Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. It's that time of year again. We're born again, there's new grass on the field, it's baseball time. And guess what? I'll be your umpire for this game. My name's Jimmy Gownley. I am also a cartoonist. I did things like Seven Good Reasons not to Grow up, the Dumbest Idea Ever, and Amelia Rules. And as a baseball player, I struck out 27 times in a row.
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 co creator of the original comic book Price Guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules, 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. It's Harold Buchholz.
Harold: Hello.
Jimmy: So, guys, are you so excited? Spring training. I know you're happy. The Pirates are two and one. So once again I'm deluding myself into thinking they will come in someplace other than last. I'm sure your guys are all very excited about baseball.
Michael: why did you pick the Pirates over the Phillies? Because you are closer to the Phillies, I believe.
Jimmy: I have no idea. Well, the reason I picked it was because my dad picked it. I believe the reason my dad picked the Pirates was because he was one of seven boys and all other-- the six other ones were all Philly fans. Yeah. Total contrarian. So I come by it honestly, you know, it's hard to be, the son of a contrarian because how do you out contrary the contrarians?
Harold: It's like the counter counterculture.
Jimmy: Yes, right.
Michael: Well, I did the same. I picked the rival team of our home team.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: And you lived in the city. I at least had some wiggle room.
Michael: Yeah, right.
Liz: I grew up really close to the Phillies, but was a Red Sox fan.
Jimmy: Really Now why--
Harold: My choice was to make, no choice.
Jimmy: Here's what we're going to do, though. We're going to find a baseball team that's going to be. We're going to just designate as Harold's official team by the end of this episode.
Harold: So someplace in Tokyo or something.
Jimmy: Well, what about the Cleveland Guardians. It's Midwest. They got that new name. That sounds pretty good. What do you think about them? That's. Don't. Don't jump on it. Just try it out for a while and I'll send out another name a little bit.
Michael: We are all rooting for Montreal.
Jimmy: Rooting for Montreal?
Michael: Well, yeah. Canadians. Go Canadians.
Jimmy: Well, there's no Montreal team for about 30 years, but.
Michael: Is that right?
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: Why didn't they. Why didn't they tell me
Jimmy: they moved to Washington
Harold: Time marches on.
Michael: so Toronto.
Harold: Yeah. Now that. The Washington Canadians.
Jimmy: The Washington, See, actually that would be my dad's favorite team. If there was a Washington Canadians, he. That would have been. Absolutely.
Liz: I don't get it.
Jimmy: Well, this national capital. But their name, the Canadians, it's contrarian. All right, so we're start. We're just try on Cleveland Guardians and we'll see how it goes.
Harold: Sounds very Marvelesque.
Jimmy: Yeah, it used to be the Cleveland Indians.
Harold: They're trying to cash in without getting in trouble.
Jimmy: Yeah, I didn't even think about that. I wonder if that did. Do you think that played into. I mean, they just.
Harold: I think Disney's lawyers are working on the cease and desist.
Jimmy: Well, they have one ready to go for everyone in America.
Harold: Right. They have to keep busy, you know, idle hands and all.
Jimmy: Absolutely. yeah. So since it is good old baseball season, starting up here, I thought we would take. Take a moment, from our regular schedule and just go back and look at a classic strip, from 1960, a classic sequence of strips. They were adapted into the special Charlie Brown's All Stars, which is the second animated special.
Harold: Yeah. Which I've never seen.
Jimmy: Oh really?
Harold: Michae,l I know, hasn't either.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah. So I'm the only one that's seen it. I've seen it like twice because about. I mean, it's never shown, but about like 20 years ago now they put out, DVDs like Peanuts in the 60s, Peanuts in the 70s, for the specials, and it had all of them. And I got the 60s one, of course, and, Yeah, it was on there. It's okay. I mean, there's a reason it's not shown like all the others, but it's okay.
Harold: Interesting. Yeah. What's the reason? Just not very good?
Jimmy: It doesn't. Yeah, well, I mean, it doesn't have the universal appeal of, like, the Christmas one or the Halloween one, I think.
Harold: You know, and I guess they went by ratings. You know, if it was, people were watching it, they'd bring it back every time.
Jimmy: And there's. Yeah, there's no--. Like, when do you play it? Are you going to play it at the World Series? Are you going to play it in spring? Or it's just throughout summer, you know, I think. And also, I'm not sure. The plot is Charlie Brown is getting new uniforms from a sponsor, for this team. But, or some reason they're getting a sponsor and the sponsor won't sponsor the team unless he gets rid of the girls and. And Snoopy, the dog.
Harold: Oh, wow.
Jimmy: And, Charlie Brown stands up for whatever and, sticks with his team. So that's what Charlie Brown's All Stars is about. But I knew these from the book Slide Charlie Brown Slide, which was a gift in fifth grade from my teacher, Ms. Klinger. So Ms. Klinger, this one is Susie Klinger, if you're out there. This one's dedicated to you.
If you characters out there want to follow along. well, a couple things you should do. The first thing you should do is go over to our website Unpacking Peanuts and sign up for the great Peanuts reread. And that'll get you one email a month that tells you what we're doing. Maybe not everything we're doing, but most of the things that we're doing, you know that we have to have some privacy, for God's sake.
