Jimmy: Welcome back to the show. This is Unpacking Peanuts, and it's an exciting day. This is our hundredth episode. It also times out just to be about our second anniversary as a podcast. So we are celebrating here. We're so excited that you guys, all our old listeners and all our new listeners are hanging out here today and, celebrating with us. We're going to talk about Peanuts. We're going to hang out with our friends and just have a good time like we do every Tuesday.
I'm your host for the proceedings. My name is Jimmy Gownley. I'm also a cartoonist. I did books like the Amelia Rules series, Seven Good Reasons Not To Grow Up, and The Dumbest Idea Ever. Joining me, as always, are my pal's 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 very first 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 the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a, former vice president of Archie comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation sweetest beasts. It's Harold Buchholz.
Harold: Say ho.
Jimmy: That could be.
Harold: I'm being derivative. I'm sorry, Michael.
Jimmy: So we've made it 100 episodes. that seems unlikely, knowing our circumstances.
Michael: It seems to me that podcasters, when they do reach the magic number, always seem, like, surprised and stunned.
Jimmy: Right?
Michael: I can't believe it.
Harold: What on earth?
Jimmy: Well, I can believe that we had the intention to do it. I know I had the intention to do it, but I'm really happy that, we were able to do it. But partly we have to credit all the wonderful people who have been listening for 100 episodes, because if we thought we were Just shouting out into a void, it would be a lot less fun to do.
Harold: Yeah, we have to credit our editor, Liz, as well, who really got us to do this thing after we had a brief attempt, on our own, trying to kind of figure it out. And then Liz kind of came back to Jimmy and me and said, hey, this is something that maybe we should pursue. And I'm so glad you did, Liz.
Jimmy: Oh, absolutely. we would not be here without you. So thank you so much for that.
Liz: My pleasure.
Jimmy: So to celebrate our hundredth episode, I thought we'd do a couple of things. first off, we got a pretty full mailbag. So after the break, we're going to dip into that and see what you characters have been talking about, what's on your minds. But we also decided we are going to randomize our selection of Peanuts strips this week.
Michael: Let's explain one thing to the new readers. We have read every single strip from the beginning up till 1981, but each year, we each pick a bunch we want to talk about, and it usually comes to maybe, like, 40 strips a year. So in this case, we're using the randomizer on, Gocomics, where you can just pick a random strip, and we're only picking ones before 1980, from the beginning to 1980. So that's giving us a sample, and we're going to read the ones that none of us have picked before.
Jimmy: Right.
Michael: So this will be the first time we're discussing these particular strips.
Harold: unless we completely forgot.
Jimmy: One of the things, actually, that held us off from starting this podcast. we'd made an abortive first attempt before Liz came on was, I didn't want to read the comic strips. I intensely did not want to read the comic strips aloud because reading the comic strips aloud is, impossible. and yet we have to do it a hundred episodes. So, this will be the first time I've never seen any of these. So we'll see, how I do, having zero, chance to prepare.
Michael: Yeah, well, I'm kind of excited because this is very spontaneous. We don't know what came up on this list because Liz.
Harold: Right? Yeah. And I can see Jimmy's like, so this guy, he's talking to this, and then looks like a dog.
Jimmy: Oh, speaking of, how is, your Ukrainian student doing with Peanuts? Just for our listeners, maybe explain quickly what you're doing, in regards to, sharing Peanuts with this person.
Michael: Well, Liz and I are both volunteered to have english conversation with Ukrainians who want to learn English.
Liz: And I'll put the link to the organization in the show notes.
Michael: Yeah, it's very good. So my student, is sort of an advanced beginner, but she's working hard on her vocabulary. And I decided I was going to start using Peanuts as a way to teach American English, maybe some slang, some new words. And so we've done, like, four strips where I have her read so I can correct her pronunciation. Then I ask her if she understands what they're trying to say. And sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn't. I will explain it. And, yeah, she's finding lots of new words, and actually, I think she actually likes it.
Jimmy: Nice.
Michael: And she's never seen it. She's never heard of it. She's never known who Snoopy is. So I have to explain. This dog is lying on the roof of his dog house.
Liz: So, Jimmy, if you get tired of doing the descriptions, we can hire Katerina.
Jimmy: Perfect. Perfect. Well, that's good. I'm so glad. It's really cool that you guys are doing that. And it's cool that, she's digging Peanuts.
Michael: Well, she's aware of it, which makes her probably maybe the only person in Ukraine.
Jimmy: Imagine, though, she'll immigrate to the United States and, like, constantly be in job interviews. Going good grief.
Michael: So far. I know about Italy and know about Ukraine. They don't have comics in the newspaper. This is a foreign concept.
Harold: Yeah. So will she apply to be an ophthalmologist, or you talk up amblyopia?
Michael: Maybe we'll get one of those strips. I miss Linus with his glasses. But we don't know what's coming up. This is random.
Jimmy: We don't know what's coming up.
Harold: The mystery strip.
Jimmy: So. Okay, how about we, just get to it? We spin the wheel, and, we're going to comment on some random Peanuts strips. This is going to be fun.
Michael: All right, let's do it.
Jimmy: All right, stand by. Ooh. We're going back to the early days with our first one.
April 3, 1951. Patty and Violet are hanging out outside, and Patty has a little box of something that, she's putting away. And Violet says to her, I wouldn't want to marry a real young man. Now they're walking down, the street, having finished their game or whatever they were playing, and Patty says, of course not, but you also shouldn't marry one who's too old. Violet thinks about this and asks, how about 23? Patty says, I think that's too old. Then they both sit down and finish their conversation with Patty, saying, when men get to be that age, they're usually pretty set in their ways.
Michael: This does not pass the Bechdel test. Talking to two girls, talking about boys, and they're only, like, three years old.
Jimmy: Can I say something about the Bechdel test?
Liz: Sure.
Jimmy: That I think is deeply ironic. Alison Bechdel didn't come up with that test. Her friend did. So I just think it's really ironic that a test that's supposed to gauge representation was named after the person who didn't create it.
Michael: Maybe her friend's last name was Bechdel. anyway, it's good to see, little old Violet with pigtails and little Patty, again, I miss them.
Harold: Right?
Michael: One thing that dawned on us pretty early on was that virtually, every Peanuts strip back in the 50s had one of the four main characters, the four A list characters. So Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, and Snoopy. And here we have an exception to that rule.
Jimmy: Well, because Linus, and Lucy didn't exist.
