Charles M. Schulz and the Seven Deadly Sins of Cartooning

Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. This is Unpacking Peanuts, the 200th episode, and I'll be your host for the proceedings. My name is Jimmy Gownley. I'm also a cartoonist. You can find all my work over on Gville Comics on Substack and you could read them for free. 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 the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former Vice president for Archie Comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation Sweetest Beasts, it's Harold Buchholz.

Harold: Hello.

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

Liz: Howdy, 

Jimmy: Guys. It's episode 200. We did it.

Liz: Wow.

Michael: So we can quit now.

Jimmy: So, Liz, how many roughly comic strips does that mean we have covered?

Liz: 200 at least.

Jimmy: Was that like, well, why do we do like 15 episodes a show or 15 strips of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a. So, Harold, that's a lot, right?

Harold: That's awesome.

Jimmy: But judging by my quick math

Liz: we asked Harold because he's the one who knows numbers.

Harold: Let's say 3,000 plus. Okay. That's impressive.

Jimmy: 3,000 plus comic strips we've covered, that has been, just fun. What a blast. Do you guys have any reflections, any thoughts here on this momentous occasion?

Harold: Thank you. Thank you to the people listening. If we didn't have people listening, we wouldn't be doing this. And it has been a joy to do this. I have learned a lot in a lot of regards, but specifically, I think related to great cartooning because you can't help but have a few things rub off on you when you keep looking at amazing work and talk with amazing people who have insights that open your mind to what comics can be. And, that's in that spirit. I think that's what this episode for me is going to be, is us kind of looking as Cartoonists after having 200 episodes to explore Schulz through the lens of another cartoonist and see how he stacks up from his perspective. So I'm looking forward to a 200th episode doing something a little bit different together.

Jimmy: I'm looking forward to it, too, because I don't have to read the strips.

Liz: Yeah.

Jimmy: At, 200 episodes ago, I was the. I was the instigator behind wanting to do this, but the one thing I did not want to do was read the strips out loud. And everybody's like, you have to read the strips out loud. Otherwise, there's no show. And I was like, no, no, we can talk around it, or I could get someone else to do it.

Michael: Right.

Jimmy: But there was no way to do that, and I ended up doing it myself. And I guess it's been fun.

Harold: It's been great. You've been.

Liz: You have this superpower.

Harold: You've been wonderful. Well, thanks. But I will say, to celebrate our, 200th anniversary, we're moving to all AI reading from now on.

Jimmy: Have you guys seen the A? CEOs getting booed at commencements.

Harold: Yeah. It's crazy.

Jimmy: So fun.

Harold: It's a crazy world.

Jimmy: It takes hubris to, show up and tell kids. Get used to it. Yeah. It's been. Michael, what are your thoughts here? 200 episodes in.

Michael: Well, it's easy. Easier than I thought, because I'm not a public speaker. I never wanted to be a public speaker. Jimmy forced me to be a public speaker. So at least I know now I can do it. But also, I think we could do a show on anything we all like. And certain things become. Certain topics run dry pretty quick. And there are a few topics that, the more you get into it, the more interesting it gets. I feel the way about the Beatles, like, the smaller the detail, the more interesting. I feel that way about Game of Thrones. It's like, you can get into the nuances. It doesn't get boring. You can talk about, was this guy, the cousin of his grandfather?

Jimmy: This guy that doesn't exist and never asks. 

Liz: Lord of the Rings.

Michael: Yeah, Lord of the Rings. Infinite. You don't run dry. You just get into, like, how many hairs do they have on their toes? anyway. But Peanuts is like that. You know, Even the strips I really wasn't interested in turned out to be worth thinking about and talking about.

Jimmy: That's awesome. Well, that makes me feel great. And the other thing that I think is funny, because you guys said this fairly recently, when we were talking about, some other milestone we reached, and you both said, oh, well, I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it. I was, like, blown away by that. I'm like, what do you mean? I knew, I had zero doubts in my head that not only could you guys do it, but you were the only people I could do it with. So that's shocking to me. Maybe it just says something about my overblown sense of self confidence that I assume you guys have it as well, but you should.

Harold: We're grateful for your overblown sense of self confidence.

Jimmy: There was no doubt in my mind.

Harold: Overblown senses of self confidence sometimes can work out quite well.

Jimmy: Yeah, you gotta use it judiciously.

Harold: Yes.

Jimmy: Okay, so Harold alluded to the what we're going to be doing this episode. And what we are going to be doing is looking at the work of CC Beck, who did the, famous Shazam comic, which at the time was called Captain Marvel and His Seven Deadly Sins of Cartooning. But before we do that, I came across a thing on YouTube. YouTube has started pushing these YouTube shorts, and I had avoided, like, TikTok like the plague. But these YouTube shorts basically are TikTok on YouTube. And they're insane, insidious. It's just.

Michael: It's.

Jimmy: It's so. It's just insidious. Anyway, so I ended up finding a couple of these people I was interested in. This one guy, an Irish fella, I just thought was very entertaining and interesting, and he did a video on how he became a successful influencer.

Michael: Okay.

Jimmy: a content creator, I should say. And I wanted to talk to you guys about it and see the overlap with, with the way a comic strip, at least the way Schulz approached it.

Harold: Yeah, we sure could use a lot to learn. We have a lot to learn about how to be a successful content creator. So. Yeah, absolutely.

Jimmy: So he's like, okay, the first thing you need to know is you have to post every day. Obviously that, goes right along with the old. The daily comic strip.

Harold: Yeah, success. Okay.

Jimmy: Even more if you can. And he said this is his exact quote, quantity over quality. especially in the early days. Now, hang on. The reason being you put a bunch of stuff out there, something will click with people. Some things won't click with people. The things that come back to you where people are like, that was awful. You don't do those. Again, things that get little attention at all. Maybe you tweak it or you give it another try. You, you, you make sure it gets rejected rather than it just disappears.

Harold: So let the, Let the world decide what you're doing that has meaning. The more chances you get for someone to tell you that that's success at the beginning. Is that kind of his take on it.

Jimmy: Well, in one sense, it will tell you what to eliminate.

Harold: Okay.

