Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Is it the future or 1999? No, it's neither. It's 1985. So we are going back to the future. I'll be your host for the proceedings. My name is Jimmy Gownley. I'm also a cartoonist. I did books like Amelia Rules, Seven Good Reasons Not to Grow Up, and The Dumbest Idea Ever.
Joining me, as always, are my pals, co hosts, and fellow cartoonists. He's a playwright and a composer, both for the band Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast. He is the co creator of the original Comic Book Prize Guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules, and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells, and Tangled River. It's Michael Cohen,
Michael: say hey.
Jimmy: And he's an executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie comics, and the creator of the instagram sensation Sweetest Beasts. It's Harold Buchholz.
Harold: Hello.
Jimmy: So we are here in 1985. if you guys have been listening out there, religiously, week by week, you might know that we announced recently we are going to start just taking our time with these strips. We were happy with the two episode a year format. but you know what? We're going to slow it down, and I'm excited that we're actually slowing it down now, because, we probably, we definitely missed some classic, strips over the last, the first 35 years. But, a lot of people have already discussed those strips. There's books and books and movies made about how great that era of Peanuts is. This part is a little less documented. So I think it's exciting that we're going to, we're going to slow things down and take an even deeper look.
So, guys, the one thing I want to talk about there, I quoted, a, great movie of 1985 off the top there, which is back to the future. And the whole premise of back to the future is how different 1985 was from 1955. And yet Schulz predates that with Peanuts by an additional five years. And I just want to talk about. That's super inspiring to me. I can't imagine whether we talk about whether or not he's lost a little off his fastball or whether he's not the absolute pinnacle of his powers. But it's an astounding achievement to be this close to the heart of pop culture for three and a half decades.
Michael: Yeah, well, I mean, he's conscious of pop culture, but I don't think he's really into it. Whatever was happening in the eighties was probably not on his mind, but he probably heard it.
Jimmy: No, but I just mean the fact that he, his work, whether it was on his mind or not, predates the rise of the hula hoop as a trend. And now we're at Duran Duran. You know, Paul McCartney's follow up band to the Beatles has been gone for a half a decade now, and Schulz is still plugging away. It's amazing.
Michael: Things are going downhill fast. That's for sure.
Jimmy: Things are going downhill?
Michael: Yeah. I mean, hula hoop. Come on. Great. Duran Duran, eh.
Jimmy: You know what? I will give you that one. I do think the hula hoop beats Duran Duran. Harold, does this area of conversation interest you at all?
Harold: yeah, it's interesting. I do think that he was trying to stay on top of things. I mean, when, I see things like Flash Beagle. Right, from Schulz, I don't think he was a huge Flashdance fan. I think he's looking at what's going on in the culture and he's responding to it. He's interested in what people are talking about and watching. And he does, I think, want to be relevant because, otherwise, I think he would only be picking things that he personally was really interested in. And I don't think he was a huge Flashdance fan. I want to know about him.
Jimmy: But the fact is now, though, hold on, hold on. We cannot pass this by, because I really just want to think about Schulz, the huge Flashdance fan. I picture him like, Jeannie Jeannie, I worked it out. Now he's, like, doing the dance in the living room,
Liz: leg warmers.
Jimmy: yeah, right. The whole thing. He's pounding them down.
Harold: She's just, okay, Sparky, you're a maniac. On the floor, Sparky.
Michael: Look, I think the culture was way more united. I'm m talking about that everybody was being fed the same stuff on the same three channels and the same few magazines.
Harold: Absolutely.
Michael: So, you know, even though I was not into pop culture in 1985, I still read Newsweek and Time. And so whatever was big in the culture, everybody was reading, our grandmas were reading about, they knew what Flashdance was because.
Harold: Right.
Michael: You know, that's what people were talking about. What's, what's the big thing right now?
Jimmy: Yeah, right.
Harold: but if you look at the other strips that were his, I guess, most direct competition, if you want to call it competition. I don't see as much of that in, say, Beetle Bailey or Family Circus. there might be some references to things. But it does seem like Schulz does it more than others. And it does seem like he's trying to stay relevant with people in the moment. He's taking advantage of the fact that this is a daily strip. That on the same day this is dropping into tens of millions of newspapers. I really find interesting about him that even at, 35 years in, he's not in his own little bubble. He's not in a Krazy Kat bubble where nothing changes. There's no sense of time. He is trying to, I think, reflect the culture and find ways to get people reengaged with the strip. It seems like he's just a very competitive in that way. And I find that fascinating. You know, going dating back. We remember the Davy Crockett thing 30 years ago.
Jimmy: Right? That's what I'm saying.
Harold: Now it's flash.
Jimmy: Different world. Yeah, a completely different world. The Davy Crockett eras to this. The other thing I sort of want to talk about, Michael, you said, like, you know, we were feeding. Being fed the same few choices by these big monolithic networks and stuff like that, you know? And that's true of, like, there were big gigantic record, labels. And big gigantic movie studios. If I think about the eighties, though, if I go just let's think about, like, either movie or, music, rather. And comics. There were really, really strong mainstream things going on. This was the era of things like in comic books like Watchmen and Dark Knight and all that. But there's also a counterculture going on. Things like Love and Rockets and Cerebus. And that, was, the same way in music and stuff like that. And I was thinking recently, like, is there a counterculture these days? And then I thought, well, how could there be a counterculture? There's no culture. Like Taylor Swift and Beyonce can't carry everything. And I just think that it feels like not having big things that everybody can or not everybody, but that gigantic millions and millions of people can relate to. Even hampers, the stuff that's pushing against it.
Harold: Right?
Jimmy: Ah, if it doesn't exist, you know?
Michael: Yeah, no, everybody can live in their own niche of culture and ignore the rest. And you still have a support system, you know, that kind of confirms your opinions or your opinions. But, yeah, nobody's listening to every kind of music. But, you know, back. Back in the day, we were force fed everything. I mean, I'm talking further back in the day than you're talking about, but basically just top 40 could have a country song. It could have a, you know, a Frank Sinatra song, could have a psychedelic song. It's just whatever was selling is what you're going to hear. There wasn't any niche way of getting pop culture.
Jimmy: Right.
Harold: Yeah. It's fascinating how now the only thing we can do to get some sort of common culture, again, is to reboot something from the eighties or earlier.
Jimmy: Right.
Harold: You know, you know, which version of the Addams family are we gonna redo now? Or all these Marvel Spiderman characters and all that stuff that kind of came from this. The collective experience of this, these characters through comic books and maybe an animated series, and they had a live action show on tv. That's all we've got right now, is something that, was known decades ago, and it's very rare to see something somehow break through, like baby shark, you know?
Michael: Yeah. But I think at this time also that there were some niche cultures that were coming out. Like, you know, we're talking about Love and Rockets, which was focused kind of on the punk movement, and that was a niche culture. And I think, you know, a lot of readers were attracted to that because there was nobody else was doing it, so it really stood out.
