times. Yeah, this is a good one.
Jimmy: Yeah, all those people going by, some are mathematicians, some are carpenters wives.
Michael: Yeah, carpenters wives. Yeah. It's a little odd that Sally hasn't wondered before who those people are.
Harold: Yeah, she can be very incurious sometimes about things and then all of a sudden it's this revelation of what, what on earth is that?
Jimmy: Yeah, the bleak attitude of just that you're going to have to work for 50 years for some company you don't care about that truly doesn't care about you. It's a tough realization for a six year old.
Michael: Yeah, well, how come everybody isn't like a self employed, self published cartoonist?
Harold: Well that's a great question.
Jimmy: Because there's nothing wrong with that lifestyle. That's nothing but bliss.
Harold: Just think of all the ants that are climbing into their open sack lunches on the ground there.
Jimmy: I don't want to think about that.
February 11th, Sally and the girl with the zipatone hair are, making some valentines. And, Sally says to the girl, I'm making this valentine for my sweet Babboo. And then from off panel, I'm not your stupid sweet Babboo. But Sally ignores this and says to the girl, he's my sweet Babboo and I'm his Babooette. And from off panel, we hear, I've never heard of a Babooette. And then a really annoyed Sally turns and yells in the direction of the voice you have now.
Michael: That'S the nice thing about the English language. You could just throw a little ette on the end of anything.
Liz: I think many languages have a little ina.
Harold: Babboolina,
Jimmy: and of course, Smurf. Everyone knows, right?
Harold: Yeah. This sounds to me like a classic Jimmy Gownley Amelia Rules gag. Especially your read on that you, have now.
Jimmy: Now.
Liz: Well, it's nice to see Sally coming back and, going for Linus when he's been cheating on her for years.
Jimmy: Poor Linus. That's harsh.
Liz: Sisterhood.
Jimmy: Yeah, it's a really good strip. I do love it. Well, I was gonna say, oh, the smurf thing. yeah, I have a character going, trick or treating as an off brand Smurf. You know, when you go to, like, it's too late to the party store or Halloween shop, and they only have the. Really, the dregs of the costumes.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: So she's going as a snurf.
Harold: A snurf. Yeah. And, yeah, I'm wondering if you got a letter from the Hallmark Corporation, saying, why are you encouraging children to make their own valentine?
Jimmy: Yeah, right. Every year, that's pretty funny.
February 12th, Violet and Sally are walking around the street, and, Sally says to Violet, see, I made this valentine for my sweet Babboo. And of course, from off panel we hear, I'm not your sweet Babboo. And then Sally continues, I signed it from Your sweet Babooette. And then from off panel, again, there isn't such a thing as a babooette. To which Sally replies, David used to call Bathsheba his sweet Babooette. Which off panel replies, no, he didn't. And then we actually see Linus going, or did he?
Harold: Now, here's another great example of Schulz playing with the panels in a way that I don't remember quite seeing it this way, because he's certainly set up the thing about Linus always being off camera when he's saying, I'm not your sweet Babboo. And you just see the word balloon and the little pointer trailing off into the edge of the panel where he is somewhere off to the right. And you have that in panels one and two with him replying. And then three, he does it again, and there's all this empty space behind Sally where you have the lack of Linus in the space far off. And so he has this. No, he didn't. In this big white space. And then he has, in the very thinnest panel, a cut to Linus saying, Or did he? I thought this was funny or funnier because of how he played the panels here.
Jimmy: Yes.
Harold: I mean, the panel makes it funny. And I don't see that a lot in Schulz's stuff because usually, again, you know, when he was doing dailies for 30 some years, he. All the panels were the same, but all of a sudden he's like, hey, you have this response from Linus in panel three off camera with white space under it. And then Linus appears in the next panel, and it's that little sliver with, the little comeback. I think that's brilliant. And it makes it funnier than if he had done it the traditional way. He's really taking advantage of his ability to mix up the panel sizes.
Jimmy: Yeah. And that's a whole nother, you know, realm of decisions he has to make that he didn't have to make for whatever that was 30 some years.
Harold: Right.
Jimmy: And it's cool to see him embrace. I think it kind of took him a while to do it. I think a lot of the, first few years were basically, it was just a time saving thing.
Harold: Yep.
Jimmy: But it really does start to work more and more this year.
Harold: Yeah. And look, and the other thing is interesting. He's got four different backgrounds in each of these panels. You've got what looks like maybe they're. Maybe they're walking on a sidewalk. And you can see two levels of grass behind them. And it look like a little. Little bit of brush or a bush. Then they're going by a stone wall that seems to have some ivy or something growing over the top of it. Then you have a totally empty panel, and then you've got Linus on the sidewalk with this just, grass behind him. It's like four different different spaces that you're in that flow with the strip as well. Which maybe that also adds to the. How dynamic this Particular strip.
Michael: Seems to me, I wonder what. Why he picked certain characters to be in a strip. It says the presence of Violet again, who once was a major player. And it's pretty much disappeared. And it's just what's his thought process? He needs somebody there. But it could have been the little kid, the girl with the Zipatone hair from the last strip.