Harold: We're not going to show you what we had for dinner at the local restaurant.
Jimmy: No. Unless it's like really good and. Or Peanuts related, I guess. Well, and while you're over there, check out the website. Liz, has done a great job, maintaining it and putting all kinds of good stuff on the old Peanuts Obscurities page. But then, anyway, once you do that, you can follow along with us. And if you wanted to follow along with this one right now, just go over to May of 1960 on go comics.com and you will be able to see all of these strips I'm talking about and read along with us. So with all that preamble out of the way, how about we get right to it?
Harold: Sure.
Liz: Got it.
May 16, 1960. It's the middle of a baseball game. Lucy and Patty are sitting on the bench, and Lucy has her eyes covered. She says, I can't look. Patty says the score is three to two in the last of the ninth. And Lucy, looking very upset, says, but we have two outs. Patty says, but Charlie Brown is on third and our best hitter is coming up. Lucy is still looking very nervous and says, say you don't think Charlie Brown will try to steal home, do you? And Patty says, never. Not even Charlie Brown would do anything that stupid. And in the last panel, we see Charlie Brown standing on third thinking, I wonder if I should try to steal home.
Michael: Classic. I mean, he poses the question at the end. But there's two other big questions that come up in this strip. We do not find out who is their best hitter, who's coming up.
Jimmy: Yeah, it's gotta be Snoopy.
Michael: It's gotta be Snoopy. It's gotta be Snoopy because the other characters appear, rooting on the sidelines.
Jimmy: Wow, that's some good detective work. Yeah, it's gotta be Snoopy, I guess, because who else? Yeah, interesting.
Michael: Then the other big question, of course, is how did he get on third?
Jimmy: I assume he was hit by a pitch.
Michael: Wild pitch.
Jimmy: Yeah, wild pitch. I don't know, maybe a block or something like that. Yeah. Now going to Charlie Brown's being a terrible manager. He's not thinking that on third base. He's saying it out loud. So that's probably first thing he did wrong, because there's a third baseman supposedly right standing right next to him.
Harold: It's interesting.
Jimmy: What do you think of, see, having gone through, you know, Well, how many decades, three decades since this, strip. And what do you think now with the whiplash of looking back at this earlier style expressions.
Harold: He sells his expressions much, more broadly in 1960 than he does in 1994, which we looked at last. It's really interesting to see how subtle he has gotten with his characters.
Michael: They look. The line. The lines seem a lot thicker.
Harold: Yeah.
Michael: More confident. But also notice the, balloon arrows are nice and pointy.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Harold: He's only got one incomplete one there. Or maybe the third panel. Yeah, it looks very old school, traditional pointery. Especially for the fourth panel with Charlie Brown saying what he should not say out loud. This is something I haven't really noticed a whole lot. how often do we see the human characters thinking with the thought balloon that we always see with Snoopy? Does Schulz avoid that? I'm trying to remember. It's not striking me one way or the other. Does it happen often, or does he make a rule for himself since Snoopy owns that?
Jimmy: I don't think so.
Michael: Yeah, it never occurred to me to check.
Jimmy: Yeah, I don't really know. I mean, there are lots of times when Charlie Brown is all by himself and he is talking and not thinking. Well, like the rest of the sequence.
Michael: Well, when he's sitting on the bench at school, eating his peanut butter sandwich, thinking about the little redhead girl. Is he saying that out loud?
Jimmy: I think he's saying that out loud.
Harold: He's saying it out loud. Oh. It's also interesting that often the model for a cartoonist is if you're speaking and you have a word balloon, you show the mouth open. Schulz does not do that when it looks like he should be thinking and shouldn't be saying anything, but he still gets that balloon. Maybe that is a Snoopy thing. He's trying to delineate Snoopy more, and so he doesn't give himself the flexibility with the kids.
Jimmy: Yeah, that might be it. Or maybe there's just some internal thing. He just thinks it's funnier. I don't know.
May 17, this continues. Charlie Brown is still there on third, and he's saying, this is my big chance to be a hero. And now he just edges a little bit, as if he's going to take a big lead off third and says, if I could steal home, the game would be all tied up and I'd be the hero. And then in panel three, he does a little movement with his elbows as if he's gonna take off for home. but then in the last panel, he says, I haven't got the nerve.
Michael: Boy, I know that feeling.
Jimmy: But this is the right instinct to not do it, because this is a terrible idea.
Liz: Did you ever steal, Michael?
Michael: Oh, no, Nobody steals.
Jimmy: Yeah, I don't.
Michael:, we played, basically on concrete. Not too much sliding happening.
Jimmy: Yeah, I think when I played Little League, you weren't allowed to take leads, and you could steal on a passed ball, but you didn't steal. you know, just on a regular play, but never in. I, mean, there's probably been less than 100 successful stealings of home plate in baseball history. I mean, it's next to impossible.
Michael: And you can find out exactly how many there are. Well, it seems to me like baseball has statistics for everything.