Jimmy: Yeah. And that's what I feel like. Yeah. Like, you know, the fact that Love and Rockets was a rare thing, and I'm just using this as an example, it could have been REM. It could have been anything that was a niche thing in the eighties because, it was a rare example. It made it so much more important to the people who found it. But now there are web strips that we've never heard of that have millions and millions of readers that they might not even have any artistic value whatsoever, but they just exist, and they're huge, but they're not culturally significant. They have no cultural impact.
Michael: Yeah, well, there's millions. I mean, there are millions of webcomics from, you know, any. Well, it's also, I mean, that reflects japanese culture a little more, which was very early on, comic books were pretty much anything but superheroes.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: You know, you can have sushi chefs and baseball players comics about them, because that was kind of a monoculture, but, people were able to create identities by what they liked.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: I remember, you know, people listening to pop music in particular, it seemed to me, because I wasn't really, as we had talked about before, about our musical interests and my lack of any cachet in the music field, but it just felt so oppressive to me back then, because there was this top 40 and it was playing in every restaurant and in our high school in the hallways. And it's like, well, whether you like it or not, this is the culture. And then you got people who were so passionately into these, these rock groups where, I mean, the level to which all of that was elevated, I think people who were growing up today, they have no idea of what. There was this own, there was this weird cultural peer pressure that doesn't really exist anymore. In a way that's kind of refreshing. I think.
Liz: There isn't peer pressure?
Harold: Well, cultural peer pressure, I mean, individual peer pressure, I think in high school, I think still exists. Well, but I think it's the idea that, you know, you have a group that identifies themselves as the who freaks, you know, and there's a, another group that's totally into some other band. and, and that you, you define your friends through that culture.
Michael: Well, I mean, it's still there. I mean, you got your swifties, you've.
Jimmy: Got, and I think the peer pressure stuff has moved on to online. Yeah. Like, you know, it's how you look and that kind of thing.
Michael: Yeah. But relating to comics of this period, now, I'm not that familiar with, with the other strips, but I was very familiar with Bloom County and I seem to recall there's quite a few popular references. I mean, there was a start.
Harold: Oh, yeah.
Harold: Tons. Yeah, he was, he was messing with all sorts of things. What was the name of the, the dog? Spuds Mackenzie. Yeah, I think he was messing around with that because there was all this controversy that there was this popular dog for. Was it for beer? And beer, yeah. Was it Coors for appealing, super appealing to kids. What are you doing? I remember he was making fun of that and.
Jimmy: Yeah, and the beer comes. We were like, what? we don't really test market these ads or anything.
Harold: Kids like this Joe camel fella.
Jimmy: Who knew?
Harold: We just thought Chester Cheetah was popular with the kids. We had no idea that Joe Camel is such a thing. Yeah, but yeah, it really has changed. And it does seem in some ways that the pressure is a little bit off of what I remember as a kid. But, you know, being, an older adult, I don't, I don't know if that's true. It would be interesting if we have some younger listeners that they kind of let us know where they're experiencing that kind of, you know, the power of culture on you with whether you like it or not. Do you still experience that and in what form is, like, I think you're right about the social media. We have a whole new world of inundation of information, and, you know, the.
Jimmy: Influencers, I can't even imagine. Now, listen, we're gonna have to. We're gonna get to the strips, but, this whole topic of conversation is gonna come up a little bit later. I was in a-- I posted something on Twitter, and it was. I said, make comics, not content. And super listener, Joshua Stauffer asked, what's. What do you. What's the difference? You know, I see comics as a type of content that. Which he's not wrong about. Right? But he said, can you elaborate? And, I attempted to, but my night had already started, so it was a bad time to be tweeting. So I said, we're going to just take this up on the podcast, so when we get to the mail, we'll talk about that. What's the difference between art?
Michael: Okay. I think the difference is that content is something needed to fill a space. The next issue of Spiderman going to come, you had to fill it.
Jimmy: Right?
Michael: Whereas the stuff we do, if we don't do it, it's. It's. There's nothing there. There's zero.
Jimmy: Right, right. Yeah. That's actually brilliant. Yeah, you're right. And. And it's also not an absence, because it doesn't have to be there.
Michael: Yeah.
Jimmy: Which makes what you do what we. It makes what we do so much more special. Anyway, we said it.
Harold: We say, as we do our weekly podcast.
Jimmy: Exactly.
Liz: But it's also a new buzzword for how to do multiple things with the same amount of content. If you produce content, then you can do audio content, and you can do blog posts, and you can do articles on Reddit. And you. I mean, you can. You can make an ebook. You can. You can do multiple things with your content, and it doesn't really matter.
Jimmy: Slice it and dice it.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: Right, right. Yes. It doesn't matter what it is. oh, okay. Well, I guess we're talking about this now, Joshua. But, yeah, content, to me, is exactly what those guys were saying. It is something that is there just to fill a space in some way. The comic strips themselves were content, right? Because they're there to fill space in the paper together, and they had to.
Michael: Be there every day.
Jimmy: Every single day. Now, within that, like Peanuts here, Charles--
Harold: Berke Breathed says he's busy making comics for tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy this blank space.
Jimmy: Right? Right. Now, within that idea of this, just content creation stuff. Art can occur like it did here with Peanuts. And I'm like, and that's what I meant by comics. I was using comics as a code for art. Comics meaning people trying to express something genuine. I think the first 37 or whatever they are, issues of Spiderman are art. After that, it becomes content. It becomes, all right, Spiderman needs to exist. Who's available? You know?
Harold: So, Jimmy, what's the mindset you're putting across there in that tweet? What are you saying regarding the creator? How are you supposed to see what you make that changes content into comics?
Jimmy: The comic has to be the thing you are focusing on. I am drawing this comic. I'm not creating an OC and this world because I'm an imaginary, J. R. R. Tolkien, because that's,
Michael: wait, there's a big, there's a huge difference. And, I think your Spiderman analogy doesn't really work because these guys were surviving on a paycheck, and.
Jimmy: Yeah. Oh, I'm not criticizing them. Look, no, here, I agree. I'm doing, I do Donald Duck comics, right? but they're Donald Duck content because they tell me, you know what I mean?
Harold: Well, couldn't, couldn't you, couldn't you, from your own mindset, make comics when you were assigned? Well, it's just like Schulz, right? He, he's, he's obviously in the content category because he's on a deadline, but he's also making comics. He's making art because he has,
Michael: To do whatever he wants. I mean, the editor might get pissed, but he's not fulfilling, you know, you have to have Charlie Brown and Snoopy in every, every strip, right?
Harold: Yeah.
Michael: Kind of breaks down. Let me just. Because you mentioned that, what he said about Spiderman is the, Steve Ditko issues, the man who pretty much created it, but he was burned out at the end of that period, and people kind of notice that the last three or four issues were just kind of, well, they weren't as good, but he wasn't coming up with anything really brilliant or new. He was just, you know, killing time, basically. So in that case, he was just doing content. Well, I got to do another issue.
Jimmy: Right, yeah, no, that's true, too.