Liz: Well, he couldn't because they're talking. She's telling somebody something new.
Michael: Yeah, that's true. So, yeah, she'll smile. Do you think maybe he was like II know how to draw Violet.
Harold: He's like, well, I can't put Violet in the same classroom as Sally. Although he does.
Michael: Well, she's much older. She's much older, but they're the same size.
Harold: But once they're outside, then maybe there's a little more. Yeah, you're right. They're pretty much the same height. I guess you could say Violet's a hair taller.
Liz: Lucy wouldn't be interested.
Harold: Yeah, right.
Michael: it's just, I don't think I know if we've ever seen a Sally Violet duo.
Harold: I don't remember it. Yeah. But yeah, it's fascinating that he chose to bring Violet out and she's been appearing here and there this past year. And again, does that have to do with the animation? Because she's in the mix and whatever they're working on now. And so he's thinking of her.
Michael: That's the question I'd ask him if I had one question.
Jimmy: Yeah. Who knows? I love the look of the stone wall.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: And it really looks good when Violet's in front of it. One of the things that's a big, secret of black and white composition. We talked about spotting black and stuff like that, but really having black against white or white against black, just pure, no gray, no details and stuff that really always reads well and really pops well.
Jimmy: I think that looks great with Violet in this instance.
Harold: I also think, you know, this is one of the classic things in comics that I think most artists definitely know about. Maybe those who read the strips and just enjoy them maybe, don't notice as much. But the idea that if you have a background behind you, you create this little aura of white around the character, of what's behind them so that the lines don't touch and so the characters pop. The only thing, only place where the characters touch something other than themselves is their shadows on the ground in that second panel. And they're floating over their, shadows in the first panel. But it's so powerful.
Michael: Not everybody uses that technique. I've never used that technique.
Jimmy: it's very hard to do, but.
Michael: A lot of people just put that little halo.
Harold: Yeah. It works so well in that second panel.
Jimmy: Yeah, well, it works great if you can do it, and if you can't do it, it looks terrible.
Harold: Yeah. And, you know, as a. I just remember as a beginning cartoonist how weird it felt to even try to not connect a line that, you know, is there, the going behind the character, and it's like, oh, can I actually do this? Yeah. And sometimes you kind of hedge your bets, and some lines touch and others don't. You, Then you screw it all up.
Michael: Well, you have to go take the rule book.
Harold: Right.
Jimmy: Well, I will give you the example of the true genius leaving some lines out. Dan DeCarlo. And then also ripped off and incorporated into his own work by Jaime Hernandez, when he would have, the beautiful girls in profile. There's no connecting line between their nose and their lips and even their chin and their lower lip.
Harold: Oh, right. Yeah.
Michael: Which creates a problem when there's a black background.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: Because that creates sort of a line that isn't there.
Jimmy: Yeah. Tried that many times, failed many times. I just look at it, and I don't have the confidence enough to even know if it works when I do it. And I always just put, you know, put the remaining lines in.
Harold: Right. You give it a try, and they go, I just can't commit.
February 19th. Lydia and Linus are in class. And Lydia, you know, they're in their classic position. So Lydia is in the desk behind Linus, and she says to him, they say that the first thing a woman notices about a man is his eyes. And then the next panel, Linus turns with a big smile, says, really?
Michael: How does he do that? are those pupils actually bigger than usual?
Jimmy: It's crazy. They are.
Liz: And the eyebrows are up.
Jimmy: Nuts.
Michael: But they don't. I mean, it really reads well. But they don't look much bigger.
Harold: No, no, just a little. They look rounder. I guess that's the thing. Right.
Jimmy: That is unbelievable confidence to go, Yeah. I'll put this into thousands of newspapers, and everyone will pick up on it.
Harold: Yeah. It's so subtle, and yet it just jumps out at you at the same time. How does that work?
Jimmy: Amazing.
Harold: But, boy, it's so funny. Every time, Lydia shows up again, I'm like, oh, that's great. Because I don't know if she goes through 1999 or 2000 or. This is the last strip we're going to see of her since I never read these before. So every time she reappears, I'm like, oh, that's great. There's Lydia.
Michael: Yeah, I think she has one of the highest percentages of great strips.
Harold: And here's an example again of Lydia, suggesting that she likes Linus. She's constantly testing out these issues of relationships with, the opposite sex.
Liz: And how quickly you all forgot Sally.
Jimmy: I love Sally. Sally is twin flame, as they say.
Michael: But Linus doesn't seem to think about her very much.
Jimmy: Hey, I'm pretty out of the loop on, you know, the culture these days. Is twin flame like a cult or something?
Michael: Yes. Watch the documentary on Netflix.
Jimmy: Okay.
Michael: It's so disturbing.
Jimmy: I'll just go with soulmate then.
Michael: Yeah.
Jimmy: All right, well, let's take a break here because we're about halfway through what we got. We got some stuff in the mailbox for when we come back. so, yeah, let's go get ourselves a nice tea and hit, the backside of these strips. Hit the backside? No.
