1999 Part 4 - Rerun Would Never Pull the Ball Away

Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. This is Unpacking Peanuts. I'll be your host for the proceedings. My name is Jimmy Gownley. I'm also a cartoonist who did things like Amelia Rules,  7 good reasons not to grow up, and the dumbest idea ever. And guess what? You can read my new strips, for free over at Gville comics.substack.com. 

Joining me, as always, are my pals, co hosts and fellow cartoonists. He's a playwright and a composer, both for the band Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast. He's the co creator of the original comic book price guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules, and the creator of such great strips as, Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells, and Tangled River. It's Michael Cohen.

Michael: Say hey.

Jimmy: And he's executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation Sweetest Beasts, Taro Bucholtz.

Harold: Hello.

Jimmy: And making sure everything runs smoothly and keeping us out of trouble, it's our producer and editor, Liz Sumner.

Liz: Howdy.

Jimmy: Well, guys, we've, ventured into uncharted territory. A fourth episode. For a year, no one's ever done anything like this. Never. It's never been done before. So, is everyone ready for the emotionality of getting through episode 1999, part four, and then episode 2000?

Liz: Get out your handkerchiefs.

Harold: Yeah. Yeah, it was emotional, emotional. Reading these strips, there's no question about, really was tough. And for those of you who don't know what we're talking about.

Jimmy: Spoilers, spoilers.

Harold: This is the end of the run of Peanuts. And, you know, any history of the creator of Peanuts, it also dovetailed eerily with his end as well. And that is, I think, partially what makes this particularly powerful to be reading his, his final work. On November 16th of 1999, he was rushed to the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. he had a blocked abdominal aorta. They did surgery, and during the surgery, they discovered he had colon cancer.

Jimmy: I remember finding out, you know, that he was sick. I was actually. I worked at a TV station at the time, an ABC affiliate. And they knew I was a Peanuts fan, a Schulz fan, and they had me on as their, you know, man on the street, explaining why it's. It's such a sad thing. But I refuse to cry on camera. Even though they really, really wanted me to. 

Harold: Well, you can make up for that today.

Jimmy: Yeah, well, no camera thing. I'll happily cry on a microphone.

Harold: Okay.

Liz: So I wanted to say, everybody, get your colonoscopies.

Jimmy: Yeah, you know what? That's a good thing. That's a good thing to remember. you know, who knows what would have happened if they would have been able to find it, find it sooner, but they did not. So, Michael, do you remember, this period? Do you remember what your thoughts were having not read it in such a long time or.

Michael: I don't remember how I found out. Possibly you. You told me. No, I do remember. An issue of the Comics Journal came out shortly afterwards. It was lots of interviews and lots of comics professionals talking about how much they worship Schulz. And, yeah, that was the first time it really sunk in when I was, you know, all of my other comic heroes mourning him, even though they had no stylistic relationship to him.

Jimmy: Well, yeah, that's such an interesting thing. I mean, his work just crossed every possible boundary. underground cartoonists loved him. Horror cartoonists loved him. Superhero cartoonists loved him. I mean, he just touched everybody. And obviously, not just cartoonists. You know, it's just hundreds of millions of people. It's astounding that it all came from one person, you know, and what's also kind of amazing is the fact that even though, you know, he. He leaves us at the end of this run, Peanuts doesn't. You know, it's still, like Michael said, episodes ago, for a lot of people, it never ended. you know, and, And that's something else. That's. I guess when you can. When you magically turn your one and only life into art, and the art's this good, it's a kind of immortality in and of itself. It's amazing. Well, you know, I guess, there's no point in putting it off. Sydney or the Bush. How about we just hit these comic strips?

Liz: Okay, let's do it.

Jimmy: Actually, Harold, before we do, do you have one final anger happiness Index?

Harold: I do. So. Yeah, the Anger and Happiness Index. this is the last full year. And so last year, 1998, we had 91 strips where a character showed anger and 80 that showed happiness. So anger was beating out happiness toward the end of the run. How does it feel like it ended to you guys?

Jimmy: I think. I think it's about the same. I don't think we've had much change at all.

Harold: Yeah. Michael, did it have a different vibe to you at the end or did it pretty much just seem like the continuation of where we've been?

Michael: it really seemed like he was just moving forward as usual and not letting whatever was going on affect his characters.

Harold: Yeah, well, it's interesting. I, the, the happiness pretty much stayed the same. It went from 80 to 84 strips, but the anger, dropped like a rock.

Jimmy: Oh, wow.

Harold: To 57.

Jimmy: Oh, wow.

Harold: Isn't that wild? So, yeah, I mean who's to say what that was about, why it was. But I think that's the second lowest it ever was since we started counting this.

Jimmy: Amazing.

Harold: So, yeah. So some, something, something's happened, you know, if something was going on. but in a way I'm strangely happy that, yeah, that was the case.

Jimmy: Absolutely. And that puts up your happiness index because I don't know if you know this, but I keep the same tabs on you.

Harold: That's good. We'll have to put, we'll put that on the Obscurities tab. That's inside the Obscurities.

Jimmy: Yes, the obscure Obscurities.

Harold: And again, for those of you now that we're kind of coming to the end of this 50-year run, if you have not been to unpackingpeanuts.com and have not clicked on the Obscurities page, Liz has created an amazing collection of little posts that were related to things that we've talked about all the way through the run of the strip that were a little bit out of the ordinary. And I think maybe that tab is a little an injustice to what's in there to call it Obscurities. But since you are the insiders, you know, the podcast, there's a lot of really cool stuff in there and it's definitely worth going in and spending a, ah, a few minutes just reminiscing if you've been with us all the way through or discovering some pretty cool stuff about things. Peanuts, covered over the years. Yeah.