Harold: I'm still kind of lost in what you're in, what you're saying about the mindset that, what, what gets you to the better place, like, like the Donald Duck comic that you write. If you looked at that Donald Duck comic, which you do have to do because you've agreed to do it.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: Is there a way for you to look at it so that it maybe has a better chance of being the art that you're talking about?
Jimmy: What? I'm doing it when I'm sitting there at my notebook and I'm writing a Donald Duck comic. I am trying to be the James Joyce of Donald Duck comics. I mean, I am, There are jokes in the Donald Duck comics I. That the editors didn't get. I mean, there. I know that for a fact. But it'll never be much beyond that, because then the editor is gonna do what they have to do with it, and then the legal department's gonna do what they have to do with it, and then it's gonna go to an artist that I've never met and that I didn't know who it was before. And they may want to. They may be Steve Ditko, or they may be Larry Ditko. You know, Steve's less talented nephew. And there's no way to control any of that. Here's the. Okay, all right, since we're. This was. Okay. I posted that. Then Fran Conner, a good friend of mine, a friend of mine for, oh, boy, 49 years, and a Shakespeare professor, said, yeah, this is what you mean. And he posted, like, every Marvel movie that's coming out for the next, like, x amount of years. Every Marvel movie, every Star wars movie, every DC movie. They don't have scripts, they don't have casts. They don't have directors, but they're coming out.
Michael: Yep.
Jimmy: That's content.
Michael: That's content.
Jimmy: Sam Raimi making that first Spiderman movie is art whether you like it or not. It's pop art. It's, you know, it's not the Mona Lisa, but it's. It's. It's everybody. We're making a movie. They're just extending intellectual property.
Michael: But what you're. I think what you're doing. I mean, the way I look at is what you're doing on the Donald Duck stuff is you're amusing yourself.
Harold: Yeah.
Michael: By seeing if you can put in some real creativity, and no one will notice. Hopefully, no one will notice you're being creative.
Harold: Yeah. I mean, the way I look at it is if you're an artist, let's say you're the director or screenwriter who gets to make his first Hulk movie. And, because you've been doing other great things, and they see you and they say, hey, how would you like to plug into this world? The artist can't help but make art or comics or movies. And, you know, having worn the hat of the producer, I, mean, I think the producer looks at that very same thing as content, because that's producer's job. But the artist, hopefully, is always. Yeah. Like, is always looking at it as art. No matter what they've been assigned, they're going to put their stamp on it. They're going to make their own unique. Like the Barbie movie, you know, who you. That somebody would find, discover something is.
Michael: Ridiculed, and it was by, the only, you know, genuine artist, you know, the Ang Lee, but.
Harold: Yeah. Right.
Michael: You know, sometimes people just want to make some money, dude.
Jimmy: Hey, Martin Scorsese made commercials.
Harold: Yeah. I've seen some people say, I'm going to create art, and because they're saying, I'm gonna create art, that's when they get themselves in a ton of trouble. Yeah. Cause they get a little too high, minded, and they kind of forget that there's content.
Jimmy: Yeah. But the other thing about that is that's okay, because you can fail, and that's up to you.
Harold: Sure.
Jimmy: Another thing is content is generally created or is called into existence by a corporation. Like, if they don't call me next month to do Donald Duck comics, it's not because Donald Duck comics cease to exist or I have perfected them. It's just that they've moved on to somebody else.
Michael: It's not just a corporation. It's a team. And it's hard to control art when there's, you know, ten people in the room. so someone like Schulz. I mean, these are the people who can create art. I mean, first of all, they're financially secure, and they've created the characters. They know the characters, and if they wanna risk their financial security, they can take it in any direction they want and not worry about the readers or the editors.
Harold: Right. So, Jimmy, is this a way to kind of restate what you're saying? Cause I'm kinda still trying to get what you're. Cause that's a bold statement that it seems like if.
Jimmy: Yeah, baby.
Harold: It's bold trying to say. If you grasp what you're trying to say, that hopefully it's helpful to creators. Is it just tell the story you want to tell and don't worry about where it fits. Is that a good way to.
Jimmy: Yeah. Create. Yes. Create a comic, not content. I am making a comic book. It's gonna be however many pages it is going to be this story that I desperately want to tell. it's going to contain these jokes or these tragic moments and all this stuff. And I'm going to do it in the style that I want to do, and it's going to be a complete unit in and of itself. It is not designed to later be a happy meal and later be a lunchbox and later be a 16 parts prequel spinoff series. That all can happen. But that don't make that your goal, because, I'm sorry, that's a stupid goal. And I know that there are millions of people out there who want that. I know that there are people listening who desperately want that. It's a stupid goal. Make something of value.
Michael: Well, I agree with that.
Jimmy: Be a reality tv star. just be a Kardashian, and that's it. It'll be easy.
Michael: But then again, people who think, you know, if I could just make a living doing comics, I love them. Somebody who wants to compromise and go like, okay, I got a job at Marvel drawing, you know, their, you know, C level feature, but at least I'm in the biz, and eventually I can get to where I want to be. I don't knock that.
Jimmy: I don't knock it either, but they better be making great comics and not be trying to sit around and concoct a franchise, because it's just going to be mush.
Michael: They're still working from someone else's script. I mean, really, when I read comics or collect comics these days, almost without exception, the only exception being Alan Moore, is these are things, they're written, drawn by the same person.
Jimmy: Right? Yeah. And that's who I assume I'm talking to. Like, I, you know, I'm not talking really about to the people who are work in jobs. Like I said, I work in the Donald Duck job, and I am thinking of it as a comic, but I don't necessarily care if other people are thinking about their Donald Duck comics that way, because Donald Duck is a franchise. Donald Duck is content. Donald Duck will exist long after us.
Michael: Well, here's the art of Peanuts. I see it as the art of creating characters who you care about.
Michael: And what comes out of their mouth is consistent with their personalities. You know, I think we're in a period now where the jokes aren't funny and, the art, even though it's still good, is, to me, going downhill. But again, then again, he's creating characters that are extremely one of a kind. And I think that's why Peanuts is still popular, because it, it transcends media. It works on for movies, so I hear. Or, specials. It works on lunch pails, it's. It's the characters. And so the art of Schulz's greatest contribution is creating, you know, dozens. Well, I don't know if it's that many, but at least a dozen really memorable characters.
Jimmy: Yeah. All right, Joshua, so that's hopefully that answers your question. I doubt it.
Michael: What was the question?
Jimmy: I'm sorry, I don't remember. But the one thing I will say, just, create a dozen or so super memorable characters, and you should be okay, buddy. All right, how about we just take a break? Should we take a break now before we even get to the strip? And then we'll start the strips and then come back with our new segment. What flavor milkshake am I drinking?
Michael: Our new segment. Let's talk about Peanuts strips.
[Swoosh]
Jimmy: And we're back. All right, so with that, a, simple, philosophical conversation out of the way, how about we get to the strips?
Harold: Sure, sure.