BREAK
VO: Hi, everyone. You've heard us rave about the Estabrook radio 914. And what episode would be complete without mention of the Fab Four? Now you can wear our obsessions proudly with unpacking Peanuts T shirts. We have a be of good cheer, pen nib design. Along with the four of us crossing Abbey Road and of course, Michael, Jimmy and Harold at the thinkin wall. Collect them all, trade them with your friends. Order your T shirts today atunpackingpeanuts.com store.
Jimmy: And we're back. Hope you got a delicious beverage, maybe a snack, a little treat for yourself because, we're just having fun hanging out. As a matter of fact, I'm hanging out in the mailbox. Liz, do I got anything there?
Liz: We do. We do. We got something from a new listener. Ian writes, hello, all. I'm a newish listener. Catching up on the episodes. Back in the 1984 strips, you put out a call for the Spike contingent to step forward. While not my favorite and clearly not the funniest character, I have always enjoyed Spike. I identify with him strongly for his melancholy attitude and desire to both be alone, but to also have company. He has an inner imaginary world like Snoopy, but applies it to creating friends for himself, like the cactus and inexplicably Mickey Mouse. Of all Snoopy's family, he is the only one with the real developed personality.
Harold: Interesting.
Liz: And is in a lot of ways one of the most complex characters in the strip. And he. He tells us about a favorite spike strip, but it's not until 1997, so I think.
Harold: no spoilers.
Liz: write to us again when we get closer to 1997.
Michael: Well, I think Jimmy's gotta comment on the fact that Olaf is, can you believe it there?
Jimmy: A character with the depth of feeling and just the introspection, the beauty of the design, and he just gets short shrift like that. Shocking.
Harold: Well, thank you. Thank you for mentioning that. I really do like to hear people's perspectives, especially when they're different than ours, about what makes a character special, why they fit into the strip, how they fit into the strip, and why you appreciate them. So thank you.
Liz: And, we want to give a shout out to Debbie Perry for her fan art.
Jimmy: Oh, yes, it's very, very cool. We, were talking about a few, I guess, a few episodes ago, Snoopy had to be a sheep for Woodstock, which we thought maybe was a little bit cow, like for a sheep. But, Debbie's, done a little revision for it. It looks great.
Liz: And also on social media, she sent us a picture of an Olaf keychain. Jimmy, you should check it out.
Jimmy: Incredible. Well, thank you, Debbie. Always good to hear from Debbie.
Liz: And we heard from Eric on YouTube, who writes, According to Wikipedia, looks around shiftily, the kind of, comic strip called Yankoma, which I recognize from magazines and web comics. And he's quoting, these comic strips appear in almost all types of publications in Japan, including manga magazines, graphic novels, the comic section of newspapers, all right, game magazines, cooking magazines, and so forth. And then he adds, I don't know what that means. Of course, a lot of Western comics also use assistants, for instance, but nothing probably compares to a manga studio. However, a daily comic strip would probably need about the same work in Japan as in the US So who knows?
Harold: So I'd be interested to know. So did Peanuts have a major presence in the newspaper form in Japan? were people experiencing it that way, or did it mainly come along in the books and the animation first? I'm guessing if there were spaces in newspapers for it, given the popularity of it, that it probably was around every day, or maybe to this day is still in a number of newspapers.
Michael: Maybe it's just the merchandise. It's like Hello Kitty never appeared in the comic strip.
Harold: That's true. Yeah. The Hello Kitty is one of those strange, strange things where they say, Hello Kitty is actually a human being. I maybe mentioned this before. It's a human being who looks like a cat. That's such an interesting backstory when you experience it that you start to think differently about hello Kitty when you have that in the back of your head.
Liz: So that's it for the mail.
Jimmy: No, it's not. Because I got some stuff from the hotline.
Harold: Oh, boy.
Jimmy: I heard from a little guy named Alexis Fajardo. he writes. I'm listening to episode 1984, part two, and wanted to let you know that we have written an OGN original graphic novel based on the Peppermint Patty in Paris storyline. But I really like the title Peppermint Paree, and we might steal it. Awesome.
Harold: That's great.
Liz: Maybe explain who Lex is.
Jimmy: So in addition to just being one of our earliest guests, he's also the editorial director for the Charles Schulz studio. So they are out there making stuff happen, making books, making new Peanuts comics, and Lex is, overseeing that.
Liz: Wonderful. So he's the one who listens when we say pitch of the week.
Harold: Yeah, it's good to see some of them are happening without us having to lift a finger. It's just. It's already happening. We just don't know about it.
Jimmy: Peppermint Paree is a fantastic title. So, so that's it for the mailbox this week. if you guys want to reach out and talk to us, keep the conversation going between episodes, there's a couple different ways you can do it. You can follow us on social media. Of course. I'll give you the rundown for that at the end of the episode. Otherwise, you can just go ahead and email, us. We're unpacking peanuts@gmail.com and we would love to hear from you. or you could also call our hotline or leave a text message. And that number is 717-219-4162. We'd love to hear from you because remember, when I don't hear, I worry. So let's get back to the strips.
