The name Charles Shultz might be fading from the public consciousness, but his creation, the “Peanuts” comic strip, will live on for decades to come.
In November, a computer-animated film based on the characters will be released in theaters while the original comic strip continues to appear in newspapers across the country, Shultz’s “Peanuts” will probably continue on for decades to come.
During the course of its nearly 50-year run, the strip evolved a lot and, at least according to a recent article I read, not for the better.
An article appearing on Kotaku.com this weekend alleges Snoopy ultimately harmed the comic. The short synopsis of the argument goes like this: the “Peanuts” strip’s best period took place during the first 15-20 years of its life as it focused on the kids and their seemingly adult problems and observations. Snoopy’s transformation and the added spotlight he received, as well as the later licensing deals Shultz signed for the characters, drove “Peanuts” to a slow decline during the last 30 years of its life. The author suggests Bill Waterson, creator of “Calvin and Hobbes,” may have had the right idea in ending his strip after about 10 years before a decline in quality could visibly be noticed.
The comic was a very different beast during its early years. The first strip, published Oct. 2, 1950, shows two kids talking about the main character, Charlie Brown, as he walks by. By the time Brown is off panel, the child speaking so highly of him then verbally stabs him in the back and announces his hate towards Brown. Throughout much of the comic’s life, Brown was often the butt of the joke. His baseball team would continue to lose game after game, earning the incredibly rare victory at times when Brown wasn’t around. Other situations would see him often being the one with the short end of the stick. The comic, through Brown’s trials, offered a somewhat dark social commentary on life. At times, Brown does come out on top, such as when he mentions how loving his father is when another girl mentions how much better her father is at sports than Brown’s father, which completely derails her and sends her walking off the panel. However, those instances are also few and far between.
Compared to the earlier strips, not only did Snoopy become a larger part of the comic, his life begins to take on a series of more fantastic elements. Snoopy became a WWI pilot continually fighting against his nemesis, The Red Baron. He became Joe Cool, the college kid too concerned with hanging out at the student union to care about his chemistry class. He became an astronaut, a secret agent, a helicopter, disco dancer and dozens of other personas.
While it’s easy to dismiss later incarnations of the characters as deviating from the original tone and style the early strips presented them in, it’s important to note that anything over the course of nearly half a century is bound to change. The final “Peanuts” strip Shultz made focused on Snoopy at his typewriter, writing a letter for Shultz announcing his retirement from the strip. Early Snoopy, regardless of what he was doing, wouldn’t have been so far removed from behaving like a dog. He may have imitated other animals, but he wouldn’t have been sitting at a typewriter. The imaginative adventures Snoopy had after he started walking on two feet came to define the character and possibly shows that Shultz later viewed the black and white beagle as an extension of his more imaginative self. After all, Charlie Brown didn’t receive Shultz’s letter in the mail; it was Snoopy, sitting atop his dog house and surrounded by faded images of the comic’s memorable moments, who composed Shultz’s letter to his fans.
When Watterson ended his comic “Calvin and Hobbes,” he did so at a time when it was at its most popular point, also deciding not to allow his characters to be licensed out for merchandise or other uses. He had been battling with the syndicate distributing his comic over merchandising the characters, no doubt an extension of how similar newspaper strips like “Peanuts” and “Garfield” had successfully merchandised. In fact, those licensing agreements made Shultz a fortune. The “Peanuts” characters made Shultz an estimated $30-40 million per year and generated revenues of more than $1 billion annually. Yet, that popularity and the willingness to license merchandise “Peanuts” is used as a negative in the Kotaku.com piece.
Some people view the idea of “selling out” as an avenue leading to the death of any artistic freedom, as if the act of doing something for a paycheck is inherently detrimental to true artistic endeavor. The author, by invoking that logic, essentially claims if Shultz had followed a similar path to Watterson’s, the strip would have been remembered for its groundbreaking humor and would have ended at a point when the strip was still popular and fresh.
Yet, without expanding the “Peanuts” characters into television, they would never have reached the popularity or timelessness Charlie Brown and the gang ultimately earned. Make no mistake, the comic strip was already one of the most popular comic strips of all time at that point, but the 1965 cartoon, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” cemented their status as pop culture icons. The special, along with other “Peanuts” cartoons exposed Shultz’s characters to generations of children. Those later generations who ultimately became less inclined to open newspapers to read the comics still were exposed to the “Peanuts” through those animated specials, some of which have become traditional family viewing during the holiday season. In essence, “selling out” and licensing his characters resulted in Shultz extending the life of the strip beyond the shelf life of what it could have originally been. While many people still yearn to see more adventures between Calvin and his imaginary tiger friend Hobbes, it’s safe to say they will eventually fade from public consciousness. “Calvin and Hobbes” will be remembered as one of the last, great American newspaper comics of the 20th century, but it won’t have the lasting impact and appeal Shultz’s “Peanuts” have.
Fifteen years after his death, Shultz’s “Peanuts” continues to be reprinted in hundreds of newspapers. On Nov. 6, a new movie will be released in theaters, a month after the 65th anniversary of the “Peanuts” first publication. While the strip may look strikingly different at its end than its earlier incarnation, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That evolution, as well as the strip’s exposure to other media outside of newspapers, is what kept it alive for such a long time. Like anyone, the longer the strip continued, the more it changed and evolved as Shultz got older. Nothing never changes.
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