Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. It's Unpacking Peanuts, the show where three cartoonists do what they love best, which is avoiding work by talking about their favorite cartoonist, Charles Schulz. I'm your host for the proceedings. My name is Jimmy Gownley. I'm also a cartoonist, like I said, I did Amelia Rules. Seven Good Reasons Not to Grow Up, and The Dumbest Idea Ever.
Joining me, as always, are my pals, co hosts, and fellow cartoonists. First, he is a playwright and a composer, both for the band Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast. He is the co creator of the original Comic Book Price Guide, the original editor of 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 the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics, the current creator of the Instagram sensation Sweetest Beasts, and his new book, the Neat Before Christmas, is available for order now. It's Harold Buchholz.
Harold: Hello.
Jimmy: All right, guys, we are, deep in the woods here of 1979. We're wrapping up the third Peanuts decade. I think we just get to the strips. What do you say?
Michael and Harold: Sure.
Jimmy: All right, so if you guys are new to the proceedings, welcome. Here's how we do things. We go through every single year of Peanuts. We read every single strip, but then what we do is, we pick a handful, a smattering, to discuss, amongst ourselves and with you guys. So if you want to follow along, you can go to our website, unpackingpeanuts.com. You can sign up for the great Peanuts Reread, and you'll get a once a month newsletter letting you know what strips we'll be covering. And then you can read them for free, which is amazing. You just go to Gocomics.com, type in Peanuts, the year that we are covering, in this case, 1979, the dates of the strips that we're talking about. And away you go. So you do that now, and, away we'll go.
May 6, one of the, classic Schulz symbolic panels, we have Woodstock, as a cuckoo in a cuckoo clock, a nicely cartooned cuckoo clock, I would say. Then in panel two, Woodstock lands on Snoopy's doghouse. Snoopy is sitting on top. Snoopy turns to Woodstock and says, “what are you doing here? You're supposed to be out somewhere sitting on a branch chirping. That's your job.” Snoopy continues, “people expect to hear birds chirping when they wake up in the morning.” Woodstock takes this in and then goes. Sits in a scraggly little tree. He chirps once. Then he walks back to Snoopy's dog house. Snoopy says to him, “you only chirped once. You can't brighten someone's day with one chirp.” So Woodstock dutifully walks back, sits back in the tree and chirps six times. Then he comes back to Snoopy's and he says, “there now, didn't that give you a feeling of real satisfaction?” Woodstock's blank look on his face. But then in the next panel, Snoopy says, “the bad news is you're supposed to do that every morning for the rest of your life.” And for the second time in Peanuts history, I think we have a clunk moment where falls off the doghouse in sheer shock at the proposition.
Harold: That's why I nominated this strip was simply for that fact. That's such an old trope in comics, to have the character fall back after somebody says something in the last panel. And Schulz has not done it. Not done it, not done it. And now twice, I think in two years, he has the little gag as Marcie was the first to do it. She's falling back in her seat when Peppermint Patty was reading the cereal box as her reading assignment. Boy, but I sure enjoyed it. As somebody who loves old school cartooning, I'm happy to see Schulz do a little clunk moment with Woodstock.
Jimmy: Eine kleine clunk moment.
Michael: I have a question.
Harold: Yeah, yeah.
Michael: I probably should have noticed this or thought about it before, but in the past when Snoopy is doing a lot of talking or thinking, was his mouth used to be open?
Jimmy: we have talked about it. We touched on it once. Anyway, it seemed like when he was yelling, it's open. But I don't think otherwise. It's ever open.
Harold: Yeah, it seems pretty unusual to see Snoopy's mouth open when he's thinking something through. Talking to Woodstock. Okay. Grateful that Woodstock can understand his thoughts.
Jimmy: Right, Cool.
Harold: And on the other flip side here, so he's telling Woodstock to chirp. And instead of Woodstock then going to the tree, and we see in the little word balloon, a vertical line as the chirp. We actually see chirp, which begs the question, what is Woodstock doing when he is talking to Snoopy?
Michael: Interesting. He's slashing.
Harold: Maybe he's tweeting.
Jimmy: That's really wild. Yes. That's very interesting. Clearly, his little slash marks is a means of communication, whereas the chirp is just birdsong sound. Just notes, I guess. Right. But then he didn't draw notes either.
Harold: Right. Interesting. Yeah, it's a mystery. It is.
Jimmy: But you know what? He was focused on getting to that Clunk punchline, and he forgot.
Harold: Yeah. He's burning his way there, inexorably.
May 13. Charlie Brown is, standing there, and he's looking at a pillow. On the pillow it says, have you kicked your pillow today? In the next panel, we see Charlie Brown has arrived at the psychiatry stand where Lucy says to him, “you're a puzzle.” Charlie Brown says, “I am.” Lucy continues, “sometimes I suspect that you have a terrible rage bottled up within you. I do. It isn't good to keep all that anger inside Charlie Brown.” Charlie Brown. Just emotionless and expressionless, listening to this, Lucy continues, “what I want you to do is get mad, shout. Don't hold back. Say anything you feel like saying. Go ahead.” Charlie Brown says, “right now?” Lucy. “Right now, Charlie Brown.” He gets all shaken up. He's vibrating. And he says, “Rats.” To which Lucy says, “forget it. $0.05, please.”
Michael: She's channeling Arthur Janov doing primal scream therapy.
Harold: Yeah. That was a thing, right?
Jimmy: Oh, yeah.
Michael: John Lennon was doing it.
Jimmy: Yeah. That album might be the only decent thing that probably came out of that therapy. I don't imagine it's super effective.
Harold: So can you explain primal scream therapy to those who maybe didn't live that?
Michael: Jannov felt that all the pain of hating your parents was bottled up in you and it caused neurosis. So if you actually sat in therapy and screamed, of course Yoko had no problem with that-- and screamed as loud as you could, you would feel a release of all that anger.
Liz: tell your story.
Michael: No.
Liz: tell your story.
Michael: No.
Liz: Do it.
Michael: No.
Liz: Guys, make him tell his story.
Jimmy: I'd love to hear it.
Michael: He might be listening. I don't know.
Jimmy: Yeah, let's call him Clyde. Okay.
Michael: A friend of mine, or at least part of the crowd, who's a little rich kid, basically. His father was a doctor, so he had money. But anyway, it turns out that he was in the primal screen therapy with John Lennon.
Jimmy: Oh, my gosh.
Michael: For months. But he was not allowed to tell anyone.
Jimmy: Oh, wow.
Michael: And it sort of leaked out years later. Imagine, like, so what did you do today? Like, nothing.
Jimmy: I sat and screamed with John Lennon. Although I sort of feel like if screaming was the release John needed, like, he did that every day for years in front of tens of thousands of people. I don't know that everybody would feel great, but maybe they did. I don't know. You know what? If you're into still primal screaming, have at it. Who am I to judge your methods?
Michael: Don't do it in the microphone when I have the headphones.
Harold: Well, maybe this is a good time, given Charlie Brown's attempt at, getting mad. let's do the, anger and happiness index.
Jimmy: All right, let's go. Because I think I'm going to get it exactly right. I'm predicting I will get happiness exactly right.
Harold: Wow, that's impressive. Okay, well, let's go. So we'll give you the background here. Again, for those of you listening, for the first time every year, for no discernible reason, I go through all of the strips and I see if there is a character who is showing happiness in the strip or a, character showing anger in the strip. And I count up the strips that have that. And then every year ever since 1953, we've been doing anger. I think we added happiness just a couple of years after that. In 1978, we were at an all time low for anger. We were down to 70, which was less than 20%. That's pretty remarkable, the run of strips, we're seeing less anger out of the characters than before. so what do you think happened in 1979?
Jimmy: I believe the happiness has gone up three strips.
Harold: Okay, so you want to start with happiness. All right. Yes. And then anger.
Jimmy: I believe the anger is holding steady.
Harold: Well, yeah. Well, up three is pretty steady, too.
Jimmy: Yeah, but it's up. This is micro surgery. I'm going to pinpoint exact same.
Harold: That's amazing.
Jimmy: Michael, how about you?
Michael: Frankly, I have no Idea. I never had an Idea.
Jimmy: Yeah, but you regularly got it right.
Michael: Actually, I have no Idea what happiness is, so I don't know what you're talking about.
Harold: When they have the little smile that goes upward and little curve. that's how I'm counting.
Michael: I couldn't read these expressions.
Jimmy: All right, Harold, what is it? Let us know.
Harold: Well, Jimmy, you were within five, strips. That's pretty amazing. So, yeah, the anger went from 70 to 72, up two, and the happiness is down one. But maybe you would have counted it differently than I did.
Jimmy: That's pretty good.
Harold: Yeah, that's incredibly good. I think that's maybe just about as close as we've ever gotten to guessing where it is. But going back and looking at where we were, the 50s were a little more amped.