Harold & Michael: Sure.
March 5th. Charlie Brown and Linus are hanging out at the old thinking wall. And Linus, says to Charlie Brown, do you still like Peggy Jean? Then here's what you should do. Linus continues, tell her about the little red haired girl. Unfortunately, she'll never want to see you again. Now, most likely, the little red haired girl will someday also turn you down. Then you'll have nobody and be unhappy the rest of your life. To which Charlie Brown replies, that's the worst advice I've ever heard. To which Linus answers, well, I just thought of it five minutes ago.
Michael: This is a little bit out of Linus usual approach to Life. I don't think of him as being particularly negative.
Harold: Don't you get the sense that maybe it's being processed more or less as he's saying? Yes, but yeah, he comes to a conclusion. Maybe he wasn't expecting he would.
Jimmy: Well, not that I've ever experienced that on this podcast where it's like you start a thought and it's like, this is going to be great. And then halfway through you can't even remember the sentence structure, let alone what the Idea was.
Michael: Well, apparently Schulz felt it was important to, put a little bow in this Peggy Jean relationship. I mean, before he says drop things many times and he hasn't quite resolved this yet, apparently still going on, right?
Harold: Yeah. And, I keep thinking about those animated specials where they make a commitment to something and then he knows millions of people are going to see that, there's a Little Red Haired Girl special, and yet Peggy Jean's in the mix and you don't mention Peggy Jean. And I don't know if he's sometimes just trying to kind of navigate that because he's knowing way in advance what's going to happen, what's going to be out there on an animated special. They're working like a year in advance or whatever. So if, if there's a Little Red Haired Girl special that Lee Mendelson maybe pitched to Charles Schulz, maybe he's got to do some things in the strip to kind of prepare people that we're getting back there.
Jimmy: Yeah, well, Peggy Jean is going to show up throughout the rest of the 90s quite a bit. You know, she's basically his girlfriend for several years as we go on. She's not going to drop, out of sight for some time.
Michael: That's a spoiler.
March 8, Charlie Brown is, writing a letter or something and he's, talking to his sister Sally about it and he says, so if I'm going to be honest, I think I should write to Peggy Jean and tell her how I'm still fascinated by the Little Red Haired girl. What do you think? Sally says, so long, Peggy Jean. It's been nice knowing you. Charlie Brown puts his head in his hands in despair. And, as, Sally continues with farewell, au revoir, ciao, sayonara, adios, auf wiedersehen.
Michael: Well, I'm totally impressed. For someone who doesn't know that people go to work, that's a wonderful display of language knowledge.
Jimmy: Well, I think Sally probably tells people that she is leaving quite a bit. She needs that in all languages.
Harold: So what do you think of Charlie Brown taking up Linus's suggestion, which was the worst advice he'd ever heard just three days ago? It's been percolating and he's actually about to.
Jimmy: Classic Charlie Brown. Such a bad Idea. Such a bad Idea. There's nothing to be gained from this year eight or nine, Charlie Brown.
Harold: Makes you wonder if Schulz did it himself in real life and saw some repercussions.
Jimmy: Yeah, certainly could have been. I love Sally's just forthrightness, the way she just lays it down. So long, Peggy Jean.
Michael: Yep. She understands how the world works.
Jimmy: She does. Except when she doesn't.
Michael: Yeah, right.
March 13th, Sally's on the phone and she says no, he's down at our dad's barbershop getting his hair cut. Then we cut to the barbershop and there's Charlie Brown in the barber smock in the chair saying, I'm all confused, Dad. I guess what I want to ask you is, do you know anything about love? And then last panel, Charlie Brown replies, to his father's unheard reply. No, I understand you were pretty busy there in barber school.
Jimmy: Well, I just thought it was funny. Okay.
Michael: Oh, well, I think, wait. What a question to ask your dad.
Jimmy: Well, don't you think that's a good question to ask?
Michael: I think any question's a bad question to ask your dad, unless it's about golf or something.
Harold: Yeah, it's pretty cool to see him in his father's barber chair there and playing around with those Zipatone white highlights around the edges of things.
Jimmy: And the Zipatone when he's using this kind of abstract, you know, with the white, it almost looks like duotone or duo shade. Do you guys remember what duo shade was?
Harold: Yeah, it. Buz Sawyer.
Jimmy: Yes, Buz Sawyer. Right. And basically for our listeners, you would draw on a special paper and that paper had undeveloped patterns on it. And then you would use a noxious, chemical. And the one that smelled semi bad, you'd paint on and it would make like a light pattern of dots or lines. And then the one that really smelled like chemical warfare would make dark patterns. And they don't make.
Harold: Was it like lines? Lines that went one direction diagonally and then if you use the second chemical would make the lines go the other way diagonally to kind of create this.
Jimmy: Some of them weird. There's all kinds of different patterns.
Harold: Oh, they're all different. Okay.
Jimmy: It's not made anymore because it was a cancer causer.
Michael: Yeah. And it looks ugly. Which is worse. I don't know.
