Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. This is Unpacking Peanuts, and I'm your host for the proceedings, 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. Joining me, as always, are my pals, co hosts and fellow cartoonists. He's a playwright and a composer, both for the band Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast. He's the original editor of Amelia Rules, the co creator of the original comic book price guide, and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells and Tangled River. It's Michael Cohen.
Michael: Say hey.
Jimmy: And he's executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation Sweetest Beasts, Harold Buchholz.
Harold: Hello.
Jimmy: And making sure everything runs smoothly, it's our producer, Liz Sumner.
Liz: Greetingsl.
Jimmy: Alright. Harold, I believe you have some stuff to share with us about Mr. Schulz in good old 1994.
Harold: I do. So Schulz went to the National Cartoonist Society annual Reuben award weekend in 1994, which he was a pretty regular, attendee of, even though he was kind of getting out less often, as I understand. But it wasn't too far. I think it was in La Jolla, California. So that's, that's not a huge trek from Santa Rosa. It's not nothing.
Jimmy: Right.
Harold: And, he was, actually there to, to give a talk and a Q and A. So we have some interesting insights from him right around when the strips we'll be discussing came, out. So I thought we want to share a little bit of that. And this is coming, from an account by David Astor in the Editor and Publisher magazine.
So it's kind of cool because here is Schulz, among his peers, talking about his strip 44 years in. And, he shared a story. He said there he heard an argument between two women recently, in a restaurant just, a few days before this speech. And they were talking about him, not knowing he was there. Says one said, I'm dead. The other side, I'm not. Even though I've been drawing for 44 years, I'm still here, and I'm not ready to retire. So this is classic Schulz. You know, here I am, a famous person, and, and yet people don't even know if I'm still around or not.
Harold: He said, I work harder now. I'm more particular about everything I draw than I have ever been. I almost never send in anything that I'm not totally pleased about. And he said cartoonists should do this not only for themselves, but for the syndicate salespeople. And we've heard this a lot. He was so aware of how he fit into the ecosystem, that this was an art and a business. And he said, that Peanuts would not be carried on by another cartoonist when he retires or dies, quoting that his children asked him, you know, they didn't want anyone else to do his strip. and he said being a father of five helped him learn to stop and resume various kinds of work. He recalled that when one of his kids wanted to play, he would leave his writing and drawing table behind for a while.
And regarding, writing and drawing in a strip, he said a comic must be fun to look at, no matter what the dialogue might say. And we definitely see that. We've been talking about that so much that, you know, he's trying to make every drawing of interest. And, I think he does that so well. And this is interesting too. We've talked about this recently. Schulz did say he gets annoyed when he sees what he called extreme drawing that shows a comic character overreacting to something. And Peanuts is so much about underplaying. And, he talked about how he never liked the name Peanuts. 44 years in, he's still griping about being saddled with the name Peanuts. And he also called out the importance of understanding the history of comics to his fellow cartoonists. And he gave his list again of his favorite strips. this time he called out Skippy by Percy Crosby, which we've talked about early on in this, podcast, Lil Abner, even though, Al Capp was not always kind to, to Schulz and Roy Crane, who did Washtubs, and Captain Easy and Buzz Sawyer. So that would have been a cool event to be sitting in on. But I'm glad that David Astor kind of gave us the highlights.
Jimmy: Yeah, that is fantastic. You know the thing that really bums me out that the part where he's talking about he was in line and he heard people talking about whether or not he was alive or dead. And it's really one of the reasons I wanted to do something like this, because for whatever reason, probably because their commercial origins are shady and filled with ties to organized crime, but for whatever reason, the content, the characters are famous, and the cartoonists really aren't and it's the one medium where that's the truth. You know, you don't buy records and go, hey, is that band alive or dead? I don't know. You know what I mean? So it's sad to hear that you could achieve so much and still have people not even be aware whether or not you're alive or dead. But that's the way it goes sometimes. We're alive. And that's a good. Hey, not only are we alive, it's my birthday today.
Harold: Happy birthday.
Jimmy: Not when you're listening, but when we're recording this. And I can think of no better way than to hang out with all my friends, and that includes you guys out there. and, just talk about our favorite comic strip. So with Harold's Prelude out of the way, how about we hit those strips?
Now, if you guys want to follow along, what you can do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the great Peanuts Reread, and you'll get one email a month from us letting you know what strips we're going to be covering in the upcoming episodes. And then all you got to do is go over to gocomics.com, type in the dates we're saying, and, away you go. You can read along with us. So you do that, and then come back here and we'll start right now,
May 2nd. Olaf and Andy are sitting, leaning up against a barn, just enjoying an afternoon. And Andy says to Olaf, if we're a couple of farm dogs, Olaf, don't you think we should be doing something? Andy continues, don't you think we should be useful? And Olaf says, we are useful. If we move, the barn will fall down.
Michael: Now, in the early days of comics, they used to have the main strip on the Sundays, the main strip taking two thirds of the page. And a lot of strips had a secondary strip on the bottom. Same creators sometimes, same characters. This would be a good one for Peanuts.
Michael: Every on is these two. You can use the same panels over and over again.
Jimmy: That's brilliant.
Harold: There's so many good holding up barn jokes they could just riff on.
Jimmy: Now, was that because of the war that that. Was that a paper shortage issue that they would make? you use two strips instead of one?
Michael: Well, it would be a bonus to the creator, too, because he'd get paid for separately, probably. For the secondary strip.