Harold: In terms of the characters being showing emotion, and that makes the strip feel very differently. And that's the sense that I got. I basically try to get a sense of what's going on, and then I wind up using doing the count later. But I'm obviously reading through the strips the first time fresh, and it does feel like he's kind of moved into this more. I think I've said it last week, but these are milder characters, I think, than what we've had before. And Schulz, as the master, of kind of deadpan humor, he's kind of found a space that's a little consistent for him. So, anyway, that's my take on the anger and happiness.
Jimmy: Very interesting. I'd like to stick with this strip for just a moment more because it's pretty interesting in a couple of ways. First, off, do you notice the little. No Waiting on the side there, tier two, where the last panel, of tier two, she has no waiting, which is cute. And this is projection, conjecture, whatever you want to call it. There's no way we know. Do you think this is something that Schulz, had said to him in his own life? Because he obviously seems, like a very mild mannered, proper, retiring kind of guy, and it seems like someone might say, oh, I bet you're loaded with anger, and he just isn't.
Harold: Well, if I had one person to guess who I know of in Schulz's life, I have somebody in my mind who might have said it to him.
Jimmy: I think I do, too.
Harold: Okay.
Jimmy: Bill Melendez.
Harold: Bill Melendez, yeah. He was the guy who ran the studio that did the animation for the Peanuts specials. And judging by what he said on the American Masters Schulz documentary that came out, I think was right after Schulz had passed. Not too long after Schulz had passed, there was some anger in Melendez, I think, on behalf of Charles Schulz.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: And it's a very jarring thing in the special, and I think we mentioned it once before, I think. But it seemed like he was angry for Schulz, and he said he was a wimp. And I don't think he was saying that because he disliked Schulz. I think he loved Schulz. I think he was saying it because he felt that Schulz was holding himself back from being stronger than he was showing.
Jimmy: Right.
Harold: And that was something that Bill wished for him, is that he could have had the ability to, show more emotion or assertiveness in his life, and I think Melendez felt he would have benefited from that.
Jimmy: Yeah, well, I agree with all of that. the other thing I just wanted to say is last week, I believe one episode recently we replayed the William Pepper thing about Lucy, about how she does. And this is a perfect example of this where she still gets to do the Charlie Brown put down. But it's at the end of her legitimately trying to help. Misguided though it may be, she wasn't trying to make a fool of him in any way. She was trying to help. So I just think that's kind of worth pointing out.
Harold: It's funny for me, being a fairly mild mannered guy, when I see Charlie Brown's anger in the second to last panel, I'm pretty impressed. He's got his fists clenched, his teeth clenched. He's got these vibrating lines all around him and an angry face.
Michael: Even the balloon is kind of warped.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah.
Harold: So I thought, well, that's not a bad start in front of your psychiatrist, right?
Jimmy: Well, that's true. I have to share this. I know I've told this story before, but I have to once. I am doing much better, I hope, at least from my own standards, of trying to not be a lunatic. But, back in the day, I would get really high strung all the time. At one time, I was screaming about something with Harold. Oh. Because-- this is a great story. We should actually tell this whole story on Patreon. People should pay to hear this story. But the end of it was that we were having trouble getting books from India to America. And I'm ranting and raving. And then Harold, I finally made him furious. And he said to me, well, what would you like me to do about it, Jimmy? And I was terrified. That was the angriest I've ever seen.
Harold: yeah, I remember that moment.
Jimmy: Upshot is, we got the books. It was a huge success. We're all good. And I got medication.
May 20. Woodstock is sitting in a doughnut. Then he flies over to Snoopy's, house, and Snoopy shows him that Snoopy, in fact, is holding a donut. He says, “look.” And then, he continues. Snoopy does anyway, saying, “a jelly donut. There's nothing in the world better than a big, fat jelly donut,” says Snoopy with a smile in his face and eyes are old skyward. “There's only one problem,” he says as he examines the jelly donut. “You have to be careful when you eat one. Sometimes when you bite into a jelly donut, the jelly squirts out the side.” And in the last panel, we see Snoopy has bit a deflated jelly donut. And the glob of, jelly is atop Woodstock's head.
Harold: That's a lot of jelly out of that donut.
Jimmy: Yeah. That's too bad, because sometimes you get jipped on the jelly. He got a really nice helping.
Harold: Yeah. He must have gotten donuts from this particular place before. He knows.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: I nominated this strip because I just was delighting in the art of Snoopy. This is a new place for Schulz with cartooning Snoopy. We've mentioned before that he was moving more toward what, to me, looked like a little more like classic animated style expressions. And he does some fun things with the eyes in the panels here that look much more cartoony than usual. And it's an interesting juxtaposition with the roughness of the art due to the tremor that I think is making him work faster than he's ever worked before, basically, to get past the tremor. In other words, if you move that pen faster, the faster you move, the less the tremor is going to possibly show itself. But at the same time, you have to really be a master of knowing where that line is going. And then Schulz adds on top of these kind of rougher looking outlines of the characters, these highly cartoony eyes, and I just think it's a pretty cool looking combination, and it makes Snoopy really appealing. It's yet another version of Snoopy that's just a little bit different. So if you're wondering what we're talking about, go back and look at May 20, 1979.
Jimmy: Yeah. So, Michael, what do you think about this version of Snoopy? His head's way bigger than it used to. Is this the version you refer to as, like, the plush animal?
Michael: No, no, not at all. Because the plush animal eyes are very expressionless.
Jimmy: Right, right, right.
Harold: Yeah.
Michael: I mean, it definitely looks more like an animation thing.
Jimmy: Well, I wonder if that goes back to what we were talking about, with him drawing Snoopy, fighting his way out of the music staves in the other strip. If all this is of a piece of him being inspired by the animation.
Harold: How could you not be? I mean, there really was some beautiful stuff. There's some that. Obviously, there's tons of animators working on this, and some were better than others. But I would think so.
Jimmy: I can right now think of several iconic Snoopy movements from those know his dances or the way he's, like, firing the guns on the plane, the sopwith camels.
Harold: the chairs in the Thanksgiving special.
Jimmy: Yeah. Playing basketball, all that stuff. I would not have the confidence to draw that first panel and go, yes.
Harold: Woodstock, sleeping inside the hole of a doughnut, looking at the donut vertically. Yeah. It's all in the coloring, right?
Jimmy: A lot of this works. That's the other thing. This looks terrible in black and white with the blob of jelly, which I guess is jelly. Could it be snowfall or whatever?
Harold: Yeah, I'm assuming it's a lovely, kind of purplish red.
Jimmy: Oh, here's a good one.
June 11. Charlie Brown and Linus are walking up to-- it looks like a little five and ten style store. Charlie Brown says, “I don't go into that store anymore.” He continues in the next panel. “I used to buy all my comic books there.” Panel three. He says, “every time I'd buy a comic book, the man would say, going to do some heavy reading tonight, eh?” Then Charlie Brown and Linus walk away with Charlie Brown saying, “I don't go into that store anymore.”
Michael: Now my experiencing deja vu. Or did one of our guests pick this?
Jimmy: Maybe. But also, you're sort of recalling that going to do some heavy reading tonight is also used by the world famous grocery clerk. That might be it.
Harold: It's interesting that he does it twice. So I can't remember if I read somewhere that Schulz said this did happen to him, but the fact that he has Snoopy do it, and then he has this completely different take on it years later with Charlie Brown. I'm guessing this actually did happen to Schulz when he was, in St. Paul, Minnesota, as a kid. Yeah, that's the kind of thing you remember if you're sensitive and you're normally invisible to people as far as you're concerned, and there's a clerk who's given you a little rough time and you don't know what to make of it.
Jimmy: There was a kid, in my town who, he would go to the Jiffy Mart, which was like, the one store in town so often to buy slush puppies. They called him at the Jiffy Mart, the slush puppy kid. And I was so like that. He had a nickname was like, really? Yeah. So I was like, what do I like? So I would go and I would buy a Three Musketeers. I didn't really even like them that much. I ate myself sick on three musketeers. Not noticing that I also bought a comic book every time. Finally, at the end of the summer, the lady goes, boy, you really like comic books, don't you? I'm like, oh, comic books. That was it.
Harold: I didn't have to buy something I didn't like and have to eat it.
Jimmy: Like, waving the Three Musketeers around. Boy, that's number three this week? Nothing.
Harold: It's not all about food stuff. You can go other places with this. I also noticed this year there were so many things that I wanted to nominate this year, which I think is a good sign.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: I didn't pick an obscurity. I was unwilling to give an obscurity as one of my picks because I had others I wanted to do, because often the obscurities aren't the funniest because, well, they're obscure.
Jimmy: Obscure.