Jimmy: And while you're there, you can go over and you can sign up for the Great Peanuts reread, which you've missed. So we're going to have to change that tab. But sign up, for that and you'll get our, our newsletter, which just comes out once a month and it lets you know what we're going to be covering next, which is even more important as we go forward, because, we're going to be covering a bunch of different topics. Our first topic is Unpacking Snoopy, where we're going to do a Season, for the Gen Z icon Snoopy. Following him all the way through, 50 years of the strip, all his permutations. That should be a lot of fun, and we would love to have you be a part of it. Okay, well, guys, no putting it off anymore. Let's hit the strips.

Liz: Oh, just one more thing.

Jimmy: Yeah,

Liz:  sorry. 

Jimmy: Oh, you were just kidding.

Harold: We'll see you next time. For episode five of 1999.

October 15th, Charlie Brown's Reading that same book he's been reading for 50 years on the chair. 

Jimmy: that's my head canon. He has never finished this book because people keep interrupting him. 

And Sally interrupts him hanging on her new favorite position, hanging on the edge of the chair. And she says, the teacher didn't like my report. And she sits next to him and says, I have a sneaking suspicion she thought it was dumb. And Charlie Brown asks, why do you think that? And Sally says, she said it was dumb. 

Jimmy: I guess their teacher's not that much better than Peppermint Patty's.

Harold: This is the first time I've seen a strip where a character doesn't have both parentheses around, the sides of their eyes. If they have one, they have two here. Their first two panels. Sally has parenthesis on one side and not on the other. And I'm wondering, is that some new, new expression, that he's going for? Because I've, not seen him do that before.

Liz: I think it's because her head's turned a little bit.

Jimmy: Yeah, that's what I think.

Harold: Unusual. And then she doesn't have any in this. In the third panel. So, yeah, her kind of depressed look is, I think, what he's going for. But only on one side.

Jimmy: Yeah, I think, well, maybe she's only half depressed.

Harold: Maybe it's all that zipatone around her, the fumes.

Jimmy: There's a lot of zipatone on that strip, isn't there? A lot that is. Does look like a Buzz Sawyer strip. Three different shades. And then he's got a cast shadow behind her and a cast shadow done with zipatone on Charlie Brown.

Harold: And the version that we've got digitally, the halftone looks kind of moiréd, which is not something I think we've seen a whole lot of.

Jimmy: Yeah, it's completely moiréd. But that's probably just because we're getting a reproduction of a reproduction here.

Harold: I would think so. Yeah. I'm sure if I go to the-- Because I know how that would happen when I was doing a strip, because the only way I knew how to reduce it, to take it over to the university newspaper was to use, a photocopier. And the photocopier was an imperfect device. And so you didn't get whatever was crisp dots was not crisp dots anymore after it had run through a photocopy or down to a size that they would accept. And I don't think Schulz ever had to do that.

Jimmy: No, I highly don't, actually.

Harold: What's interesting is, there is no zipatone at all in the Fantagraphics book. So this was, this was added after the fact.

Jimmy: Oh, well, maybe it was even done, with an early version of Photoshop. And that's why they're getting fancy with drop shadows and stuff.

Harold: Who knows, even possibly the color version, which did exist at this point, was being in some way turned into the black and white version. And that was a. Something that they were trying at the end. And that would explain why it looks a little rough. Yeah.

Jimmy: All right, here we go. One of the all time greats. 

October 24th. Rerun's on the front porch or the back porch of the Van Pelt house, and he yells, lucy, lunchtime. This is a Sunday. So now the, strip really starts up and, oh, Lucy is ready to hold the football for Charlie Brown one last time. And Rerun says to her mom says to come in for lunch, but Lucy's busy. She says, so I'll hold the ball, Charlie Brown, and you come running up and kick it. But Rerun says to Lucy, she says, right now. Lucy says, oh, good grief. She's frustrated because this is like her favorite time of year. And Charlie Brown says, that's all right, we'll do it some other time. But then Lucy makes the fateful decision and says, no, Rerun can take my place. And Rerun says, me? And then he sets up as if he's gonna hold the ball for Charlie Brown. And Charlie Brown walks away saying, this time I'll do it. This time I'll kick it. Rerun will never pull it away. He just wouldn't. Then Charlie Brown heads for the football. So here we go. And then we hard cut to inside the Van Pelt house with Lucy having her little lunch. And Rerun brings the football in and Lucy says, what happened? Did you pull the ball away? Did he kick it? What happened? And Rerun says, you'll never know, which sends Lucy screaming to the heavens.

Michael: Well, I would actually. I hate to deflate the importance of.

Jimmy: This, but this doesn't count because she gave it to Rerun as opposed to her doing it herself, right?

Michael: No, no, because I, I'd been doing, some heavy 1950s rereads. And he actually kicks a football. It was like 1953. It was a Snoopy strip. So Snoopy's just looking at the football and then not sure what's going on. Then he, Charlie Brown runs up and kicks it.

Jimmy: Somebody. No, well, that doesn't count. I'm sure he's kicked a football in his life.

Michael: No, but someone was holding it, so it's not the first time.

Jimmy: All right, well, that wasn't.

Michael: Sorry. I  was deflating you all week.

Harold: No, well, again, I mean, come on, Rerun. He's mixing up this strip so well at the end. And this is such a great example of that. A long time tradition and he gets to step right into it. I love the little innocent stare he has looking down at the ball, holding his finger on it as Charlie Brown walks away to go and run and try to kick it. It's just great, Great little character.