Harold: Yeah. And apparently those old strips look pretty nasty these days because over time, those chemicals just kind of turned everything brown. And it's unfortunate. You know, you never know if your tools are going to hold up. Someone looks at something 50, 70 years later in original art, and it's just.
Jimmy: Been, oh, I went through a period.
Harold: Marred by this really bad chemical.
Jimmy: Whenever, I'd see a cartoonist that I was interested in or liked and they'd recommend some sort of tool, I might try it. And I remember Howard Chaykin recommended something called, like an ink stick, I think it was called. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to try that. It's going to be great for lettering. It's all light purple now. It completely faded to nothing.
Harold: That's so sad. You know, you're not thinking about that. Yeah.
Jimmy: You, don't like the look of it, Michael?
Michael: No.
Jimmy: The duo shade, I mean.
Michael: No. So it's. It's brutal. And I think he is using it here because some of those cuts are roughly small. He's not.
Jimmy: I don't think he's using it, but it just looks like that because he's painting over it or cutting out the white sections. And that's the thing about that duo shade. It always looked much rougher and almost arbitrary than Zipatone.
Harold: Yeah, it kind of looks like he's cutting it out with a knife. But, you know, the, experts who see these things could let us know if he's. Yeah, because there's. Like you said, there's two ways you could do it. One would be to get some white paint and cover over the tone. Or you just take your X acto knife, which you've already used to cut in the first place, and hack out some spaces in between.
Michael: I think Zipatone. I used to think it was great, but now when I look at stuff that's been Zipatone on, purpose originally, like, you know, early ECs, you, know some of that Al Williamson stuff. I got a black and white book of his early EC stuff, and it was all Zipatone. It looks great in color. When you color over Zipatone, it's. It looks like 3D, but, It just totally obscured all the line work.
Harold: Oh, yeah, it's interesting. It's like instruments in music. There's certain instruments that will date you and other ones that seem timeless. And Zipatone seems to be of a time. And, that may be a good thing or a bad thing.
Michael: Well, Dave, Sim. I never thought of him as a master of that, but it sure looked good. He used a lot of it.
Jimmy: I love using it in Clip Studio, which is what I color in now. You can create digital Zipatone and I like doing it. If I want like a 3D effect now I want to look like one character is actually on a plane, maybe above the paper or something like that. And it's really fun and it's really cool. And you could also even create colored zipatones if you wanted to. You could do a blue one or whatever. It's very fun.
Michael: you'll have to tell me how to do that.
Harold: Never messed with it. But, going back to the strip, I really do like Charlie Brown with his father. We haven't seen a lot of the kids in the presence of parents in a long time, and it's kind of cool that he's gone to his dad for a little, bit of insight. Is his father still living in 1991?
Jimmy: No, I don't think so.
Harold: No. Okay. Yeah, it's nicely done. He spent. He seems to spend a little bit more time on this strip with the shading. I always wonder, you know, if he's particularly pleased with someone a strip. Maybe he's just doing a little bit more with it because he wants. He doesn't want to leave it. I don't know if that's true or not.
March 16, Charlie Brown's atop the pitcher's mound and he's yelling out to the outfield, all right, team, this is our first game of the season. So let's hear some chatter out there. What do you have to say? Which Lucy replies, just wait till next year.
Michael: I picked this because this is really a great joke. And also this could have appeared anytime in the course of the Peanuts strip. This could appeared in the 50s, 60s, you know, slightly different art, but it's a great little gag.
Jimmy: It is.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: They probably take that middle panel and split it in two and it's a classic 60s gag.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: Look how rough the fence is behind Lucy. You can really see the tremor on that long downward stroke.
Harold: Yeah, yeah, I'll say.
Jimmy: We haven't talked much about the tremor in recent episodes, and it really does seem like it's. I don't know if it's more under control or if it's just baked into the look now. And it doesn't.
Michael: I think he'd learn.
Harold: Yeah, I was noticing that. I wasn't noticing. Yeah, and I like that. I mean, I was expecting anything 90s on it was just going to be so overwhelming. but not yet, not now.
Michael: He's got it under control pretty much.
Harold: Yeah. He has baked it into his artistry, and it's pretty remarkable. Even him cutting out the jagged zipatone sections complements that look. And like you said, there were other artists working rough, like, Bob, Bob Thaves, who did Frank and Ernest. I don't know how you pronounce his last name, but Shoe or Herman, those kind of rumpled looking lines, often with brush work instead of a pen, but same concept. So Schulz is not completely out of the visual look of that newspaper page, just with his own thing, everything else being clean. There really is this movement for this roughness, which I guess you could say started probably around the early seventies. Greeting card art had it, and then it seemed to make its way into book illustration even. I guess going back to the 60s for that stuff. So Schulz is not alone here in terms of having that rough line.
April 14, Snoopy's out on hitting the links. He's being followed by a little gallery, of birds who are commenting as, he sets up his. And then he is sort of irritated after a few panels of this turns and says, please, do you mind? But the little gallery of birds keeps chirping away, really, annoying Snoopy, who turns again and says, what in the world do you have to talk about that's so important? But then one of the birds, we actually can see what they're thinking, and it turns out they're discussing some sort of, recipe. And we find out that Snoopy learns that what they're discussing is Harriet's recipe for 7 minute frosting.