Harold: I read in passing, I don't know if this is true. I'd never seen it before. I was just researching something else. And it came up, and I think somebody said William Randolph Hearst thought up the idea, and I don't know if it was to, to kind of try things out to kind of see if there's something that might break out. And actually there were. Was some success in that, in that regard, I guess, but don't know if that's true.
Jimmy: Now that you mentioned that, of course it's not just the war, because that's where Krazy Kat started. Right. Wasn't Krazy Kat a secondary strip to the family upstairs?
Harold: The Bungle family. Yeah.
Jimmy: Or something like that.
Harold: Yeah, I, yeah, I, I, I can't remember. It was baked into the strip or if it was just along the top or it moved from, you know, one to the other. But it's not a bad idea. Right?
Michael: Is there a name for this for this kind of strip.
Jimmy: I don't know.
Harold: That's a good question.
Jimmy: Listeners. Anyone know.
Michael: Yeah, because, Alex Raymond, you know, who's doing Flash Gordon, had Jungle Jim.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: On the same page, on the bottom.
Harold: Maybe our listeners know.
Jimmy: Yeah, this would be really cute. And you could just. Yeah, it would be great. They never do anything. They just have a little conversation every day. I love both of these character designs. I love to see Andy. And of course, we know I love Olaf and his own unique beauty.
Harold: I like, Andy's Princess Leia ears.
Jimmy: Ah, he really does have Princess Leia ears. So cute.
May 19th. Peppermint Patty is in front of the class giving a report, and she says, this is my report on Hamlet. A Hamlet is a small village with a population of maybe a few hundred. And then her teacher interrupts her. Pepper. And Patty says, ma'am. And she sits down at their desk, and Marcie says to her, far and away, sir, one of the great tries of all time. Peppermint Patty says, I can't stand it.
Jimmy: This goes to them, this crazy school they go to.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: That she has to do a report on Hamlet. Maybe, though, like, this will be some sort of insane weight training, and Patty will get to, like, high school or whatever and realize she's brilliant because she's already unbelievably insane grade school.
Harold: Yeah. This teacher is ambitious. It's nice to see, I can't stand it as the final line in this trip. Haven't seen that in a while. That was a I just can't stand it.
Jimmy: You know, speaking of hamlets, we know the Ameliaverse here is in the great state of Pennsylvania. Do you know there's only one town In Pennsylvania?
Harold: No.
Michael: Oh, officially a town.
Jimmy: Yep. There's many hamlets.
Michael: Doesn't have a church. Is that what it is?
Jimmy: No, I don't know what that has to do with population size.
Harold: Oh, it has to be between 8302 and 8307, something like that.
Michael: Yeah, I heard a hamlet actually is a small village with that. it doesn't have a church.
Jimmy: Oh, really? Well, they still call hamlets things in America, and I don't think it has to do that, but that's probably where it did start. Yeah.
Jimmy: Because I grew up in a borough, but anyway. Yeah. Bloomsburg. Only town in Pennsylvania.
Harold: Really. Wow.
Jimmy: If you go to. If you go to Bloomsburg, you'll see a big sign.
Michael: New York is a town. It's like, hey, this old town had a great town. Chicago is also.
Liz: my kind of town
Jimmy: Oh, yeah, Chicago's definitely.
May 30, Snoopy and, Woodstock are hanging out. And Woodstock is atop a birdbath. And, he is fishing in the bird bath. And it looks like, he got something because he gets pulled in the bird bath. And that shocked Snoopy, sending his ears straight up in the air. And Woodstock, in the last panel, managed to clamber his way over to the side of the birdbath, looking disheveled and down at Snoopy, who says, Some pretty big ones in there, huh?
Harold: Such a cute Woodstock in the first panel, fishing.
Jimmy: Absolutely. One of my, talents. Especially starting in 1986, when I feel like around 84 to 86, is when they started really using photocopiers in comics. And one of my great superpowers was trying to find the original image and seeing which ones were the photocopies. You could really see it. Bill Sienkiewicz used to do it a lot, and he'd do it with color photocopiers, and those were never right on, but you could always see. And, Yeah. So this bird bath is definitely photocopies three times. Which one do you guys think is the original? Can you tell?
Michael: Yeah, the first.
Jimmy: First, yeah.
Michael: Guessing.
Harold: So. Wow. No, I don't know that we can say that ever happened before. To our knowledge, we haven't seen this before. That's. That's something.
Michael: You know, you got the same object in three with zipatone and three panels.
Harold: I'm wondering why.
Jimmy: Well, do you think it's because of the Zipatone?
Michael: Yeah, I think that he couldn't duplicate it.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: But it. The interesting thing is, you know, he would have. He would have penciled this. Right. And he would have drawn it three times, and then he would have. I'm guessing. And then he would have been inking. And then once he inked the first one, the zipatone wouldn't have gone down, I'm guessing, until the very end. Do you think he. He was all the way into it. He's like, oh, I'm not gonna do this again.
Jimmy: Could have been that. Could have been that. He tried to duplicate it and couldn't and then thought, oh, I know what I'm going to do. Photocopy it. But I. But I suspect that Michael's right it has something to do with the fact that it's. It. It has that kind of, not elaborate, but, you know, intricate little details of the zipatone on it.
Harold: It's nicely done. It really. It's uniquely Schulz. I just don't know anybody else who treated zipatone this the way he did.
Jimmy: No, it looks so much more like Duo Shade. Yeah, Duo Shade you're painting it on. That's the thing. We talked about this before. It's the chemicals you put on the paper to, develop different lines to make the shading.