Jimmy: I love it. He has the-- And what's, great about it is that, you know, he has this opportunity. He could just do it and let Charlie Brown kick the ball. He could pull it away and make Lucy happy. But he finds, as Rerun often does, a third way.

Harold: Yeah, right. Yeah, he can, yeah, he can possibly, satisfy Charlie Brown and himself. Or not, we don't know. But yeah, he's got those closed eyes that we often saw Pigpen have. It's kind of this noble.

Jimmy: He's so content and smug actually is the word we're looking.

Harold: Smug and. Yeah. Noble maybe. I don't know. But it's, that's great.

Jimmy: Yeah. Really, really good. And such a. What, like you couldn't end it better because you can have it whichever way you want, you know, and that's, that's amazing. If you, if you knew you had to end it, you wouldn't do this. Well, you know.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: Love it. Getting some color and those, some of those gradations in it and like puffy clouds and stuff.

Harold: Yeah, Puffy clouds even look, soft.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: And they're not hard edged. So he did not draw.

Jimmy: No. That's interesting.

Harold: Little, little spaceships, like plan--

Jimmy: Yeah. It looks like the same one moved three times. You have a supercomputer make three separate clouds. Come on, people.

Harold: You have a Commodore 64.

October 28th, Peppermint Patty comes, up to Snoopy, who's sitting atop the doghouse and says what kind of A message dog, are you? And she hands him a piece of paper and says, here, I want this delivered right now, and don't make a paper airplane out of it. And Snoopy doesn't. He just rolls it up into a ball and throws it.

Michael: This is a follow up where he does do the paper airplane.

Liz: What's a message dog?

Jimmy: Oh, you know, the famous message dogs of the Himalayas.

Liz: Uh-huh.

Jimmy: Everybody knows.

Harold: Wow.

Jimmy: You haven't checked out our Peanuts obscurity. There will be a whole entry. Entry on that.

Harold: Yeah, well, Peppermint Patty's sure there is such a thing as a message dog, and she's sure it should be Snoopy. And then, yeah, she's always signing people up for things, especially Charlie Brown. And now she's signing up Snoopy for something, and he's not. She's kind of like replacing Frieda, I see, who's always trying to get in, to go after the bunnies and early in the morning. So, yeah, this is a. This is a Peppermint Patty project. But I. I thought it was very funny. I picked this one, this wadding, wanting the message and tossing it to the cat. Oh. And so. And for what it's worth, the last daily strip that had zipatone was, September 22nd. So they were messing around with some other process for these final months.

Jimmy: How do you know that?

Harold: Because the Fantagraphics books don't show the coloring. So it's. It's only the strips as they were, I guess, in that initial form.

Jimmy: Got it. 

October 31st. We start out with a symbolic panel. It's Snoopy in a, Jack O Lantern. He's popping out the top. And from the eyes of the Jack o' lantern, two of his little bird friends, I think it's definitely, Woodstock and Harriet pop out of the eyes. And then we see Sally, going home. And she looks irate. And she comes in, and there's Charlie Brown, who's now reading a comic book. So maybe he's finished that book finally. And she says to Charlie Brown, I can't believe I'm so stupid. She kicks her jacket as she takes it off, saying, why do I believe him? Charlie Brown says, believe who? And Sally says, Linus. Why do I believe him? And then we cut back. It's a flashback to Linus and Sally in the pumpkin patch. And Linus says, if you sit here in the pumpkin patch, you may be the first one ever to see the Great Pumpkin. And Charlie Brown says to Sally, and you believed him? And Sally says, how could I help it? We actually heard something. And we cut back again, and Linus is excited and he says, listen, do you hear that? Do you see anything? And Sally says, yes, I see something. And Linus says, is it the Great Pumpkin? And then Sally yells, no. And we see Snoopy driving a Zamboni across the pumpkin patch. And she yells, no, it's a Zamboni.

Michael: Always good for a laugh.

Jimmy: Is that the final appearance of the Zamboni?

Liz: I thought we already talked about the final appearance of the Zamboni, didn't we?

Michael: Oh, maybe that's coming up. I don't know.

Liz: No, we talked about it like two or three episodes ago.

Michael: All right, well, they were wrong.

Harold: Whoever. it's the chat GPT answer. You go, are you sure? It's like, oh, it's always good to recheck. We always completely opposite of what I just told you.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah.

Harold: What do you think of the coloring in this one?

Michael: Yeah. Who's doing that?

Jimmy: No idea.

Michael: Totally different.

Jimmy: I imagine it's Paige Braddock. Right.

Harold: I mean, it's interesting. I'm wondering what Schulz did offer here. So we see his famous grass in that throwaway top panel, but you don't see the edge of the grass.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: So did he provide the grass and it was removed artistically so that it's just the. The green?

Jimmy: I don't think so.

Harold: Or did the artist just take the liberty to make peanuts grass because it's.

Jimmy: Not really very good peanuts grass?

Harold: Yeah. Yeah. It's. It's, interesting looking that it's. It's very. It's very 90s coloring. Lots of gradations. And they go out of their way to make that sofa look.

Liz: That's gorgeous.

Harold: 3D.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harold: And again, some colors we would not have seen on the color spectrum back in the day, so.

Jimmy: Right.

Harold: It's got its own look.

Jimmy: There were really. It was hard to get good dark colors, for one thing. So like, the purples look really good. Yeah. I like. I love the. The little love seat. Really cute.

Harold: Yeah. And the bushes that they're in. yeah.

Jimmy: With the little highlight all on the edge of the leaves.

Harold: Yeah. It's really giving you a measured look that's shaded like we've never seen before.

Michael: I'm wondering if he's reading an underground.

Jimmy: Comic with the X. Yeah.

Harold: It's got an X. Yeah.