Jimmy: Oh, that is true. Yes, we. Absolutely. I thought you had it at your fingertips. No, no, no.
Michael: It'd be easy to find.
VO: Why don't you Google it, you blockhead?
Jimmy: Yes, it would be. It would be. Baseball is, is a mathematician's game. I think not. Not that I'm good at math, but. Yeah, that's another reason you should like it, Harold.
Harold: Whoa. Yeah. Ah, I'm just looking up, trying to see.
Liz: Of course you are.
Harold: Oh. Ah. It says, wow, but you're not kidding. This is 2023. It says, in the last 50 years, 3,228 base runners have tried. Any guess how many made it?
Jimmy: How many?
Michael: 200?
Liz: 20
Harold: 864.
Jimmy: How many?
Harold: 864. So just over a quarter of them actually made it.
Jimmy: That's impressive.
Harold: Yeah, right.
Jimmy: But, I mean, you would never try it. You would certainly never try it with two outs in the last inning and you're down one. That would be insane.
Harold: Right? So it said. But it was only. Well, this is weird. You know, it says 3,228, but it said it happened 10 times in the 2023 season. Successfully, I guess. Interesting. This was then. Yeah.
Jimmy: Anyway, how about the St. Louis Cardinals? How's that feel, Harold?
Harold: Well, I did…
Liz: It is Missouri.
Harold: I did live in St. Louis for a while, so that. But, guess how many times Babe Ruth stole home. He's not the kind of guy you'd think would be. You would not picture burning down the.
Jimmy: No. How many?
Michael: Well, he doesn't look like a pitcher either.
Jimmy: Well, that's true, too. Or an athlete of any kind.
Harold: It says Ruth did it 10 times in his career. Of course, it could have been the first year. Yeah. You know, I don't know.
Jimmy: Wow. That's amazing. All right, so that's all Charlie Brown's trying to do. Pull a Babe Ruth. And that continues on
May 18th. So here Charlie Brown goes. He's wiggling his elbows. He's standing on the side of the old, The old bag, and he says, I'm gonna steal home and I'm gonna be a hero. Get ready now. Here I go. Don't be a coward. Here I go. Don't be scared. Here I go. Zoom. Here I go. Don't be. Be a coward. Here I go. Don't be scared. Here I stay.
Harold: I like how his hat kind of flattens out on top of his head. In the last panel, like, it's deflated.
Jimmy: It's amazing. And it's actually. It did it a little bit in the one above. But he does it even more this time as he gets a little more, embarrassed by himself or something like that.
Harold: That's great.
Liz: And, Harold, you didn't mention his tongue in the first panel.
Harold: Oh, yeah, the. The thinking tongue, you know, when you stick it up in the corner of your mouth. We all know that from Peanuts, especially when somebody is. Is drawing or writing on a piece of paper. That's what you do, right?
Jimmy: That's absolutely. I love the thinking tongue, what you do. You know, it's. It's amazing that this strip does have International legs and people, because baseball is a pretty big part of it. And you know, baseball's so American.
Michael: Even though I've got to go look, I actually do have a reprint book in Italian from the 70s and I gotta look see if there are baseball strips in there. They might just not bother, right?
Jimmy: Oh yeah, maybe not. Right. It would be interesting. It would definitely be interesting to see. The thing that, that I thought that was interesting about this was I was kind of comparing this in my mind while I was reading it to the “I hit a home run” sequence that we read not too long ago. And I, if the home run thing had happened back here in the early 60s, it would be, it would have been a stretched out drama before the home run. And then in the 90s he just cuts to, hey, guess what? You don't even see it. He just comes home and says, I hit a home run today. Part of me wonders is that just age and like, I just want to get to the good part or do you know what I mean? I think he really would have, in the height of, the world's obsession with Peanuts as a daily strip, I think he would have taken the opportunity to milk the drama of Charlie Brown's home run a lot more.
Harold: Well, it's interesting to me looking at these all these years earlier, now that we're in the 90s and think who Schulz is as a person. It seems like in 1960 he was, I don't know, more, more balled up and there's things that he didn't do. and it seems like as life went on that kind of opened up for him. This, I have this sense of Schulz having worked through some of the things that he was afraid to do as when he was younger that he's now able to do. And so maybe I really feel this, this like I really want to do something, but I just, I just can't bring myself to do it. That maybe isn't so much who he is later in his life.
Jimmy: Like in what sense? I could bring, like, bring myself to do something. In what sense?
Harold: Well, number one, he's, he's 35 years into massive success and sustained and he's the, he's the elder statesman of comics. He's, he's got it behind him and I'm sure everybody has regrets of things that they love to have done but didn't do. I don't know, it just seems like he, even though he didn't travel as much later in life,
Jimmy: Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah.
Harold: I, just get this sense of somebody who has lived a very full life, and the idea that I. I've missed an opportunity here, and there isn't so much a part of who he is. And this, when you are processing or living something and then you're putting in the strip, as Schulz did all 50 years, this is him saying to me in 1960, I've got lots of situations where I would have done something, but I didn't dare. More so than, say, 1994.
Jimmy: That's interesting.