Michael: Yeah right. So Patty, and Violet were definitely A list characters in the beginning, and they've sadly gone to comic book heaven.
Jimmy: for sure. I still am not 100% convinced of what's going on with Violet's hair. If that's like a really flexible pen.
Harold: Yeah, I keep thinking it's a brush. I like the little line between.
Jimmy: It's a brush, I guess. Yeah.
Harold: Patty’s pupil, which is really actually creating the look that she's got a half opened eye when she's putting this lid on this box. That's something you don't often see in Peanuts. I also like the classic thing that I think, like UPA, the animation studio was very stylized, did. That's what I think of when I see a, pattern for clothing in that first panel where we're seeing a leg and then we're seeing, the torso, but the lines on her dress go all the way through the leg as if it was a single piece of cloth that's not been bent by being bent over, if you know what I mean. It's like the design is consistent all the way through as if it's just been laid on top of this drawing.
Jimmy: Yes.
Harold: It does make the character look like a design more than, a three dimensional character. And that was very popular. Yeah.
Jimmy: The first time I ever saw that technique in a comic was, in Love and Rockets. And I just thought it was the coolest, hippest looking thing. It's actually pretty hard to do to pull it off. Yeah. Because otherwise you can't draw attention to it. The idea of doing it this way is to simplify. Right. So if it looks like you just scribbled over top of it, you're doing yourself more harm than good.
Harold: Right? Yeah, it's true.
Jimmy: All right. The wheel lands on May 28, 1952.
Harold: Ooh.
Jimmy: Charlie Brown, in full catchers gear, walks up to the mound, and who's pitching? It's Shermy.
Michael: Shermy!
Jimmy: Is Shermy any better A pitcher than Charlie Brown. Why? Let's find out.
Catcher Charlie Brown says to Shermy, you realize that the score is 60 to nothing, don't you? Shermy says, uh-huh. And then in the last panel, charlie Brown walks back behind the plate saying, well, don't worry about it. We'll get him back in the second inning.
Michael: This was from the second year of Peanuts. And Charlie Brown was, you can tell from the drawing, shorter than he also, he's actually younger. He was always, like, the young kid.
Harold: Yeah. And Shermy always seemed to be oldest. Right. Of the group.
Michael: Yeah.
Jimmy: I wonder if that's actually in the back of Schulz's mind, one of the reasons that those characters phased out. Because Charlie Brown, as we've spoken, he becomes more of like an avuncular parental presence for the other kids. He feels like the older one. He does, later. So maybe that was one of the reasons the other three Patty, Shermy and didn't. There was no point for them in the strip anymore. No reason for them. It made it awkward for Charlie Brown, maybe. I don't know.
Michael: Yeah, I mean, we have our theories. I think that Lucy comes along, Lucy sort of dominated among the girls, and they were all kind of mean.
Michael: And I think he thought having all three girl characters being mean might have been too much.
Jimmy: Yeah. And especially when you see him where he goes later with things like Marcie and Peppermint Patty and being such an advocate for girl sports and stuff like that, I think he probably did feel uncomfortable having three fuss budgets, let's say, in the strip.
Harold: Yeah. You know who Charlie Brown makes me think of in this strip?
Harold: Later. Spanky from Little Rascals.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah.
Harold: There's something about him.
Jimmy: His attitude, just a little bit of chubbiness. I think it's weird that Shermy's mouth isn't open and panic.
Harold: I was thinking that too. And when he says it's, uh comma, huh.
Jimmy: Who does that? Well, I guess maybe his response is, I also, have to say I'm really glad this is where you could get into trouble putting detail in and trying to make something accurate, in a style like this are those hats? Because those look like they were sourced. He has the little air holes all through. Probably has a much shorter bill, than they do later. And it just looks nowhere near as good as the classic Peanuts baseball cap.
Harold: How about gloves? I was thinking Shermy's glove has got a lot of faded detail on it that really gives it a three dimensional feel as opposed to the characters who do feel more simple.
Jimmy: Yeah. And you could see it too, when Charlie Brown, particularly, I guess, in panel three, but in panel two as well, where he takes the mask off and he's holding it at his side and normally he's not showing the mask, like from the front view where it would be completely recognizable as to what it is. You're just seeing it as if it were lying on its back. He would not try that. This is not him going for those icons.
Harold: No, not at all.
Jimmy: And I bet this did not reproduce that great in the newspaper.
Harold: No, probably not. And how tiny is that lettering? Oh, my gosh. That shows you how huge that must have been in the newspaper even though it was a space saving strip compared to the later strips.
Michael: Yeah, well, if you go look, on Gocomics, if you compare 52 and the next one, you can see how big the lettering is.
Jimmy: Let's do it.
June 1, 1972. Oh, we're way in the future now because panel one, Charlie Brown and Linus are outside and Charlie Brown says, Rerun is crying again. I can hear him. Rerun is at this point the new, addition to the van pelt household. Linus's younger brother Dennis, quotes. Yeah. like the early Peppermint Patty. Rerun is crying again. I can hear him. Linus says, when babies are hungry, they don't want to wait. Then we see Charlie Brown and Linus continue to talk, but behind them sneaks up Snoopy with his supper dish in his mouth. Linus says to Charlie Brown, takes a long time to learn patience. In panel three, Snoopy just bumps the supper dish into the back of Charlie Brown's head, which gets Charlie Brown's attention, let's say. And then Charlie Brown takes the dish and with annoyance, walks back towards the house saying, some people I know never learn any patience. And Snoopy thinks to himself very, calmly and self contentedly, I'm very patient. It's my stomach that's crabby.
Michael: There's two characters who looked like they were going to make a big play in the early seventies and kind of faded out, probably to come back strong later. But Rerun’s one never did anything with it, really.
Jimmy: No, it's like nothing at this point.
Michael: And Franklin was the other. Franklin really was just an occasional walk on character all through the 70s.
Jimmy: Yeah, the Rerun thing is the one that really baffles me because as we'll see as we go on, continuing reading the strips into the 90s, Rerun becomes like the star of the strip and it's years between, decades actually, between the time he's introduced and the time that happens and in between, like you're saying, there's not a lot that's happening with Rerun.
Harold: I think my favorite part of this strip is in panel three, Charlie Brown's response to Snoopy's bumping him in the back of. Looks like the back of the shoulders with his dog dish. You have to see it to understand what I'm talking about. But it's a great drawing. And he's got his tongue. Charlie Brown has his tongue sticking out in surprise. But it's very mild surprise. It's just a funny drawing.