Michael: I started just spelling comics with an X. Is that something that happened before?

Harold: Well, maybe. Rerun has gotten some stuff published.

November 4th. Snoopy's atop the Doghouse. And he's looking fiercely towards the house, and he says, sometimes if you stare at the back door, your supper comes early. And then we see Charlie Brown saying, Snoopy. And Snoopy is so excited, he starts dancing around. It worked. It worked, it worked, it worked. leaving Charlie Brown in the middle of this completely befuddled and an empty supper dish on the floor. And then Charlie Brown says, I just came out to tell you that supper will be a little late tonight. And then this deflates Snoopy utterly. He's lying flat in his stomach, and he says, it didn't work.

Harold: One parenthesis again. So maybe this is a thing. It's just his new. His new expression around Snoopy's eye when he's all depressed that he didn't get his food. But I love the dancing. I'm sure that one little panel of four Snoopy's dancing around has probably helped the merchandising side of Peanuts for years to come. It's adorable.

Jimmy: Yeah, this happy dance has really evolved over the years. It's good to see Snoopy still capable of it.

Harold: Yeah. Not quite the range of motion he used to have.

Jimmy:, but who does, you know? 

November 5th, Peppermint Patty and Franklin are in class. And Peppermint Patty says, psst, Franklin, what did you put down for the fifth question? And Franklin says, there is no fifth question. That was yesterday. And Peppermint Patty says, really? I thought I did that test. And then Franklin says, maybe you didn't hand it in. And then Peppermint Patty, shuffling through some paper, says, you're right. Here it is. And she says, in the last panel, this is the one where I spelled my name wrong.

Harold: She is at a Montessori school. She's just doing tests at her own speed. you're right. Here it is. Yeah, it's what she's working on.

Jimmy: That's the test she's doing that is really funny. And this is the final appearance of Franklin. So we're gonna see in the last few strips here, more and more final, appearances. And tomorrow, we're not covering the strip, but November 6th is the last time we see Linus and rerun together. So it's a time of endings. 

November 21st, Charlie Brown's on the phone, and he says, no, I think he's writing. And then we cut out to Snoopy atop the doghouse, thinking by his typewriter. And then the strip starts in the next tier with Snoopy typing the dog who never did anything. You stay home now, they said, and be a good dog. This is all Snoopy's story that he's typing. So he stayed home and was a good dog. Then he decided to be even a better dog. So he barked at everyone who went by. And we see a, really strange looking Snoopy barking over the fence to everybody. And he even chased the neighbor's cats. And we see Snoopy doing that. He comes home and they say, what's happened to you? They said, you used to be such a good dog. And Snoopy's just, like, cowering. He's sad that they're yelling at him. Then he continues writing his story. So he stopped barking and chasing cats. And everyone said, you're a good dog. And then he lies on his back and says, the moral is, don't do anything and you'll be a good dog.

Michael: I wonder if this would have been sort of the evolution of the next look for Snoopy. There's no reason to think Schulz would have stopped playing with the characters. Yeah, that's Snoopy in the, last panel in the second tier. It's just weird. And also the one where he's kind of crouched down, they look totally different.

Harold: Yeah. Eyes with circles and little pupils in them.

Jimmy: I really like the one where he's crouched, on the last tier. I think that's.

Harold: I do too.

Liz: Me too.

Jimmy: The one at the fence is, he almost. Well, the snout's so short and stuff. And the mouth is strange. And he has the weird, like, tuft on top of his head. It's completely different. Different.

Harold: Yeah. Is he, like. Is he, like, playing a younger dog? So I'm looking at the him writing and then looking at the story. It looks like it's a younger dog with a shorter snout.

Jimmy: Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. I think it might be stretching, but maybe. I think it just got out of, out of his control a little bit there.

Liz: We're back to the popcorn clouds as well as the puffy clouds.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah.

Harold: Some hand drawn and some just in the coloring.

Jimmy: Okay. Why don't we take, a break? since, you know, Snoopy tells us not to do anything, we will not do anything for a few minutes, see if that works out for us, and then we'll come back and we'll answer the mail and, finish up. 1999.

Liz: Alrighty. 

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Hi, everyone. We may have finished the Great Peanuts reread, but we're not finished talking about these strips. We have lots more to say about the characters, the art, the humor, the pathos, and how the strip developed over the 50 years. Starting in September new episodes will be available twice a month exclusively on Patreon. After the 3 month season is finished, they'll be available for everyone without a paywall. We hope you'll stay with us on this amazing ride. To sign up, go to patreon.com/unpackingpeanuts.

Jimmy: All right, we are back. Liz, I'm hanging out in the mailbox. Do you got anything?

Liz: We do, we heard from regular listener Paul Hebert, who says, hey, gang, I was looking at some old Peanuts paperbacks at the used bookstore when I noticed something. Many of the strips have been reformatted, often with panel frames removed and drawings extended lengthwise to fill the page horizontally. and he says, have you discussed this process? Was it Schulz's idea or something the publisher suggested? Did Sparky take the old strips and add a few lines to get the desired effect, or was it done by the publisher, you think? what other thoughts do you have as cartoonists on the question of reformatting a strip for a different publishing context, like newspaper page to paperback page. Be of good cheer.

Harold: All right.

Jimmy: Well, thank you for writing. Yeah, I mean, that would have been all done by the publisher. you know, Schulz wouldn't have had anything to do with that. I'm sure he wouldn't even have been.