Liz: But isn't that true of all of us who have grown over time?
Harold: I think some people really have regrets later in life, and they can become angry or depressed because they could have done something and they didn't. And then there are other people who are, the late bloomers. Schulz, to me, kind of feels like a late bloomer. I mean, you know, that man about town kind of Schulz that begins in the 70s and that, you know, he looks. He looks very suave, you know, in the photos, when I see him in the 60s, because this is before even they did that documentary on him, he just seems a little more uptight, which is kind of maybe where the culture was in general anyway. I don't know. It just seems like. Yeah, I would hope for most people, as life has gone on, they've taken more chances and they have more things behind them. There's more confidence.
Jimmy: Well, and it's interesting. And one of the great things he is able to do as our cartoonist is to take that thing that Liz says, like, we all experience, and turn it into this very specific experience with Charlie Brown, but that it has applications for people who aren't interested in, like, people who aren't huge St. Louis Cardinals fans. How's that feel? Does this feel right?
Harold: No, it just feels odd.
Jimmy: Okay, we're working on it. We'll get you something else. Okay, I'll see what I have in the back.
Harold: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Do you have anything in green?
Jimmy: Oh, yeah, sure. The A’s
Harold:. All right. There we go. A's. I like that.
Jimmy: they have that movie Moneyball.
Harold: My blood type is A positive.
Jimmy: Okay, you got your A positive. And you watched Moneyball and liked it.
Harold: Yeah, Moneyball.
Jimmy: And that's the A's. that's two things. All right.
Liz: Closing in.
Jimmy: Yeah, I played on the A's Little League team.
Harold: What does that mean you're allowed to name and no cease and desists from them, huh? Huh? Disney did not own Little League.
Jimmy: Well, I don't know that you can copyright A. We just had an A on a hat. So, let's take a little break right now. We'll get some water and a snack, and we'll come back on the other side.
BREAK
Michael: All right, let's get back to it. The suspense is unbearable.
May 19th. Charlie Brown's hanging out there on third. I gotta try it. If I'm gonna be a hero, I gotta try to steal home first. I'll dance around a little on the baseline to confuse their pitcher. And he does this. It's a great drawing. And then I’ll, he says, while he looks very surreptitiously over towards the picture, take off. And he does just that. He takes off for home.
Liz: Cliffhanger.
Jimmy: That's a great cliffhanger for a comic strip. I think that's really good.
Harold: and that last panel. My gosh, that's amazing. Last panel. The art is incredible. The speed lines.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: Are fantastic. I love that they blur out the bottom of the hat, and he doesn't finish the lines onto the shoe, the back of the head and the bottom of his mouth. There's just a lot of really cool. Oh, and. And then you get the sense that the black of his pants is part of the streaking past. It's a little bit darker past the back of the pants as well. it's like. Because we're seeing that. Well, maybe there's so many cool things here.
Jimmy: Maybe Charlie Brown got a little scared and that's what's caused.
Harold: No, no. Jimmy.
Jimmy: Oh, no. How about the Seattle Mariners?
Harold: The Mariners Mariner? That sounds like marinara. I don't know. __l keep working on that.
Jimmy: All right. All right. So we're sticking with the A's for now. How about panel two?
Harold: So I have to ask you, for those of you. Yeah. Who've played-- that panel two, why would you do that? Like, oh, the pitcher's like that. Cause attention to you. Right. And are you fooling him that you might actually go back to second?
Jimmy: Well, no, no, no. I think what he's doing is he's taking a little bit of a lead off third, and he's dancing back as if he would go home or dive back to third.
Michael: Yeah. I think he wants the pitcher to throw to third.
Jimmy: To third. Right.
Michael: Because if it's a bad throw, then you're home.
Jimmy: Right. Exactly.
Harold: Okay, well, thank you. Thank for someone who's baseball illiterate.
Jimmy: Yeah. And, you know, the other thing about this is saying it's a bad idea, but then you say well, you know, Babe Ruth did it 10 times in his career. It's only a bad idea because Charlie Brown. We know what's going to happen with Charlie Brown. Right? You know, doing bad, making bad decisions that pan out, I guess, is what makes an athletic hero. You know, you do try the things that other people are not going to try. And when you succeed, you're like, Larry Bird, my favorite basketball player once, went out on a court and said, yeah, I'm going to beat you today, but I'm just going to be a lefty. Now, if. And he played the entire game lefty.
Harold: And he scored four points.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Harold: What?
Jimmy: Yeah, it's safe.
Harold: And he's like, Larry Bird never stole home.
Jimmy: No, he never stole home. But, you know, if someone else tried that and they just failed, it would be, why was that idiot playing with his left hand? You know?
Harold: Yeah, he'd be selling shoes the next day.
Jimmy: Exactly.
May 20th. All right. And now the gang is all watching this debacle occur, and it's the whole crew. Schroeder, Lucy, Patty, Violet, and Linus. And they yell, Charlie Brown is trying to steal home. Then they yell, slide, Charlie Brown, slide. And then the third panel, we just see a poof, plume of dust. And then the last panel is Charlie Brown just lying on his back in the base path with the rest of the team around him looking annoyed. And Lucy says, oh, you blockhead.