Harold: But I did want to just do a shout out on behalf of the obscurities that there are some interesting references. I'm always fascinated when Schulz makes a reference that really is in the zeitgeist. And at this point, I would be eleven. No. How old would I be? 13 years old? And he is making some references throughout the year. I think he mentions Patty Berg as a golfer, which he does give away as a golfer in the strip, which I think is helpful.
Jimmy: Yes.
Harold: And I think we always have the ones with Peppermint Patty, where she's being asked these crazy questions, like, where is Svalbard? I think was one, And the king's daughter of Denmark in 1380, that sort of thing. But the one that I remember the most that was, like, from the Zeitgeist was there was a Karl Malden joke. It was a library card thing with Peppermint Patty and Marcie. And she'd filled out the application for the library card, and she said she'd never leave home without it. And then Marcie says, Karl Malden would be glad to hear it, sir. And it's third panel. He doesn't rely on it for the final thing. And then Pepper and Patty says, what? And Marcie says, nothing, sir. And that's a reference for those of you who are not living in this era and don't go watch commercials from the 70s. In these 17 hours blocks on YouTube, Karl Malden was doing travelers checks ads for American Express. It was the first of those ones where it's like the person's name used to get typed out, the famous person. I think he was the first one. And that made a huge impact on people for some strange reason. Certainly did for me. And to this day, they still do those things with American Express where you have a famous person or a person, maybe you don't know what they look like. Karl Malden's case, people knew what he looked like.
June 24, Eudora. Boy, we're just going full in on the symbolic panels this year. Eudora is standing there, and a star falls out of the sky, a little gold star like you would find on a school paper, and a bonk hits her on the head. Then, we cut to Eudora and Sally having a sleepover in Sally's backyard, or, no, at camp, I guess. Sorry. So, Eudora says “I should have gone to a hotel camp.” She lays down and says, “I hate sleeping outside. What if something falls out of the sky and hits me on the head?” Sally says, “nothing is going to fall out of the sky.” Eudora says in the next panel, “a star might, or maybe the moon.” And we see a big, full moon in the sky. Eudora is still worried. “What if the moon falls out of the sky and hits me right on the head?” Sally is non plussed by all of this. She has her eyes closed as, she says, “Eudora, go to sleep. Nothing is going to fall out of the sky.” Then in the next panel, it, of course, is pouring rain.
Jimmy: I love that one. That's really funny. That also is another arrow in my quiver of Schulz being a character in the strip, because I think that's, like, the kind of tempting fate, Schulz, couldn't resist, to put the rain on the two kids.
Harold: It's interesting. I nominated this one, but I did it by accident. I was actually trying to refer to one from June 29 instead of June 24. And I can't read my own handwriting, but I do like. I do think that's a funny joke. Yeah.
Jimmy: I also just really like the first panel. It's just a simple drawing of Eudora, but that's just great. Classic 70s looking cartooning to me.
Harold: Yeah. I really like Eudora's design. She's got the long, straight hair and the, knit cap on top. Yeah, it's a nice look, and it does feel seventies and feels nineties.
Jimmy: seventies and nineties.
Harold: Yeah, it's weird. But, do you mind reading the one that I actually meant to.
Jimmy: I got to go to go comics.com and type in the date and away we'll go.
Harold: Because I thought this was an important one to bring up because Snoopy's fantasy life opens up into other characters in kind of a new way. I thought in the strip, as far as the World War I flying Ace was concerned, I thought we deserved a mention. And while you're looking up, I also should mention that that heavy reading tonight, one was, nominated by all three of us. A rarity. I think we're comic book people.
June 29, the World War I flying ace is sitting in a cafe, with a beautiful French lass. We even see a little bottle of wine with a candle in it. And the Flying ace says, “here's the World War I flying ace taking a beautiful French lass out to dinner.” The French lass is, of course, Marcie. I don't know if I mentioned. Then Marcie says, “portage, au cefeuil, canard al’orange. Yeah. And then there's a lot of other French stuff she orders, like escargot and whatnot. And then Snoopy in the last one says, “Un root beer si’l vous plait.”
Jimmy: I took German. But yeah. So this is the first time, we're seeing the world. What is going on here Harold.
Harold: Well, I just thought it was remarkable, and it shouldn't have been a huge Surprise, but I hadn't seen this strip before that Snoopy's always alone, right, when he's in one of these French cafes. And all of a sudden, somehow, Marcie has entered that world and is interacting in it as if she understands exactly what's going on. Now, we've seen it with other strips, but I wasn't expecting that there would be someone this invested in his World War I flying ace fantasy life where she's entering into it, ordering her own food at the cafe.
Jimmy: Artichokes, foie gras, beignets. That's what she wants.
Harold: Artichoke hearts, I guess, yeah. What do you think of this? I mean, does this jarring to you, or did you like, Oh, it's just another.
Jimmy: Well, it doesn't bother me at all, but I think Michael will have a different take. Yeah.
Michael: There's a couple of things going on this time of year in Peanuts that I'm not happy about.
Jimmy: All right. So this is a great place to discuss it because you really like the first half of the year. Yeah. So it's like, ah, all right.
Michael: Yeah.
Jimmy: So now, though, we're leaning into the stuff that is outside, the things that.
Michael: Well, read the next one first, then we can go into this more.
July 13. Charlie Brown--. This is a long sequence. It's a very famous sequence. And Charlie Brown, has checked himself into the hospital. He says, “so this is what…: “He's actually lying in the emergency room. He's under a blanket, on a gurney, and he says, “so this is what it's like to be in the emergency room. I wonder if I'm dying. I wonder if they'd tell me if I were dying. I wonder if they'd tell me if I'm not dying. Maybe I'm already dead.” In the last panel he says, I wonder if they'd tell me.”
Michael: This is disturbing and wrong in so many ways.
Jimmy: Okay, I'll talk you through it.
Michael: Okay. Well, for me, the decision he made never to have adults, or at least after 1953 or whenever, never to show-- that's good. You draw some boundaries. But certain situations, it's so improbable that you kind of go like, where's the nurses? Where's his parents?
Michael: If he's seriously in the emergency room and he says, oh, his parents were playing golf. Especially since this goes on for it seems like he's in the hospital for a couple of weeks, I think Schulz should have found some other solution to this or just not use this strip. Not use this sequence.
Jimmy: Yeah, I hear what you're saying. Totally. But it would be a loss for him to cut this. This is beloved by many, many people.
Michael: Really?
Jimmy: Oh God, yes
Michael: It’s behated by me
Jimmy: Because. How is it? I mean, the nurses are just off panel.
Michael: Yeah, but the parents aren't there. It's up to the kids to deal with this.
Harold: Well, on July 9, the only excuse Schulz mentions, but he does address it, is when Charlie Brown's talking to the nurse at the emergency entrance check in that his mom and dad are at a barber's picnic at the time that he checks himself in.
Michael: Yeah, but this goes on for a week.
Harold: Well, yeah, but now, obviously I would guess that the parents visited them and the parents are there for dinner with the kids, but we never see that. So I didn't have any problem with that because I thought, well, I'm just seeing the moments when they are kids.
Jimmy: To me it's a fellowship of the rings situation, Michael. This is the way I'm going to look at it. In the movie, they don't show like the Tom Bombadil stuff, but they don't contradict it. Think maybe, this is a suggestion that you will dismiss. And as is your right as an American and an expatriate, maybe that's what it is. He's just leaving all that out because, it's extraneous to what he's focusing on, which might not make it any better for you. I don't know. Yeah.
Michael: Anyway, that bothered know. It's a kid's world, but here, being in the hospital, it's no longer the kids world, it's the adult's world.
Jimmy: Now, is it different than when he goes and sees Joe Shlabotnik?
Michael: Well, the other example recently was he disappears and lives in a box for a while. It's just you know where's the orange alerts and all that.
Harold: Yeah, that one's a little harder for me to swallow. Just because we have to agree that the parents don't care or if there was a scramble to find Charlie Brown, that's left out.
Jimmy: Yeah, this is 1979. This is the time when we had to have commercials reminding parents, hey, you have kids and it's 10:00 do you have any Idea where they are?
Harold: Free range was a common thing.
Jimmy: no, that doesn't bother me at all because I think it would bother me more if suddenly Charlie Brown's parents showed up and they were a massive part of the story.
Michael: No, no, he couldn't do. I just. It's the whole sequence, but it's beloved, so who am I to argue?
Jimmy: A lot of things that are beloved? aren't that great.
Michael: I didn't know it was beloved. I apologize to all you people.
Jimmy: It's on the National Registry of Beloved things.
Michael: All you people who beloved this sequence, I apologize.
Harold: What's your take on, the actual strip itself in terms of what Charlie Brown's thinking?
Michael: That's creepy.
Harold: Creepy, yeah.
Michael: I mean, if he's that sick, then we never really know what it is, right?