Harold: Thrilled about it, but he didn't gripe about it enough to stop it. Right. So. So I'm guessing there was. It was an imperfect thing. These were 4 by 7 inch books. To take a square. What? I guess you could say a, A, three by three inch. If you tried to just drop the square in, or if you did the strip, you'd have to do it. Turn the book lengthwise, which wasn't going to happen for. Because that was a standardized format. So they were stuck with me trying to figure this out. And this was not the only reprint book that had to deal with that. Right?

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: So, yeah, I think, you know, I grew up with those. And so as odd as they are, I. That was some. The most Peanut's experience I had was the way those were just kind of broken up and pasted all around the page in various ways. Yeah, it is strange. And you think for a purist like Schulz, in some ways he would be absolutely cringing every time he looked at one of those books.

Liz: But I don't know, were the Rinehart books as badly done as the, as the smaller paperbacks?

Harold: Those were larger, Jim. Were those like. Or, Michael, you might know where there was like five by seven or something like that, or Five…

Jimmy: I have one right here.

Michael: Yeah, Jimmy has my whole collection. Now Jimmy’s collection

Jimmy: Well, I have right now Michael's copy of But We Love You Charlie Brown. And it is, five and a quarter by eight and a quarter.

Harold: And that stacks two of those, those squatter strips from the 50s actually pretty well.

Jimmy: Yeah, it looks great. And the other thing about it is the sheer printing quality on these is significantly higher than the Fawcett Crest books.

Harold: Is there a price on it?

Jimmy: a dollar.

Harold: A dollar. So. So. And I guess the Fawcett Crest books around that time, if they existed at that time, would have been like 40 cents. Right. That's about as cheap as they got.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: So you got 128 pages in those little newsprinty classic, you know, Harlequin romance size books. So that means a Sunday would be over two pages and a daily would be a single page. So. And I think the ones you got the, those, the Holt Rinehart Winston, those types of things, since they had two to a page in dailies, you're probably getting about the same amount of stuff for the money, but you're getting the nicer paper.

Michael: And the Sundays were in their own editions. They did all the Sundays together and.

Jimmy: They were sideways in black and white.

Liz:  I never saw a Fawcett Crest book. I only ever saw the Rinehart ones.

Jimmy: When I was, Yeah, my whole collection as a kid was the Fawcett ones.

Harold: Yeah. You grew up in a tonier neighborhood.

Jimmy: Yeah. In Girardville. We just like the Fawcett Crest. The down and dirty.

Harold: Yeah. And as a little kid, you know, you would, you would see this, this weird inscription on the front of the book and it's like selections from. Oh, no you don't. Charlie Brown, Volume 2. Like, what the heck is that? Yeah, yeah, it's some weird thing because it was from those originals. They were pulling them. So it was telling people, if you own this other book, don't buy the Fawcett Crest book unless you want to have duplicates. But as a little kid, you don't know what the heck they're talking about. It's this kind of strange language. Like there's this other world of peanuts you don't know anything about.

Jimmy: Yeah, I just pulled one off. This I have. You're something special, Charlie Brown. Which is Selected cartoons from the unsinkable Charlie Brown Volume 2.

Harold: Which I guess means the second half of the Unsinkable Charlie Brown.

Jimmy: I guess.

Michael: So that was one of the last ones I remember buying. Late 60s, I think.

Jimmy: it's a really bad cover on this by the way, Charlie Brown in a green shirt with the yellow stripe and a white collar.

Harold: I remember somehow I got one of the Holt Rinehart Winston books and I didn't like the cover I remember it was white and then I think most of them were. And then you'd have like an inset and the cover just looked weird to me. And so I actually preferred the pulpy Fawcett Crest for some reason.

Jimmy: Well, if there's one thing you like, it's bulky newsprint, that is.

Harold: Yes, bulky news.

Jimmy: Oh, be glad Harold doesn't print those Gideon Bibles they put in people's, hotel rooms. They'd be, they'd be 10ft tall.

Michael: What's funny is the original books had much snobbier titles. They assumed kids actually had education. It was like as you like it, Charlie Brown, like a Shakespeare reference.

Liz: The one I remember was Snoopy.

Michael: Yeah, that was the third one, I think.

Harold: Yeah. And I'm assuming he wasn't choosing those titles either.

Michael: No. Sunday's Fun Day. Charlie Brown, not so good.

Harold: Yeah, yeah. I remember at Archie when we started putting out the thousand page, digests, that was so fun. And we had. But we had to come up with a different name for the book publisher so that it would, could be differentiated and we didn't. We learned if you, if you label it something Volume two, Volume three, Volume four, people will tend not to buy it unless it just looks like it's its own thing. So it was the Archie 1000 page spectacular. And then as, as we went along, we were running out of superlatives. And so if you look at some of them, they are some of the weirdest names like the shindig. And there's some really bizarre names we've got later in the series.

Liz: we also heard from super listener Susie Metzler, who responded to our email about, what we're going to be doing after 2000. And she says, but we want to know what you'll be talking about, please.

Harold: Is that how she sounds?

Jimmy: Well, we were just talking about this in the break. What we're doing, ah, we're honing the details between us, fine tuning it like a laser. But we're talking about Snoopy.

Liz: Okay.

Jimmy: First season is going to be all about Snoopy, all his various, guises, his, his growth, his evolution, all that sort of stuff. You know, it's Gen Z icon, Snoopy. So we thought that's a perfect place to start the new, the new format.

Liz: Okay, sounds good. And that's it for the mail.

Jimmy:  Alright. And we heard, on the hotline, we, received this.