Michael: So I think we can, narrow down who the batter was.
Jimmy: Shermy.
Liz: It's got to be Shermy.
Michael: Well, it could be Snoopy. It could be Shermy. It could be Pigpen, I think.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah.
Michael: So one of those three is the best hitter.
Jimmy: Well, it could be Shermy, too, I guess.
Michael: Yeah, I included him, but, that would have been in his Shermometer if he was that good.
Jimmy: Right?
Harold: Well, maybe. Maybe anonymous is another word we should use to describe Shermy. If he's like
Liz: Shernonymous.
Jimmy: How about that? Anytime something happens in the remainder of the strip where we can't figure out exactly who it is, it's. It happened shernonymously. It was Shermy.
Harold: Yeah. Maybe Shermy has been in the strip all along, right?
Michael: In disguise.
Liz: Maybe he was that person we thought was Patty.
Jimmy: This is another great looking comic strip. You know, there is something about seeing all of the characters, or as many of the characters as you can get together in one panel that I just find so satisfying.
Harold: Yeah, yeah, we got 16 characters and three panels here.
Jimmy: That's a long day's work. And it just looks so good. I mean, that second one where they all are leaning, like, why he decided to make them all lean the same direction. But it works, right? Like, they're like. It has something to do with, like, them sliding too. I can't describe why that works, but if I drew that, they would all be in different poses in different positions. Right. But he does them all doing the same thing. And it looks so good.
Harold: Well, it's interesting. And why. Why are they looking that angle? Because they're. They're looking to our left.
Michael: Well, you get. If you-- If you assume the bench is near third base, be leaning towards home.
Harold: So he's passed.
Michael: Yeah.
Harold: Yeah. And then they have to walk all the way out to meet him and stand around him and glare at him. Boy, I've never seen Linus look so miffed.
Jimmy: He really looks.
Harold: That is. Boy, you don't want to mess with Linus when he's.
Jimmy: He looks more annoyed than even Violet.
Harold: Yeah, she's angry, but yeah. that's pretty rough. But yeah, the drawing here is beautiful. I love the black of the open mouths of them screaming with the really dark lettering.
Jimmy: Oh, I did too.
Harold: It's just great.
Jimmy: Really good.
Harold: I love how wild the lettering is in the first panel, where somebody or all of them are yelling, Charlie Brown is trying to steal home. It's, you know, he's doing that really fast.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: And it's really fun lettering. It reminds me of a lot of the lettering you've done, Jimmy, where you're just kind of messing with display font to make it just represent what's actually happening, the feel of it.
Jimmy: Yeah. And it's such a fun thing to do because you're like, drawing, but you.
Harold: But yeah, it's like putting emotion into letters, you know, I love that. I mean, that is, That's. That's part of the. The joy of cartooning is that you could do that.
Jimmy: Yeah. How do you think he does, like, the slide. Charlie Brown slide lettering or the takeoff lettering? Do you think he uses the regular bold that he uses for things like you blockhead in the last panel and like, doubles it up. Does it like a sketchy motion? Do you think he draws it like an outline and then fills it in?
Harold: I think he's doubling.
Jimmy: Might be doubling, too. Oh, you know what? He is. Because you can see if you look at slide. Charlie Brown's slide and you look at just the E, you can sort of see it off the edges of the. Yeah.
Harold: which gives it kind of that. That EC Horror kind of look with the sharp, crazy edges. Yeah. And that they're all crammed together. The letters are. There's. There's. There's no space in between any of the letters. It's just one big word that they're yelling in unison.
Jimmy: How about the Phillies? You lived outside Philly for a while, and they're a good team.
Harold: I like a good cheesesteak.
Jimmy: Phillies. Okay, so now we're leading. Harold Buchholz, lifelong Phillies devotee.
Harold: Yeah, I went to a Rochester Red Wings game when I was a kid going for the minor leagues.
Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, I was trying to think in New York, but you only got your Yankees and Mets, and we don't want to go there.
May 21st, everyone's upset. Wow. We lost the game. All because of Charlie Brown. Waa. And Charlie Brown, still lying on the base path, says, was I out? And Lucy says, out. Why, you blockhead, you didn't even get halfway home. Charlie Brown then just lies there in the base path alone. And then it slowly turns to dark. And in the last panel, he's lying out there alone at night, and he says, rats.
Michael: That makes the joke. I mean, it's great. If that was daylight, it wouldn't be half as funny.
Jimmy: No.
Harold: How do you. How do you like him lying with this, his most uncomfortable thing, holding himself up so the middle of him. It's just the back of his head and the base of his shoes. Everything else is kind of floating.
Liz: core strength.
Harold: I mean, shows how tense Charlie Brown must be. And his little arm is, like, literally horizontal to the ground.
Jimmy: That last panel reminds me of Krazy Kat with all the scratches.
Harold: Yeah. Yeah.