Jimmy: It really is. So if you characters want to be, able to follow along with us, here's how you would be able to do that in the future. Go to unpackingPeanuts.com and you can sign up for something called the great Peanuts reread. And, that's us reading every strip from 1950 all the way through 2000. And what that'll, get you guys is once a month you'll get an email newsletter telling you what we are going to be covering on upcoming episodes. So then if you have the Fantagraphics collections which collect all of the run of Peanuts comics, or if you just want to go on gocomics.com for free, you can type in those dates. Away you go. And you could read along with. So that is how we decided these. As Michael said earlier, just, I think Liz hit the random button and, that's where we're at today. Just random Peanuts.
Liz: Hey, Jimmy.
Jimmy: Yeah?
Liz: In our last episode, you said that you are going to watch the Snoopy show.
Jimmy: I did,
Liz: and give us a report. So I'm looking forward to that. Maybe when we do the mail.
Jimmy: Oh, I could just tell you even right now, it's real good.
Liz: All right.
Jimmy: It's real good. Yeah. I've only seen a little bit of it now, but I think it's the most Peanutsy of these things since the early 70s, probably. And what's interesting about it is because there is a little bit more freedom than there were, say, when they were doing the Christmas sequels and all that kind of stuff for the networks, those felt very, They're great in their own way. And everybody who worked on them, I'm sure, is unbelievably talented. But they were really hemmed in by just what they were doing. Just adapting the strips as little skits and these flow better. The animation is real gorgeous and the cast is good. Everything. Yeah. Thumbs up.
Harold: Are they adding extensive new elements and storylines versus just taking the strips and stringing them together.
Jimmy: Yeah. Much more so than they ever have in the past. They're allowing a little bit of freedom, and particularly doing things like there's now Franklin show coming on, a Marcie show and stuff like that. And, I haven't watched all of it, but from what I've seen, I think they really get the spirit just right.
Harold: It's great.
Jimmy: All right, let's spin the wheel again, though.
June 17, 1978. Boy, we can really see the size of the lettering now.
Harold: Whoa.
Eudora and Sally are lying out at night in the backyard in their sleeping bags, staring up at the sky, and Eudora said, what was that? And Sally says, that was a falling star. And then there's the silent panels. They both look up into the sky, and then Eudora yells, missed me.
Jimmy: Well, Eudora, speaking of characters that are new, that don't really make much of a play, Eudora's one.
Harold: She's Eudorable. Look at these little caterpillar versions when they're sleeping.
Michael: I don't get her, because usually, at least the secondary characters have one obvious trait.
Liz: She has a hat.
Jimmy: She hangs out with Sally. here's the thing. I don't know many people with all these super obvious traits. I don't know. I like a character that's just there.
Michael: Okay, well, that's the Shermy.
Jimmy: That's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. She's the new Shermy.
Michael: We had a Shermometer. I mean this implies maybe she's a jokester because she's thinking that's funny.
Jimmy: no, I think she's paranoid because she really thinks a star might hit her.
Harold: I have no idea.
Michael: So she's paranoid. That's why you'd put,
Harold: Yeah, she seems kind of little guileless. A little. I don't know.
Jimmy: She's a great design.
Harold: Beautiful design. Yeah. I think there's a little bit of kind of that, I don't know, Marcie kind of approach to things. It's almost like if she were Marcie's younger sister, who doesn't have that more considered life inside, that quiet life inside of the mind. She's a little more simple and direct, but, yeah, the design is great. I love the little caterpillar sleeping bag versions of Eudora and Sally.
Jimmy: I love that. And I love the little hat, all of it.
Harold: And it's an interesting choice. I don't think I would have done this, and I'm always learning from Schulz. So, for those of you who are just listening, Eudora is in the front, and Sally's right behind her, sleeping in these sleeping bags, and we're kind of looking at them from the side for the final panel, where Eudora says, miss me? Sally's completely gone. We see Sally in the first three panels, but in the fourth panel, Eudora kind of sits up a little bit, and if he had tried to draw Sally, and if I had tried to do this, I would have torn my hair out. But to make Sally just disappear in that last panel, know, it's a bold move by a cartoonist. She knows what he's doing.
Michael: Yeah, but also, I think the head is totally superimposed over Sally's head.
Jimmy: Well, yeah.
Michael: Sally's sleeping.
Jimmy: Yeah, but what he's saying is, if he didn't do that and you had the both heads shown, it would be confusing. You wouldn't be able to.
Harold: There's no way she's completely covering where Sally would be.
Jimmy: Right. I don't know.
Michael: If you did a cutout, I think.
Harold: from the third panel, even the open mouth. I mean, you would have her cheek rather than Sally's cheek.
Jimmy: Well, that sounds like a project throw down.
November 28, 1971. The wheel says. Oh good. There's a lot of words.
Harold: Hooray.
Jimmy: So we start off with one of them there symbolic panels. This is a giant, annoyed Peppermint Patty and a tiny, little confused Charlie Brown or embarrassed Charlie Brown. I love that. That's so weird looking. But that's a great looking panel. And then, panel.
Michael: Wait. We're hanging in that panel. I have a question. The featuring good old Charlie Brown.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: There's no space between Charlie and Brown. Is that because you always say CharlieBrown?
Jimmy: Maybe.
Harold: That's a good way to look at it. Yeah. They're just put together like one thing.
So, in panel two, good. old Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty are in their familiar position underneath a tree, and Peppermint Patty says to Charlie Brown, you want to hear something funny? And then, she continues in the next panel. A weird thing happened to me the other day, Chuck. I had to deliver a message from my dad to a friend of his who works in a barber shop. And when I walked in, one of the barbers said to me, what can I do for you, son? Charlie Brown says, that's funny. Something like that happened in my dad's barbershop once, a long time ago. A man brought his granddaughter in, and the barber thought the little girl was a boy and cut off all her curls. The mother was really mad everyone was yelling and screaming, but those things happen, I guess, after it's all over, it's really kind of funny. The next panel, this is enlivened Charlie Brown. He's actually kind of sitting up straight and is semi pleased with his little story. Then he goes back to his, up against a tree position. But Peppermint Patty is completely annoyed. And she says to him in the next panel, I wasn't finished with my story, Chuck. And then in the last panel, Charlie Brown is completely humiliated, and Peppermint Patty is completely annoyed.
Harold: Oh, this is so life, right? How many times have we done this to friends and family?
Jimmy: Yeah, I feel like this happened the day he was writing this right to him, and he's like, all right, I'm going to editorialize a bit. That's a lot of lettering in this strip.