Jimmy: All right, so if you guys out there want to follow along, what you could do is you, hop on over to the old Unpacking Peanuts website there. You're going to sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread, and that'll get you one email a month from us letting you know what strips we're going to cover. That way you can, do a little homework ahead of time and read along with us other ways you can follow along. You can go to gocomics.com, type in Peanuts. As I read the date, you type it in there and away, you go. So let's get started. Okay, we're start off. We're going to read at least two in a row here because it's a little bit of a sequence.
January 7, 1985. Peppermint Patty is out in the schoolyard at lunch, sitting on a bench and eating out of a paper bag. Marcie, comes up clutching her lunch bag and says to Peppermint Patty, you won, sir. Peppermint Patty, without looking up, says one. What? Marcie answers, I just heard that your essay on what you did during Christmas vacation won the all city school essay contest. And Marcie congratulates her in the next panel, saying, you wrote about looking at the clouds, remember? Anyway, you won. Congratulations. In the last panel, we see Peppermint Patty rubbing something on her face, and Marcie looks at her and says, don't wipe your tears away with your french fries, sir. And we see that's exactly what a jubilant Peppermint Patty is doing.
Jimmy: And then we see it continues onto the next date,
January 8, where Marcie is standing in front of the classroom. And she says, I've been asked to make this important announcement. One of our classmates, Miss Patricia Reichardt, has just won the all city essay contest. Marcie continues her essay on what she did during her Christmas vacation has won first prize. A flummoxed Peppermint Patty sitting in her seat says, how did I win? I got a D minus.
Michael: Now, my question on this one was, is this first time we heard her last name?
Jimmy: I asked that, too. You know what? I don't think so, because the, Peanuts Wiki doesn't indicate that this strip says that. But I am just so happy that we have now gotten to 1985 and we are still doing so. Is this the first time? And in that initial thing, I said we would be the ones telling the listeners when the first thing happens. But we're not. We just go, is this the first thing? And whoever asks it, the other two go, I don't know. So, I don't know.
Liz: Well, then we ask our listeners.
Michael: We're just amateur Peanutologists. We're not exactly.
Jimmy: Yeah, there's real scholars out there. But I think it's super cool that Peppermint Patty has a last name.
Michael: Very few characters do.
Jimmy: Yes. Yeah, you. You've made it to the top tier. When you have a last name in Peanuts.
Michael: I think Five had a last name
Harold: and that seems like a very specific last name. Right? So, yeah, do, you did. Yeah. The other question is, did he know a, Reichardt that he's honoring with Peppermint Patty?
Jimmy: You know, it's funny because we normally do the mail all in one spot, but, we actually got a letter, or not a letter, a text to the hotline that addressed this very question. It said, do you have any insight into how Schulz came up with such great character names? And it was by, That's from Ken Goldmere. So I don't know. So, yeah. Answering like, he does have a knack for names. Peppermint Patty. Famously, he saw the candy in a dish and thought, I better take that name before Mort Walker does. Charlie Brown was named after a friend of his. Linus was named after a friend of his, Frieda. So a lot of that. A lot of his naming does come from just people he knew, which is something I always tried to avoid. Like, I would feel weird having a character named Harold, you know, because this guy's a real jerk. You'd be like, gee, Jimmy, I don't know.
Harold: Yeah, no, the name Harold is reserved for hen- pecked husbands and Saint Bernards.
Jimmy: Yeah, so I think he does have a knack for it, though. He knows a good word and he knows a good name when he hears it, for sure.
Harold: Yeah, well, it's funny, I think. I think the names are special to us because the characters are special. To Michael's point, what he was saying make creating great characters. The names are special because the characters are special. Simple as that.
Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that it's hard to disentangle to me. Like, you hear the word Schroeder and it just sounds like it, is associated with classical music. But of course it does, because the only time I ever heard the name Schroeder was associated with the character Schroeder.
Jimmy: Still, if that. If the pianist was named, you know, Stinky Pete, I don't think it would be as good, so.
Harold: Oh, so here it is. Reichardt was the last name of his secretary, Sue.
Jimmy: Ah, there you go. That's very cool.
Harold: That's nice to her. Yeah, right. That's really pretty cool. Now, that makes me wonder. Now, I don't know how long he had that secretary, but I wonder if there were any traits of the secretary that got into the character.
Jimmy: Yeah, that. Well, that'll be something we could maybe explore in, a Peppermint Patty focus. So this actually, this storyline also carries, over from last year, which, back on, December 28, Peppermint Patty actually delivers this essay to her teacher about looking at the at the clouds. And, Michael pointed out that he thought that was pretty prose when we covered it. And apparently the people judging the essay contest agreed. I also think it's funny, this seems to be a little bit, Schulz taking another kick at the old, Do you not share my C. You know, where the teacher grades at a D minus, but seeing through somebody else's eyes it’s an A.
Michael: I'm siding with the teacher.
Liz: Why?
Jimmy: You're giving her all d minus.
Michael: Well, the teacher's job is. I mean, you don't want to dumb down the students by accepting something that it was not really special in any way and praising it.
Harold: Didn't you say you thought it was kind of special?
Michael: The writing was nice, but. Yeah. It's not an award winning essay.
Jimmy: Well, it is. It just won.
Harold: Well, what. This is interesting. Where my mind went, I thought, and I really got concerned for Peppermint Patty is, does this teacher have it in for.
Jimmy: People have it in for her? Yeah.
Harold: And that's. That's even. That's really sinister. And that's kind of scary because, you know, I don't know, if you've had guys who've ever had that experience, I've had that. At least that. That felt experience that there was a teacher that, you know, they don't like you, just a personality thing or whatever. And, boy, you're gonna have a really hard time in that class. And. And seeing Peppermint Patty being held back by this teacher.
Michael: Yeah, I'm still on the teacher.
Harold: And then. And then the teacher. I don't know how the teacher changes their mind, but it sounds like she still has the teachers. Like, the teacher went up a grade with her or something. I don't know, but it's, I just start feeling really nervous for Peppermint Patty if she's practically being flunked all the time. And then this other group of people says, no, this is brilliant. You're brilliant.
Jimmy: It also has to do with different, criteria by which anything is judged. And there. And there is a great joke about this, about not listening to the critics because, you know, critic is just a critic. even if it's a. If. Even if it's a teacher in a class now. I mean, but she may have been gotten. She may have gotten a d minus based on the fact that the essay had to have 500 words and she didn't. It had to be typed, and it wasn't. It had to be no. Neat. With no spelling error. You know what I mean?
Michael: The essay contests might have gone like, oh, she doesn't have a mother and she's a bad student. Let's just give her a..
Jimmy: You think they fill that out?
Michael: I believe this whole thing is rigged.
Harold: I just want to know how that essay got to the contest. Peppermint Patty obviously didn't submit it, and I would be surprised if, I guess the teacher could have just thrown all the essays into a bin and, well, actually had a big d minus on it.
Jimmy: You know, I do sort of remember this.
Harold: This.