Jimmy: And in another sense, it'll say, oh, these things are response people are responding to. So therefore, those are the things you do more of. For example, obviously Lucy in the psychiatry booth, right. Everybody likes it. Linus and the blanket. Everybody likes it. You do more. Eventually this becomes your brand and then you sustain it, and that's how you become a successful content creator. So much of that reminds me of Schulz, including the fact that, like, then you. He would still introduce things as he goes along, but with the same process of, if people hate it, I throw it out. If they make no reaction, I tweak it, reintroduce it. If they love it, I do more.

Harold: It's interesting that number two one, that's kind of the controversial one. When you had a syndicated daily strip, you created a strip and put it out there whether you liked it or not. You know, make it as good as you can. But you didn't have a chance to self censor unless you were willing to throw out a finished piece, which he did. Schulz did do occasionally. I think we've, we've, we've heard of that, but it's rare and it's a lot of work, you know, but the fact that you are obligated by a contract with a company that you are beholden to, to turn out something every single day, whether you, you could call that quantity over quality, because if you didn't have that over your head, how many strips would you put out? Yeah, I don't know.

Liz: Yeah, that's a difference between somebody with a contract with multiple newspapers and someone who's just putting stuff out on his or her own channel on YouTube.

Jimmy: Well, that's the other part of this that I want to talk about because, because I'm watching this video and I'm like, this is really interesting and really fascinating. And I'm like, okay, is there a way I could look at this as someone who's putting stuff online, who basically hates it? You know, I basically hate social media across the board. The only thing I like doing for fun is, is podcasts, but I don't like Instagram or any of that stuff, but I'm, I'm forced to do it.

Jimmy: So I'm, like, well, you know, this guy's fun and interesting. This is a valuable path. But here's the thing that I found out. So I had watched, you know, probably two dozen short videos by this guy, right? He's funny primarily. But then I After reading or after watching this video where he explains how he achieved it. And he has over a million followers on YouTube. He has something like 400 and some thousand followers on Instagram.

Michael: Wow.

Jimmy: Now he, So I did a deep dive and I looked at his earliest videos.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: And there he is holding a beautiful Martin acoustic guitar. The strings are brand new, they're shiny and they smell of brass and hope, you know. And now he does reaction videos of snack foods.

Michael: Wow.

Jimmy: So so my point being.

Harold: Yes, go on.

Jimmy: He makes, he makes a living.

Jimmy: As a content creator.

Harold: Which was his goal. Yeah.

Jimmy: But it is so far afield from being an Irish folk singer, which is what he started as.

Harold: Right.

Jimmy: So as to not be the same thing at all.

Jimmy: I don't think there's any danger we could have done that. I don't think we could have started off with unpacking peanuts and accidentally ended up with like a stock futures podcast or something.

Michael: No.

Jimmy: You know, or, or let's try all the Hershey products.

Harold: And I think that is one of the things about podcasts is you, you choose a lane and you put out 10, 20, 60 minutes of content, along a theme and you have to just kind of double down. Right. And it's not like you're doing a Instagram post and you had your cat in it and people love the cat and all of a sudden you're doing stuff with your cat. it's much harder I think. And we're basing it on the life's work of someone we really admire. That's why we're here. Right. So yeah. It's interesting that podcasts don't lend themselves right. To that. I think the way other really bite size social media can. But.

Jimmy: Right.

Harold: You know, and YouTube and discoverability and just everything's different. podcasts seem to be like the most stodgy thing that you could possibly do that would be considered maybe social media.

Jimmy: Which is why we picked it, of course.

Harold: Yeah. We're stodgy.

Michael: Yeah.

Jimmy: They were stodgy.

Michael: Yeah.

Harold: My hundred year old references are kind of make a little bit more sense in this world.

Jimmy: Yeah. but I think, I also think what Liz said is interesting and part of it because there's some sort of what the missing component is that the syndicate and the, and the newspaper editors. Because however the newspaper editors were looking at it privately on a business level. They were investing in you.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: they're like, we bet that your comic strip is going to be good enough to hold our readers attention and we'll give you $7 a week for it, or whatever it was, Right?

Harold: Yep.

Jimmy: That's the part that's missing. And that's why Schulz could explore and get to the World War I flying ace. But he's not there saying, you know, Sanka is a better brand than whatever Maxwell House. They talk about old references, but he

Harold: is trying lots of different things over time. He's not cramming it up with, like, I'm going to do, but all three

Jimmy: dozen things, but always in the context of. Of it's always still being some Peanuts.

Harold: Yes.

Jimmy: Has there.

Michael: I mean, what's.

Jimmy: There have been comic strips that have changed 180 degrees. Right. I mean, Barney Google, what are they? Do you guys have any other examples that you could think of?

Harold: Well, Mary Worth was originally a slapstick comedy. Of course, everyone knows I'm kidding.

Liz: Phew.

Harold: But, yeah, there were.

Michael: Oh, yeah, Dagwood and Blondie definitely was.

Jimmy: Oh, that's another great example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blondie was a flapper, and Dagwood was like a, rich guy that she was dating. Yeah, yeah.

Harold: And you got a kind of an urban thing with Barney Google, and it turns into a rural comedy with Snuffy Smith.

Michael: I don't know. Schulz is a different case completely, just cause, yeah, you gotta make a living. You gotta feed your family. But he got way past that.

Liz: Uh-huh.

Michael: And that was always been my. The question I had about Schulz and his motivation is he was the most successful person in the field by far.

Jimmy: Not even close.

Michael: And he could do whatever he wanted. Nobody was going to tell him no, so, you know, he didn't have to do any of anything. He could do whatever he wanted. And he's kind of much. He stayed in his lane. That's what he liked.

Harold: Yeah.

Michael: But he did not have that pressure of, like, okay, you know, if I blow this, I'm gonna have to get a job at an insurance company.

Harold: he's way beyond that pretty, pretty quickly. Right.

Michael: So, yeah. People on social media, you know, which I don't follow all that much. It seemed pretty desperate to me.

Harold: Yeah.

Michael: You know, attention, attention, attention, attention. Yeah. But you're. You're not doing what you love anymore.