Harold: Usually when you look at Schulz's lettering as a block, it looks really clean. This one looks a little more ragged. I don't know why. In 1971, it's a lot.
Jimmy: He's cramming it all in, and he's not going to change his tool.
Harold: He's moving fast.
Jimmy: it looks like a good looking strip. You see how it's moving fast, too? The fact that we have gotten through 30 years worth of these strips, and we don't have that many more to go. Can you believe it? So in an effort to just slow and delay that inevitable inevitability. An inevitable inevitability. In order to do that, we're going to take a break now, and then we'll come back on the other side and we'll answer the mail and stuff. So be right back.
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Jimmy: Hey, everybody, we're back. We're celebrating our hundredth episode. And, hey, let's hear, from you guys out there. Liz, I'm hanging out in the mailbox. Do we got anything?
Liz: We do. We have a lot today. All right, we got a message from John Merullo. And he says, hearing you all discuss the intricacies of Peanuts is like a dream come true. I grew up reading Peanuts in the newspapers and in the compilation books, as well as the tv specials and everything else. I never knew anyone who was as big a Peanuts fan as I was. Most people only knew the animated version and seemed to think Snoopy was the main character. As a gay man one aspect of Peanuts that has always struck me is its defiance of traditional gender roles. This starts with the second strip ever, with OG Patty socking Charlie Brown in the eye while reciting that little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Of the human characters, the three most sensitive are the three main boys, Charlie Brown, Linus, and Schroeder. Almost all the girls show much more aggressive traits, especially Lucy, Violet, both patties, and Sally. Marcie, while not aggressive, still defies gender norms in her dress. She is the only major female character never seen wearing a dress, and her willingness to get violent if needed. Whether any of the characters as adults would identify as LGBTQ as a moot point. They will never grow up, so we will never know. Having said that, when my husband George and I were married in 2017, Charlie Brown and Linus sat atop our wedding cake.
Jimmy: there may be a Linus and Sally weding cake topper around somewhere.
Liz: You have one, too?
Jimmy: Yeah. Well, I think that's interesting, the idea of what they would identify, as later in life. I thought about this recently, of all things. this is going to be surprising to you guys, but I was reading this book about the Beatles, and it was weird, and they're talking about a day in the life and how there's the verse that says something. know, I saw a film today, the english army had just won the war, which is probably a reference to his movie that he was making at the time, but it's also obviously a reference to Vietnam. But if he mentioned Vietnam in the song directly, it makes it less. There's no room for you to put yourself into it. It's nice to have little areas where things are not 100% defined by the artist because it gives you room to put yourself. And I think that's the success Schulz has a lot of times.
Harold: and I remember as a kid growing up and sensitive kid, to see characters like Linus in the world just kind of managing their way through the world is super meaningful because there wasn't a lot of that. There were a lot of characters that were very surfacey, and because there's so much to these characters, you're seeing traits in them that you don't see in other art. it's weird because in a comic strip, it is so streamlined, right? Comic strip artists are doing things that are types, and so they're playing type. And Schulz found a way to make that character. And like you're saying, the pieces that aren't there, I think, often comes from the simplicity of the drawing of the characters. And this was famously, stated by Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics, where he would say, look at a wall outlet where you plug in your lamp and you see those two vertical lines and the little hole underneath it for the plug, and you see a face in it. And these really boiled down characters that are just a dot and a c for a nose and a c for an ear and a very circular head for Charlie Brown. The characters are so boiled down that it makes it easier for you to see yourself in them. And I think that's a huge power of comics. But that Schulz also then layered on top of it a complexity to the characters that didn't play to type. Like you're saying. I think that endeared him to almost everybody. The universality of what he did is, I think, one of the things that just constantly amazes me and inspires me.
Jimmy: Well, this is actually super interesting. let's talk about a little bit more, like, the idea of Charlie Brown. Okay. So he talked about flipping the gender roles at the beginning. And Charlie Brown is this sensitive guy, and he loses a lot in 1950. That is super radical. And it must have been freeing for people, because even the male comic archetype would really just be making fun of either the character for not being sufficiently male enough. Like, he doesn't work, he's a layabout or whatever. Or it would be like a hypermasculine. like a little Abner or something like that, right? This is way more like a person.
Harold: I said, Linus, I knew Linus better than my next door neighbor because he just seemed that much more, I could know him better than I could know my neighbor, because somehow it's there. It's there.
Jimmy: I have to make another confession, though, Harold. All those years ago,
Harold: oh, my goodness.
Jimmy: I was your next door neighbor.
Harold: What were the odds?
Jimmy: And you never even made an attempt. I'd be like, hi, I like Peanuts too. And you're like, shut up. You're not as real as Linus.
Harold: Oh, you kept throwing baseballs at my bike. What am I going to do?
Jimmy: I don't think we told that story on the air, did we? I may have assaulted someone with a baseball. It was the past. We don't need to talk about it now. Hey, what other, letters did we get?
Liz: Well, okay. we got one from Sam Alexander, who says, I love what you're doing. And today I found a reason to get in touch. There was a robust discussion around references to Sam Sneed over a few podcasts, notably May 6, 1963. And I may have a bit of helpful background. Golfing Great. Sam Sneed said that he was plagued by the yips for over 55 years. It's a kind of disorder that interferes with putting. Yips were considered to be a factor in his failure to find a US Open victory during an illustrious golf career. In several podcasts, you've discussed Sparky's issues with tremors and also mentioned that his work often seemed to reflect what was going on in his life. I think that's the connection. So that's my contribution, for what it's worth. I love the way you all relate to one another, how respectfully you disagree. A model for us all. And I especially love when Liz laughs. That's all for now. But I wanted you to know you were loved.
Jimmy: Oh. well, thank you. That's fantastic.
Harold: Wow. That's such a lovely note. And thank you for mentioning that about Sam Sneed. I did not know that about him. And there's so many connections to Sam Snead, and I wonder, I'm assuming that was pretty well known if you're watching a golf game, sounds like it's something he talked about. He didn't try to hide. If Schulz knew about that, that's very interesting. I'm trying to remember the year we were engaging with him, and if Schulz himself would have been dealing with that at that point, or if he had seen it, maybe in his own family.