Jimmy: So something like this sort of happened to me in high school in that we had to write an essay about who our American hero is. And the teacher, everyone was getting submitted in the whole class, but it was for, like, a $500 scholarship. And she called, like, three of us up and said, I think you three have a chance of winning this. Just, like, make these couple changes and blah, blah, blah. And, of course, we didn't win at all. It was some kid who just wrote my American heroes, Vietnam vets, and that was it. You can't beat that. It was like,
Michael: Captain America, your obvious choice.
Jimmy: No, I picked. No, I'm not telling you I picked. But also, Yeah, I mean, that. It's just. It's different criteria. It's. I lost an Emmy award once. We did it. We did a story about a cool soul record company in Harrisburg, and the one we lost to was a kid beating cancer. You don't beat. You could, you know. I mean, I didn't go to the award ceremony because I knew how that was coming, man.
Michael: You didn't want to boo the kid.
Jimmy: Yeah. What a rip off. Oh, and here we go. leading to that conclusion, from Snoopy, we have,
January 9. So Peppermint Patty is explaining this to Charlie Brown and Snoopy, who's standing there, and she says, explain this if you can, Chuck. Everyone in our class had to write an essay on what we did during Christmas vacation. When I got mine back, the teacher had given me a d minus. Well, I'm used to that, Chuck. Right? She continues in panel three. Now, guess what? All those essays went into a city essay contest, and I won. Explain that, Chuck. And Snoopy sums it all up. Lying atop his doghouse. Never listen to the reviewers. I take it back. If I was going to get a Peanuts tattoo, I would get. Never listened to the reviewers.
Michael: Oh. But, I rely on the reviewers to tell me what I thought. I mean, really, I can't form my own opinions.
Jimmy: Yeah. Don't you hate it when you go to a movie and you're like, that was really good. And then, you read a review, and you're like, oh, I guess I didn't like it.
Harold: Yeah. Well, I really appreciate that Schulz did this for Peppermint Patty, you know, because she's constantly, constantly struggling in school and that not only one person, but whoever was this committee that decided they gave her the thumbs up and that Schulz is saying, hey, look, you know, you might be judged by. By somebody, but that doesn't mean that you don't have worth or value, or maybe you're special to someone in your own way, you know?
Michael: All right, here's my little autobiographical thing. amongst my friends in school, there were some A students. There were some B students. I was like a C student. And there was my unnamed friend, unmentioned friend. D minus all the time. I mean, he was Peppermint Patty. He got D minuses on everything. He didn't do any homework. He's by far the most successful of anybody I know.
Harold: Absolutely. Yeah.
Jimmy: Oh, I truly do believe if anyone tells you any platitude, just do the opposite. Pull a George Costanza and do the opposite. It's almost always wrong. You're never listening to the reviewers. This made me think of something. A few, episodes back, we were talking about putting, personality into your art and how sometimes people. It rubs against people the wrong way. And Harold asked if that ever happened to me. My lovely daughter Stella reminded me of our favorite one. And it makes me laugh to just even think about it. It was a review that said, you know, I just didn't vibe with the main character. Frankly, I think he was a bit of a prick. Now, that would be one thing. But it was my memoir. It was my memoir.
Michael: Oh, no.
Jimmy: Yeah. Then the guy goes, maybe it was the writer being self aware. Maybe.
Michael: That hurts. Well, if there are any, podcast reviewers out there, just ignore everything we're saying. We love reviewers.
Liz: Podcast reviewers are the exception.
January 13, a pretty cool. It's a Sunday strip. A pretty cool panel of Snoopy, Lucy, and Linus, their heads atop three snowman bodies of varying sizes. Nice looking drawing. Another, great looking panel of Lucy sneaking out, peeking from behind a tree in the snow. It looks like there's going to be a snowball fight going on here. Next panel, we see Linus and Snoopy revved back, ready to throw a snowball. And Lucy facing them the other way. Linus says, go ahead, throw it. Then, very smugly, he says, there's two of us and only one of you. We've got you outnumbered. But then, unbeknownst, to Linus behind him, Snoopy decides to bail. He says, I think I hear a chocolate chip cookie calling me. And then Linus continues, okay, Snoopy, let's show her that. But then Linus turns around, sees Snoopy has left, and Lucy, just pastes him with a snowball from about two inches away. and then we see Linus in the last panel, climbing atop the doghouse with a giant snowball, balanced just on the peak. And Snoopy's underneath it, his nose sticking out. And Linus says, come on out. I have another cookie for you.
Michael: I don't see Linus as being this vindictive.
Harold: Sorry.
Michael: Snowball missed him.
Harold: Yeah, I thought this was a funny one, but I was a little struck by, Linus taking his revenge on Snoopy there.
Jimmy: Yeah, I know, but you guys have very wussy views of Linus. Well, he's a much more rounded character than someone who just sits there and. And, you know, thinks sweet thoughts and stuff like that. I think he would love to pace Lucy with a couple snowballs. I think he wishes he had all the beagle scouts behind him as well. I don't see anything out of the ordinary here.
Harold: Well, I can't. The thing that the two things strike me in this strip. One is when Lucy throws the snowball at Linus. It's still completely intact after it's pasted him. So I think that's a lot of ice in there. That was probably a very painful snowball. so maybe that's why it looks.
Michael: Like he dodged it. I mean, it's not deflected. Look at its course. It's.
Jimmy: Oh, that's how hard it was hit.
Michael: No, I don't think he. I think he dodged it.
Harold: And the other thing that stands out to me, and this is in that world of that, these characters live in the mind of Charles Schulz. And so they all have a common experience that's beyond what you would have in real life. Snoopy is just walking away saying, I think I hear a chocolate chip cookie calling me. And the last panel, Linus somehow knows that that's what Snoopy was thinking when he walked away. Even though Linus didn't even know he walked away. But somehow he knows that Snoopy left because of the chocolate chip cookie. The surreality of that. And the, way that Schulz lets the characters somehow in on the minds of the other characters, creates. I don't know what it creates, but it's kind of this magical world that does not line up with the world that we live in. In the sense that somehow you can think the thoughts of a dog character and know what he's thinking, even though you're not aware what he was thinking when he left you. You know, it's it's wild. Unless, I mean, unless possibly Snoopy did come back with a chocolate chip cookie and a panel we didn't see.
Jimmy: Right.
January 20. I don't know who picked this one, but I'll never forgive them. So Snoopy's out of a golf course, and he says, stupid tree. He's, looking at the tree when he says it. Then we see him take a big swing with the driver. Then the next panel, the strip really starts because it's a Sunday. They say, not again. Snoopy has his little golf ball right up against a tree. And he says, every shot I hit seems to end up behind a tree. And then, two panels later, we see that's the same case again. He goes, I can't stand it. Sometimes I think that as soon as I hit a shot, a tree runs out and stands in front of my ball. The next panel, Snoopy takes a mighty swing, and we see the tree doing just that, running out on its big, ridiculous, feet, with Mickey mouse hands, which are actually just leaves. And in the last panel, of course, it arrives right in front of Snoopy's ball, blocking it. And Snoopy rolls his eyes.