Harold: And that guy, Roy Crane we just mentioned is one of the three people he called out was a master of that. And, what I don't understand is how many people were using this. How did a company manufacture this stuff and stay in business for years when there's, like, one or two cartoonists who use it and.
Michael: Advertising.
Jimmy: Advertising. Yeah.
Harold: Yeah, but how many times have you seen it in advertising? I mean, it just doesn't seem like something that there would have been a massive demand for. I could be wrong, but I just. I don't remember seeing it anywhere but, you know, Buzz Sawyer or whatever.
Jimmy: Yeah. I don't know. but it was. And it was such a great thing. I was wondering. I don't know if this is. This might be insane, but does it read as gray to modern eyes, or does it look like black dots? Like, in a world where everything is high def, like, everything in our lives looked grainy and out of focus and weird. So, like, you didn't think, okay, those black dots represent gray tones. Fine. Because half tones were everywhere in newspapers.
Harold: And I would bet it varies from person to person. there are certain things that people see exactly the same thing in such a different way. I, Again, like, it asks the listeners, you.
Jimmy: Know, Well, I remember being. I remember when the Batman movie came out, the first one in 1989, and I was in high school, and my geometry teacher pulled me aside. Because we had, like, a dress, down day. I went to Catholic school, but, like, every once in a while, you'd be able to just wear whatever half the school was in Batman shirts. And my geometry teacher, pulled me aside and said, I have to ask you a question, because I was wearing a Batman shirt. Just why is everybody wearing yellow teeth? And I'm like, what are you talking about?
Jimmy: She saw the yellow circle around the bat as interesting mouth with. With teeth, and thought it was the ugliest thing. And why did suddenly everyone in the world want to wear yellow teeth? I'm like, no, it's the. It's a bat signal. And, it took her a minute. She's like, oh, I see.
Harold: Oh, that's cool.
Jimmy: Yeah, that's.
Harold: That's really. I was afraid you got in trouble. You were going to get dressed down on dress down day.
Jimmy: Oh, no, I bet it's.
Harold: It's different to different eyes. I've heard some really fascinating things from people. I've always said, I love the thicks and thins of the line in cartooning. And I've met people who look at me and go, what are you talking about? They don't see the variation in line. If someone had drawn something,
Liz: I don't see them.
Jimmy: Oh, really?
Liz: I, mean, I think it's. You guys, as cartoonists, see an entirely different thing from those of us who are, like, auditory people.
Harold: Yeah. There's certain things that I don't know if our brain is just trained to shut out stuff that's irrelevant to you. And so after a while, or, you know, you're just. It's like when you're looking at a chair and you say it's a chair versus having to draw the chair, and then you have to see it in a completely different way in order to recreate it. Your brain is just saying, oh, that's. That's Snoopy. You know, there's no reason to analyze the lines that make Snoopy.
Liz: speaking of analyzing the lines, what's with those clouds? I mean, it looks like a flying T shirt in that second panel.
Jimmy: Oh, that's kind of look like a flying T shirt.
Harold: That's a bat signal.
Jimmy: Maybe they're near, a baseball field where it's T shirt day, and I shoot them at the cannon. I like the third panel. Woodstock looking a little. Little moist.
Harold: Well, that's interesting. Talk about seeing things two different ways. Up until just now, I was seeing Woodstock looking off into the distance.
Harold: And. And, now I'm seeing Woodstock looking directly at Snoopy.
Jimmy: Yeah, he's looking at Snoopy because the.
Harold: Two, the two lines are so close to looking like two eyes.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah.
Harold: But it's not. It's. It's. It, it is thinner on the second one. And that's, that's that little Lucy Linus.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: Line around the eye that, you know, where you can see that Woodstock's had a hard time. But I read that as just Woodstock looking off into the distance. A little disheveled. But it's, it's not. That's so wild. That's so unusual for. It's so funny. We were here, we were talking about it for other things and, and I just realized I was misreading Schulz's intent. Did you guys see it as immediately as Woodstock looking at Snoopy?
Michael: It's both at once. It said, the, Cubist influence.
Jimmy: rabbit duck thing
Harold: I like it both ways.
Michael: Yeah.
Harold: I can just hop back and forth now.
Jimmy: I got to use Nude Descending a Staircase as our title.
Michael: Yeah, I saw that. I don't know if you can use the word nude on the, web, though.
Jimmy: Not allowed to. Is that.
Harold: That's right. Yeah. The downloads are down by 50% because it's edited out by AI. This requires 18 and up.
Jimmy: 18 and up. So, you know, just talking, going back to whether you see the lines or don't see the lines, to me that's really. I never even considered that. That some people really don't see the thicks and thins because, like, Michael talks about his favorite, or one of his favorite, artists being Al Williamson. Right. Who's in so many ways the opposite of Schulz. Schulz is spare and cartoony, and, Williamson is detailed and realistic. But if you look at both of them on like a microscopic level, the lines are beautiful. Despite. They're both beautiful. It doesn't matter what they're describing or even how they're describing it. You could. I look at them and I think, oh, my gosh, those are just amazing pen and ink lines.
Michael: It's funny you mentioned that because, we were just talking about thin and thin lines. I was just thinking about the guy who was my favorite inker in the 60s for Kirby, which is Dick Ayers.
Jimmy: Yep.
Michael: which to this day, still my favorite anchor. Because that's the stuff I, you know, I fell in love, with. I go back and look at it, it's still beautiful. But boy, the thick lines are insane. I mean, just. And it's something I've never tried to do, but it's probably not fashionable anymore. But at that time, you really, really poured it on on those outlines.