Jimmy: Well, that could be, I mean the yips in general are certainly a real thing. there was actually a Ted Lasso episode about it in one of the more recent, I think, the second season or something like that. And half of REM is in a band called The Baseball Project that just does songs about baseball, and they have a song called The Yips. But also, I went to a very small, high school, so take all of this with a grain of salt. There was only 200 and some kids in my entire school, but I was the lead in the musicals. I used to sing. I used to be able to sing. And I remember going to college, and we were playing music. Not like really starting a band, but just sitting around playing guitars and stuff like that it's like, I can sing. No, I can't. And I lost-- So if you go back and listen to that Charles Schulz 100th anniversary birthday spectacular, and I have to sing, like, three lines at the end, almost killed me. Almost killed me. The yips are real people. All right, anything else? What else we got?
Liz: So Andrew Cadell wrote and says, hey, guys, love the podcast. I listen to it every week while I draw my own comic strip called on the 7th day. It's a one panel strip that I've been drawing for my church since 2018. And hearing you guys discuss Peanuts every week is wonderful company. While I draw this strip, he sends us the link, and I will put it on social media. And then he adds, best wishes to you all. And my favorite REM album is Fables of the Reconstruction, because I can play the entire album on guitar.
Jimmy: Oh, that is fantastic. That's a good pick. All right, finally, some quality REM content on this podcast. yeah, I think the first REM song I learned on the guitar was driver eight from Fables of the Reconstruction. So that is an excellent pick.
Harold: Well, that's great.
Liz: And Melissa, from Beagle and the Bird writes well. First she says, this is my favorite podcast.
Jimmy: All right.
Liz: And then she says, I finally got a chance to listen to the Gary Groth episode. I loved hearing the backstory of how the Fantagraphics books came to be, and I was surprised to learn that Charles Schulz didn't think people would want to read them. Go figure. Thank you for all you guys do. I love learning about the history of this strip.
Harold: Oh, thank you for writing. And when you say that, and I'm remembering what Gary said, yeah, on one level, you think that's very surprising. But if you can imagine being Schulz and being at the top of his game in the culture, I mean, I'm trying to imagine this. Like, if I myself did something and I saw it just zoomed to the top, and everybody wants a part of it, and then the tv specials have these blockbuster ratings, and you're in 2000 newspapers, and they're advertisements and toys. And then he can't help but notice in some way the strip itself is becoming eclipsed as he's going on in his life. And the other stuff kind of has a life of its own. But the strip itself, he can tell that he sees the book sales numbers that are coming in, and that really peaked out probably in the Fawcett Crest paperback books. And I'm sure that was disappointing to him. Of all the successes he had, he was somebody who could also dwell on the failures, right?
Jimmy: 100%.
Harold: And he must have been frustrated to see that people were not buying paperback book collections of his comics anymore. And he's seeing that Garfield, those little half height Garfield books, were selling like crazy and getting on bestseller list. But Peanuts really wasn't in those later years. So I'm wondering if that was him kind of thinking, well, this is over for Peanuts. I'm just not selling that many. And he didn't realize that there was this pent up love for the strip, and there was a real regard for the strip in the sense that it's never been properly treated as a collection of strips. And that that would make such a huge difference to people to be able to see it from beginning to end. I'm just guessing Schulz didn't know, didn't know that the strips themselves had such meaning to people. They just hadn't had a chance to engage with them in a way that Gary Groth helped make happen. And I'm so glad that he did.
Jimmy: Me too. Me too.
Liz: And we heard from Rich Izzo, who writes, as with you all, my love of Peanuts runs deep. I was born near the beginning of the 70s, so I started reading Peanuts around the point when it started getting cutesy. I realized it when I started reading the Fawcett Crest collections from the. Not long after discovering the strip. I still laugh at those earlier strips 40 years later. Not afraid to grouch about the later strips either. I can out kvetch Michael on a sunny day with an armload of eggs from the Easter Beagle. I also enjoyed many of the tv specials. Watching a Charlie Brown Christmas with my dad was one of the few truly fond memories I have of our relationship. He loved Snoopy and laughed at Charlie Brown killing the Christmas tree every time we watched it together. So I do hope you profile the tv specials after the final strips. That means you too, Michael. Anyway, keep up the great work. I'll be listening. Warm regards, Rich.
Jimmy: Awesome.
Harold: Thank you.
Jimmy: Thank you so much. I really do appreciate that. It's always great to hear from people. we did also get one text message to the old hotline. it's from listener Don, who said he is concerned about what we're going to do after 2000. Please tell me you're not going to cancel the podcast.
Okay. I think there's a case to be made for. We read the last strip and then we never speak again. And I don't mean just on the podcast. I mean, like, to anybody ever. And here's why. I've realized how many of these podcasts are me going, hey, you guys remember this? And then you guys going, no. And then me telling you the story, and then it just goes on forever and ever. And then I thought, oh, my God, maybe we're in hell, because I can't remember. I told the story, and you guys can't remember. You heard it or, lived it. So it's just this endless loop. But then I realized, well, Harold won't go to hell. Then I realized we're in purgatory, and Liz is in hell because she has to cut out all the. Did you guys ever. Nope. Blah, blah, blah, cut.
Harold: Sure you do it. It was on fire.
Jimmy: It was right in front of you. Don't you remember that? I will never forget this day as long as I live.
Harold: anyway, I guess.
Jimmy: I don't know.
Liz: Or we could colorize it and just reissue all of the episodes.
Jimmy: Well, hang on. So here's what I'll just. I will say this. Don't worry about it yet, because we will reach our destination, but it's still a ways away. Okay, that's a little driver eight for our buddy there.
Michael: Yeah.
Jimmy: So I think that's what we're doing. We're just canceling the podcast 2000, part two. Peace out.
Harold: But when we hit the.
Liz: We could stop now.
Jimmy: No, that would be the worst.
Harold: 1999 it's like one strip a show.
Jimmy: I followed a podcast that was reading the Sandman issues, and they got all the way to the next to the last trade paperback and decided to quit. It's like, come on. Come on. I think they were in a relationship, and it may have ended, but come on, suffer through for a few more weeks.
Harold: for the fans.
Michael: Well, the ReJoyce guy died.
Jimmy: That's true. He did. Let's definitely not do that.
Liz: Let's definitely not do that.
Jimmy: We recently, had also, just to let you guys know, we recently had a live event for our Patreon supporters, and it was a lot of fun. We just hung out. We, took questions, we asked some questions. We talked about Peanuts, and we laughed a lot. and it was a great hang and a great group of people, and we're going to be doing that again soon. Liz, when are we doing that again?
Liz: We did it two days ago.
Jimmy: Oh, we did it two days ago. We're talking about the new one. Yeah, I see. Okay.