Harold: Yeah, we're not. I went to see if this was, like, coincided with Schulz being in the hospital. Like it was when, his leg was in a cast. And I couldn't find anything that suggested that.
Jimmy: Yeah. You know, it's so funny, because one of the things I keep saying is how, I have the timing wrong. Even though I've read all this through. All this stuff happens much earlier than I thought. I was 100% convinced this happened while Schulz was in the hospital.
Harold: I thought. I was thinking, yeah, that must be what it was. And that's not, Was it Craig or Monty? Who was the motocross guy?
Jimmy: Craig.
Harold: Now, I was just wondering if maybe he was living through somebody else who was going through it. That's certainly a possibility because it feels like he's really going into a deep place that he normally doesn't go. And sometimes that is triggered by an actual experience and he's processing it. So I wouldn't be surprised if he had a loved one that did go into the hospital. We just don't necessarily know.
Michael: We've had hospital stuff. We've had broken legs and all kinds of injuries. But when you, belong there, thinking you're going to die is not the kind of thing that. I mean, I have no problem with it, but it's not, the kind of thing that fits into this strip.
Harold: That's, funny because I didn't nominate this strip, and I know you nominated it for the reasons we just were talking about here. But this seems to be really close to know where he says, I'll lie awake at night and I'll be thinking really deep, dark night of the soul type of stuff. And so when I see Charlie Brown doing it, I'm kind of appreciative that he's gone to a deeper place with Charlie Brown. And it seems very true to Charlie Brown with me. i don't know if it does.
Jimmy: Well, that's what I feel to me, I feel other than the hospital staff issues, all that stuff, which doesn't bother me, but it feels like this is something that would have been in the 50s strip. The sentiment, the lying awake at night, wondering about when you're going to die. But he didn't do it then.
Michael: I wonder if he would have. I don't think he would have.
Harold: Would have what?
Michael: I think this would have been too intense earlier in the strip. Yeah, he's definitely experimenting at this point.
Harold: He is. and I'm grateful for that. I think what makes this sequence so remembered and beloved is we see a lot of revelations about the characters that take them further in one way or another, emotionally or revealing of themselves and their thoughts about Charlie.
Michael: I really like the Sally-- it's the next strip we're going to do.
Harold: okay, we can go to that.
jimmy: should we do it now?
Michael: oh, good. I can move into his room and get rid of all his stuff.
July 18. Sally is writing a letter. She writes, Dear big brother, I hope you are feeling better. Things are fine here at home. I have moved into your room. Don't worry about your personal things. The flea market was a success.
Michael: that's a Sally we know and love.
Jimmy: yeah, but I also think we also know Sally does love Charlie Brown. If this were something actually serious, Sally wouldn't do this. This might be something that maybe makes it more palatable to you. so we now know that Charlie Brown's parents are on it because Sally knows and Sally's at home and she's healthy and well. Right. And Sally sends a goofy, jokey letter. She didn't really sell his stuff at a flea market, I'm sure. Right. So I think this is something like, well, maybe she did, but this is Charlie Brown having like a panic attack or he had something that happened and it's going to be taken care of, but it doesn't make Charlie Brown less anxious. Like the amount of time you have as a parent listening to something that one of your children is wildly, deeply worried about, that, you know, has no consequences whatsoever. But you can't just dismiss. So I think the stuff that we see with Charlie Brown and all that and all that, that's just them dealing with it. It doesn't mean that the situation is necessarily out of control from the parent standpoint. Just because he's in the hospital doesn't necessarily. And it might not be a week, it might be two days, three days, whatever. But it doesn't mean that necessarily he's dying.
Michael: No, I don't think he's dying. But no, the Sally gags work because it kind of goes back to everyone is like selfish in this world. And that's funny. Him lying there by himself wondering about death is not funny.
Jimmy: Hm. That's weird, though. And it's not weird that I disagree with you. I find it weird that you think that I would think the opposite. But that's how it always is with you. You never stop surprising me.
Michael: That's my job.
Jimmy: That's a good thing. And we can continue because the story continues as well.
July 19. Schroeder and Lucy, in their classic at the piano positions Schroeder pounding away at the keyboard. Lucy looks worried. She says, “I'm so worried about poor Charlie Brown lying there in the hospital. He's got to get well. He's got to. Oh, boohoo. Sob,” she says. And she actually buries her face on top of Schroeder's piano. Schroeder says, “it's interesting that you should cry over him when you're the one who always treated him so mean. And stop wiping your tears with my piano.” Which he does, in reference to the fact that Lucy is doing just that.
Harold: holding it up on her face.
Michael: I can't visualize that working.
Jimmy: I like Schroeder's cool appraisal of the situation. Schroeder is, I think, a deep thinker who doesn't emote much.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: But he's not missing things.
Harold: Right. And again, this sequence does take us to places with the characters we haven't seen before. We have a character who might be in peril. And to see this side of Lucy. To me, it's like when you are working on a strip that you have to do day in and day out, and you know, you've got to keep these characters going for possibly many, many years. Often with a comic strip, there are tensions where you don't get a payoff from the tension and that's how the humor is sustained. But every once in a while in a strip, there is this choice by the creator to have a payoff. You're cashing the chips in. And this sequence to me is he's cashing in a ton of chips and there's a lot of emotional release in these strips because of it.
This thing with Lucy is moving to me because this is a part of Lucy that only Schulz can reveal to us at this. We can't guess what she would do. And he makes this choice. And I appreciate that. We've seen it. Certainly with Linus, she's had those moments. Know she just bursts into flames when something he says because she really does care about her brother. And I think that's what makes these strips so memorable to so many people because it shows the side of the characters that we so rarely see. But Schulz is telling us it's there, it's there and it'll color everything. You ever read again about these, characters going forward, I think maintain this.
Michael: I mean, Lucy bounces back to who she was.
Harold: Yeah, but it happened. And Charlie Brown was in the hospital. It was a major moment and she could have been callous, but she's not. And I totally accept that in Lucy's character. I don't think he's going out of character with her. I think she's just been pushed to a limit she's never been pushed to before in terms of relationship with somebody. And she obviously has a relationship with Charlie Brown that is pretty consistent. She'll show up for those baseball games. We don't know why, but she'll show up. And then she enjoys giving Charlie Brown a hard time when she's out on the field, but she's there and she's the psychiatrist and she's the thinking wall with him sometimes. And it's like she's not running away from Charlie Brown. That's the thing about Lucy, is she will engage with him and she seems to enjoy it. And that is a part of her that would lead me to think that, yeah, this is absolutely consistent with her character. But I think about other comic strips. Know the tension of Lil Abner was that Daisy May is chasing Lil Abner all the time. And the Sadie Hawkins thing where they have the dance or whatever, they have the thing. If you can catch the guy, then he has to marry you and that sort of thing. And then all of a sudden, years into this strip, Al Capp, the creator of Lil Abner, decides okay, she's been chasing him all this time. She's going to catch him. They are going to get married. And they've had so many false alarms about getting married, but it actually happens and changes the strip, you know, and that's not exactly what Schulz is doing here, but it is that cash in the chips thing where he's built attention. He's sustained tension, and he's not afraid to cash those chips in. And I do appreciate that. I really do. as a creator, that was a risk, and I think it deepens the strip.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah, I absolutely do. Yeah. It's so funny because when I was reading this, I thought, well, this is obviously going to be Michael's favorite of the latter half will be this story. There's no question in my mind.
Well, how about we take a break right here, because this is going to be a long ep, which I'm okay with, but we'll take a break now. This will be a cliffhanger. Come on back on the other side and you'll find out what's happened with Charlie Brown in the old hospital. Be right back.
BREAK
Harold: On December 30 at noon Eastern Time on Zoom, we are holding a live Q and A, the first time we've done this, and we're going to be sharing some behind the scenes stories of, unpacking Peanuts and our own lives, things that we've, held back from--
Jimmy: Tragedies, comedies, the whole thing.
Harold: Yeah. So if you support us on Patreon, you can be a part of this, and we're going to continue to do these into 2024 and hopefully beyond. So, yes, if you could support us on Patreon, we hugely appreciate it. And we have some really fun stuff coming up. That's December 30 at noon Eastern time. You can find out more on unpackingpeanuts.com.
Jimmy: Be there or be square.
Jimmy: And we're back. So, Liz, do we have, anything in the mailbox?
Liz: We do. Let me see what we got here. So, the Reverend Dr. Sarah Hinclicky Wilson, who is a generous supporter of the podcast, writes P’shaw, how could the fellas not know what a Fleuron is? I built a book title around fleurons.
Harold: Wow.
Liz: She gives us the link to her book, which is titled Protons and Fleurons, 22 Elements of Fiction.
Jimmy: That's amazing. I am so impressed. That's wild.
Harold: That is why we have listeners who fill in our massive gaps of knowledge. The fact that, we didn't know about these medical tags.