Jimmy: Maybe, it's just because it goes from day to night in a panel, too. That's what I'm thinking. But there's something about that scratchiness underneath the black. Then we skip May 22, because that's a Sunday. And then we were back
May 23. Charlie Brown's still lying there. It's still dark at night. And, he's saying to himself, why did I have to go and try to steal home? Why? Why? Why? And in the next panel, outside his house is Linus, and he senses or hears something. And then in the third panel, he explores to see what it is. And we see it's Charlie Brown lying there going, why? Why? Why? And then Linus just walks away saying, I thought I heard a cry of anguish. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Says Charlie Brown.
Jimmy: So Here's a question. Why. Why do you think Charlie Brown did this?
Harold: Be a hero, right?
Jimmy: He's so. And do you think some of his failures, or I guess maybe most of his failures are because he wants to not just be good at what he's doing, he wants to be a hero.
Michael: But where does he ever try to be a hero? I mean, not flying a kite. Nobody's even watching.
Liz: I think he wanted to not be a coward.
Jimmy: Uh-huh.
Liz: He wanted to overcome his fear.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: I think it's Lucy's fault. She's always counseling him that he has to take chances and be more aggressive.
Harold: Plus, all of them were telling him to slide before he even got halfway to the.
Jimmy: That's true. That could be done them that he didn't make it.
Harold: Maybe, you know, he choked because of his friends. You know, let's try to listen to them.
Liz: He could have just kept running.
Harold: I mean, this is classic Peanuts in 1960 of, the disconnect between the characters. I think maybe that's also something that it has been bridged a little bit as the years go on. That Linus, who's pretty sensitive about these some things, right. He comes out to check on Charlie Brown. Well, he's just curious whether he heard a cry of anguish. He's not going to say anything to Charlie Brown. He's not going to try to console him in this strip. He just wanted to check if he was hearing a cry of anguish.
Jimmy: Then he heads back home, right? That is really funny. Leaves him. Be of good cheer. Yes. Be of good cheer. Then leaves him.
Harold: Right.
May 24, Charlie Brown is still lying out there, still night, and he's talking to himself. Why didn't I just wait on third base? Why did I have to try to steal home? Why? Why? Why? Why? Linus comes back, Charlie Brown. And then he says to Charlie Brown, I have been asked to tell you that your cries of anguish are keeping the whole neighborhood awake. And in the last panel, Charlie Brown remains there, and he just says to himself, why, why, why, why?
Jimmy: How tiny those whys must have been in the newspaper that day.
Harold: I love the formality of Linus. He runs out there, and then it's not, I've been asked to tell you. It's I have been asked to tell you that your cries of anguish are keeping the whole neighborhood awake.
Jimmy: And asked by who is he, like, going door to door saying he is the.
Harold: He's the, om-
Liz: ombudsman?
Harold: I don't know if that's the correct term for, you know, he's looking after the rights and wrongs of the neighborhood, I guess, maybe. But, yeah, he is, He's been sent by the neighborhood and he's running. Right.
Jimmy: Well, people need to get to sleep. It's an early day tomorrow,
May 25th. Charlie Brown's still lying there. Now Lucy has come out, and he says to her, if I had stolen home, I'd have been the hero. Instead, I'm the goat. And then Lucy says, don't think of yourself as being the goat, Charlie Brown. If you forget about it, everyone else will too. Then Charlie Brown says, do you really think so, Lucy? And then Lucy says, I'm positive. And then the last panel, she says, Good night, goat
Harold:, as thousands of millennials scratch their heads.
Michael: Yeah, when did that happen? Because that confused the hell out of me all of a sudden. Goat meant good.
Jimmy: Yeah, it's weird. I don't know. I don't know. The first time I heard of it this way was in Infinite Jest PGOAT, Prettiest girl of all time. But I don't think it started there. I bet it started long before then, but I don't know. And in case anyone out there doesn't know what we're talking about. But yeah, goat now stands for greatest of all time.
Liz: But it didn't always.
Jimmy: No, it meant you were, a buffoon.
Harold: So basically, we're saying that the march of time has made Charlie Brown the greatest of all time.
Jimmy: Absolutely. Now, he'd want. Here's the. This is genius cartooning Charlie Brown in panel two. Okay. Lucy says something that possibly could cheer him up a little bit. Look at him in panel three. He actually. You know what I mean? His spine straightens up. So he's like. Really? He has a reaction even though he's not moving at all except just the slightest little bit.
Harold: And, he arches his back so that he can tilt his head toward Lucy, who's standing behind him.
Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah.
Harold: That's fantastic.
Jimmy: Isn't that fantastic? And then he's deflated, of course, by Lucy's punchline. And then he's even more prone than he was previously because he's on the side of his head, and he looks more like all of his body is actually touching the ground.
Harold: And he's looking at us.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: Like, you know, that kind of Jack Benny stare. Oh.
Jimmy: If you zoom in there, that is a complete look of despair on his face.
Harold: That's great. I mean, you're right. I mean, when you think of what a cartoonist. How a cartoonist processes something and how they try to get it across. He's so in tune with his characters. He's doing an impossible thing with Charlie Brown with that. But it's so funny.
Jimmy: It's so funny.
Harold: He has. I mean, how do you get there? How do you get to the place where you are going to make your character do an impossible physical act? Because, you know it's going to be funny as a cartoon?