Harold: Yeah, it's 2 unbeaten egg whites, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 5 tablespoons in tablespoons tbsp period cold water, 18 tsp period salt, 18 tsp cr period of Ta, period for cream of tartar. this is so. I mean, it's just levels of strange that. What is he doing here? Why is he letting us see what looks like it's straight out of a recipe book. It's got this strange punctuation, but it's also not just the lines of the little.
Michael: It is a strange, but it's also a callback to, something that was like, I don't know, five years ago. There was a whole sequence about this recipe, but who's going to remember?
Harold: Seven Minute Frosting is a big deal. Yeah.
Jimmy: Well, this is my favorite strip of the 90s. Spoiler.
Harold: really?
Jimmy: No. I did actually Include a recipe in one of my comics, though, and you could see it on the Unpacking Peanuts. Obscurity is my Nana's Oatmeal Cookies.
Harold: Well, there you go.
Jimmy: Here's a question. Do, you think things get easier or harder as you get older and more comfortable as an artist?
Liz: Yes.
Michael: Well, I mean, not too many people have to generate a finished Idea every day.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: Yeah.
Michael: I don't know what the answer to that is.
Harold: I agree with Liz.
Michael: I mean, there's a certain point where you're stretching for the jokes.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: Well, I think you also. I mean, you're a pro, right? You know, they say you have 10,000 bad drawings in you before, you know, you get. And, you know, I remember as a young artist and as an artist who hasn't done a ton of stuff over the whole course of my life, it's just. It's been in these little spurts that you're having to learn your own rules, and that slows you down, and you make mistakes, and you cumulatively collect that knowledge. And so in that regard, I think it becomes easier. But when it comes to staying within the realm of something where you set the rules and you've played with those rules and those characters over and over again, it does seem like it would be harder and harder to come up with something that is fresh and new. And that's why I'm so appreciative of him playing, let's say, with the panels here, to make it fresh and different and surprise us. You know, he's constantly surprising us, even though he's repeating the tropes and all of the things with these characters in so many different ways. He's got something new to say or some new way to tell it or draw it. That surprises us.
And the other thing I think of, when you get older, they've, talked about it, the concept of the old man slant. You know what I'm talking about. When you're drawing, I don't know what happens with the eyes of certain people as they get older. My comics are always. Have a want, and it's just always been the way I've drawn, you know, and they say when one of the things you do for those of you who are an artist, you'll draw something, and then to check to see if it looks right, you flip it over. And like, you. If you have a light box or whatever or in a computer program, you just flip it horizontally, and you can kind of see the wonkiness in what looked right to Your, your eye, the way you drew it, but it may not look right to others. And, and if you flip the character's head or whatever, you can see that, oh my gosh, I've got that cheek way high on that angle and all of this. But for some people, when you get older, everything gets this strange slant. Now, I don't know if it's how you're approaching the art, how you're looking at your screen, but the sense of that three dimensionality and it just kind of falls away, from. In Very, very accomplished artists, they somehow cannot see the 2D trying to create 3D into 2D the way they used to. And so there's this, there's this weird thing like you're almost looking at the page at a 30 degree angle or something and everything looks just slanted or wonky. I don't know why that is and why it only affects certain people, but it does.
Jimmy: I got a book a few years ago, it was a cartoonist's autobiography. someone that, an older guy, very talented person. Love him, but. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Everybody looks like they're slightly melting. And I think it might even be partly like how you're sitting. Like you're older, you're hunched, maybe you're leaning. Obviously your eyes are worse.
Harold: Maybe you're closer to it. And then you not having the perspective of being able to sit back because your eyes are not as strong.
Jimmy: Yeah, that could be it.
Michael: Yeah. But part of it is you, have less energy.
Jimmy: Yes.
Michael: And, you look for shortcuts.
Harold: In Schulz's case, I don't see old man slant. It's the issue of his, ability to create the clean lines that we're used to from the past. That's what's different here. He still has that sense of three dimensionality right now in 1991. And the characters, even though they've morphed and changed, still have a definite appeal of a master cartoonist.
April 18th. So this is a little sequence where Snoopy is hanging out in the French Cafe during World War I. And, Charlie Brown shows up and says, hi, am I in the right place? This sends Snoopy, into shock. He just launches, out of his chair, root beer mug goes to flying. And then we can see he's in his World War I garb. And he stands up and he shakes Charlie Brown's hand saying, president Wilson, what are you doing over here? Have they signed the armistice? Sorry, no time to talk. My squadron takes off at dawn. And he takes off in the direction, out of the cafe, leaving Charlie Brown and Marcie, the little French, waitress behind. And Marcie says, maybe you should have bought a golden retriever. Charles.
Michael: You know what would be funny? Look at that first panel. Turn that Snoopy thing into a character. You can do your whole strip with that character.
Jimmy: Like those Mr. Men. Right? You flip it upside down, you put a face on him.