Jimmy: What is wrong with you people?
Harold: Pretty massive gaps here. Well, thank you. That's pretty cool.
Jimmy: We know more about pen nibs. Yeah, and travelers checks. We can help you with that.
Harold: The important things in life.
Liz: So that's all the mail. But I do want to thank our, most recent Patreon subscribers, Stephanie Mack and Andrew Cadell.
Harold: Oh, yes. Thank you so much.
Jimmy: Oh, I also want to just give another quick shout out to our super listener, Shaylee Robson, who, along with Jeff, also found the Woodstock toothpaste roller, which it does make me happy that I'm not crazy. I didn't imagine it, but it is not anywhere nearly as cute as it was in my memory.
Michael: When I saw that picture, I did not know what it was. I had never heard of a toothpaste roller in my life.
Jimmy: Well, it's not a super useful invention. It does get every last ounce of toothpaste out of the tooth.
Harold: It's no fleuron.
Jimmy: It's no fleuron.
Michael: You want kids to exercise their little fingers and get some strength in their hands.
Harold: Think of the savings over the years.
Jimmy: That's right. All right, well, okay, so if you guys want to reach out to us, you can do it any number of ways. But if you want to, just email us, go to our website, unpackingpeanuts.com. Or you could just email us unpackingpeanuts@gmail.com. You can follow us on Instagram and Threads and Bluesky at unpack Peanuts. Is that right?
Liz: Blue sky is unpacking Peanuts, and we don't do that X thing anymore.
Jimmy: Yeah, I thought I noticed that. We're not doing that anymore because he's a piece of something else. All right, so if you want to keep the conversation going, you can find us, at those places. And, as far as it goes now, we'll keep the conversation going right here.
July 22. Charlie Brown is still in the hospital, and he's receiving an IV, of what looks like, Valentine's hearts. So he's getting some love. And then we cut to outside the hospital, where we see Peppermint Patty and Marcie sitting on the bench, at, what looks like twilight. It's a very beautiful and very detailed drawing. Peppermint Patty says, “if you sit on a park bench across from the hospital and stare up at his window, the patient gets better.” Peppermint Patty continues, “poor Chuck. I hate to think of him lying up there in that hospital room.” Marcie says, “you kind of like Chuck, don't you, sir?” Peppermint Patty says, “well, I you know, I feel sort of, you know, he. I. He.” Then Marcie turns to Peppermint Patty and with a smile on her face, says, “I love Chuck. I think he's real neat.” Peppermint Patty looks at Marcie and says, “real neat. You think he's real neat?” And with an even bigger grin, Marcie says, “I sure do. Someday I hope he'll ask me to the senior prom. In fact, if he asked me, I'd even marry Chuck.” This prompts Peppermint Patty to hop off the bench and say to Marcie, “come with me, Marcie.” Then we see she is now in the hospital, and she says, “is this the emergency entrance Ma'am? We're friends of Charles Brown.” Then Peppermint Patty indicates to Marcie, “I have another patient for you. I think she's sicker than he is.”
Michael: Has there been any indication that Marcie felt this way before?
Jimmy: You should listen to this podcast Unpacking Peanuts. They've talked about it.
Michael: I've never listened to it, at length, no. this surprised me. I didn't realize this.
Liz: I am not surprised.
Jimmy: Wait, are you not surprised at what's happening in the strip, or are you not surprised that Michael doesn't remember that we talked about it?
Liz: I'm not surprised that Michael doesn't notice that young girls...
Michael: I didn’t think Marcie was into this stuff.
Jimmy: I don't think Marcie, expresses them in the way that others do. But, no, she definitely, I think both of them, obviously, despite whatever their close relationship is, also feel this love for Charlie Brown, too.
Michael: Go figure.
Harold: What do you think of the artwork, Jimmy?
Jimmy: The artwork blows my mind, because this is a radical change to me. he is noodling in all that black with the 914. There's so much detail. There's the little flowers on the bushes, the hatchy scratchy kind of texture of the shadows on the concrete parts of the bench, more cinematic lighting in general, different angles, the whole thing. It looks like he felt like, you know what I want to do, like a, Milt Caniff Peanuts strip or something.
Harold: Yeah, yeah. This shows Schulz's hand that this is a very important strip to him. You get the impression he spent more on this Sunday strip than he has in a long, long time. As far as, drawing.
Jimmy: By an exponential amount
Harold: That, to me, suggests he's obviously revealing something, about Marcie, just like he did about Lucy. That has been possibly in the background. It's there. We've seen a little bit of, you know, she says she loves him. She says that she thinks he's real neat. She says she would love to go to the senior prom with him and then she would marry him. Now, for the gag, as far as Marcie will take it, it helps build up the gag. But Schulz is traditionally very true to his characters. He will not sacrifice a character for, you know, something that's out of character for them. He genuinely gives them an integrity that he rarely hits these weird notes where we think that was just for the joke. That's not really what this character would do. And so I think that gives it super weight when Marcie says these things, and I think talk about tensions that get released in this sequence. This, to me, is the pinnacle of that. this is the biggest reveal, I think, of any character ever in the strip and ever will be, as far as I know.
Jimmy: Right.
Harold: And he knows it. You can tell it from the artwork he's doing here that this is a big, big deal. I appreciate it. Marcie is a very stoic character who can also get incredibly angry and violent even. But she has this in her life, and you can tell she's got this in her life that we're not usually very privy to because she's usually second fiddle to Peppermint Patty being wearing her heart on her sleeve. Right. So to have this revelation to me is a big, big deal and really bonds me with Marcie forever.
Jimmy: I agree with all of, know I'd marry him and all that is wonderful. but I love Chuck. I think he's real neat. Why, if everybody in the world could talk to each other like that about how they really feel and what they really think of people, we should all be neurodivergent, if that's what Marcie is. You know what I mean?
Harold: Liz, can I ask you from your perspective, as you're seeing this conversation, does this ring true to you, or does this feel a little awkward? I'd be interested to know your perspective on it.
Liz: I think it absolutely rings true to me as a person who remembers being a young girl of their age. We fell in love often.
Harold: huh
Jimmy: Absolutely.
July 26. Linus, has hung up the phone, and he approaches his sister Lucy, who's sitting watching TV. Linus says, “I just talked with Charlie Brown's mom. He's not any better.” Lucy yells, “he's not any better. That's crazy. He's got to get better. What's wrong with a world where someone like Charlie Brown can get sick and not get any better?” In the last panel, teeth are clenched and her fist is in the air. And she says, “I need somebody to hit.”
Jimmy: Let me just go ahead with the next one so we can move along with the story. Then on
July 28, Linus says to Lucy, who's now just sitting in her beanbag watching TV, Linus says, “Let me get this straight. If Charlie Brown gets well, you promise never to pull the football away again?” And Lucy raises her hand in a vow and says, “that is my solemn promise.” And Linus says “he's sure to get well now he has something to live for.”
Michael: These two strips are very interesting because it strikes me these two last panels are very different than anything he's ever done before.
Jimmy: I never thought of notice that. But now that you say that, that is interesting.
Michael: Usually the last panel is a reaction to what somebody said I need somebody to hit. And then the last panel, like, maybe like Linus looking, like, scared, right?
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: And they're not jokes. There's somebody exclaiming something.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: It feels almost like the last panel in, like, an apartment 3G or a story strip.
Harold: Yeah. It's like Schulz is saying, the power of the characters revelations and what's happening is the most important thing here.
Jimmy: Right.
Harold: And I think it's true. I mean, for me, it is. The thing that's interesting that comes out of Lucy is what's wrong with a world where someone like Charlie Brown can get sick and then not get any know. We've seen Lucy's take on the world before, and this is a slightly more mature Lucy, and I think she's going to continue to be. This is almost like we've seen this transition where she's gotten a little more mellow. In some cases, she'll still haul off and hit Linus, do some pretty intense things. But there seems to be a maturity to Lucy in some ways that she's mellowed out. Some of her edges have been sanded a little bit, and we see both in this strip.
Jimmy: Yeah. I love Marcie in this sequence. I love her relationship with reality, in the fact that she is just matter of fact. And, you always know where you stand with Marcie, I think, which is.
Harold: Very admirable, considering those blank glasses and that blank stare. That's pretty surprising.
Jimmy: She uses her words, though.
Harold: Yes, she does.
Jimmy: Sometimes she'll flatten you.
Harold: Yeah. Or sometimes you just get the stoic sphinx-like Marcie, and then three weeks in, all of a sudden you get, oh, okay, that's where she is. She'll just tell it like it is.
Jimmy: Actually, that's a part of her I do sort of relate to in the fact that sometimes, a lot of times actually on this podcast, but even just in regular life, one of my friends, usually one of you guys will say something interesting that I think about for like eleven years or so. Hey, do you remember you said this and neither of you have any Idea what I was talking about. Wow. I've thought about it for eleven years.