Jimmy: I don't know. It has to be supreme confidence. Because anytime I try to do things like, you know, we talk about this again and again and again and again, and we can recognize it in his work and in other people's work. But then when you sit down to do something in a similar vein, or maybe not even a similar vein, but to make a. A bold choice yourself, all the doubt comes in. All the second guessing comes in right.
Harold: Shall I steal home? Should I. Should I do it?
Jimmy: Whoa. This whole thing--
Harold: Because it is kind of like trying to steal home because, you know, it is hard to pull off and it can backfire on you and you can think it works for you even though it breaks the rules, but you don't know if it's going to work for 90% of the rest of the public unless you just somehow have the supreme sense that, it's going to work. And he does it over and over again.
I will say the one thing that I've gotten out of doing this podcast is permission from Charles Schulz to go for it for something that's, that seems a little odd off model. He just. You see him doing it over and over again. And now that I'm talking about it and not just enjoying the strips and reading it through, I'm, I'm seeing things. And then you guys are bringing things up that I haven't noticed. And it's like, oh, my gosh, he's. He's breaking the rules all the time. And they always say you have to know the rules before you break the rules. But he took it to another level because he would take a chance. And not everything works right, but he has an incredibly good track record. And then once it does work, it's now part of, the strip in a way that is unique to him and sets him apart from everybody else. And he amasses one of these after another, after another after another, until the strip is in a stratosphere where nobody can touch it.
Jimmy: Yeah, well, and this is what makes. It makes me think about us talking, you, know, comparing Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes and, you know, just comparing things from totally different eras. Because, you know, Watterson was lucky enough to have all of those arrows in his quiver that Schulz, you know, invented.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: Now, I mean, Watterson invented then a bunch of his own, too.
Harold: Right.
Jimmy: and that's what, you know, that's what makes the whole field great, you know, and then we who come along after Watterson get to take. Steal his ideas, too, and put them in our. In our quiver. But it's amazing to see a master do it.
May 26, it's our old pal Shermy.
Harold and Michael: Yay.
And, he and Charlie Brown are walking down the street, and Charlie Brown says, all I wanted to do was be a hero, but do I ever get to be a hero? No. All I ever get to be is this stupid goat. And then Shermy says to him, don't be discouraged, Charlie Brown. In this life we live, there are always some bitter pills to be swallowed. And then Charlie Brown says it, if it's all the same with you, I'd rather not renew my prescription.
Michael: Boy. Shermy is a wimp.
Liz: He's a cipher.
Michael: He's just got nothing. No good personality traits.
Harold: I just see him as the Charles Schulz stand in here because of the crew cut. And, you know, all of a sudden I'm like, oh, this is Schulz stepping into the strip through his cipher, Shermy, to give him a little bit of solace.
Michael: Yeah, I don't think Shermy was at home plate, because if he was, then he was robbed of an opportunity to be the hero.
Jimmy: Right.
Michael: so that narrows it down to Snoopy or Pigpen.
Harold: Unless Shermy really is that philosophical. Right. And it's like he's the guy who could give him the solace because he was the one who lost the most.
Jimmy: Yeah, that could be it, too. The other way it could be is that he wasn't there at all, and Charlie Brown is telling him what happened.
Harold: Right.
Liz: what about that Charlie Brown kicking the can?
Jimmy: That looks pretty cool. Oh, that's a great picture of him kicking the can.
Michael: When have we seen his teeth before? That's really weird.
Harold: That whole Charlie Brown Goes to the Dentist sequence we've ever got to see.
Jimmy: He was in the mood for cans because I like the trash can, too.
Harold: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Jimmy: Boy, I really like the picture of Charlie Brown kicking the can. Just. You can feel the swing of his leg, even.
Harold: Yeah. He's got this little double line for the swing, and then the can is way far away. And the little motion lines again. he just knows what he's doing, and it's floating in this white space above the grass. Yeah, it's great.
May 27, Charlie Brown is writing a letter, and Lucy's watching him. And Charlie Brown writes, dear teammates, he continues, I've been thinking of resigning my job as your manager. And I. And Lucy says, we accept! And then Charlie Brown yells, wait till I finish the letter.
Harold: I love the look of Lucy there. This glib, we accept.
Jimmy: Oh, she looks so happy. We accept.
Harold: And strangely surprised that Charlie Brown has anguish. But I will say it's some of the best penmanship I've seen Charlie Brown doing.
Liz: That's true.
Jimmy: Is it a pen or a pencil? Can we see?
Harold: Yeah. maybe it's a early magic marker or something. Who knows?
Jimmy: He was really feeling the big lettering throughout this, sequence. Lots of opportunities to do that. Always looks good. And then San Francisco Giants.
Michael: That's mine.
Jimmy: No, that's. Oh, that's Michael's. Well, you could double up with Michael.
Michael: No, I don't want to share.
Jimmy: All right, you don't get the. So you're sticking with. Who are we? The Phillies. All right. And right now, as of now, it's the Phillies.
Michael: Well, what's this? Closest team is like the Yankees or the Mets.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, but we're ignoring that.