Benjamin Clark: Hi, gang at Unpacking Peanuts. This is your friendly neighborhood museum curator Benjamin Clark, calling from Santa Rosa, California. I'm actually calling from the Schulz Museum itself. And your recent mention, and discussion of the strip from January 28, 1999, featuring the gang at Art Museum, Rerun, is looking at the tribute piece of art for Earl from Mutts and several other characters. Looking at another painting, and you all wondered what it was. And you know what? I have been wondering the same thing for a long time. And so, but having, you know, art museum friends, I've sent that around, and nobody else seems to know what it is either. In the next strip, January 29, rerun mentioned Andrew Wyeth, who was someone that Schulz really, really admired. And so I thought, well, I wonder if it's an Andrew Wyeth, tribute. And I looked through all the art books of Andrew Wyeth that Charles Schulz owned, and also not there. So. But Andrew Wyeth did like to paint boats and ships and things, and I think that is what. What is in that picture. So I think the mystery still stands. And it's maybe not Andrew Wyeth, but maybe somebody liked that. I don't know. anyway, that's all I have. Thank you very much for such an engaging conversation as always. You guys do such a wonderful job. So, keep up the good work. We'll talk more soon. Bye.

Jimmy: Liz, why don't you say what happened, from here?

Liz: So I had just posted on Bluesky that we did a reverse image search of that panel, and I learned that it was a Monet chalk drawing, black chalk, called the Port at T O U Q U E S Touques. So I pointed Benjamin to my post, and he looked it up in Schulz's Monet books and posted back that you are absolutely right. Mystery solved.

Jimmy: There you go. Unpacking peanuts for the win. And reverse image.

Harold: Well, thanks for checking that, Liz. That's exciting. And it's nice to solve a mystery. We can put that in an exhibit someday.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Liz: And we are always here to help you. Schulz Museum.

Jimmy: Absolutely. that's it. So if you guys want to get in touch with us, please feel free, because we love hearing from you. you can call us on our hotline or leave a text message. That number is 717-219-4162. Just remember to identify yourself on the text message. you can also send us an email. We're unpackingpeanutsmail.com and you can follow us on all the good social media. But I'll give you that at the end. Now let's get back to those strips.

Liz: Oh, wait a second. what about, Where's Harold?

Jimmy: Harold, where are you going to be?

Harold: Where's Waldo? Well, I just wanted to remind all my friends in the New Jersey area that I will be on the 26th of July at the New Jersey Punk Rock Flea Market, which I misunderstood. I thought that was in Trenton. They have moved it from Trenton. It is actually in Edison, New Jersey.

Jimmy: That's so punk rock to move it. Yeah.

Harold: Come on. Yeah. Well, it is an interesting story. Apparently the place they were in was. Was falling apart, and Trenton was doing nothing to keep it up. And they were fearing for the lives of the people who were coming. So it. It was two punk rock. You know, they didn't want anyone to die. So they, they looked around and they found, another location in Trenton which was owned by Ticketmaster, which is very not punk rock. They did not like Ticketmaster and how Ticketmaster did things. And they're like, we can't do this anymore. So they, they renamed it to the New Jersey Punk Rock Flea Market from the Trenton Punk Rock Flea Market and moved it to Edison. So. But it's closer to my home, so I'm kind of happy about that.

Jimmy: So what do you say, guys? Are we going to hit the strips.

Liz: This is it.

Michael: Sure.

Jimmy: All right. 

November 28th. It's a Sunday. And we see Snoopy in the World War I flying ace get up. And Spike is down in the trench, in his infantryman get up. And they, run off the field of battle and head to a little cafe. And then, they're both sitting in the cafe, and Snoopy says, two root beers, s' il vous plait. And they get the root beers, and Snoopy says, pardon, mademoiselle, could my brother have a straw? And Spike gets a little straw. And then we see him taking the paper off the straw, but only part way, so that he could then blow through the straw so that the paper shoots up and sticks to the ceiling, which causes them to look over in the direction of, I assume, the waitress, who then kicks them both out of the little cafe. They go flying out into the rubble. And then they're sitting there on the battlefield, and Snoopy says, always the rowdy one, aren't you, Spike? And then Spike says, I got carried away.

Harold: I have to say. Kudos to the colorist. Those top two panels, that is really amazing in what it does to the scene.

Jimmy: Absolutely great coloring on this one. Totally love it. Hard to get those gradations to work right. They usually look super dated. but that color is awesome on those first two panels in particular.

Harold: Really, really nice. And Schulz offers just enough detail in the ink to complement the coloring and vice versa.

Liz: Yeah, I wonder if our friend Benjamin Clark could tell us who the. We were praising the zipatone artistry over the last few years. And, it would be nice to know the zipatonist and the colorist on these.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, I would be. And this is the final appearance of Snoopy as the World War I flying ace. Heartbreaking. Such a long run. If there's one personality that's associated with Snoopy, it's gotta be the World War I flying ace. Maybe also the writer. Those are the two I think people think of the most.

Liz: Yeah.

Jimmy: And, last one.

Liz: But not the last Spike.

Jimmy: No, not the last Spike.

Liz: Okay, good.

November 29th, but here's another last. Linus and Charlie Brown sitting on a bench in the schoolyard having their little lunch. And Charlie Brown says, and they very clearly, to set up the joke, have tiny little bottles of pop or something next to them. And Charlie Brown is playing with the bottle cap. And he says, I should take this bottle cap over to that little red haired girl. If she has a bottle cap collection, she'll throw her arms around me and say, thank you, thank you, thank you. And Linus, without even looking up from his lunch, says, a bottle cap collection. To which Charlie Brown just throws the bottle cap over his shoulder into a trash can.

Harold: Oh, man.

Jimmy: Did anyone ever have a bottle cap collection?

Michael: Is that a thing?

Harold: Not officially. I think I did have a few bottle caps lying around in a junk drawer.

Michael: This was the age of pogs, which I never quite understood.