Jimmy: Right.

Michael: And so it's kind of. To me, it's sad.

Jimmy: Well, that's how I felt watching those early videos of this guy. And, like, he has a gorgeous singing voice. He plays guitar beautifully, and he's given, you know. Oh, the Canadian Kit Kat, 4 out of 10. You know, like, I'm happy that he's successful.

Harold: But, yeah, and I'm hoping he's going to go do some gigs, at the local pub.

Jimmy: And that's the other side then. Are you able to then turn that. Can you look at it as something completely separate, as just promo for the thing you really want to do? Yeah, well, yeah, so this is just what I wanted to. To sort of talk about, because I wish there was a way we could find that keeps people able to experiment, but it had that safety net that. That they were still doing the thing that they loved.

Michael: Well, frankly, nobody could have been doing any of this stuff 20 years ago.

Jimmy: Well, that's true.

Michael: And, you know, someone like CC Beck didn't have a whole lot of choice. Well, because we're going to be talking about CC Beck a lot, later in the show. Super successful in the field. I mean, his comics were selling over a million, which nobody comes near today. But, you know, his worldview is basically, hey, you know, I'm drawing comics and making money. You know, what else do I need?

Harold: What else do I need?

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Harold: And we're going to find some real pragmatism in his way of seeing things that I'll be interested to hear what your perspective is on, because it's kind of along the lines of this social media guy who obviously chose the path to, enjoy a number of snack foods and rate them and get paid for it, versus, you know, playing his. His guitar and singing. So. So I'm fascinated by the. The people that are so pragmatic or how they balance the pragmatism with the idealism of art. That's kind of baked in. Schulz is an interesting mix of pragmatism and idealism, and I think it served him well.

Jimmy: Yeah, it played out okay for Sparky.

Harold: Yeah, he did okay for himself.

Jimmy: All right, so we're gonna take a break, and then we're going to do the Seven Deadly Sins of Cartooning. Harold is going to take us through it. The CC Beck, manifesto. So come back in a second. We'll be here.

BREAK

VO: Hi, everyone. Thank you for listening and engaging with us. Your appreciation makes this effort a real pleasure. And now we're asking that you support our work. If you enjoy the show, we hope you'll join us on Patreon as a contributor. Those of you who can't, for whatever reason, that's okay. We've been there. We're glad you're here. Thank you for being an essential part of Unpacking Peanuts.

Jimmy: All right, here we go. Harold, talk to us about CC Beck. What are we going to do here?

Harold: All right, so the title, I hope, of this episode is Charles M. Schulz and the Seven Deadly Sins of Cartooning. The seven deadly sins of cartooning were created by a man named C.C. beck, who we alluded to. I'm assuming the majority of people listening do not know who CC Beck is. And why on earth would we listen to CC Beck when he makes a seven Deadly sins of Cartooning? Because what we're going to do is list off what he's saying, the seven deadly sins, and then we're going to think about it in context of Schulz, kind of like what we just did with the how to Post on Social Media for Success. And we're gonna talk about it as cartoonists and as an amazing editor. what is this guy saying? And what do we see in Schulz that either, makes that stand out as true or possibly kind of proves it false? Because Schulz, we say, is the greatest cartoonist, did the greatest comic strip of all time. 

And CC Beck here we'll go, I'll give you. For those of you who don't know who he is, I'm going to try to connect the dots. So this is the Connect the Dot section. So that something that's related to CC Beck maybe you have heard of. And this will give you some context for what we're about to talk about. So in 1919, William Fawcett started Fawcett Publications in the Minneapolis St. Paul area. So there's number one connection to Schulz, right?

Harold: He was a soldier in the Spanish American War and he put out a little publication that took off like wildfire, that ran in the 20s, was super popular, was called Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, because William Foster,

Michael:  music man, Captain Billy. 

Harold: There's another connection. If you ever, ever seen the musical Music Man in the famous song, you've got trouble. When Professor Harold Hill is trying to rile up everybody to think that they need to buy band uniforms and instruments for their kids because they are otherwise going to become juvenile delinquents. It kind of was the epitome of the beginning of the roaring twenties following World War I. 

So that was his first publication. He went on to create an empire of publishing. He started Mechanic, I think it was either Mechanics, Illustrated, Popular Mechanics, super popular stuff. He got into book publishing and in 1940 they moved the offices when he passed away from Minnesota to New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut. And Greenwich is like about 10 miles from where I am recording this today. Fawcett published in the 60s and 70s the Little Fawcett Crest line, of paperbacks. That was how everybody got their Peanuts book fix if they wanted. Because there were just millions and millions of these little 4x7 books with black and white reprints of Peanuts. That was Captain Billy's company, Fawcett, that published those things. So going back to 1940, they get into comic books and they create a character. And that character was just less than two years after the debut of Superman in 1938. 

And Michael, you'll probably be able to speak to this better than I can, but Superman starts the superhero comic book craze in 1938. Everybody and his brother's publishing a comic book, and Fawcett is no exception. And the character that they come up with that really clicks with people is a character named Captain Marvel. And it was the best selling superhero comic in the 40s. And depending on how you look at it, possibly of all time, at one point it was selling 1.4 million copies an issue. It was even being published like bi weekly instead of monthly, which was. Nobody did that in comics because it was so popular. 

So our man C.C. Beck was the art director of the Captain Marvel comics line from 1940, pretty much from the beginning of Captain Marvel until it was shut down due to an extended lawsuit with DC Comics who claimed that it was infringing on Superman. So Beck basically ran the most popular on the art side, not the story side, the art side. He did the most popular comic book line featuring superheroes that we have ever known.

Michael: And in serials, movie serials too.

Michael: Probably a radio show. I don't know about the radio show.

Jimmy: A TV show in the 70s.

Harold: Right. Because just for one more piece of context, because of the names and the trademarks, because Marvel Comics came along and you have a character named Captain Marvel. It gets kind of weird because DC essentially shut down Fawcett Comics. They just dropped their entire line of comics in 1953, because they had been worn to a nub by DC suing them over a decade, trying to get them to stop publishing something that was actually beating their own character. And he's now a footnote in a way in comics history because he ended, just chopped off in 1953 because of this lawsuit. 