Harold: This is an interesting strip. If you had not been following this strip and you just picked up your daily newspaper on April 18, 1991, Boy, oh boy, would you be scratching your head.
Jimmy: That'd be amazing.
Harold: I don't even know why Charlie Brown is saying hi, Am I? Why is he saying that he's been invited by Marcie to come over, to pick up his dog? Because Snoopy's sitting around in the World War I Flying Ace costume at her checkered tablecloth in her kitchen and drinking up all her root beer. And Charlie Brown is obviously in her place because there's Snoopy and there's, there's Marcie in her little, hat. Little French hat. It's just such, a strange strip.
Jimmy: Yeah, I picked it because of President Wilson as Charlie Brown. I mean, the way he's doing the double handed handshake.
Harold: I love that. That's great. Yeah, it's so strange. I do love the strip. It's just strange as can be.
Michael: Not as can be. Wait till the next one.
Jimmy: strange as can be.
April 21, Charlie Brown and Snoopy are out in the Lynx. And I think Snoopy is the golfer and Charlie Brown is the caddy. And Charlie Brown says, you know what I think? And then Snoopy says, I'm afraid to ask. Now, this is a Sunday, so that whole tier is removable. And now we have the second tier of the strip, which is just one gigantic panel. And we see Charlie Brown and Snoopy in the foreground at the golf tee. And Charlie Brown says, on a hole like this, I think you just have to relax and pretend the water isn't there. But the water that we see is a high contrast photo stat of a tidal wave.
Jimmy: Yeah, this is my favorite strip of the 90s.
Harold: Really?.
Michael: It's so surprising. I mean, it's just so far away from any other Peanuts strip.
Jimmy: There's a couple times he does this in this decade, and it never gets any more integrated or normal.
Michael: It's really shocking. I, mean, it looks nothing like a Peanuts strip. It's. I mean, it's not even a particularly good joke. So why did he just not want to draw.
Jimmy: Yeah. I think it's pure fatigue.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: That's what I think.
Harold: Do you think this is a photostat or do you think this is a. It looks like it's. What they called was like a stipple board. What did you call it? Stuff that had the really rough surface.
Michael: I think he's right. I think it is photo stat.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: It doesn't look like. This looks like art. This looks like somebody has drawn this. And I actually ran it through Google Images in case there was a famous painting. There's a famous.
Michael: It's not Hokusai. The obvious thing would be to do the Hokusai wave, because everyone recognizes that. No, he took a photo and he has a stat, and I think all the spray turned into dots.
Liz: Well, Harold's looking at it in the book rather than on Go Comics.
Harold: That's true.
Michael: I don't know.
Harold: Well, it looks to me like what I've seen a lot of times. A, sports cartoonist use this to. To do the shading.
Jimmy: It begins with the C. It's like coquille board.
Harold: Or it. I mean, I'm guessing that Schulz did this.
Michael: No, he didn't.
Harold: You know, knowing who Schulz is now.
Michael: I don't think he could.
Jimmy: Yeah, because you'll see he does this again and again, and it's always photo.
Harold: Yeah, but when you say a photo stat, because it does not look like a photo stat to me. It looks like someone, some artist. Maybe not Schulz. But I'd be amazed that he would not do it. And there certainly didn't pop up in a Google search, as this is a piece of art that he would have found in a book or whatever. Because Google doesn't know about it, and I guess they possibly don't. But. Yeah, I think it's. Somebody drew it. I don't think it's.
Michael: I really don't think so.
Liz: Would Benjamin know? Would he be able to tell from the original?
Jimmy: Sure. Anybody could. Well, access.
Harold: Well, the thing is, coquille board is stiff and has a thickness to it that he would have probably had to. If he did do it, he would have had to make a photocopy of it or a photo stat of it. So that might not give away time.
Michael: It would take for him to do this he could have done a week's worth of strips.
Jimmy: Exactly. It's not. This is what.
Harold: Unless he already just did it as an exercise, and then I've never seen.
Michael: No, he's done exercises, you know, trying to do like a Bill Mauldin type of thing. This is just so far out of.
Jimmy: It looks like In the Heart of Julia Jones or on stage or whatever, when they would photocopy a scene from, like, a city street with. And they just, like, put some ink on it to make it approximate an ink drawing, but they just have the contrast cranked all the way.
Michael: Now, what I thought of right away was how shocking it was when Kirby did it. Fantastic Four, number 33,
Jimmy: the Negative Zone?
Michael: No, it's an underwater scene with submariner issue. He just basically put a photo and then drew, like, submariner and some characters over it with no attempt to hide it.
Harold: I would like to go to our listeners. If you look at only one strip this year that we were talking about, do go to April 21, 1991 and check it out. And we have a lot of artists who are listening to this. I would be interested to know your take. Does this look like a photo to you guys? What do you think the technique was? How did he get there? Does it look like art? Does it look like. Do you think it's his art? Do you think it's somebody else's art? I'd be interested to know what.
Michael: I mean, you could do it. I mean, one could do it, but it's not worth it because you're spending all that time to make it look like a photo.