Liz: So, I'm sure we had a wonderful time.
Jimmy: I just want to say I think I had the best time I've ever had in my life. Nothing was as really soul satisfying as our live event.
Harold: because of my scintillating conversation.
Jimmy: I don't know. I don't remember what you said. So that's our mailbox.
Liz: Thank you, everybody. That was great.
Jimmy: Yes, thank you. So if you want to reach out to us or keep the conversation going, there's a couple of different ways you can do it. You can first go to the good old website unpackingPeanuts.com, where you can write us an email and, just tell us what's on your mind. We'd love to hear from you.
We're unpackingPeanuts@gmail.com. You can also follow us, on the social media, on blue sky, Facebook and YouTube, we're unpacking Peanuts. And on threads and Instagram, we're at unpack Peanuts. so we would love to hear from you, between now and next week. And also, you can always call the hotline. we're getting text to the hotline. I'm happy to get the text, but I want to hear your sweet, smiling voices,
Harold: Dulcet tones.
Jimmy: so feel free to give us a call at
VO: 717-219-4162
Liz: add it to your contacts list.
Jimmy: There you go. Yeah, so that when you're reading your Peanuts and your Fantagraphics books and you want to shoot us off a hot take, you'll have it right there.
All right, so we're going to get back to the strips here, where we are just, randomly selecting them. Let's spin that wheel. All right. The wheel lands us on
November 5, 1965, and we see Snoopy atop his doghouse, Charlie Brown holding a cue stick outside, and Linus, like, crawling out of the doghouse. Charlie Brown says to Snoopy, thanks for letting us play pool in your recreation room, Snoopy. He continues, incidentally, a tip came off of one of the queues, so I'm taking it to be repaired. Charlie Brown walks away saying, and don't worry, I'll see to it that they use only indonesian water buffalo hide. In the last panel, Snoopy lies down in his doghouse and thinks, I'm glad he told me that. Otherwise I would have stayed awake all night worrying.
Michael: I have to point something out. I have to point.
Jimmy: Please do.
Michael: Check out that forehead. I've never seen a forehead that big.
Jimmy: It's lima being shaped, for sure.
Harold: The thing that strikes me in this strip is we talk about the poetry of comic strips and how every word counts. And it seems like virtually every single one of these panels has more words than it needs or it's longer than it needs. And he's really cramming these words in, especially in the first panel, because he has to deal with that little Peanuts.
Jimmy: Logo and the copyright.
Harold: And the copyright thing. Yeah. If I were editing this, if I were writing this, I was just thinking, boy, did they not call it a rec room instead of a recreation m back in the 65? Maybe that wasn't a common thing.
Jimmy: Also, he has a real nice layout, even though he's cramming it all in. The lines are relatively even. And maybe it was something where it would make an awkwardness of, the lines being stacked vertically. I don't know.
Harold: Well, I don't know. I mean, recreation room, Snoopy is. That is crammed.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: Rec room. Rec room. He would have been better off, I would think. And then he adds the word, incidentally, in the second panel, which he doesn't have to say. And instead of the tip came off of one of the cues, a tip came off a cue or something like that. I don't know. And I'm taking to be repaired. He has so in there just all these words that an and. Don't worry, he didn't have to have the and. And then otherwise is the last word with says otherwise. I would have stayed up awake all night worrying because it's consistently wordy like that and conversational. I'm sure Schulz knew what he was doing, but I'm kind of surprised. I don't know if Schulz was the kind of guy to go back through something once he's thought out what he wants the characters to say and try to chip it down. Looks like he's certainly not doing it.
Jimmy: I think, you know, I, like using incidentally is a great word to use in conversation, or even just something like, you know, or likes or whatever.
Harold: Yeah, you did that. A lot of million rules, I remember.
Jimmy: Yeah. And it's kind of a pain sometimes because it's extra lettering and you have to sort of account for it in the word balloons and stuff.
Harold: I was guilty of. Well, I was curious to always start.
Jimmy: Well, yeah, I do.
Harold: Well, instead of just saying it, I would just start with a Well. I don't know.
Jimmy: I don't know. There's something about it, though, that makes it seem like, this one maybe isn't the most. It doesn't trip off the tongue while you're reading it, but it still reads like Charlie Brown to me.
Harold: Absolutely.
Jimmy: And, of course, indonesian water buffalo hide. That sounds like something he read in a magazine somewhere. And just like, that's really weird, because every pool cue I ever used in my life had felt on the front. But I grew up in the Skook, so we didn't have indonesian water buffalo hide.
All, right, let's spin the wheel again. And the wheel lands on
December 27, 1950. This is about as early as you can get. And it is Shermy and Patty, and they're standing there and Patty says to Shermy, I can't marry you, Shermi. Shermi says, why not? And Patty says, I haven't known you long enough. And Shermi, annoyed, says, well, what do you expect? And then Shermi delivers a punchline in panel four. I've only been alive for a few years.
Jimmy: Reasonable.
Michael: Yeah, I'm appreciating these really early ones more. When, I first encountered them, I started reading Peanuts, probably with the fourth book.
Jimmy: Right.
Michael: And then went back and got the earlier ones. And I always felt like the first three books were not Peanuts. I would not ever recommend them. I'd say start with the fourth book, but now, it's got a certain charm, the big head kids.
Jimmy: I always like how it's that, I don't like that. That's not Peanuts. How do you like the chocolate cake? That's not chocolate cake.
Michael: Well, certain things take a while to get going.
Jimmy: Yeah, this definitely.
Michael: And you're not going to recommend start with Cerebus number one.
Jimmy: Right Yeah. This is actually something that's interesting and worth bringing up. And Cerebus made me think of it. That's an example of someone who, they have done other work. Dave's done other work, but that's 90% of it. If you're going to engage with his work, you're engaging with Cerebus, Jaime Hernandez, Love and Rockets, Harold Gray, little orphan Annie.
Jimmy: You're asking a lot of your readers when you do one big work. And I think there is a potential that some things can get lost simply because of that. Like, well, where do you start? And that is a tough question to ask. Yeah, I know we're doing the read the whole thing from the beginning, but if someone was super casual, I wouldn't recommend 1950. for sure. But what do you think about that? Because there's so much rewards from doing a long work, but there's also a lot of downsides.
Michael: Yeah, but we're following the author who's growing and learning about the characters as he's doing it, and it's not a novel.
Jimmy: Right.