D.C. brought it back about 20 years later with CC Beck as the main artist. Twenty years later, because he got out of comics and he comes back in and for a while he was drawing Captain Marvel, but under the name of Shazam, which you guys may know the name of, because that's been movies, right? And TV shows. So Shazam Is Captain Marvel. 

And the last thing I'll say about this before we jump into Mr. C.C. Beck and his opinions on how to make a successful comic and what you should not do is that, well, CC Beck was what he called a curmudgeon. And you will see this as I quote some of the things he's about to say. He is really, he is really going to have some very strong opinions about what makes good comics. And I want us to talk about those strong opinions and see what we think of it. Because he was pretty much responsible for the most successful superhero comic in the United States of all time. So that's worth listening to, right?

Jimmy: Absolutely.

Michael: One small fact, I suppose you guys probably know this first, Captain Marvel story.

Michael: Simon and Kirby.

Liz: Wow.

Harold: That's pretty cool.

Jimmy: I didn't know that.

Michael: Yeah.

Jimmy: Wow, that's mind blowing. I did not know that.

Harold: Now Michael, I asked you off air about how people viewed this Captain Marvel, which had ended in 1953. So it just disappears. There's this collector world that you were a part of in LA, leading you to create the first comic book price guide we always talk about at the beginning of every episode. What was the opinion after the fact? Like this would be late 60s, right. Mid late 60s, where people are collecting old comics. You can't get them anymore. They're gone. What was the opinion of these Captain Marvel comics we're going to be talking about that, that CC Beck was responsible for?

Michael: Actually the period we were doing that would be the early 60s.

Harold: Early 60s. Okay. So even earlier. So they'd only been gone for like a decade.

Michael: 64, 65. Yeah. They only gone 10 years, but that was like an infinite amount of time. I'd never seen one in the wild. But when me, and my friend Tom started working at Collector's books, those and there were a lot of titles. It wasn't just Captain Marvel.

Harold: Right. It was whiz comics, Mary Marvel.

Michael: It was a whole family of characters. Many had their own books. Captain Marvel Junior. Yeah.

Harold: So what did you guys think of it when you looked at that compared to these other comics?

Michael: They were not taken seriously. To us, you know, discovering the comics from the 40s was a real experience, but it was only the legit superheroes we were interested in.

Harold: And what made, Captain Marvel not considered? What was it about? It's got not legit.

Michael: It was not. We never had paid any attention to it or bought any. They were dirt cheap because there were so many printed.

Harold: Yeah.

Michael: But mostly it was the fact that it was clearly a kid's book. and it's not the kind of thing, you know, these stories were really stupid in the 40s. You go back and read them and go, this is ridiculous. Only you know, and a seven year old would read this. But Captain Marvel was even more extreme in that there was a talking tiger and Hoppy. The Wonder Bunny.

Harold: The Marvel Bunny. Yeah.

Michael: And all the family. So Captain Marvel there was like an old version of Captain Marvel and a young girl version of Captain Marvel and a young boy version of Captain Marvel.

Jimmy: The young boy version. Captain Marvel Junior.

Michael: Yeah.

Jimmy: That's who Elvis based his look on.

Michael: Really?

Harold: Yeah.

Michael: That is why he dyed Marvel.

Jimmy: He's blonde. He dyed his hair black with shoe polish to look like Captain Marvel Jr.

Harold: Well, we've got interesting factor. It's the model for Captain Marvel was Fred McMurray. Fred McMurray, yeah.

Harold: So you guys know him from My Three Sons. The Disney movies like the Professor. 

Liz: Double Indemnity, 

Harold: Double Indemnity.

Michael: Anyway, so getting back to the story, even though we discovered this lost era, which was really only 20 years before, which we took, you know, this stuff was serious. We didn't take Captain Marvel seriously.

Harold: So he's like the Archie of superhero comics. Kind of.

Michael: There was so much of it. But basically. No, I mean you take Archie was more serious than Captain Marvel. It's just why would anyone read this stuff?

Harold: And yet the most popular superhero comic of all time.

Michael: But when we go through this essay by CC Beck, his focus is definitely what comics should be for kids. I mean he can't help it. That was the business he knew. 

Harold: And that was. And I don't know to what extent that was told this is what this is going to be. And then he fulfilled it. He certainly seemed to know exactly what he was supposed to be doing.

Michael: Oh, I'm sure he loved it.

Michael: This was his style of drawing and this was the kind of thing he can really get his teeth into. But he's a curmudgeon. So when he writes this, he's older, retired from the comic biz.

Harold: It was around 1980 probably when he wrote this thing. He's kind of involved in early fandom, as this figurehead who's not done a whole lot of comics recently. And he's still got a lot of opinions.

Michael: Yeah. And he's well respected. But clearly his opinions on ah, what comics should be are comics for kids. He is a curmudgeon. So you know, it's like, ah, these comics today, kids these days. Yeah, these days with those kids today. And these comics are reading. But he is fairly open minded. He's not like he's a nut or anything. He's.

Harold: No, he's, he's, he's got a track record that he's calling back to that was incredibly successful and mostly forgotten or ignored or disagreed with in his time.

Michael: these rules do not apply today at all. But then again, he was in a different world.

Harold: Or maybe they do and we're just not doing them. That's what's interesting to me about this stuff where you dig up something from someone's past who had great success and then we've moved on for whatever reason. And it's like, is there any kernel of truth or wisdom in what he did? And can we look at the greatest comic strip artist of all time, Charles Schulz? Was he doing this somehow in his work? Just like we were talking about the social media, you know, was he kind of following these, these unwritten rules?

Michael: Well, but he had different rules. The comic strip was a different medium.

Harold: Right.

Michael: And because Beck could do long form stories and you know, looking back at Captain Marvel, you kind of go, when you look back at the 40s comics go, why was everything so compact? I mean they're cramming in eight page stories, even four page stories, and you're going, why? They could do extended stories like they do now or something goes 10 issues. Beck did that?

Jimmy: Yeah. The Monster Society. Is that what it is?

Harold: Monster Society of Evil? Yeah, yeah. They do a 64 page long story.