Harold: No, no, that was. Oh, boy. supposedly they've kind of maybe in a way made a comeback. But. Yeah, for the. You young folk who don't know what a POG is, we don't either.

Jimmy: And we were there when it happened.

Harold: No, I mean the deal. The deal was, it was so you would get a gallon of milk or whatever, right? With a little twist off plastic cap with the big wide open mouth. And on the inside there was some company that had a, printing of some sort on the inside of the cap. So if you flipped it over you could see what was printed. And for some reason they decided, hey, you know, we have to print a bunch of these at a time. Why don't we do a bunch of different designs? Maybe people will collect them. And for some reason, they did. And then all of a sudden, it was like, oh, other companies, hey, we'll do it too. But then people said, why even bother with the having, to buy the drink? We'll just print thousands of these circles with little designs on them and call them pogs. And people collected them for a while, and they were not very collectible because they were weird. And I didn't understand them either.

Jimmy: Well, I remember when I was a real little kid, I think it was Pepsi. they did all the NFL helmets on the inside of their bottles, caps. And I remember collecting those. And I also remember a friend of mine had a big piece of Styrofoam on the wall. And when he would get a bottle or his dad would get a different beer bottle or whatever it was, he would just push the bottle cap into the Styrofoam and it made, like, a mosaic on his wall. And he had, like, hundreds of them. It was actually very cool.

Harold: That's kind of neat.

Jimmy: Shout out to Joe Vivasis, who I'm sure is not listening.

Liz: So I'm curious that. Jimmy, you said pop, not soda. And I'm under the impression that people from the Philadelphia area…

Jimmy: if I said pop, it's the only time I've said pop in my life.  Yeah, we would only say so. I never would say. Who knows why I said it? Who knows when you're talking on these microphones, what comes out of your mouth?

Liz: Phew. No. Now my. My theory is complete.

Jimmy: Oh, yeah. No, I don't mean to betray our Pennsylvania roots by saying pop. That's that 

Liz: right on P.A.

Harold: Yeah. Well, what's the Minnesota way to say it?

Jimmy: It's Midwest. Is pop, right?

Liz: Yeah, I think so.

Harold: Yeah.

Liz: What about LA. What'd you say?

Michael: Soda.

Liz: Okay, good.

December 4th. Spike is trying to climb up his cactus friend and says, ouch. Ow. Ooh. Ouch. He gets a little higher and says, ouch. Ow. Ouch. Ouch. Then he gets to the very tip of the cactus, and then he starts crawling down, saying, ouch. Ouch. Ow. Ouch. And then he hits the ground and says, joy to the world. And we see what he had done was put a star at the top of the cactus, for Christmas.

Harold: And one last ouch.

Liz: That's wonderful.

Jimmy: And that is the final appearance of Spike's cactus.

Harold: Oh, well, that's a. That's a quite, a way to go.

Jimmy: Yeah, it's a good looking little star, though. It's a real star, not so much a Dating Game star. So.

Liz: Yeah. Really?

Harold: Yeah. And it tells you something about Spike, that he's, he's an early decorator. This is the 4th of December.

Jimmy: Now, we don't talk about the next strip, the 5th, but that is the last appearance where Linus and Sally are together and they're going sleigh riding in the box, which is an appropriate little end for them. Sally sticking by her man as she flies that mountain. And then, 

December 7th, Charlie Brown, comes out to Snoopy, who's sitting on the doghouse. And Charlie Brown says, a good watchdog doesn't just go woof. A good watchdog goes rawr, Grr. And Charlie Brown is like gritting his teeth and really getting into it. And Snoopy says all capitals? 

Jimmy: meaning he could see Charlie Brown's lettering.

Harold: The last self referential strip about lettering.

Michael: They're all capitals.

Jimmy: Yeah, right.

Harold: That's a good point.

Jimmy: Yeah. It's really more bold is the issue than, it being capitals.

Harold: I think we should put out a book that is just this strip with Snoopy saying different things every single panel. And sans serif. Have you flossed?

December 13th, Snoopy is out there with, in his Santa Claus outfit and he's got his bell because he's doing his Santa for the Salvation army shtick. And as Lucy walks by, he rings the bell really loud. Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang. One, more. And then Lucy goes butt over tea kettle and she's lying there on the ground. Snoopy says season's greetings. 

Jimmy: And that's the last appearance of Lucy.

Liz:  Wow

Michael: that's very bizarre. I mean, he wasn't thinking that clearly.

Jimmy: No.

Michael: because it doesn't feature any Lucy traits at all.

Liz: He also makes a decision about season’s with an apostrophe.

Jimmy: Well, finally someone's done that.

Harold: And I will say that the zipatone, came back. So I don't know if that was an experiment and that they switched on or maybe Fantagraphics was getting its sources from different places, I don't know. So they were gone for a while and then they came back. So what you see here is what you see in Fantagraphics.

Jimmy: All right

Liz: Final Lucy?

Harold: Yeah. Isn't that.

Michael: You think she'd stick around till the end? Yeah, he just didn't have any more Lucy's to do in the last couple months.

Jimmy: Yep. December 21st, we have the final appearance of Spike, just walking his tumbleweed out around the desert. And then, the final baseball theme strip is on December 27th. It's just a whole season of endings. You really just need to read all of these and really take them in and savor them. But here we go, 

December 31st, and, Charlie Brown's in the beanbag chair, and Sally's behind him and says, that phone call was for you. I told them you don't take personal calls. I told them you lead a secluded life and prefer not to be part of the outside world. And then Sally leans up against the beanbag chair, saying, I volunteered to be the one in our family to take all the phone calls. And then Charlie Brown, sinks deep into the beanbag chair and says, I'd say something, but I am out of this world.