Harold: Yeah. And I mentioned Joe Kubert, in his later career. He had such incredibly chunky brush lines that I could only see the lines. And I had to fight to see what he had drawn because I just saw blotches of ink. Like, Tor, I think, was one of the, Or actually, there was a logo I think they used for his school in New Jersey, this cartooning school, like.
Jimmy: A Tarzan kind of guy.
Harold: This Tarzan guy. And when I look at that, I have to fight to see the guy because it's just this massive Rorschach blobs of ink.
Michael: Speaking of which.
Harold: And maybe because I'm so focused online, you know, I don't know.
Michael: Look at our next strip for talking about blotches of ink.
Harold: Oh, wow.
June 9th. Snoopy is amid many blotches of ink. He is an infantryman in World War II. and he is storming the beach at Normandy. And, we see in throwing some grenades, and he's thinking to himself, D4. The brave infantryman hurls a grenade at the pillbox. Then another and another, and it looks like a really wild battle scene. And then we cut, to Charlie Brown reading that one book in his chair, and he says, why do I have the feeling someone is throwing rocks at our front door?
Liz: So this is the 50th anniversary of 4 Days After D Day.
Michael: This brings to mind just how incredibly naive I was and ignorant, and comics taught me so much. Talk about Joe Kubert again. Okay. There was a Joe Kubert story, probably, you know, early 60s, a war story. And I read the title as the Dday Hhour, and I thought, okay, the guy's really, like, nervous.
Jimmy: Oh, man. We were talking, I guess last episode about sometimes drawing the way you're drawing, affecting the emotion, or being affected rather, by the emotion you're feeling or trying to portray. This is. And, I'm completely projecting. I don't know anything about this, but to me, this looks like someone with PTSD. I mean, this is an intense, violent, ugly. And I don't even mean that in a bad way, like, but, you know, expressionistically ugly panel--
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: Of war in Peanuts. I think it's pretty wild. And I remember. I very much remember when these were coming out and thinking the same thing, like, that pillbox just looks evil.
Michael: You know, I find this slightly disrespectful
Jimmy: because it's Snoopy?
Michael: I know. He was in battle. But to make it part of a joke with the dog and being this. Well, it's as realistic as Schulz gets.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: About, you know, people getting blown up.
Jimmy: Yeah. I'm curious. I believe he heard lots of good things about it from the people who, you know, from vets and stuff like that. But I definitely see your point, because, I mean, it's Snoopy, and in most people's mind, it's a simple, basic comic strip and not like the creator's personal diary, which it kind of really is. What do you think of the art, Harold?
Harold: Interesting. You were saying about the PTSD? That's really interesting because this is. He's. He's showing the horror here and.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: What's. What's going on? It is a strange juxtaposition in this comic strip within the panel of Charlie Brown quietly sitting in his chair.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: Which is actually. I don't. Yeah. I guess again, this is. This strip, maybe it maybe is another Rorschach test for people where they may get so sucked into what Snoopy is doing and what he's in the middle of, which actually happened, that Snoopy's recreating. it's either a tribute to the brave soldiers or it's disrespectful. That's really interesting.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: I didn't read it that way, but. Because I'm. I guess I was just so used to Snoopy. But, you know, we've seen him as the World War I flying ace, and he's fighting a certain person who we know never dies.
Michael: But he's here.
Harold: Snoopy could be killing somebody.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah.
Michael: He's in a plane. If he was in the trenches, it would not be good.
Harold: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fact that he's throwing a grenade into a place that has, you know, you expect other, beings who could be killed by Snoopy.
Michael: Other dogs. German shepherds.
Jimmy: German shepherds.
Harold: That's disrespectful. Michael.
Jimmy: I apologize to all our German listeners. That was just funny. Okay. I'm sorry.
Liz: So what. What tools is he using there? Is that a marker? how does he. It doesn't look like zipatone to me.
Jimmy: Well, there's some zipatone, I think. Well, actually, maybe there's no zipatone. It looks like it's black brushes. And then it looks like he's almost scratching into it with white on top.
Michael: Well, there's pretty. Some pretty tight cross hatching going on, too.
Harold: Yeah, yeah.
Michael: which he never does.
Jimmy: No, no, no, no. Never. Almost never. Yeah.
Harold: Very, very Unique panel.
Jimmy: I'd be curious because, you know, because I do this sometimes. I'll scratch into the black. Really? Only in this depression book I'm doing, I'll scratch over the black with an exacto knife to get white lines through it, which I got from an interview with Schulz where he was talking about George Herriman doing it that way. but yeah, I look at this and I see ptsd.
Harold: Yeah, that's. That's really an interesting insight. I can see that in, in this art. It is, one of the most tortured panels, if not the most in Peanuts history here.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: No, I have to go back, Michael. I confess, I didn't understand that thing you were just saying. It's been going over my head because I didn't get what you were saying about the day.
Michael: H hour. D day. H hour.
Harold: What is H hour? I don't even have never heard of H hour.
Michael: That's the landing hour.
Jimmy: Oh, and he thought it was Dday.
Harold: Da day. I didn't know the H Hour, so I was kind of…
Jimmy: I guarantee I would have thought that if I saw it. Definitely.
Harold: It makes sense. Yeah.
Jimmy: Here's another one of, the D Day strips.
June 10th, and it's Snoopy, behind a machine gun in a little machine gun nest with his helmet on. He's riding home and he says, dear mom, just a note to tell you I am well. They say we will be home by Christmas. I hope so.
Jimmy: And that's the entire strip.