Harold: So what do you think of this one?
Jimmy: I think it's a golf strip.
Michael: No, I picked it because we didn't realize that Tolkien was a big influence on golf.
Jimmy: Oh, my gosh. It's an Ent. I didn't think of that. Well, it's also amazing.
Liz: A week later than the previous strip, and the season has changed dramatically.
Jimmy: I was gonna say, this is, this is. And, I say this with all love. This is a rich guy in California cartooning, right. Hitting the links with a nice sweater on in late January. although my dad would have probably would have hit the links in January if there was no snow or permafrost on the ground. He would have been out there.
Harold: And again, this is like where Schulz kind of has a character will something into an existence in a way. He imagines it, and then it becomes real. And I don't know how you look at that, but he's willing to go into this kind of surreal kite eating tree.
Michael: This. Yeah, this definitely fits into the weird Peanuts. I just have the date written. It was a big question mark after it. What was he thinking?
Jimmy: What I. Well, he was a rich guy out on the golf course in January, and he kept hitting the ball in front of trees. I mean, that's what it like. You know what I mean? This was not an attempt, I don't think, to, entertain the masses. However, that next to the last panel with those, hands, which look like Mickey mouse gloves, but are just leaves. That's so cool. And that makes me laugh.
Harold: And. Yeah, me, too. And it's, again, it's that classic Charles Schulz run where you put both of your arms up and let your hands drop below you, like 90 degree angles. That's so Charles Schulz. We were just talking about it the other day with Charlie Brown. when you, when you see a character running, it's an animation person would have, like, one arm in the front, another arm in the back, you know, different angles. Yeah. And we don't, we don't see that in Schulz's.
Jimmy: well, it's so strange, too, but it's hilarious. I have so much running in the Amelia comics, and, if you don't do contrapposto meaning the left leg is out, then the right, then the right arm is forward. You know, if you have, like, both, if you do anything weird, like what Schulz is doing, I find it looks wrong and just awkward, but he just has this iconic. He just came across that goofy pose. And it's so funny. It's so funny.
Harold: It's great.
February 21. Linus is out, making what looks like a little stone wall. And Lucy is gonna come up and, of course, criticize it. And she says, why, may I ask, are you building a useless rock wall? And Linus says, I discovered that I have the ability to pick up a rock and to carry it from one place to another. Then I discovered that I could pile them up and make a rock wall. It's ugly and useless, but who cares? Lucy walks away saying, when you're done, you can make a second wall with the rocks in your head.
Jimmy: I picked this one because I've seen this rock wall, Charles Schulz. And this is written about in his book, or not his book, but in the biography, by Rita Grimsley Johnson, called Good Grief. And he talks about he was doing this as sort of like a meditative therapy exercise, just picking up rocks around his property and turning them into this wall. Until I think it was Jeannie or maybe one of his kids said, hey, you're building the wall from the strip. But it hadn't occurred to him. So when I got to stay, out there, I got a picture of my little girls at the thinking wall made by Charles Schulz. I just really wanted, to, just brag about that. That's why I picked that strip. Also, I love the way the rocks. Rocks are fun to draw.
Liz: Michael used to love building rock walls.
Michael: It was the greatest therapy.
Harold: Yeah.
Michael: In the woods behind our house. And go, a great rock. It's flat. I'd lug it over to. I was rebuilding the well, which had mostly fallen apart. Yeah, I love looking for rocks.
Jimmy: Well, I mean, New Hampshire has those everywhere, right? I mean, there's walls, stonewalls all through New Hampshire.
Michael: Yeah. And some reason I can understand why, because it's very therapeutic to lug rocks and put them in a nice little shape.
Jimmy: Schulz agreed, apparently.
February 28, Snoopy's lying atop the doghouse, and Lucy comes up. She's in a real crabby mode this month. And she says, sleeping again. And Snoopy says, till now. Lucy's outraged. She says, is sleeping all you ever think about? And a, really groggy looking Snoopy says, only when I'm awake. Then he rolls over and says, want him asleep? I don't think about it.
Michael: Yeah. This goes along with my theory that sleep was one of the main topics. Sleep is really important.
Jimmy: Absolutely. It is. One of. Well, I think it's one of the great joys of life. An afternoon nap on a sunny day or a rainy day or a snowy day.
Michael: Yep.
Liz: What about cloudy days?
Michael: It's the highlight.
Jimmy: You know what those I try to stay up for. Oh, man. okay, so let's take. We're gonna take a second break here. It's unprecedented. then we're gonna come back. Then we'll finally do, the mail and that fantastic milkshake challenge you've been waiting for, and then do a couple more strips. All right? We'll be right back.
BREAK
VO: Hi, everyone. We all love listening to Jimmy describe what's going on in a Peanuts strip. But did you know that comics are actually a visual medium? That's right. You can see them anytime you want@gocomics.com. Or in your very own copy of the complete Peanuts available from fanographics. Plus, if you sign up for our monthly newsletter, you'll know in advance which strips we're talking about each week. Learn more about the Great Peanuts reread at unpackingpeanuts.com
Jimmy: Okay, we're back. we're gonna check the mailbox. But first, our brand new and beloved already segment. What flavor milkshake am I drinking? Remember, there are three choices, vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. I'm gonna ask my, pals, co hosts, fellow cartoonists and producers, what they think I'm drinking, and, we'll see who's right. You can play along if you want to, but please remember, no wagering. All right, Michael, what do you think? Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry?
Michael: That's vanilla.
Liz: Chocolate.
Jimmy: Harold?
Harold: I'm going with the, box odds. Chocolate. It is.
Jimmy: Chocolate. You know, we added that, and we, don't charge any extra. That's a whole new segment. Same free price for you.
Harold: All right.
Jimmy: But I am hanging out in the mailbox, enjoying my milkshake. So, we got anything?
Liz: We do. We got a lot this week. Let me see.
Jimmy: Great.
Liz: Okay. So, do you remember Paul Hebert?
Jimmy: I do.
Liz: He's the guy who wrote a while back and mentioned his Doonesbury blog. And based on our discussion of the Doonesbury strip, the relationship between Honey, the person, we couldn't remember her name, Duke's translator, and Marcie is something he dug into at length, and he has given us the link.
Jimmy: Oh, awesome.
Liz: And I will put it into the show notes.
Jimmy: Oh, thank you, Paul. That's fantastic.
Liz: He also adds, everyone is quick to point out how Breathed had borrowed from Trudeau, but fewer people talk about what is clearly his biggest influence. Walt Kelly. Without Pogo, there's no Opus.
Harold: That's interesting. I wonder, has Breathed had talked about that influence from Kelly? Because I'm a huge Walt Kelly fan, and I never put the two together, so it's interesting.
Jimmy: Oh, really?