Jimmy: Yeah. Now, this is, I would bet.
Michael: Yeah.
Jimmy: Up to 50 cents.
Michael: Whoa.
Jimmy: That I am right.
Michael: Yeah. Well, I agree. Double that.
Jimmy: All right. We might owe Harold a buck. It wouldn't be the first time.
Michael: Anyway, definitely goes in the top 20 weirdest Peanuts strips years from now.
Jimmy: We'll see. I think he just takes the famous painting of Washington crossing of the Delaware, and puts that in. I think he has a, like a D day photograph maybe or something. I'm not sure. But it definitely happens more than just this one time.
Harold: Interesting.
April 24th, Charlie, Brown and Sally are sitting at the old kitchen table, I guess. And Sally's working on, her homework. And she says to Charlie Brown, we studied exclamation points in school today. And the next panel, Sally demonstrates them, a whole row of them, to which Charlie Brown says, they look very good with four exclamation points. To which Sally replies, thank you. With six exclamation points.
Michael: Yeah, you can hear her say that, it's funny. The exclamation point was such a part of the vocabulary of comics that when I did my first comic, every punctuation mark outside of question mark was. Everyone was exclaiming Everything.
Jimmy: Yes.
Michael: And it was just so fashionable. And it turns out the reason why was that the periods did not always print well.
Harold: is that true?
Michael: So the comics generally, every. Everything had an exclamation point just because you could see it.
Harold: That's fascinating. Yeah. And Schulz does not--Talking about the things that you can do for emphasis in a comic strip. Schulz does have his share of exclamation points, but maybe less than the average strip. I don't know. But also, Schulz is dealing with things. He's not using italics and bold or bold italics super common in the strips. Think of Lil Abner. I mean, there was tons of bold italicized. So it's basically cueing you in how to read the emphasis. And I think we brought this up before.
I was just thinking about it in terms of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 comic we did. People knew this TV show where you're being fed the jokes and you're hearing them and you're laughing. And I was looking on Goodreads, and I was thinking, because it's gotten fantastic reviews on Amazon, it's like 4.8 stars out of 5 or something. But Goodreads always has tougher customers. Right. There are people who read a lot of books, and so their rankings are a little bit lower. And so was the Mystery Science Theater thing in Goodreads, and I was like, what are they complaining about? Or what didn't they like about it? And a lot of them were just saying, the humor doesn't work for me. And I was just thinking about how hard it is as a cartoonist who's trying to make something funny. You have no control over how the reader reads the punchline, that you have no way of giving it just that right delivery that will kill the joke or make it work. And I genuinely think it is the case that many of us are not very good at reading humor. And if someone delivered it, because these are Mystery Science Theater fans and they say, I really wanted to love this. And there were tons of people who did love it, obviously, but there were people saying, I really wanted to love this, but it's just not. It's not as funny. And I was thinking, just name a comic book, a classic comic book that was genuinely funny. And I, you know, and people were struggling, and I was struggling.
Michael: That is funny? Is that what you said?
Harold: Yeah. Yeah. That really was genuinely fun.
Michael: Yeah, well, Eightball and Hate were hilarious.
Harold: He's talking about mostly, I think, about older stuff.
Jimmy: You know, if you really want to read a funny comic, you could subscribe to Gville Comics at Substack.
Michael: Yeah, that one too.
Harold: Yeah, Like Pogo. I can think of Pogo as being one that genuinely would make me laugh out loud, on a regular basis.
Michael: Well, the thing you mentioned, Schulz does not use those bold emphasis. That's the only way you can get the rhythm of a punchline.
Harold: Right. And I don't know if it's because he's so good at writing the words so that it's harder for you to go down the wrong path if he has a gift for that or if it's just we're used to it being understated. And that actually works in our favor for the humor because usually it feels too forced. In other comics,
Jimmy: It just all has to be a gestalt, you know, I mean, the lettering and the style and the emphasis used has to relate to the line around the word balloon. You have to relate to the line of the characters. And I think that's just the look for Peanuts, that it all works together and there's going to be pluses and minuses to that. You know, like, you can't imagine Pogo without that lettering. You, can't imagine Amelia without that lettering.
Michael: Yeah
Jimmy: Well, guys, that brings us to the end of the year. And I'm going to let you guys out there know a little secret. The reason I'm wrapping it up so quick. I have 2% battery on my device. So come back next week when we do more of 1991. Lots more fun strips to talk about. If you want to, get in touch with us between now and then, of course you can email us at Unpacking Peanuts, but you can also follow us. We're Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and Threads and unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, blue sky and YouTube. And we would absolutely love to hear from you. So with that and 1% battery left for Michael Harold, Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.
Michael: Yes, yes, Be of good cheer.
VO: Unpacking Peanuts copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen and Harold Buchholz. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukrala Clark. For more from the show, follow Unpack Peanuts on Instagram, and Threads Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue sky and YouTube. For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.
Jimmy: Farewell. Au revoir. Ciao. Sayonaro. Adios. Auf Wiedersehen.