Michael: Yeah. Again, we had one shortly, before this, which was no attempt at a punchline.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: Yeah. This is pretty remarkable. Peanuts, 44 years in.
Michael: Yeah, this is definitely a Mauldin kind of thing where he'd have people in their trenches riding home and.
Liz: Maybe it is zipatone.
Harold: Well, this. Looking at this. Unless there was a zipatone that was uneven lines. He's doing every single line.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: The reason that I would think I can't make up my mind on this, but I'm guessing he's drawing every single line here. Unless there's some tone I'm not aware of. That was just kind of uneven.
Jimmy: I mean, there are. But no, not like this.
Liz: I think we have to go to the museum and see that exhibit.
Michael: Well, no, I, You know what happens when you're. You're cross hatching and you're not up really close. Sometimes some lines are closer and some lines are further apart.
Jimmy: Yeah, no, that's definitely what's going on.
Michael: And then the reproduction. Yeah, I'm sure it's cleaner. In the original.
Harold: But, but, but you're saying, Michael, this is hand. This is hand done.
Michael: Every single one. Yeah.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: That's a lot of. He spent a lot of time. Because there are probably a good 400 plus lines.
Liz: But the way he cuts it out, I mean, it looks like the way he does zipatone.
Harold: Yes, you're right. That's what I was looking at. Now, in this case, what he would do is he would take, some sort of a white out and drop it on top of the lines he's already drawn. Right. That's how he would do this. So he'd do all the lines.
Jimmy: Well, sometimes, like add some white. Yeah. Onto where it's on top sometimes. Yeah, on the right hand side, like above Snoopy, those little, nurdles of white. But like, I think in some other instances, like when he's bumping up against the trees, not all the way. I mean, he just did it that way, I believe. You know, I don't think he did the whole thing is. And then went over top of all of it.
Harold: This is a strip I really would like to see in person. And you can really see the technique that he. I mean, the fact that we were discussing this and trying to figure it out shows that he. This is a remarkable work, that he's done. You know, as cartoonists, we can't fully figure out what he was up to.
Jimmy: The other thing that's interesting about it is if you go back to 1950 and he's given this tiny little strip and he's like, well, I'm gonna fight back using white space, and everything's gonna be about drawing the eye to my thing. And this is not caring. I, guarantee you, you know, I haven't seen it in the newspaper in 31 years, but I'm guarantee that looked just like a smudge in the newspaper. The two or this whole sequence. And I'm guarantee. I also guarantee that he knew that.
Harold: Well, I think it's interesting. 44 years in, Schulz has influenced a lot of cartoonists. And everybody, I think, moved in his direction, or most people moved in his direction. So there's a ton of white space now in the strips. And so he mixes it up. He's like, well, if that's where you guys are now, I can go the other direction.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Liz: And have we seen Snoopy holding a pencil in his paw?
Harold: No. that looks. That's such a strange drawing. It looks like it's just balancing on the top of a paw. That looks like it's going the wrong direction, even right.
Liz: Well, he's left handed.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah. He would be left handed. Yeah, that's.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: So Snoopy's a left handed writer. Wow. that's weird.
Harold: I read it as his right paw.
Harold: Because I thought the little paw. I saw a little paw down that's in front of him, which would have been his left paw, maybe.
Jimmy: Oh, you're right, Harold. Oh, I see what it is. No, no, yeah, you're totally right. Oh, that's. You have to really zoom in to see that.
Harold: But yeah, yeah, it's very, very unusual drawing.
Jimmy: Well, you know what? Having successfully stormed the beach at Normandy, I think we need to take a break. recollect. And, before we advance sound. good.
Harold: Sure.
Liz: Yes, sir.
Jimmy: We’ll be right back
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Jimmy: And we are back. Hey, Liz, I'm hanging out in the mailbox. Do we got anything?
Liz: We do. we heard from Colin from Ireland who writes big fan of the pod.
Jimmy: All right.
Liz: I work in a bookstore, and I'm always perusing this site called Lithub. And I recently came across a great article by Chuck Klosterman about Peanuts called Writing about Charlie Brown Feels like Writing About Myself. I can't vouch for the quality of Klosterman's other work, but I very much enjoyed this. And, I will put the link, on social media. He says, thanks for the great show. Me and my partner always look forward to the new episode.
Michael: Wow.
Jimmy: Well, thank you so much.
Liz: P.S. i've been recently deep diving REM's back catalog.
Jimmy: Yes.
Liz: While listening to the pod. Are you talking REM Re Me?
Jimmy: Oh, great pod. Adam Scott. Scott Aukerman. I know it well. Very nice.
Liz: And he says I might have to agree with Jimmy that they're the best band ever. Along with the Smiths, of course.
Jimmy: What a great day it is for me, my birthday, and fantastic. Thank you so much.
Michael: And I have read, all of Chuck Klosterman's books of essays. They're great. He's very funny. Also, he's just writing about pop music.
Harold: Generally, so you can vouch for Chuck Klosterman’s other work
Michael: Oh yeah, yeah. He's one of my favorites.
Jimmy: Yeah, he's great.
Liz: So thank you, Colin. That was great.
Harold: Thank you.
Liz: Then we also heard from Paul Hebert, who writes. Hey gang, I'm listening to the 1993 Part 2 episode where you talk about Rerun's relationship with Snoopy. Bringing Rerun back with more to do than comment about being on the back of a bicycle was, as far as I see it, the last brilliant thing Schulz brought to the strip. Especially for how he put Snoopy and Rerun in a, deeply meaningful relationship. Jimmy's comment on how Snoopy and Rerun are on the same wavelength left me with a question for y'all. This all happened when Calvin and Hobbes was the thing in comic strips. Any speculation on the idea that Rerun and Snoopy as a pair of characters was influenced by Watterson? Be of good cheer.