Harold: So this is a particularly heartbreaking strip to me. because, as we know, he went into the hospital November 16th. This is December 31st, so we're six weeks out. And, this was an unfinished strip. the lettering in the last panel is, I, believe a font.

Jimmy: Yes, it is. Well, I don't even know if it's a font or if it was just assembled from his lettering, you know, but it was done by.

Harold: It definitely looks like a font. Yeah. And which they. Which they would have already had for the sake of doing.

Jimmy: Oh, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right.

Michael: But do you think he. I think he had. In his notebook. He had the lettering or the word.

Jimmy: The lettering was on the strip, I'm sure. Yeah. Because there's a number of these that.

Michael: In pencil or what?

Jimmy: yeah, yeah. He would put the lettering in. In pencil, but he was also not dead. I mean, he could have just told.

Harold: They could have asked him. Yeah. What the ending was. But. But, man, that. As soon as I saw. I was like, oh, right. you know, he's right in the middle of a strip. You know, maybe now we. We were asking ourselves the question, did we know if Schulz went straight through on these things and. And would complete one before he'd move on to the next one? Now, if that weren't true, this could have been something he had set aside. For some reason, he wasn't pleased with it, or he was. Wasn't sure about it. Didn't have the gag line. I don't know. But otherwise, that does suggest the sense that he's drawing and he can't go on, and he's going to the hospital, and that's just like. Oh, well.

Jimmy: yeah, they they do. In that, book, Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis, he goes into detail about that day and Schulz being taken to the hospital. It is very sad. And you can see that, Charlie Brown's feet look just a little too small coming out of the beanbag chair. Yeah. And that's the end of 1999. 

Everyone alright?

Michael: Okay

Harold: Man.

Jimmy: Well, that was the last full year of Peanuts. so before we, sign off, let's. Let's just, go around and do our strip of the year and mvp. Michael, why don't you start?

Michael: Okay. yeah, I kind of found this pretty quick, so I'm not. This is not probably actually the best strip of the year, but this is my pick.

Jimmy: Well, you know, often the ones you pick is not actually the best strip of the year.

Michael: Yes, occasionally. but I do like this one. We're going back to August 19th. If people remember, this is the one where, Rerun is just sitting there doing nothing. And Lucy's very upset about this, and she's screaming at him, saying, this is a book. You know what a book is, don't you? And he goes flying. And then apparently mom sees this interaction, and Lucy says, nothing, Mom. I'm just encouraging him to read as he recovers, as Rerun recovers from being yelled at. And it. I. I like this just because this is Lucy at her Luciest. She's not going to really help anybody. She may think she's helping people, but she's just making them more neurotic.

Jimmy: And who would be your mvp?.

Michael: It's been Rerun the last four years. He's. He's definitely the star of the strip at this point.

Jimmy: It's a good pick. All right, my pick, for strip of the year is October 24th. Rerun, holding the football. Did Charlie Brown kick it? Did he not kick it? everybody go around. Did he kick it or not kick it? Michael.

Michael: Rerun would not pull it away.

Jimmy: All right, so it's one for kick it. Liz.

Liz: I think that he kicked it.

Jimmy: All right, and Harold

Harold: kicked it. 

Jimmy: All right, that's, a clean sweep. We all believe Charlie Brown kicked the football because Rerun would not pull it away, But Rerun would torture his sister. So that's my strip of the year. And I'm gonna go, with Charlie Brown, for this last one, just because he. No matter what has happened, he has been the hub around which all of this spins. So he's my pick. Harold, how about you?

Harold: Oh, good selections. I think that is a great classic strip, especially its meaning for the end of the run. and, to add the third strip without repeating, just for sheer joy of cartooning June 6, Schulz is revisiting the Red Hand.

Liz: Oh, yeah.

Harold: With the, with the Beagle Scouts that's staring up at them at the street crossing. That frightens them. That is just layers of Schulz and characters and humor and classic hat flying humor. So I. That one I just have a really warm feeling for. But character of the year? Not in this one. It's gonna be Rerun again. He was consistently surprising and delightful, and I wish him all the best in his career in comics.

Liz: And may I do a shout out for my strip of the Year?

Jimmy: Of course you may.

Liz: I want to mention the January 28, 1999, the Museum One, because the discussion we had, on that one, was really great. I really enjoyed editing that one because of all of the stuff that we teased out about that strip.

Jimmy: Oh, that is a good pick. That is.

Harold: Yeah, absolutely. That is a top strip of this year and has lots of meaning on lots of levels.

Jimmy: Absolutely. Well, guys, just because that's the end of the 90s, doesn't mean we're ending, next week, we are going to cover the strips of 2000, the last, few weeks of Peanuts. So please be here to help us get through it. We're, going to be basket cases, so we need all the support we can get. I was trying to psych myself up just for doing this one, like, and it's still, you know, it's not easy. but anyway, we would love to hear from you between now and then. 

If you want to keep this conversation going, the first thing you could do is go over, sign up for the great Peanuts reread, and get that newsletter once a month to let you know what we're up to. And you can also go ahead and email us if you want to. We're unpacking peanutsmail.com. you could also call the hotline 717-219-4162. or you could leave. You can leave a message or just, text that. And you can also find us on social media. We're unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads and unpackingpeanuts on Facebook, Blue sky and YouTube. And remember, when I don't hear from you, I worry. So come back next week, when we hit 2000. Until then, from Michael, Harold and Liz. This is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

MH&L: Yes, yes, yes. Be of good cheer.

Liz: Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz and Liz Sumner. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark. For more from the show, follow Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue sky and YouTube. For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.

Jimmy: You'll never know.