May 28th, Charlie Brown's hanging out on Schroeder's piano, just like Lucy. And then Schroeder says, Charlie Brown, let me give you a little advice. As long as you think only of yourself, you'll never find happiness. You've got to start thinking about others. And then Charlie Brown says, others? What others? Who in the world am I supposed to think about? To which Schroeder replies, Beethoven. Charlie Brown says, oh, good grief.
Michael: Now, this isn't necessarily part of the same sequence, except he's still angry at the world.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: Yeah. And that's just another Charlie Brown we've been seeing recently. And the later strips. He's. He's got a lot of attitude and.
Liz: A lot of flexibility in his back.
Harold: Yes. I'm going to check on the anger happiness index and to see what's going on.
Jimmy: While you're doing that. Schroeder. It does make a good point, you know, I mean, ah, ah. And that's one of the things about depression. It's very narcissistic. I'm, not saying that as a critique of people who get depressed, because I do, but. Yeah, I mean, you can't see beyond yourself. It's also kind of Charlie Brown's problem as a manager. He couldn't he didn't give, like Michael said, Shermy, whoever it was, the opportunity to just bat him in. He doesn't give Linus the opportunity to pitch because it's all going to be about him.
Harold: It's interesting.
Jimmy: It's just interesting that it was brought up in the strip. Like, you know, Schroeder actually says that.
Harold: Right, right. Yeah, there is more going on. so the last year we did when we recorded this was 1994. We had 72 anger strips and it's 116 in this period. So yeah, there's a little more of that going on. I think it's the craziest, like in the late 50s. So this is maybe just a little bit of a trailing off of where that peaked in the strip.
Jimmy: I wonder if he, was. Well, I'm sure he was disappointed that the Charlie Brown All Stars thing did not make the splash that the Christmas one did.
Jimmy: Right.
Harold: Yeah, maybe so.
Jimmy: Especially because baseball was such a part of his, you know, persona and personality and the whole vibe of Charlie Brown that it feels. I bet he felt it was going to be a real natural.
Harold: Well, it's interesting when you think about cartoonists, back in the day, the amount of feedback that you got might be letters for the most part. Right. and that would be so much after the fact. Schulz has this extra weird layer with the animation of seeing Nielsen ratings come in for versions of his characters. You know, whether it's a holiday or it's a certain theme that's part of his strip. He's, he's seeing that. I wonder if that affects him.
Jimmy: Oh, I'm sure it has to. Even if he says it doesn't. Right. I mean, being awash in a, sea of feedback when you. I always, I just think because we're talking about the 90s, you know, we're reading the 90s on the regular episodes and I was looking up, TV ratings around that period. And yet broadcast television was the dominant medium in America and the big shows had tens of millions of viewers. But you know, I think the Seinfeld finale was seen by 70 million people. That's like one fourth of what Schulz had on a daily basis as a readership. Right. I've seen some estimates that he had around 300 million potential readers anyway.
Harold: That is incredible.
Jimmy: Insane.
Harold: Yeah. Yeah. To have that presence in that many people's lives all around the world is pretty crazy.
Michael: I have a feeling that unlike us, most people who read Peanuts, it was a two second read and they never gave it a second thought.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah. Every comic.
Harold: But do you think there's, like, a cumulative effect on you, given. Well, I mean, the merchandise is maybe some sort of an indicator of. My gosh, this thing.
Michael: I think people would probably just scan through the funnies.
Harold: Sure.
Michael: And occasionally laugh, but generally not react at all.
Liz: But. But they think, yeah, Peanuts. That's one of my favorites.
Michael: Yeah. I mean, me and my friends talked about that day's Peanuts every day.
Harold: Wow.
Michael: That was a, topic of discussion. But I think in general, reading the dailies especially, it's just, you know, it's a couple of minutes, and then you go on. You don't think about them again.
Harold: Yeah, that's true. It's true. But, yeah, to so many people. So many. So many exposures is pretty crazy. And, you know, and maybe that's why we lost Shermy, because they put out a Shermy soap dish, and it was just not a good seller.
Jimmy: No one wanted it. Use Shermy to get rid of your Germies. That's a freebie for you there. Peanuts Worldwide.
Liz: It might be time to wrap things up if that’s where we’re going.
Harold: Yeah, maybe.
Jimmy: All right, so we don't-- Do we have an official team for you, Harold. Are you sticking with the Phillies?
Harold: I think I'll stick with none of the above. That's fine. But thank you for giving me a chance to live the dream.
Jimmy: All right, well, then, how about this? Your favorite player, Roy Hobbs.
Harold: Roy Hobbs.
Jimmy: All right, guys, anything else you want to say before we wrap up this baseball?
Michael: No, I think this is one of the great sequences, if not the best sequence in Peanuts.
Jimmy: Yeah. You like it that much? Yeah, I do, too.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: Okay, well, with all that said, let's, get ready for next week's episode. So for Michael, Harold, and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.
Harold: Yes.
Jimmy: Yes.
M&H: Be a good cheer
Liz: and play ball.
VO: 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 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: Take off.