Jimmy: Oh, interesting. Well, he'd never admit it.
Michael: Well, we didn't actually see these Snoopy rerun strips till later this year. And this is the year that I've been waiting for this to happen. That Rerun actually comes into his own as a main character
Jimmy: 21 years after his-- Maybe I'm wrong about that, but around 21 years after he was first introduced, which is wild.
Harold: They certainly are. It's two very different types of relationships. Calvin and Hobbes and Rerun and Snoopy. Yeah.
Jimmy: Oh, definitely. Definitely.
Harold: There seems to be this. I've read so few of them and here I am going in order now. So the vast majority of strips ahead of me I've not seen, but the ones that I have seen just kind of randomly through the years, there seems to be a very pure relationship between the two of them.
Harold: That in some ways reminds me of Snoopy and Woodstock.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: So. Because that is a different. Well, it's so interesting. I think that's one of the wonderful things about Calvin and Hobbes is you have this, this, this tiger character who is, you know, you're dancing in the world of Calvin's fantasy, but it can't be Calvin's fantasy. So is he real? Is he not? And that's the, that's one of the dynamics of the strip, of course. But to have somebody who is as thoughtful and playful as Hobbes with, Calvin, who is much more. He can be cynical and he can be super self serving, it's a great balance. But it's definitely a different dynamic, of course, than Rerun and Snoopy, who are just kind of finding joy in each other.
Jimmy: I think it probably is more likely that Schulz would look at Watterson's work and see the things Watterson took from him, rather than seeing things he could take from Watterson. You know what I mean? Just from that. You know how it is.
Harold: But he is a student. We know he's a student of what's going on around him, and he absolutely is going to glean from somebody who is at the top of his game, in the field that he works in. So, you know, I think Schulz would also be a fool to not say why is this working, you know? And is there something I can pull? He's very, very good at that.
Liz: And we also heard from, regular listener Sarah Wilson, who writes, dear Ma'am, I, mean sweet cheeks. I mean hon.
Harold: That's a good start.
Liz: Just last week, I popped into Snoopy Town here in Tokyo and noticed that all the Olaf merch was discounted and on sale.
Harold: Oh, my.
Jimmy: Scoop that up.
Liz: Had this fad too passed already? But then I discovered why there's a new dog in town named Andy. And she sent us pictures, which I will post. And she says, I thought the Japan Peanuts merch people just made him up. But then I did my reading assignment for Unpacking Peanuts and met Andy at Snoopy's bedside. Serendipitous timing.
Harold: Yeah.
Liz: She closes with, but I don't think the Japanese like Spike. I don't think I've seen him once.
Jimmy: I'm not sure that the Americans like Spike.
Harold: Yes. Is there much Spike merch out there? I can't remember seeing anything at the time.
Jimmy: They have all the brothers and sisters in plush at the museum. I know, so I'm sure there's a Spike there.
Harold: And there's probably just the cactus collection.
Liz: And that's it for the mail.
Jimmy: I got a couple things. We got a voicemail and two texts. So let's start with the texts. Dear UP, how much a product of its time is Peanuts? Do you think a similar property would succeed if it started today? Thanks for the amazing podcast, Charles Kulak. And then he has a P.S. i think you should post a playlist of Michael's music for the show.
Liz: Oh, we have it.
Jimmy: What?
Liz: I put it out at Christmas a year ago.
Jimmy: Well, he didn't know.
Liz: And, it's on Bandcamp, I think. But I will.
Jimmy: Oh, awesome.
Harold: Fantastic.
Liz: I will make sure that it is in the show notes and more available maybe on the website.
Harold: That's wonderful, Charles.
Jimmy: This is how good we are at marketing. Not even all of the people on the podcast knew that, so don't feel bad that you didn't know it, Charles.
Michael: I had no idea I wrote music for this podcast.
Liz: Well, I'm really glad that somebody asked about it.
Jimmy: It's a good thing.
Harold: That's cool. You can just loop that and you'll be imagining your own Unpacking Peanuts episode.
Jimmy: There you go. you could play it in headphones and, like, walk around town. My neighbor is sitting by the thinking wall...
Harold: and just have every once in a while have a little Aziza thing pop in.
Jimmy: And how much of a product of its time do you think Peanuts is? Would a similar property start or succeed today?
Michael: I don't think anybody's really paying attention to comic strips today.
Jimmy: Well, yeah, I would. That's what I was thinking is, like, it would have to be in a different medium. Right, right.
Harold: As a property, of course. You know, he's kind of opened up that question. It doesn't necessarily have to be in the comic strip.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah. Do you think a similar property would succeed? Right.
Harold: Well, given we've been talking about Gen Z, really responding to Snoopy. No. You know, this is a character that was created 75 years ago, and Snoopy is relevant. I kind of think that Peanuts, although it was a slow burn in terms of Schulz having to grow into being the phenomenon, he was it. I think he would have had to have done it through his own means and over the course of years got better and better, and then it would have caught on. But because we have the Internet, I think that was possible. So I. I would say the answer is yes. that this would have found, an audience today.
Jimmy: Well, there you go, Charles. I agree. And we heard from Pat M. Who writes, I just found your delightful podcast already up to 1964, and Lucy's slideshow of CB's faults. It got me thinking, what media would Lucy use to critique Charlie Brown in 2025?