Michael: You know, no one else did that. So anyway, he is respected, but his terminology, attitude kind of put people off, I think.

Harold: Yeah.

Michael: Because he's, he's kind of going, this is how you do comics. And then, but then again, you know, in, in 1990, you know, 1980s, Love and Rockets and Watchmen, which I think he would dismiss completely.

Harold: Yeah. And yet he was creating something that was more popular than almost anything that's been done since. So, yeah, let's, let's take a look and let's see what we think about it. Why maybe it did lead to the most popular superhero comic of all time. Why? We think maybe that doesn't even matter to us as artists. this will be interesting conversation, I think. 

So, there was a guy, I don't know how to pronounce his last name. I apologize. It's like Heintjes. It's a, I think it's Tom. He was, he does the amazing Hogan's Alley magazine. He'd been doing it for years. He was the guy who was trying to stay in touch with curmudgeon CC Beck and just do interviews with him and get information out of him because he was this lost piece of comics history. And he said he was really hard to deal with sometimes, especially on the phone, he'd answer things by letter. But he's just a tough guy to communicate with because he said if I. If I thrust, he'd parry. You know, he was that kind of a guy. And Tom did not want to give up. And he collected some really interesting information from Beck. 

And I'm going to start out with just a brief piece of Beck's idea of what he was doing with Captain Marvel comics that made them so successful from an interview. And then we'll jump right into the seven deadly sins. So Tom is asking Beck, you know what. What made this successful? How did you make these comics? What made them different than the other comics that were out there? The comics are kind of cartoony, wouldn't you say that, versus, say, what a Superman comic might look like? It's a little more cartoony style. It's maybe a little simpler. Is that fair to say?

Jimmy: And it also feels almost like a proto European clearline style. It's diagrammatic.

Harold: Yeah. Tintin, same kind of era, Little dot eyes, that sort of thing.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: And it's a very clean, very clean look. Very cartoony, very spare, I guess you could say. And he'll go into this a little bit. I'll share this. Right. So Beck said, when I was illustrating comic books, I always considered the stories to be what we were selling, not the pictures. Now, that's interesting. I looked on myself as a director, producer of a play. I didn't want to draw the reader's attention to the production itself, but to the story that the performers were acting out. Basically, he wanted to make it clearer and more easy to understand by young people. So again, he's thinking young people, obviously, as he's creating these things. And he said to keep readers from having their attention drawn away from the stories, I deliberately used characters, settings, and props that would be instantly recognized by everyone everywhere. In other words, stereotypes. So that's interesting as well. So he goes on to say, let's say if a guy is supposed to be a thug, he's gonna have the five o' clock shadow.

Michael:  boy, that reminds me of Nancy.

Harold: Yeah, yeah, right.

Jimmy: She who must not be named.

Harold: And Beck says, I treated my comic panels as views of a puppet show. Where heroes, villains, and other characters came into view from the left. So they walk in from the left side of the panel, the direction we're reading. They spoke their lines, and then they disappeared to the left if they were not to be used later, to the right if they were part of the ongoing story. Isn't that interesting? When characters fought, they fought each other. When they talked, they faced each other. When they ran, they ran across the stage, not out of it, and into the laps of the audience. this kind of presentation was in such a contrast to the superhero comics of the time. So he's talking about the 40s, that it caught on immediately and made captain marvel the biggest selling comics of the golden age. So simplicity and a set of rules that made sense to him. Not trying to elevate the art at all. Is really interesting that he attributes that to the success of captain marvel.

Michael: Well, let me interject one thing here. The polar opposite was the other style that was very prevalent in superhero comics came from the Simon and Kirby studio, where the layouts were all over the place. People would break out of the panels and run towards you. It was really dynamic, but it wasn't really super clear storytelling.

Harold: Yes. Yeah. So those are the two kind of extremes, I guess, of what was going on in superhero comics.

Jimmy: And two, that actually had an aesthetic and a vision. Most comics at that time, the people were doing them because they couldn't get other illustration work. And it was coming out just the way it came out. You know, Kirby had a vision and Beck clearly had a vision.

Harold: Yeah, absolutely. And, just to see them alongside each other is really interesting in terms of, you know, in terms of sales success. As successful as Simon and schuster were in multiple genres, Simon and so schuster, Simon and kirby were successful in all sorts of genres of comics. And Kirby obviously has affected pop culture in ways that are kind of unimaginable. Because of all the things he did primarily with marvel comics. He's had the long term impact and beck had the short term impact. 

So let's get into our sins here by CC Beck. He says these are not laws, but, you know, but they're laws. He says in future ages when people will look back at their work, they will shudder as they condemn its perpetrators to oblivion if they do not follow. So this is kind of the. The over the top, heated conversation you're going to get from a guy named CC Beck. 

Sin number one, not staying within the limits of the medium. So he's saying comic pictures are basically line art with color added, small framed, with panel Outlines presented in sequence. Each picture should not be complete in itself, but should be only a part of the whole presentation. They're printed more like wood cuts, so the artists who prepare the drawings should be aware of the limitations of printing. Too much fine detail, it's not going to produce properly. Comic pictures are small, only a few inches wide and high, and are viewed at a distance of a foot or so. Sounds like Scott McCloud going through stuff.

Jimmy: Yeah, really.

Harold: Readers will not back off to look at them as they might when viewing a, large painting or a mural. You've got to keep all these things in mind. They should be simplified, easily understandable, as the reader will only glance at them out of the corner of his eye while reading the story they illustrate. As comic pictures are each only a part of a sequence of pictures, they should be separated from each other by being enclosed in panel outlines. Artists who use too many vignettes, montages, make the pictures in different sizes and shapes. Jimmy. Are straying outside the limits of the medium and will lose their audiences. In quotes, comic or parentheses. Comic readers without gaining other audiences, such as the people who would go to a gallery or a fine art collection, or readers of other kinds of printed material. Yeah, okay, what say you?

Michael: He totally wrong. I mean, clearly Kirby, you know, his pages are selling for 30, 50, $100,000.

Harold: So they are now today's fine art collectors.