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: I always thought there must have been, because the politics and the animals. The animals are much more. Not just Opus, but, you know, there's the groundhog, there's the rabbit. all in, you know, Opus's little, then obviously build a cat and stuff like that. So he does have a little, like, mini Pogo cast within the larger Bloom County cast.
Harold: Yeah. Much different flavor of humor in a lot of ways, but, that's interesting.
Jimmy: Yeah, just speaking of Doonesbury, we were talking about, if we're going to do other cartoonists and stuff, if I were to pick a sequence to re examine from another cartoonist, there's a sequence from about 20 years ago in Doonesbury where BD goes to Iraq and is wounded, and I think it might be the best comic sequence ever. It's profound. It's really, really, really good, and it's not, a super partisan political thing. It's a real human story, and I love it. So we should look at that some now in our free time.
Liz: I will make a note. Then William Pepper, friend of the show, writes, I have a question. When Jim Sasseville and Dale Hale were working on the Peanuts comic books, did they also use Schulz's preferred pen nib? If so, did they have to buy their own, or did Schulz give them some private stock? If or when they were using a different pen? Can you tell?
Jimmy: And how, first off, William Pepper, host of It's A Podcast, Charlie Brown. Great podcast you need to be listening to if you're a Peanuts fan. I bet that Schulz, I bet a lot of that would have been up to the artist doing it. I think from what I look at, when I look at the Sasseville stuff, it looks more to me like a Hunt 102, which is like a slightly stiffer, thinner, scratchier instrument. But that could just be how Sasseville is using the pen that he's using. And it's not the pen itself. it's. It's. It is hard to tell. You know, they talk about the first Led Zeppelin album, you know, selling a million, Les Paul's but there's no Les Paul guitar on the record. It is hard to tell. And I think once, when we know that Schulz always use that radio 914, we maybe assume it was used by Sasseville, but I think it would probably be up to Sasseville, whatever he wanted to use. What do you guys think?
Harold: I have no idea. yeah, I'd have to pull up some Sasseville stuff to look at. It's interesting, given Schulz felt so highly about that, that, you know, he. Well, maybe he offered it, and they said, I can't draw with this thing, you know? And then you just ultimately have to let the artist use what they used.
Jimmy: Yeah. I mean, or they are using it, and that's the closest they can get. It is really hard to say without, like, a photograph or, you know, a direct testimony from someone.
Harold: Jimmy, you've drawn Peanuts characters with that radio 914 nib, right?
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: So what was your experience when, for the first time, you're trying to draw Peanuts character using the same tool that Schulz did? It seem to make like, oh, it all makes sense now? Or were you like, how on earth did he do this?
Jimmy: At first, I couldn't get it to put any ink on the paper. I was like, okay, I don't understand. And I had inked at that point, I don't know how. Hundreds of pages with a crow quill pen, like an idiot in the 21st century. But I didn't make that thing work. And then I. So I put it away. I got, like, five of them, and I put it away. And then I was reading that interview where. Or I don't know if it was reading it or it was in some video I saw or something where he says it was a writing pen. And I thought. So I pulled it out and was like, well, let's write my name. Let's write. And I was like, oh, wait a second. I see what it is. it's really. Actually, you have to sort of unlearn the stuff you learn for a regular dip pen. It's actually more intuitive than a regular dip pen. You can have more freedom with it. But what was frustrating is, yeah, you get the lines and you're like, oh, my God, those are Peanuts lines. But it only highlights all the more that you're not Charles Schulz, you know, because there is some magic.
Harold: Well, that makes a lot of sense because I could never. I could never get a crow quill to work. I would. They would. I would fight with them, and I ultimately just gave up. And, when I. I also got some of the 914 nibs. And like you said, it was much more intuitive and I instantly could start using it. And. And when I was drawing, trying to draw a Peanuts character as well as I could, it really looked like a Peanuts character. I was like, ooh, yeah, yeah. That's pretty amazing.
Jimmy: Yeah. That's the best answer I could give, though.
Liz: And Jim Puey McClary writes, I vaguely remember my headmaster, Latin teacher, having a book with a bit of Peanuts in Latin. I do remember at the time that the Holy Grail was to collect albums, issues of Asterix that were translated into Latin and also Esperanto. Schulz was, of course, familiar with one phrase in Latin as it appears in his January 11, 1965 strip, felicitas est parvus canus calidus-- happiness is a warm puppy.
Harold: that's cool. And of course, he had a lot of them when Snoopy's a lawyer.
Liz: And he adds, considering that Linus is a latinate name now, I'm wishing that the strip had taken place in classical antiquity. Snoopy's flashbacks to the gallic wars would be especially exciting.
Jimmy: My advice would be, go for it. I think that's a fan comic waiting to happen.
All right, well, if you guys want to get in touch with us, what you can do is you can go over to our website, unpackingpeanuts.com, and, just fire off an email. We're, unpackingpanutsmail.com We would absolutely love to hear from you. And of course, you can always either send us a text or shoot us a voicemail. And that number is 717-219-4162 all right, let's get back to the strips.
March 2. Lucy and Charlie Brown are hanging out at the thinking wall, and Charlie Brown says, in a good conversation, one person talks while the other listens. Then that person talks while the first person listens. Lucy takes this in and says, I like talking. I hate listening. Charlie Brown says, I realize that when, Lucy answers, what?
Michael: I've stolen this joke.
Jimmy: That's brilliant, right?
Michael: Brilliant, but pretty obvious, too.
Jimmy: Yes, but also great. I've never. It's a joke that you would do a million times as a kid. You know, I didn't hear you. What? What? But in a comic strip, that just struck me as really funny.
Harold: It's weird that Charlie Brown rolls his eyes in the fourth panel and you draw that little line down from the, from the pupil to show that he's missing it on one side. Yeah, that's really odd. It's like he left it all on purpose or he forgot. He.
Jimmy: I think maybe, you know, who knows? It might have. I mean, again, it's impossible to really know, but it seems like it might be the kind of thing where, you know, he was trying to draw him, not just rolling his eyes upward, but there he's rolling his eyes upward and to his left, all, right. And to do that, the part of the parentheses would then conflict with his nose. So, he did it that way as opposed. Because it's a different look if you put them the other way. If you put the. If you just flip the eye and have the parentheses on the outside, you know.
Harold: Yeah. So maybe he tried it and then he whited it out again.
Jimmy: Yeah.
March 5. Sally and Eudora are at the Tiny Tots concert. Sally says to Eudora, every time we come to one of these concerts, they play Peter and the Wolf. They must think we don't understand anything else. Sally says, don't you like Peter and the Wolf? And Sally says, I don't know. I've never understood it.
Jimmy: Those are two back to back good punchy jokes.
Michael: as far as I could tell, though, Eudora has no personality.
Liz: But she did get a haircut.
Jimmy: She did. I like a good no personality character. I want to do an episode where we have to draft a comic strip using the Peanuts characters. So we'd each have to pick a main character, a supporting character, you know, comic relief, whatever. and see if we could come up with a, with a. Each of us come up with a unique, different cast that would make its own comic. Just using the Peanuts characters, I could find a spot for Eudora. She gets on base.