Michael: And we have the wonderful option, those of us who are doing online comics is to go back and redo the early you. Certainly the newspaper, once it's out, it's there forever or forgotten, right. Instantly.
Harold: Yeah. Well, Michael, I think, Charles Schulz would probably agree with you about, these early Peanuts and how you felt about them in your younger years, because that upper left hand corner, little slug line for the strip is actually in quotes in 1950. It's “Peanuts” Air quotes. It's not really quite Peanuts.
Jimmy: That's so strange.
Liz: Proto Peanuts.
Jimmy: Yeah, because here we go. Let's spin the wheel again, and let's see if the, quotation marks, are there or not. The wheel takes us to November 7, 1956. The quotation marks are gone. We're fully Peanuts now.
Harold: It's Peanuts now. Oh.
Jimmy: And it's a good, no qualifier. It's a good one.
So Snoopy is out, in the weeds, and the weeds are above his head. And even though you can barely see him through the weeds, you can see he's focused. He's locked in, and he says, by golly, I'm not going to let a bunch of stupid weeds panic me. I'll just hit here. And in the next panel, he jumps up out of the weeds, looks both ways, screams, aug runs out of the weeds. And then in the last panel, he's free of them, and he leans up against a tiny little tree. He's clearly shaken, and he says, weeds, brrr,
Michael: weed claustrophobia, This ran, this is a long sequence, and really, this was, like, for me when I really started loving the strip. But if you look at Snoopy in that last panel, there's almost no relationship between that and the current.
Jimmy: If you put them next to each other, they could be different characters in a strip.
Michael: Yeah, well, that's the thing, is, why are they the same character?
Jimmy: Well, you could say the same thing about me if you looked at me over 40 years.
Harold: you've always been the same character.
Michael: It’s not like your head shape changes or that long snout. Now I look at it after seeing 70s Peanuts for the last many months. I look at it now, I go, boy, didn't we notice how weird? but we didn't when we're reading it, like, well, that's right.
Jimmy: Schulz says the same thing. He said that he went back and looked, and the actual word he used was appalled. I was appalled at how I was drawing Snoopy in this era. It's like, all right, we'll take it down a notch. Think it looks great.
Harold: Yeah. Michael, what do you think about the second panel where Snoopy is turning his head both ways, all into, a morphed Snoopy, but his mouth's not open. When he's crying out, you think of the dog could do one thing. He could yell AUGH, but his mouth is shut. Here. Was that typical in this 56?
Michael: I don't know, but we all grew up reading comics, so we had no problem understanding this panel. But this could be extremely complicated. If I show this to Katerina and say, she will go, like, why is dog have two heads.
Harold: Why are there two dogs in the second panel? But why is his mouth shut?
Jimmy: Well, it's really interesting when you do. I think a moment like that is. You can say it's like, because you're seeing multiple moments. Right. So that's why the mouth isn't necessarily open. And you'll see this. I think Kirby sort of mastered this in 60s Marvel books, where it's almost like there's multiple perspective points. Like, you're seeing the punch. Like, the fist is one perspective from one moment, but the body is really actually from, like, 2 seconds previous or whatever. And when you're reading this, like Michael says, and you're versed in comics, and you just go past it, no problem. But for me, drawing something like that is where I get hung up, because when you're.
Harold: What do you decide to do? Yeah, no ears. A lot of choices go into that. No ears. Yeah. I'm guessing if he had a taller strip, like he did later, he might have thrown some ears shooting up. But no room here. The claustrophobia requires weeds going very high in that.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: I love the weeds in the third panel.
Jimmy: Yes.
Harold: I love how he draws them. They're great.
Jimmy: He's a great pen and ink artist. Like, he could have been an inker if he wanted, because he can get texture. He could have been an inker! He could have aspired to trace someone else's pencil drawings.
Harold: He could have been a contender.
Liz: This was in the book where I first discovered Peanuts.
Harold: Oh, really?
Liz: In the one with the french fries.
Jimmy: Oh, that's a great era.
Harold: And I love that drawing of Snoopy in the fourth panel with the way he makes Snoopy look shaken, is his ear. Looks like it's ruffled. Maybe it's been ruffled by the weeds. I don't know. And the back of his. The little spot on the back. On his back, the little black spot has. It's like it's raised. Like if you had fear, the hairs on your arm or whatever. Works really well.
Jimmy: All right. The wheel takes us to
January 29, 1972. 70s Snoopy is out for a walk, and, he passes a tree. We can't see what's going on high up in the tree, but Snoopy looks up and says, how about that? And then in panel three, we see what he's looking up at, and we see Woodstock, in his nest. But his nest is atop four other nests. And he is, like, in the penthouse of the nests. Snoopy walks away saying, woodstock has moved to a high rise.
Harold: Visual gag.
Jimmy: One of my greatest, things in life, one of the things I'm most pleased about is getting Michael to become a Woodstock fan. Just by not getting him, but by just making him read these strips, he was forced to become a Woodstock.
Michael: You don't get credit for that. I kind of credit Schulz for that.
Jimmy: Yeah, but you would have never looked. Well, first off, any chance I get to take a little credit for myself, I'm going to do it. And secondly, no, you would have never read these without me badgering you.
Michael: That might be true. I definitely had a mental block against venturing into 70s Peanuts.
Jimmy: All right, this will be the last one for our spinning wheel of destiny. And it is May 29, 1967.
Linus is patting a little bird, a proto Woodstock, on the head. Pat, Pat, Pat. Charlie Brown watches this. Then, in panel two, Charlie Brown approaches Lucy where he says to her, your brother pats birds on the head. Panel three, pow. Lucy just lays them out, punch right to the mouth. Panel four, Charlie Brown is laying on the ground, dazed. And he says to himself, some people are pretty sensitive about their relatives.
Jimmy: I love the bird patting sequence. I think that's so fun.
Michael: Yeah, this is great. I mean, I really laugh out loud. I just did laugh out loud. I've read this one many times.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: It's just Lucy, what a great reaction. Think about it.
Jimmy: Perfect timing.
Harold: Yeah. Look at her legs when she's punching him. It's quite a
Michael: Kirby-esque
Harold: Quite a stance. Yeah.
Jimmy: That foot's crossed over. I like it. And his weird stars that he draws. His weird shower rounded--
Harold: five point stars that have no points. They do look like the things that you would have had up in the Dating Game.
Jimmy: Absolutely. They're Dating Game stars, for sure.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: All right, so would you want to explain what we're doing here for the finale list?
Liz: Sure. I picked the strip that was printed on our birthdays, except for Michael's, which was printed on his first birthday.