Harold: That's a sign of a true friend. Mull over your words and remember them long after you've forgotten them.
Jimmy: Well, don't you ever feel that way if someone.
Harold: There's stuff that will stick with you.
July 31 okay, so the big payoff. Charlie Brown, Lucy and Linus are outside. Lucy is setting up to hold the football. Charlie Brown says, “you hold the ball and I'll come running up and kick it.” Panel two. Charlie Brown with supreme confidence says, “remember you promised that if I got well, you'd never pull the football away again.” Oh, spoilers. Charlie Brown got well between last strip and this strip. “Can't I change my mind?” says Lucy. Charlie Brown walks away saying, “no, you can't break a promise to a sick friend.” Linus, delighted, says, “Hha. Now what are you going to do?” Lucy, “quiet. I'm thinking.”
Michael: This works. But again, it's a really odd final panel. It doesn't have a beat to it.
Jimmy: This is the best, though, of what you're pointing to. The fact that these endings are much more like story strip endings. I think of the three we've looked at, this is the best one because I think Linus's delighted reaction is funny. And I think Lucy, who is clearly backed in the corner, she has clearly lost, but she's, not given up yet. Quiet, I'm thinking. And that leads us to
August 2. Lucy is in fact, holding the football. In panel two, we see Charlie Brown comes running up and he attempts to kick it. But what we see is Lucy screaming and flying. Charlie Brown seems to have missed the football entirely because it is behind him. And in panel three, we see Charlie Brown sitting on his butt, looking confused, the football on the ground, and Lucy running around screaming and holding her hand, screaming, “my finger. My hand. My arm. You missed the ball, you blockhead. You kicked my finger. You kicked my.” And Charlie Brown just looks confused at the ball lying inches away from him.
Michael: Well, I'll be interested to see next year if this is brought up again when it's football time.
Jimmy: Yeah, we'll have to make a note of it. I think this is a great. This isn't the ending. It ends with, we actually see Lucy in a giant cast from Charlie Brown's missed kick. I think this is a great ending to this sequence.
Harold: We always mention that sometimes sticking the landing with a story sequence is not a Schulz strength. This actually takes things full circle and I think is really funny. The last line is her at the thinking wall with Charlie Brown holding her gigantic cast from her elbow up to the top of her hand, in the famous lean on that pose. And she says, next time you go to the hospital, stay there. I mean, this is a totally satisfying arc to me. And then with all that's happened in between, this is one of my favorite sequences of all time. I don't think it's the funniest sequence, but I think it's the one that Schulz invested the most in, in terms of his characters. He was willing to reveal more things in the course of three weeks about his characters than he ever has in the strip. I feel you.
Jimmy: If you wanted the natural ending to the whole strip, it could have ended there. You get to see everybody's relationship to Charlie Brown, right? Which is not antagonistic. It's actually loving from basically everyone. Well, not everyone, but the major players. Right. He is given the thing he really wants, but his innate Charlie Brownness screws it up anyway.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: And, it goes back to status quo. That's great. I think I'd be thrilled if I wrote the worst Peanuts comic strip, but I would be super thrilled if I had written that.
Harold: Yeah. What he's invested in these characters over almost 30 years really comes to fruition here.
Jimmy: I'd be bummed that Michael didn't like it more if I wrote it. But other than that,
Michael: I wouldn't tell you. I’d lie.
Jimmy: Thank you. And thank you. That is all I want from a friend. Someone who will look at my work and lie through their teeth and say they love it.
Michael: Doing it for 30 years.
Jimmy: Thank you. And you don't think I haven't noticed it? I have, pal. And it is appreciated.
August 6. Perhaps the most iconic of iconic poses. And Peanuts Snoopy atop his dog house in maybe the most iconic of iconic, iconic drawings of iconic things. It's quite an icon. Snoopy barely lifts his head up in panel two. Then in panel three, he's sitting up and stretching with a big yawn. Then he lays right back down and thinks, “born to sleep.”
Michael: Now, is this a reference? When did, Born to Run come out?
Jimmy: 75. But it seems like it could be the kind of thing that is still, around in pop culture. That's what I was thinking, too. Now, what do you think about. We're seeing some real weirdness of poses. I think that, second Snoopy is very strange looking.
Harold: Much like a later Snoopy, right. With a big, really big head.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: Talking about poses that Schulz chooses the look that he wants. You definitely see it here. Right. The classic Snoopy on his back pose. His little ear is so narrow, hanging down the dog house. But then when he's up, his head is up even slightly. Here, he's in between, in that pose we don't normally see. And he's gone to the full on oval ear with, the black fill in and the white outline around it, which he doesn't do when he's lying down. It's kind of striking, right?
Jimmy: Yeah. Especially in this…
Harold: it makes you feel for Bill Melendez to think, how could he do this and morph that and not have people go, what?
Jimmy: Yeah.
September 22, Lucy and Linus are walking outside, and Lucy says, “I've become interested in learning about the Earth's surface.” And she points to the ground and says, “for instance, have you ever noticed this lava formation? Ancient lava flows such as this one here are really quite fascinating.” Then in panel four, we see what, she was referring to, a big, black, inky mass, which Linus points out. “I always thought this was our driveway.”
Michael: This is a real throwback.
Jimmy: Real throwback.
Michael: Meaning that this was a very common bit in Peanuts back in the mid 50s.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: Lucy-- Linus was still kind of babyish, and she was making up stuff about the world, and he was kind of believing it.
Harold: Michael, when you look at this, how does this feel in terms of how he puts over the gag visually to you versus those ones that we're recalling?
Michael: No, this is a classic punchline, pacing wise.
Harold: On the visual side, though, does it work just as well, because I know it looks different.
Michael: Well, I think that big black in the last panel, I mean, if you talk about spotting blacks, he's not doing it there, which makes it seem kind of. I don't think it was a great decision to do it solid black.
Harold: It's very arresting, for sure.
Jimmy: Yeah, I like the panel. Here's what I would have done. Here's what I would have done. Oh, how presumptuous we are. However, if we think about it this way, just if we tweak one thing, if this isn't Linus and it's Rerun, you could then spin that entire thing off into Linus witnessing Lucy doing to rerun what she did to yeah. and Linus could now be trying to prevent it, and it would solidify them as a unit. I think Michael pointed out a couple of episodes ago, like, Rerun is outside the family almost. He's on the bike and with his mom, or he's non existent. He's not hanging out that much with the kids, but that would have been an opportunity, I think.
Michael: Yeah, well, he pretty much disappeared from the strip. Yeah, you're right. You are the Peanuts of the 21st century. And Rerun would have been a better choice.
Jimmy: Oh man, this is embarrassing. Okay, so the Peanuts for the 21st century thing, Comics Buyers Guide wrote that in a review, right? So we put it on the cover of every book. And then Harold and I were at the Eisner Awards, and I'm sitting there holding my book. And this woman sits down next to me, and I'm like, oh, she looks very familiar. Is that the lady who played Lois Lane? no, it was Jeannie Schulz. And she says, hi, I'm Jeannie. Do you remember this? Hi, I'm Jeannie Schulz. oh, I'm Jimmy Gownley. What do you do? And I'm like, I happen to have a book right here. And I hand it to her-- oh Peanuts for the 21st century, and I'm like, I want to die. If there is a way to just shrink into nothingness, I would like that.
Harold: Well, I think.
Jimmy: Of course, super gracious.
Harold: You sure timed it out nicely. If he had gone into 2003, there could have been more room for offense. Yeah, well, that's time for you to take on the mantle without, actually taking anybody down.
Jimmy: I guess that's true. Thank goodness for small favors.
Harold: But this strip. There's one other thing. It's so inconsequential, but this is my vote for the most illegible signature in the history of the strip.
Jimmy: Oh, wow. That is.
Harold: Yeah. Check out panel blur if you want to see what we're talking about. September 22.
Jimmy: This is a great one coming up here.
September 27, Linus and Charlie Brown are out kicking the football around. Linus is the one kicking. Charlie Brown says to him, “Linus, do you think girls should play the same sports as boys?” “Well, I'm not sure,” says Linus, as he kicks the football. We don't see who he kicks it, too. And Charlie Brown and Linus in panel three are standing watching off panel right, as Linus says, “there's always the problem of injury.” And in panel four, we see Linus getting bowled over by Peppermint Patty. As he says, “I hate getting killed.”
Michael: That is good. He's really an advocate on the sports thing.
Jimmy: Yes.
Michael: Years ahead of the zeitgeist.
Jimmy: Well, you know, the second animated special is Charlie Brown's All Stars, where that's the central plot is that, the sponsor doesn't want girls or Snoopy on the team and Charlie Brown has to stick up for it. So, yeah, it's obviously important to him.