Michael: You could say they're in galleries, they're influential. But he missed. Well, this was written before the era where comics could be produced beautifully with beautiful colors and incredible detail. Yeah, he was working with, he just knew the business as it was, limited then.

Michael: It's expanded vastly since then. So most of the stuff just doesn't apply. You can't say somebody like, oh, that's too much detail in that panel. Because I go, you know, my guy was Al Williamson. I went, boy, the more detail, the better. I can study this for an hour.

Harold: Yeah. What do you think, Jimmy?

Jimmy: Well, you know, everything has to be viewed through my oppositional defiance disorders.

Harold: You and CC Beck had been a great conversation.

Jimmy: Oh my God. I remember I went to Catholic school, you know, first grade, the nuns up in front. We say, we're going to study the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not. And I'm like, watch me!

Harold: That's not the intent.

Jimmy: Yeah, So I can't. So, you know, I think rules like this, they're all true except when they're not true. and I, I, you know, I do think clarity is really important, even if you can Put a lot of detail in. It does. Like Al Williamson can put a lot of detail in because he's Al Williamson. And I think it's a weird thing, you know, and Michael and I have talked about this. One of the reasons I put in detail in Shades of Gray was to cover the fact that the drawing itself wasn't very good.

Michael: Yeah, I agree with that. I did that.

Jimmy: But if you're someone like, ah, Al Williamson, everything's perfect. So, you know, yeah, he could put as much detail in as he wants.

Harold: Right.

Jimmy: But if Al Williamson drew Captain Marvel, it wouldn't be particularly compelling or good.

Harold: I mean, the art would be beautiful,

Jimmy: but I don't know that it would necessarily, you know, jive as a successful comic. But the other thing, because he said, like, you're not selling the art, you're selling the story. That is like the biggest canard people tell you. it was, you know, good art can't save a bad story. That's simply not true. I have millions of comics in my collection that I have no interest in reading that are just beautifully drawn and I don't feel like I got ripped off. There's comics I've read and looked at for decades that I've never read the story to and I never will.

Harold: could you argue that those will be a subset of the Captain Marvel type of audience? He was serving in the 40s and 50s. In terms of how many people would want to look at it with the bad story or.

Jimmy: I think a lot of people must. Because what Marvel pretends is the biggest selling comic of all time is X Men number one. Not the real X Men number one. Not giant sized X Men number one. The one that came out in the

Harold: 90s, that got bagged and boarded in, 2 million copies and wait for

Jimmy: it to be open, eight different covers and stuff like that. And that is, I don't mean. Well, you know what, the guy who drew it is the publisher of DC Comics these days. You know, it's not to my taste, let's put it that way.

Harold: Okay.

Jimmy: And I don't, I bet millions of people who bought it, aside from the ones that they put aside just to, to save for hoping it would be worth money. I bet a lot of people just looked at the pictures because the story's unreadable.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: But I don't think it's good. I think what's Beck is saying if you want to make something that has value, maybe, but not necessarily that people will reject that.

Harold: Okay. Or, or the greatest success possible Right. Because he, he is the example of the greatest success possible in terms of numbers of people who would spend their dime to purchase that magazine in his day.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: So I now turn it to Charles Schulz. Did Charles Schulz pretty much avoid sin number one by the choices he made in the medium he was working? Yes, yeah, Yes, I agree.

Michael: But he did not have a comic to work with. He had a tiny, tiny spot on a newspaper maybe.

Harold: Is that why he is the most successful comic artist of all time? Because he had those limits? Because he had to do the simplicity?

Michael: He's the greatest cartoonist of all time because he was a genius.

Jimmy: But I also think there's something to it. Like I do think if you like, if I could, if I were to be assigned by, you know, the Fates, you have to go back and retro redo Amelia so that it's guaranteed to be a block, not just a success, but a blockbuster success. Well, I know that there's a bunch of things I put in there that are barriers to people entering. The vocabulary alone is the barrier to a lot of kids reading it. Who's theoretically my argument then, the layouts, the, the crazy, you know, formal experimentation and all that sort of stuff. But if I didn't do that stuff, it wouldn't be what it was.

Harold: Well, in the famous words in referring to the show I worked on, Mystery Science Theater 3000, the Right People will get it. It's kind of I'm creating a subset of people who are going to be really into this, but I know I'm limiting my audience. And Schulz somehow seemed to manage to carry off both in ways that are like the Beatles, you know, they just, you just kind of are in awe that they go, everyone, almost everyone goes along with them. I'm guessing not, not doing sin number one actually works heavily in Schulz's favor. So there's something to this rule that is being set out by Beck. There's something to that.

Jimmy: I think there's some part like really good art as like good illustrative art as you know, photography replaced illustrations in advertising and stuff. People lost the ability to see and appreciate what it was.

Jimmy: I don't know why. but it seems like they did.

Harold: Yeah. All right. Sin number two, revealing presence of the creators. What does he mean by that?

Jimmy: Well, my Eisner nominated series In the Real Dark Night would beg to disagree with that one. I wouldn't have a. There wouldn't be anything.

Harold: Right. Well, this is interesting. I mean what he's essentially saying is if you view a Comic story as a play, you want the characters to be focusing on each other. Don't break the fourth wall by having someone leap out of the panel, even if he's not looking at you. don't let them ham up stuff. Don't have them do. Needless asides, pointless remarks. They can face the audience so we can see his expression. And this is the interesting thing with us in Peanuts, is so many times when you guys say. And Charlie Brown looks at us and says, to me, he's not looking at us. He's looking, like, just off, away from us. Like, it's like you never look into the camera in a movie. He's not looking in the camera. But there are absolutely sequences where the characters do look at us. And Snoopy's a great example.

Michael: Yeah. All his thoughts, like last panel thoughts or addressed to the audience, it seems like, because no one can hear him. But he's looking out at you, and you're the only ones who can hear him.

Harold: Yeah. To me, unless it's clearly Snoopy giving us a side eye or whatever, that's him saying into the void, something that we get to see him almost full front face. But this is a fascinating one because Schulz, Jimmy, you said it again and again. Your favorite character in Peanuts is Charles M. Schulz. Did Charles Schulz somehow take this idea and elevate it in a way that almost nobody did? That takes what. I think there's truth in what Beck is saying. Right. But it seems like he somehow transcends that and connects us to the characters even more.