Michael: Wow. TikTok.
Jimmy: yeah.
Liz: Twitter.
Jimmy: Maybe. Like just a bunch of GIFs, like ant looping GIFs of him failing at various things. What do you think, Harold?
Harold: I think those are good answers.
Jimmy: All right, that's what you got. He's going to be humiliated with GIFs on TikTok. And we got this voicemail.
Marcia: Hi, this is Marcia Hepps, one time Snoopy, longtime listener, fan of all you unpackers. I am so grateful that you pointed me to February 20th. I'm calling because I don't want you to worry. And I love this strip. I love all of the cozy Linus and Snoopy in frames, 2, 3, 4, and 5, especially, and then the wackiness of, the tossings and turnings, and then ending up with Snoopy in the blanket, and Linus is on the doghouse. I think this is brilliant.
Jimmy: So, okay, so she is referring to the strip we discussed, where it's kind of that futurist take, where we're seeing multiple images of Snoopy and Linus as they're trying to get comfortable as they nap. So that is the strip she was, talking about liking.
Liz: Thank you, Marcia.
Harold: Yes. Yes, that is a great strip. Thanks, Marcia.
Liz: And it's one that needs to be seen to appreciate.
Jimmy: Yeah, it's hard to even discuss that one without having it directly in front of you, because it is so weird. But it is a cool one. And that's it.
Liz: I just want to add one more thing that, Michael had an interview today with regular listener Tim Young, who runs the podcast, Deconstructing Comics. And his interview with Michael will be out sometime this spring, I think. We will let you know when it happens.
Jimmy: That's fantastic, Tim. Thank you so much for, doing that. Michael, did you represent us well? Did you do us proud?
Michael: I sure did. I said we were good.
Jimmy: All right.
Liz: He knew what questions to ask because he has memorized your intro of Michael.
Jimmy: Oh, are you kidding? Oh, my God. Me too, buddy. Well, thank you.
So if you guys want to, reach out and keep this conversation going, there's a couple different ways you can do it. You can call us on our hotline or leave a text there. 717-219-4162. Or you can email us through our website unpacking peanuts@gmail.com and. And, you can follow us on social media, too. But I'll give you that litany at the end. how about right now, we go right to the strips?
Liz: Sure. Okay.
June 27th. we're at the good old mall with Peppermint Patty and Marcie. They have shopping bags and ice cream. And Marcie says, my grandpa says when he was little, kids used to roll hoops, shoot marbles, and spin tops. And Peppermint Patty says to her at the mall?
Jimmy: love another appearance of the mall. I think it's great. I think his, what I'm interested in this one is the way he just designed the background to frame Them, you know, and I'm also interested in that fact that this is a mall. But basically there are very, very few things indicating what anything is. There's some items, on the, on like a makeup counter. Including what, the world's smallest lamp?
Michael: Oh, I thought that was like a ketchup bottle. And so.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah. I don't know. I mean, maybe it is. I don't know what it is. Yeah, it's. It's. That's what it is. It's condiments. And that's a paper towel roll.
Liz: no, it's a toilet paper roll. That, that doesn't look like a paper towel.
Jimmy: that's what it is.
Harold: It's a vertical toilet paper.
Jimmy: I also don't know what's in the. The store on the left hand side.
Michael: Oh, those look like shirts.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah. Maybe shirts. Yeah.
Harold: So do you think he purposely kept it, unclear so that the punchline would hit? I think then you'd have to see it afterward.
Jimmy: And the thing that I think that's amazing is that you know it's a mall. But why do you know it's a mall? Like she says.
Michael: She says so.
Jimmy: Yeah. But then you're like, you don't go, is that a mall? I don't know. I just think it's a really interesting graphically designed long panel, especially the big white space with two of them in it. Yeah, I think it really works. And I just like any appearance of the mall because that's.
Liz: Honestly, when I first read this before we started, because I always read word balloons without looking at the pictures first. I thought the punchline was hysterically funny because I didn't realize they were at the mall until after I dollied back out. So when you introduce the strip by saying they're at the mall, I think it loses some of the humor, really.
Harold: But to the point, I think the way he drew it, you don't know it's a mall until you've read it, even if you're looking at it. So I think maybe that was intentional for the very reason you said. Liz. It is funnier if you don't know they're at the mall. At least first. At first.
Jimmy: Well, I ruined that for you, Sparky. I'm sorry.
July 15th. Charlie Brown is lying awake, in his bed. And Snoopy is actually now laying, not in the doghouse, but on his lap, adorably curled up. But Charlie Brown's having a rough night. And he says, sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask where Have I gone wrong? Then he rolls over and continues. Then a voice says to me, this is going to take more than one night.
Harold: Wow.
Jimmy: you know, I cannot help but think this is because this, you know, this is an older man with some regrets that he's putting into the strip. And it's, you know, to me, I look at that and I think, wow, Charles Schulz had some regrets. That's great. You know what I mean? Like, everybody, right? You know, if after 44 years and he was drawing a comic strip with Charlie Brown in his bed thinking, you know what? Everything I did was fantastic. It would be. No one would like that. But this is. This feels very relatable to me.
Harold: Yeah, this is. I love the zipatone on the blanket. It's so well done. It's so evocative of a rumply striped comforter. It just works so well. And it's Snoopy in that first panel, kind of curled around, but it's probably Charlie Brown's foot. I don't know.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, it would have to be his foot.