Harold: Yeah. And this sequence goes on quite a long time and a lot of it is just different riffs on the same Idea of women in sports. Title nine, is at the forefront at this point. And, that the spend as much money on women's sports as men's sports was something that NCAA had to deal with at this time. And Schulz is obviously very interested in it. We know Schulz knows a lot of female athletes and he's very much a fan of a lot of female athletes. And so I wouldn't be at all surprised if he hasn't had conversations with people like Billie Jean King about this sort of thing, because she was a friend. Yeah, but the fact that he's exploring this, I think from a comic, it's like, how many different ways can I approach this and address this? And yes, it's rare to see this many strips that are at least at the beginning, kind of. They're not directly related, they're just him noodling, I think, with different ways of doing it. You just see one after another after another after another, which are slightly different. Takes on this concept of women in sports and how it's time that they need to be supported as men's sports are.
Jimmy: Well, I have a hot take on women's sports. As a former high school basketball player, in the 1920s, I don't understand how women's basketball isn't the most popular sport in the world. Women's basketball, if you're a true basketball fan, is ten times more exciting and better than the NBA. I mean, there's absolutely no question the NBA is.
Michael: just ‘cause they’re shorter?
Jimmy: In part, yes, because it's Cirque du Soleil now. They don't even call traveling in the NBA anymore. It's because they want the highlight reel of someone dunking from 30ft away or whatever. But women's basketball is an actual sport that requires strategy and whatnot. And I think America's sleeping, so that's my call.
Harold: Well, you're not alone. There are obviously some huge fans of specifically, women's basketball and very supportive of it. But, yeah, in general, the focus is all on the guys and there's lots of great hot dogging stuff, but it's fascinating how sports rules change over time. It's a really big deal if you change a rule in football or whatever, but a really good sport is designed to be endlessly challenging. We've been watching the local curling at the Arm___, and you got a feed, constant feed of people. If you're down there playing on these courts, you can be watched on YouTube, right? And there's usually two or three people watching at any given time.
Michael: But is the guy with the broom an athlete?
Harold: Yeah, I think so.
Jimmy: Well, he.
Harold: Maybe not.
Jimmy: You just blew my mind. I'm going to have to think about this for eleven years. I'll get back to you. Oh my gosh. I remember going to the Kitchener stop on the Spirits of Independence tour. Michael, do you remember this? Which the Spirits of Independence tour was a self publishing convention organized by Cerebus creator Dave Sim. And we were in the pub in Kitchener after the show. And it was the curling championship that night because it was in Canada, in Kitchener, Ontario. Everyone's glued to the curling.
Michael: Couldn't believe it.
October 8. Sally's outside. She's yelling to someone. “You thought you could fool me, didn't you? Well, I'm not as dumb as you think.” She walks away. But then the fourth panel, she turns back saying, “nobody pulls the carpet over my eyes.”
Michael: This is a Schulzism, which she hasn't used in a long time. Is them getting these two of these sayings mixed up.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: Actually, I don't talk about my lyrics very much, but I did use one in a song I was kind of proud of. It's like “it's just water under the bridges I have burned.”
Jimmy: That's really good.
Harold: It's very evocative.
Jimmy: You know what, Michael? I think you're a genius. And I always appreciate the work that you share with me over these years.
Michael: Well, you're faking it very well. anyway, so he used to do this a lot and I always thought it-- Sally especially--I thought it was very funny.
Harold: Yeah, I've been listening to a lot of old time radio and malapropisms. Boy, there were so many characters that used him in comedy in the. I'm sure Schulz heard a lot of that sort of stuff growing up.
Jimmy: Yes, I'm sure. No, he was a big fan of the comedies on the radio back in the day.
Michael: This year he's doing more wordplay jokes.
Harold: Yes.
Jimmy: I guess it's just where the muse is striking in some ways. Or maybe in other ways, he's consciously trying to explore something different than he did six months ago. A month ago.
Michael: Well, you got to run out of inspiration at some point.
Harold: Yeah. You get the feeling here that a lot of the humor is coming from exercises. Right? He's doing comic exercises. He's noodling with drawings. He's messing with probably a first Idea panel or a character saying something. I see a lot of that in this year where I feel like we're seeing an exercise, particularly beginning of the year. I got that feeling from the strip that it seemed like the mechanics of the strip were a little more bare to me. I don't know if that makes sense.
October 10. Snoopy is doing one of his imitations. He's lying face down in the grass and he thinks, “Here's the fierce python slithering along the ground. Slowly he begins to slither up a huge jungle tree.” And we see just that with the tip of Snoopy's nose just approaching the root of the tree. Then in panel three, we see he has gotten basically half of his body up the bottom part of the trunk of the tree. But then in panel four, he just slides right back down to the ground saying, “that was my famous backward slither.”
Michael: this is another callback. This was another standard Snoopy bit. I think he's been pythons before. Yeah, but not for many years.
Jimmy: I like that first drawing a lot. It's so weird looking.
Harold: Yeah. This is a good example of that rougher looking art style, due to the tremor that he's working, and using lots of blacks right. In these trees.
Jimmy: Well, yeah, that's another thing. I was wondering if he had that Peppermint Patty Marcie Sunday with all that extra detail. And I think part of that might have also been an approach of what if I add a little bit more shadows hatching and stuff? Not an attempt to cover sins, but an attempt to cover sins. Right. sometimes sparse drawing is harder because it has to be perfect or it's illegible. If you make a mess of cross hatching, you could say anything in it eventually.
Harold: Yeah. Some of these drawings, actually, what they make me think is precursors of Calvin and Hobbes because, Bill Watterson had that masterful kind of rough, brushy kind of Schulz, you know, not necessarily entirely by design, but just by necessity, based on what he was physically being able to do. It seems like he's continually experimenting with how he makes the most of what he can do now. And, there's some really nice choices.
Jimmy: It seems like the lettering is huge at this point.
Harold: It does.
October 17. Peppermint Patty's at the desk at school taking one of the famous true or false tests. “True. Who knows? False. Only time will tell.” She continues to answer. “Perhaps. Could be. Maybe. I doubt it. Don't count on it. Maybe in the long run, it all depends, weather permitting.” Then she folds her hands on her desk and says, “some of us, ma'am, see everything in shades of gray.”
Michael: I think this is one of the best Peppermint Patty strips.
Jimmy: Yeah. What is it that makes you like it?
Michael: it realistic. She's thinking. And what she's thinking about isn't stupid. She's thinking about the fact that they're forcing you to choose from a dichotomy.
Jimmy: Right. Which is a false.
Michael: Very few things are a dichotomy.
Jimmy: Right? Yes. True. False test is clearly just the teachers really tired that week.
Harold: Right. And we've all been here. Right? You take the test and you're like, oh, my gosh. I've even taken, like, when we had to do those SAT things. Usually those things have been tested and retested and sampled, and then they say, okay, this one will go on the test. But I remember hitting some of those questions, going, there really are two answers to this thing.
Jimmy: Yes.
Harold: And it's like, oh, great. So now I think I'm smarter than the people that make the test for everyone to decide how smart they are. It's like, that's really great place to be.
Jimmy: Harold has an existential crisis during the SATs. He just hands it in. It just says Harold at, the top.
Michael: So, Jimmy, why did you name your first strip Shades of Gray.
Jimmy: Oh, do you really want the real answer?
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: I liked the Monkees song.
Michael: It was not this Peanuts strip.
Harold: Yeah, Shades of Gray was Jimmy's high, school comic book the first time he published. It’s pretty cool.
Jimmy: All the way through college.
Jimmy: Yeah. And the town they live in is Pleasant Valley, which is also a Monkees reference. I was heavily into the Monkees in 1987. There you go.
Liz: Just 20 years later.
Jimmy: Yeah. It was actually coming off their 86 the comeback tour. They were the second concert I ever saw. so, yeah, I really enjoyed that. So that's why.
Harold: Okay.
Jimmy: And it was black and white with gray, so, I mean, that made sense.
Michael: Yeah, of course.
November 11 in panel one.
Michael: That's the weirdest panel one.
Jimmy: Exactly. Word for word. What I was just going to say, and you really need to look at it to see is Frank Miller came in and inked Snoopy in some sort of war zone. It's really strange.
Harold: Spike dressed up as Snoopy. As drawn by Frank Miller.
Jimmy: Yes. Which, if that doesn't whet your curiosity, I don't know what, Will. Come on
Panel two, Snoopy notices it's November 11. Then in panel three, he peruses the calendar yet again, saying “today is Veterans Day.” And he hops off the dog house and says, “every Veterans Day, I go over to Bill Mauldin's house to quaff a few root beers. He tells me about the trouble he had.” Oh, now we see Snoopy has actually put his little military hat on, he says. “He tells me about the trouble he had with Patton, and I tell him about the funny things that happened between Pershing and me.” The next panel, Snoopy is stopped short by two little birds who are also dressed up for Veterans Day, but wearing army helmets. And Snoopy looks after them and goes, “hey, wait a minute. Who are you guys supposed to be?” And, the first bird, who I'm going to say is Woodstock, chirps out an answer, and Snoopy tells us what it is. “Willie and Joe?”