Harold: In a way, that's pretty remarkable.

Jimmy: Well, I, This is something that I. That I realized because I was thinking about it consciously while I was creating the first books, first pages of. In the Real Dark Night was that if I was going to do something that was truly, truly realistic, it has to acknowledge that it's not real. this has been something that has always been in my brain since I was a little kid. No matter how invested I am in Charlie Brown's baseball game, I am looking at line drawings on a paper, and I can't not look at line drawings on a paper. So I think what Beck, though, is saying is, don't do something that cheapens it. Don't do something that removes the reader from caring about the world. But if you're great and you can do that, then it's even richer. And like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Annie Hall, Looney Tunes, there's a million examples of people who are able to do this and still make you care about, you know, what's happening in. In the world. But it's really, really hard. But that's where great art comes from. 

I saw fairly recently an interview with Norm MacDonald, who was the comedian from Saturday Night Live, and he was talking about, Sam Kinison explained that there's only two ways to write a joke. This is what he said to Norm MacDonald. And the first way is the Jerry Seinfeld way. See, this completely unimportant thing that has no. Like a Pop Tart or whatever, I'm going to blow it up. So it's the largest, most important grandiose thing imaginable and make you think about it in every kind of conceivable way. And the other way to tell a joke is take something that is huge and diminish it to the point of nothingness and throw it away. And the cognitive dissonance between those points in either joke is what makes it funny. The farther away you get. Right. You know, the. The dumber the thing is that you're trying to make great. The.

Jimmy: The better the joke is, but the more dangerous it becomes and the more likely it is to fail.

Michael: I think, all these rules are ridiculous, including that one. And that's what people, you know, who think too much think about. Yeah. You know, I mean, humor can come in a million different ways. People like stick figures. Yeah. If it's just a joke, then stick figures are fine. And there's a comic that was just stick figures. To me, it's like, this is, like, this is a bad joke. But there are people who like comics with stick figures. That's all they need to carry the joke.

Harold: And one of the most popular webcomics was a stick figure comic. And maybe there is, because of the simplicity, that somehow that's where more people can connect than, any detailed version of any character that you could draw beautifully.

Michael: I mean, for me, I want to see technique. If you want to simplify later, prove to me first you can really draw. And so Jaime Hernandez's later work is very simple. But I know he can draw as good as anybody in the world because he's proved it in his earlier work.

Harold: So you wouldn't have respected the later work as much if you hadn't seen the work that you saw at first.

Michael: Absolutely. And, you know, he does stuff that's very influenced by Peanuts with little kids in his later work. but once he proved to me he can draw anything, I know that when he decides to simplify, it's for a reason he's doing it on purpose. And it's not that he can't draw.

Michael: Because he can't. And so I can see that Beck can really draw.

Harold: Yeah.

Michael: I mean, I posted to you guys as something he drew later on. I went like, boy, I wish I could draw like that.

Harold: He was a painter. He was an all around artist. He went to art school. Yeah, yeah.

Michael: So when he simplifies the Captain Marvel stuff, it looks right and it's cause he knows what he's doing. And there's a lot of cartoonists, including, you know, the early image guys who, you know, were selling more than anybody.

Jimmy: Yeah, right.

Michael: But you look at it and you go, this guy can't draw.

Jimmy: It's hideous.

Michael: Yeah.

Harold: It's so strange.

Michael: Yeah. So I like seeing somebody prove to me that they've got the chops.

Harold: Okay.

Michael: And then I'll accept anything they do after that.

Harold: Interesting.

Michael: Now, Schulz is a different case because. It wasn't, you know, he did a few things that, you know, pre Peanuts that was trying to be a little more realistic and maybe a Bill Mauldin influence.

Michael: No, he was not a great artist. So his genius to me is not the art. It's like he's a brilliant comedian.

Harold: Interesting. Well, and then going back to this sin number two, in this case, we were going a little bit afield, but that's okay because we're going to get there. Revealing the presence of the creators. By and large, for the most part, I think Schulz does follow these rules. He's not going crazy with, with, with things that would make us directly relate to the characters, but when he does, it has huge impact. And I. And there's some weird mystery of Schulz's presence that's not in your face sometimes. Sometimes like Jimmy's been saying, you know, character wants it to reign or Snoopy wants the water faucet to go on so he can fill his dog bowl. And then it rains and fills the. It's a, it's this kind of mysterious, delightful thing. That's not necessarily maybe what Beck is griping about here.

Jimmy: Oh, listen, I got, I lost my own train of thought when I was talking about the Sam Kinison thing. but the point I was making was that the tension here is that you're building a world that you want people to believe in. And if you point out that it's false, you risk destroying the whole thing.

Harold: Yes.

Jimmy: But if you can somehow make that tension hum instead of be dissonant, it's super rich.

Harold: if now I'm creating a world for you to believe in that involves a creator, me. And you accept that, and you then all of a sudden that's. That is incredibly rich. And that's something that I don't think Beck would have seen. I'd be interesting to ask him that if he were like. If he'd be like, nope. Or he'd be like, that's. That takes a real genius. I'm in on that.

Jimmy: You know, because when he's making these, he's limited to what he can imagine would be done based basically on what has been done at that point. So he's picturing like, you know, a day at the Shazam Offices where Captain Marvel flies in and sees CC back there and says, hey, CC, you know. Yeah, that stuff's always lame.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: But it's not the only way to do it.

Harold: No, no. Okay.

Michael: But I always think of like, you know, he's ignoring Will Eisner, who, you know, certainly. Even though he did get in the newspapers.

Michael: And that's where most people saw the Spirit, was totally concerned with storytelling above it all and would use anything to tell the story. But it wasn't to make it easy to read for a little kid. It was just.

Harold: It was.

Michael: It was an adult comic. It was one of probably the first adult oriented comics.

Jimmy: Yeah, probably.