Harold: Yeah, it's. It's really nice. Again, talking about 44 years into the strip. Yeah, this hasn't existed before. He's, definitely true to the themes and the characters, but artistically, imagine this in 1960, 1970. You can't. I mean, it just was not there artistically. And he said, like in that interview, I work harder on the strip than I ever have in terms of the visuals. Now, part of that is because of the struggle that he has with his. The tremor. But that's forced him to do new things to incorporate that tremor into the work.
Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely. And one great place to do it is a good old rumply comforter.
July 18, Charlie Brown answers the phone. Hello? And we see, oh, it's Peppermint Patty giving him a call. She says, hi, Chuck. Just thought I'd let you know I'm back from camp. I had a nice time. Did you miss me, Chuck? And Charlie Brown answers, who is this? Pepper? And Patty slumps to the floor, looks miserable, and says, I've never heard of you either, Chuck.
Harold: So Charlie Brown must be visual and not auditory.
Jimmy: Yes, he must be. He must be. and here's a Peanuts obscurity. Those things that, they have in their hand. That's what telephones used to look like with wires. Could not even get Instagram on those. It was unbelievable.
July 27, Lucy and Rerun are hanging out outside. And Lucy has a good old jump rope. And she says, see, Rerun it's a jump rope. You twirl the rope and you jump up and down like this. And she demonstrates and she continues to skip rope. And she says, then you count how many times you jump. To which Rerun asks, why?
Jimmy: Don't start asking that question, Rerun. That's the rest of your life. And you will have no answers.
Michael: Odds are no one out there knows what the hell she's doing.
Jimmy: People jump rope for exercise.
Michael: Yes, well, Sylvester Stallone maybe, but I don't know.
Jimmy: The little kids are out. I guess they still are.
Liz: Yeah, she would have slugged Linus if he'd said that.
Jimmy: Well, that's true. Now that we see like the classic Rerun design and we see him next to Lucy being so tiny. well, although look at the difference between panel one and panel four.
Jimmy: He shrinks. He shrinks quite a bit.
Harold: Yeah, he better. If he's gonna say that to Lucy, he's got to be kind of diminutive.
Jimmy: The top of his head's, like, by her hairline in the first one, and then he's beneath her nose in the last one. I like the short and smaller one.
Harold: My vote for where I wish Schulz had stayed with Rerun is right here. Wearing overalls, being shorter. That's Rerun. You don't have to mess with his hair. You don't need the bird's nest. It could just, Yeah, that. That's Rerun.
Jimmy: Yeah, that works Great. I agree.
July 28th. Rerun's now taken some lessons from Linus, who's shooting a basketball. Always like good basketball content. And, Linus says, this is how we shoot baskets, Rerun. See, we bounce the ball a couple of times to get our rhythm. Then we flip it through the basket and Rerun answers again or asks again, Why?
Michael: I'm still asking that question.
Jimmy: It's just fun. Just fun. I like the fact that he used the zipatone on the bouncing ball. For some reason, that really does give me the texture of a basketball. It does on the first panel, too. It's hard to draw a basketball. The stitching is weird.
Harold: Yeah. And for the next five and a half years, this is the punchline to every Peanuts strip.
Jimmy: Just why? Well, but Here we go.
July 29th. Theme and variations. So now Lucy is reading Rerun a book, and she says, okay, Rerun, I'm going to read you this story. And if you say why, I. I'm going to pound you. Oh, to which Rerun says, how come?
Harold: Grace period's over
Jimmy: So this is Rerun making a big Play, for being in the strip, having his own little thing. And I'm excited about it. I like to see him. I like his little overalls. I like his whole vibe at this point.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: And I also feel like he was off on his own all these decades, just getting weird. Nobody really was paying attention to him. Now he's just gonna reveal his weirdness to us. So what do you say we, wrap it up there? This is unprecedented because I picked so many strips. We're going to a part four.
Harold: Whoa.
Jimmy: Which will forever upset Michael's OCD that we have one that is wrong. And I apologize in advance, but I just couldn't stop picking them.
So we would love for you to come back. If you want to keep this conversation going until then, there's a bunch of different ways you could do it. First, we would love to hear from you, because, remember, when I don't hear, I worry. So you can send us an email at unpackingpeanuts@gmail.com, you can reach out to us on our hotline where you can call or leave a text message. That number is 717-219-4162. Or you can follow us on social media. We're unpackpeanuts on Instagram and threads and unpackingpeanuts on Facebook, bluesky and YouTube. And we would absolutely love to hear from you.
So, come back next week for 1994, part four. Then we're going to be wrapping up this season with, only one official season left where we, do. But we have a special surprise for you. Liz, why don't you tell us what we're doing after 1994?
Liz: We have some very exciting guests coming on the podcast.
Jimmy: First, we have Rita Grimsley Johnson, author of Good Grief, which was the only authorized biography of Charles Schulz. And she tells us great stories about getting to hang out with him and her writing life and writing career. We have Judy Sladky, who was handpicked by Charles Schulz to be Snoopy in the ice shows. And, she was Snoopy for decades. I mean, still Snoopy. She could do backflips and tell you stories about Charles Schulz, and it's fantastic. And we have Lynn Johnston, creator of For Better Or For Worse, one of the all time great comic strips. One of the most successful comic strips in history. Personal friend of Mr. Schulz, and, one of the few people who could really tell us what it's like to be a daily cartoonist at that level. So we are more than excited to bring those people to you, and we, can't wait to get there and we hope you share it with us. So until all that good stuff happens for Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer. Yes, yes.
MH&L: Be of good cheer.
Liz: Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz, and Liz Sumner. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by his Aziza Shukralla 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: Nurdles of White.