Jimmy: All right. Okay. All right, so this is Michael's first birthday,
August 31, 1951. Charlie Brown is hanging out with his new pal, a very tiny little Schroeder. And Schroeder has no shoes on. So Charlie Brown is doing the classic piggy thing. Saying, this little piggy went to market. Then panel two, this little piggy stayed home. Panel three, this little piggy had roast beef. Then in the fourth panel, Charlie Brown looks out at us and says. Now, what was a pig doing eating roast beef?
Michael: This cracked me up when I was one.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: So, Michael, I have to ask you. What was it like, life without Peanuts? You predate Peanuts.
Michael: There's this vast gap in my existence. I didn't know what it was. I didn't realize there were comics yet.
Harold: Boy, I just think of Gerald McBoingBoing there.
Michael: Yeah, it's true that if you read your birthday strips, it will tell you about your personality.
Jimmy: All right. Well, what does this tell you about you?
Michael: Well, it says, I, really like strips about pigs. I really like happy piggy land.
Jimmy: All right. Let's see what this one says about Liz.
November 18, 1954. Charlie Brown and Lucy are out there. And Lucy says to Charlie Brown, you say there's only one sun, eh, Charlie Brown? Charlie Brown's baffled by this. Panel two, Lucy confronts him angrily. Well, then explain this. Where does it go every night? Charlie Brown says, no place. Lucy's having none of it. She interrupts and starts laughing. No place. Oh, then Charlie Brown's really annoyed by this. But Lucy walks away and says to Charlie Brown. Arguing with Charlie Brown is so useless. He just can't ever be serious. And then you see Charlie Brown, who is actually vibrating with rage as Lucy walks away.
Michael: And what's the say about Liz? It says she likes believing things that don't make any sense.
Jimmy: Well, that explains quite a bit. Oh, man. Yeah, very cute. Lucy at this era with her pseudoscience and not understanding things. but her self assuredness, in spite of it, is just great.
Michael: That's your actual birthday?
Jimmy: Yes.
Michael: And do you remember this?
Liz: Yes. I loved it
Michael: Did they line your crib with the comics section.
Liz: At 07:19 p.m. They showed me the Evening Bulletin and I just laughed and laughed.
Jimmy: All right. Here is Harold's b Day,
March 18, 1966. Snoopy's atop his dog house. And Woodstock is well, it's not Woodstock. It's the proto Woodstock is atop Snoopy. As in asleep on top of Snoopy's head. In, panel two, Snoopy now lies on his stomach. And Woodstock is now asleep, basically on his rump. In panel one, Snoopy says, I can't stand it. Panel two, Snoopy says, my parents had great ambitions for me. I even had great ambitions for myself. Now the proto Woodstock is atop Snoopy's nose, and Snoopy thinks to himself, but there's one thing for sure. I have no intention of ending up as a stupid. And then in panel four, he screams, bird sanctuary. And, proto Woodstock goes flying.
Jimmy: The silent scream.
Harold: This time his mouth's way open. Yeah. So I guess, what does this say about me? It says that I have pent up anger toward birds. And I don't know what this says about me, too. That this is the strip where Snoopy has the biggest butt in the history of the strip.
Michael: You don't like being used.
Jimmy: Maybe you're the Woodstock character and you just like a good nap.
Harold: Well, that's true.
Jimmy: There's nothing wrong with this.
Harold: That could be it. I'm just a little sleeping bird who's managed to.
Jimmy: Yeah, that could. Now, I'm not sure about the science of this theory of Michael's, but we're going to go with it.
Michael: Oh, it's real.
Harold: All right.
Jimmy: So that leaves just me.
February 5, 1972. Woodstock is on a branch on the tiniest, scraggliest little tree you've ever seen in your life. In panel two, he leaves and he walks back. He ends up at Snoopy's house, and Snoopy's on the doghouse. And Woodstock explains a bunch of things to him. And then in the last panel, Snoopy lies down and thinks Woodstock wants to fly to distant horizons, but he doesn't know where they are. And then Woodstock sighs.
Jimmy: I don't think that needs any explanation at all. I think that is 100% growing up in Girardville. I get that. Totally. I remember seeing Star Wars when I was five years old, and Luke Skywalker says, well, if there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's the farthest from. And I thought, same. I get you, Luke. I get it.
Harold: and if Peanuts licensing worldwide is listening, panel one there, you got a t shirt, mug, something little Woodstock on the beautiful scraggly.
Jimmy: I am a big fan of cartoon trees. I like your Schulz trees. I like your Walt Kelly trees. I like your, Bill Watterson trees. But, no one draws a scraggly little tree like Charles Schulz.
All right, I guess that does it. That was our 100th episode, guys. I just want to say I have had fun in at least 97 of those episodes. It has been so cool. I look forward to this every week, despite the ungodly hour that we record these at 11:00 a.m.
Liz: Speaking of 97, at the moment we have 97 strips of the year, and pretty soon we will have 100 and we will be sharing them.
Jimmy: That's great. 100 strips of the year.
Harold: Wonderful. How will we share those, Liz?
Liz: I think we'll share them in the newsletter. Don't you think?
Harold: that would be great? So if you haven't signed up for the newsletter, go to unpackingPeanuts.com. There's a banner along the top that says, just basically join in the great Peanuts reread. If you click on that and you put your email address into that, we will send you every month at the beginning of the month a list of all of the strips we're going to be covering in the upcoming month. So you can read them ahead if you like, or just see who we've got as guests. That's the way to find out first what's going on in unpacking Peanuts world.
Michael: So does this mean that somewhere in that list is the greatest Peanuts strip?
Jimmy: Must be, one thing I want to do. I think we should discuss that and figure that out. The greatest Peanuts comic strip of all time. I will, though. I would like to say I want to, place be of good cheer out of, because that transcends it to me. So that will be out of competition. But the other ones, we can pick the greatest one.
Liz: Well then it's ducky and horsey.
Jimmy: Well, that brings us to the end of this podcast. It was ducky and horsey. You don't need to listen to the rest, but if you want to, we'll be back next week. otherwise, we just want to hear from you. Keep in touch on social media. The links are in our description. Call us on the hotline and call. We want to hear your voice because I worry when I don't hear from you. Other than that, there's nothing else. We just want you to come back next week. Between now and then, have a wonderful week, and, we'll see you soon. For Michael, Harold, and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.
H&L&M: Yes, be of good cheer
Liz: Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen and Harold Buchholz 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.