Jimmy: Now, we've mentioned them before.
Michael: Boy, these must have puzled a lot of people.
Harold: This could be an obscurity, right?
Jimmy: Yeah. Michael, do you want to tell us, since we've talked about it before, but tell us who?
Michael: Well, I think that first panel of his take on Bill Mauldin
Jimmy: Well, yeah, I guess that is what he's going for, but, wow. Yeah, it's weird. I love it.
Michael: It looks like he has a beard.
Jimmy: It does.
Michael: Willie and Joe basically were two GIs, fighting in Europe during World War II. And Mauldin was working for the army newspaper. And so he was set out on assignment to follow these troops and just make cartoons about their day to day life. And the fact is, these guys didn't shave. He had them shaving sometimes like they're in a mud puddle, using the water to shave. Willie and Joe. And those were the two guys he focused on. That was his great creation Up Front.
Harold: Yeah. He's so beloved by many, many GIs as well as cartoonists. I think there was a tremendous respect for Mauldin's, his candor and his art style. And he did it in a way that he could show the hell of war, but he did it in a way that didn't make the army upset. It wasn't like they were. He found this ground where I think, again, the integrity of what he did is very much like what Schulz does with his characters. And nobody could assail him for know, this was just what it was like for these guys to be going through this in.
Jimmy: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And like you're saying, Michael, I'm sure a lot of people, civilians, have probably had no Idea, but I bet those, he wasn't doing it for them, right? He was doing it for those vets who did know and were.
Michael: But he continued doing as an editorial cartoonist through the 50s.
Jimmy: I've never even seen any of that.
Michael: Well, I mean, it wasn't what he was known for, right. But he was fairly young when he was doing the World War II stuff.
Jimmy: He would have had to be,
Michael: And he's still around. I believe that Schulz and him were friends.
Harold: Yeah, I think still around. A mutual respect for there, for sure.
Jimmy: That's awesome.
December 23. I can relate to Snoopy here. Snoopy in panel one is sitting, in front of a little package, a Christmas present that says, mustn't touch. Then, in panel two, the strip actually starts. Charlie Brown gets up the package out of the mailbox for Snoopy, and he says, “a package just came for you, but it says, do not open until Christmas.” Snoopy grabs it and thinks to himself, “Dogs can't read. He he he.” And he pulls it apart and opens the box and sees it's a new cap. He puts it on his head. “How nice. A new stocking cap.” But then in the next panel, Snoopy's already deflated. Hanging off the doghouse, dejected. He thinks “he was right. I should have waited. now everyone else will be opening presents, but I'll just have to stand around and watch. Rats.” In the next panel, he pulls the stocking cap over his entire body in shame. He says, “I'm so stupid. I do this every year.” The next panel, Charlie Brown comes by again and says, “surprise. Another package just came. But it says, do not open until--” Snoopy says, “who cares? I can't wait. I can't wait.” He opens it up, and in the last panel, we see him wearing the stocking cap and now a brand new necktie. And he says, “I'm so stupid.”
Harold: I remember this strip. this one, I think, is just a little tour de force comic tour de force for him that has got so much energy and life in it, which I haven't seen a lot of in the strip this year. But this one really just is gleeful cartooning. And just having Snoopy go through all these different emotions, from stoicism to just wild abandon happiness with his stocking cap, and then depression and regret and embarrassment. And, it just keeps going all the way through the strip. And the last panel of Snoopy standing there with this polka dot neck tie around his neck and that stocking cap, I just think is absolutely love, love, love this strip.
Jimmy: Me too. What do you think, Michael?
Michael: I think panels four and before, especially if you showed me that, I'd say that wasn't Schulz.
Harold: Oh, really?
Michael: I know it is. Oh, the Snoopy, he never drew him like that. Or with that big smile.
Jimmy: the multiple arms, the smile with the teeth.
Harold: Yeah. And yet I love those drawings. I mean, to me, because I think I experienced this strip probably when it came out on a Sunday in 1979. That one just arrested me. And to me, that was Snoopy. That was like, quintessential Snoopy of that era. That's like my favorite Snoopy from this time of those drawings. Even though you're right, they are atypical for sure.
Jimmy: You know what's not atypical? Us talking for about 6 hours when we record one of these podcasts. But believe it or not, we've come to the end of 1979. so I'm going to do my little litany of things for you guys to do out there in listener land, and then I'll ask for our MVPs and strips of the year.
So if you want to keep the conversation going, if you want to hang out with the gang, there's a bunch of different ways you can do it. First of all, you can send us an email unpackingpeanuts@gmail.com. You can also reach out to us. We're unpackpeanuts on Instagram and Threads. We're unpacking Peanuts on YouTube and Facebook, and we would just absolutely love to hear from you. Also, you could go on our website,
unpackingpeanuts.com, and you can sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread. Then you'll get your one email a month from us letting you know what strips we are going to be talking about.
And that's all I got. So, Michael, why don't you start off, give us your strip of the year and your MVP.
Michael: My choice is March, (January, February,) March 17, where Lucy is, I think, in one of her greatest roles as the school reporter. And basically she's doing a write up of the baseball team and goes on about how wonderful the right fielder is and how beautiful and all that. That's just classic Lucy.
Jimmy: Classic.
Michael: And which segues into my most valuable peanut. I'm giving it to Lucy this year, mostly for the first half of the year.
Jimmy: Nice.
Michael: She had a lot of good stuff, good calls.
Jimmy: All right, Harold, how about you.
Harold: There are two strips here that I feel very near and dear to me. I don't know what your pick would be, Jimmy, but I'm going to leave one open for you to pick that I would have picked otherwise. I'm going to go with the last one we just read-- the Snoopy one. I just think that is a perfect strip. It's so funny. It's such a great coda to the year. I just love Snoopy getting the presents and not having the control to wait till Christmas. It's just a perfect strip. My, most valuable peanut, I think, would have to be Charlie Brown this year. I think the greatest honor he's ever going to get in these 50 years happens this year. So I gotta give it to him.
Jimmy: All right, Harold, now why don't you tell us what my favorite strip of the year is?
Harold: Well, I wanted to leave open to you if you wanted July 22 with Marcie and Peppermint Patty on the bench outside the hospital.
Jimmy: That's my pick. Absolutely, 100%. And I am also going to agree with you and give Charlie Brown, the MVP. Really enjoyed this year. Really enjoyed talking with my pals about it. And I'm so grateful that you guys are tuning in in ever increasing numbers. And we know it's all about Mr. Schulz, but I can't help feel grateful for you listening to us, too. So come back next week when we're going to be doing something else, but it'll be talking about Peanuts-- spoilers. Until then, for Michael, Harold. You know what? I'm going to make an executive decision. For Michael, Harold, and Liz. I'm Jimmy. Be of good cheer.
Michael, Harold, and Liz: Yes, be of good cheer.
VO: 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 unpackpeanuts 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: Hey, everybody, it's Jimmy. And I just wanted to take this moment to wish you a happy holidays and also tell you that the Amelia Rules musical is now going to be available online from us. if you hear at the beginning of every show, I say Michael, is a composer and a playwright. Well, this is one of the things he composed and playwroted-- with me. I helped write the story, but he wrote all the music and songs, and it's fantastic. And someday, maybe we'll also tell the story of Harold and I trying to get to see the musical in our rented car, which is like a rejected Indiana Jones script. But, Liz, can you tell them where they'll be able to find it?
Liz: I'll put the link in the show notes, and it'll be on our YouTube channel.
Jimmy: Awesome.
Jimmy: So give it a watch if you have a chance.
Michael: it does star the legendary Kay Perkins by the way.
Jimmy: the legendary Kay Perkins as Amelia. It's great.
Harold: Jimmy, can you tell the audience, those who have not ever read Amelia Rules what it's about just so they can have.
Jimmy: I'm pretty sure everybody has read Amelia. No. Is that not true? I mean, it's sold upwards of 70 copies. So Amelia is about a little girl.
Harold: NY Times best selling author,
Michael: Peanuts of the 21st century.
Jimmy: translated into a bunch of languages. No big deal. Anyway, it's, about a little girl who has to move from New York City to a small town in Pennsylvania after her parents get divorced. And this is, her first Christmas in that town, where she is obsessed with the idea of getting the intergalactic Ninja fight Squadron Red Captain action figure for Christmas. It was one of my favorite stories to write in the comics, and the fact that Michael wrote all those songs to go with it makes it, like, one of my favorite things in the whole wide world, so I hope you guys get to enjoy it.