Michael: Well, either her Schroeder. I mean, Shermy.
Jimmy: Shermy.
Michael: Yeah, there's the Shermy slot.
Harold: So is Eudora active in the Nirvana era?
Jimmy: she's around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's around. We're getting there now.
Harold: She grew it. Grew into it, yeah, with that little, that hat and that hair and.
Liz: Yeah. I think you were right about the Imperial margarine, though. I think it's closer.
Jimmy: We're only six years away from the Nirvana era at this point. Well, actually, we're only four years away from their first album. That's.
Harold: Wow. We're probably about ten years from Imperial Margarine.
March 10, Charlie Brown's atop the mound, and he lets one rip. It turns out to be, a hi pop. He yells a pop fly. I got it. It's all mine. Now we see Charlie Brown trying to maneuver under the ball to make a spectacular catch. He says to himself, if I catch this ball, we'll win our first game of the season. He's positioned himself underneath it, but he is a little shaky. He's saying, please let me catch it. Please let me be the hero. Please let me catch it. Please. On the other hand, do I think I deserve to be the hero? The ball's still in the air through all this, but the kid who hit it doesn't want to be the goat. Is a baseball game really this important? Is ball still in the air? Lots of kids all over the world never even heard of baseball. Lots of kids don't get to play at all or have a place to sleep or. And at that, the ball lands in Charlie Brown's mitt. But then bonk pops out and hits the ground. Schroder comes out to the mound and says to Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown. How could you miss such an easy pop fly? Charlie Brown says, I prayed myself out of it.
Jimmy: I think, judging by the ones we picked, he's on a roll. I think this is another really funny strip and another really funny strip that I would only see in Peanuts.
Michael: It didn't need the punchline, I don't think. I mean, the funny thing is, he's, like, wavering and thinking about all kinds of different things while there's balls in the air. praying himself out of it doesn't seem to work, because he doesn't really pray, does he?
Harold: Well, he does have. Please let me catch it. So it does look like he might be, you know, talking to a higher power.
Michael: That's in one panel. I think it's near that he's thinking about kids all over the world not having enough food or.
Jimmy: Yeah, because actually, I didn't think about it that way. But really, the only panel that could be just thought of, really, I would think, as praying. Is that third panel on tier two. Everything else is him talking to himself is basically.
Harold: I don't think so. Why wouldn't he continue to be talking to who he was talking to in the other panel? I could totally see this as a prayer. he's continuing the conversation. It's one sided, like with Lucy. Conversations can be. But, yeah, he totally could be. I mean, that that was a revelation to me at the end, was like, oh, this whole thing was a conversation with God.
Jimmy: The problem with all of Charlie Brown's problems are he's always focused on the wrong thing. He doesn't have to think about being a hero or asking a higher power. To be a hero, he needs to catch the ball. That's the. He goes twelve steps down so far. I mean, you know, I'm yelling at him like he's a real person. This is a brilliant comic strip that's creating this character.
Michael: One thing people around the world who never heard of baseball don't appreciate. It's like one of the hardest things in the world to judge where a fly ball is coming down.
Jimmy: Yeah, that's true.
Michael: You've got it.
Harold: Like, especially if it's been high up.
Michael: And long enough, you gotta judge this trajectory. And you can use the sound of the bat to tell you how far it was hit and the wind condition. I mean, to me that's magic, because I always had, I still have nightmares about a high fly ball and just not being in the right place when it comes.
Jimmy: We had the worst teener league baseball field in the world. I mean, it was just basically rocks. And behind home plate or not home plate, behind right field was a, crick, as we would call it, a creek that was just filled with sulfuric water from the mines and open sewage. So that was right field, right? It was a dump. I mean, I grew up in, in the coal region. It was really a poor place. One kid, played, and so left field faced exactly west. So the sun would set and you couldn't see anything out there. And he invested in flip up sunglasses, you know, which were pretty expensive at the time. And I remember standing in center field and a fly ball went to left field and he flipped the sunglasses down and he just stood there hitting his glove. And I'm like, is he ever going to put his glove up? And he didn't. He just, he just completely lost it and it hit him right between the eyes. He has, I think I've told this on this podcast before, he has, like a butterfly scar in between his eyes for this, where the glasses were for the rest of his life.
Harold: Oh, my gosh. Wow. This may be controversial, but I actually kind of admire Charlie Brown because of this whole sequence, because he's going, he's going through a lot of really deep stuff that's more important than the game. So I kind of like, go, okay, you go, Charlie Brown.
Jimmy: But it's not more important in the game because everybody's there for the game. That's the part that's problematic. Like, I think Charlie Brown often assumes his personal, moral, and, philosophical quandaries. His emotional problems are the most important thing. They're actually not. There's 18 people there that are there to play the baseball game, not worry about the people in China who don't know baseball.
Michael: It landed in the glove.
Jimmy: Yeah, but it's.
Michael: That was not the problem. The problem was he has a bad glove.
Jimmy: He's a bad. He didn't break it in.
Michael: He didn't any basket catch, which, you know, Willie Mays…
Jimmy: also, bad mistake.
Harold: Well, I'll respectfully disagree, Jimmy. I think he was. He was going into something that was actually more important than the game. And if that's the way it plays. The way it's the way it plays.
Jimmy: Well, no, he can do that. A great place to go through something more important in the game would be any place other than the game. That is what the rest of the world.
Harold: always about, the game, right?
Jimmy: Go outside these fences, and you can contemplate anything you want. In the meantime.
Harold: I mean, he's still, he's still trying. When you're talking about Charles Schulz being a character in the game, let's say God is a character in this, and God says, okay, you learned something very important. I'm gonna let you drop the ball so you remember what's important, you know?
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: We talk about how all the different ways you can read a Peanuts strip, and this is definitely one of those.
Jimmy: Two, I think, catch the ball, Charlie Brown. All right, so how about, we contemplate, our existence and the fate of the universe and people who do or do not like baseball or know about baseball, for a week and come back and pick up this conversation?
I don't know how everyone else is going to like it, but I like this new format. I love that we get to, talk longer about all this stuff. That's, it's Peanuts adjacent, but it's part of Peanuts. Like, Charles Schulz, has given us a lot to chew on. So I'm more than happy to, listen and chat with my pals in, even greater detail in the coming weeks and months.
So if you want to, keep this conversation going, you could do it a couple different ways. the first thing, like I said earlier, is you can go over to our website. You could sign up for the great Peanuts reread. and that will get you an email once a month. That'll tell you what we're going to be covering in the upcoming episodes. you can also just, follow us on social media. We're unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads, and we're unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, blue sky and YouTube. We would love to hear from you there. And, of course, you could call the hotline or leave a text message. And that number is 717-219-4162 and remember, when I don't hear from you, I worry. So. Okay, so that's going to be it for this week. come back next week where it'll be more of the same. Until then, for Michael, Harold, and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, 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 his 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.
Michael: Hopefully no one will notice you're being creative.
Comments