Harold: Yeah. Published as little mini comics in the newspaper in color. Pretty crazy. All right. Sin number three, overdoing the job. Meaning that artists overload panels with all sorts of things that you don't really need to put in them to tell the story. Or doing crazy types of shots that draw attention to themselves. Like a super panoramic long shot or basically insane human anatomy that starts to get silly at some point because it's, you know, the. The physiques of the characters, male and female, are so, so crazy different. He says that's taking you away from the reason this is here. It's to tell a story. What do you think about that?

Michael: Well, what would he say now? I mean, with. With comics being over. Over the top or the.

Jimmy: Remember the 90s, the bad girl trend, the broken.

Michael: Oh my gosh, I only see covers of comics now.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Michael: Just go like, oh, yeah, this basically pornography.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Michael: Right.

Jimmy: I mean, it's crazy.

Harold: Yeah. Over overdoing the job. I mean, do you think that there, you know, is. Is. Is less more more often than more is more.

Michael: In art, there's a time for detail. Alan Moore, when he wrote his scripts, they're notorious for the amount of detail. He put in his. He spent a whole page describing what's in the room.

Michael: It's true. The artist could ignore that if he wanted to, but you want to establish the world and detail is the way to do it. So, I mean, do you know what Billy Batson's room looked like?

Jimmy: Right, right.

Harold: We never did actually clarify this. So I'm glad you brought up Billy Batson, Michael, because so this comic, in going back to Michael saying this is mainly a kid's comic, so the alter ego of the boy who think he's like a newspaper boy or something is Captain Marvel. So he gets the power to turn himself into Captain Marvel whenever he says these words. Shazam. And so what Beck would, say about Billy Batson is he is truly the star of the show. Captain Marvel is a fulfillment of his fantasies. But if you take. He said, the editors and the owners of the company said, get rid of Billy Batson. He's getting in the way of all the fun adventures. And Beck was like, no way. The reason the kids are buying this is because they see themselves in Billy. And so when he turns into Captain Marvel, they are Captain Marvel.

Michael: And that's the genius of that strip.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, it's much better. Even though I love Robin, you know, especially, loved Robin as a kid. Robin is the sidekick.

Harold: Right.

Jimmy: He's not doing the cool stuff. Captain Marvel is the hero.

Harold: So you get to be the hero as an 8 year old reading it.

Jimmy: Yes.

Michael: Well, yeah. Or Captain Marvel is actually like an 8 year old in a man's body.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're totally, you know, able to project into that.

Harold: And I don't think anybody did that as well as Captain Marvel until Spider man came along. And you've got this kind of, you know, this, this outsider kid who a lot of readers of that era could relate to.

Michael: Yeah. So. But I think, I think it's important to establish what the world looks like. And you can ignore it later. It's just like become a convention in comics as you establish the scene. And it can be an insane amount of detail.

Harold: Right.

Michael: And then after that you don't even need backgrounds because people know where they are.

Jimmy: Yeah. And I think that's kind of what Beck is saying. You know, it's use what, don't use more than is necessary. Sometimes what's necessary is quite a bit.

Harold: Right.

Jimmy: and sometimes it's not. I think if I'm going, when I go wrong against this rule or if I commit this sin, what I actually am doing is going, oh, I'm really happy with the way this is coming out. And I'm going to. Oh, now I. So now I'm, like, adding stuff. I'm overdrawing, and that's a mistake. You know, I, think that the. It's not whether there should be detail or should be no detail. It's using the right amount of detail when you need it. Going back to Al Williamson, you know, he did the Empire Strikes Back movie adaptation, six issues, best science fiction comics, Priest, Strange Attractors. And I like. He did the asteroid field scene, which is the most dynamic. Like in 1980, the Millennium Falcon. Going through the asteroids was incredible in a film. And he does a great job of it in the comic. And that's entirely due by how.

Jimmy: Due to how he sells that spaceship and the textures of those rocks and the placement, all that sort of stuff. Okay, but then the next panel, when you're in the Falcon, you know, yellow. No background whatsoever.

Harold: No background. Yeah, yeah. And Beck does talk about this in other pieces of interviews, that that's exactly what he's saying. You know, show it if you need to establish it in the most concise way possible to get the idea across. If you don't need to see it again, we know it's in the room. You're not going to see it. So going back to Schulz, did more or less Schulz follow, Follow or not follow, the sin of. Of sin number three, overdoing the job. This was he.

Michael: Schulz's following this to the letter.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: Okay, interesting. All right, let's go on to sin number four, Losing control. What does he mean by that? He says comic art can very easily get out of control. And as cartoonists, I'd like to hear your perspective on this. Characters in the story can take on a life of their own, do all kinds of strange things. Backgrounds, props, special effects can run away and overpower the whole production. Too much detail and too many things going on at the same time indicate that the writer or artist has lost control. And if a publisher tells you as an artist or writer to go hog wild, refuse to bow to such commands, that will let, Essentially the quickest way to destroy a comic.

Jimmy: Actually. Can I just throw that last part? That's 100% right. I will tell you. And I. I don't know if it actually is 100% right, but in my experience, I remember sitting with my editor from Scholastic outside the doors to Hall B in San Diego when I was about to do Seven Good Reasons Not to Grow up, which at the time was called Kirby Finn and the In Crowd. And he goes, david and I. And David, who's the publisher of Scholastic or of, Graphics is classic. We talked about it, and we just want you to go hog wild on this book. Just go nuts. Don't worry, we'll have.

Harold: Did they actually use Hog Wild?

Jimmy: Yeah. And I'm like, okay, great. But what they, you know, they wanted, like, outrageous fart jokes, I guess, and something. And, I'm like, how many David Foster Wallace references can I get? Not what they meant by hog wild. What I meant by hog wild is not the same. Same thing. And I did do that. And. Well, you could read it. The book's nuts. I really like it, but it's nuts.

Michael: Well, I mean, thinking about this. I mean, tell this to, Jaime Hernandez about losing control. Luckily, I mean, he had a publisher, which was fortunate. He also had a publisher who knew enough to stay out of it. Yeah, it's all about the characters taking on lives of their own and doing unexpected things. And as a-- people who've read this book for 40 years know that feeling of, I wish Maggie was back, you know, with the punks in LA, because she's now, like, cleaning rooms in a motel somewhere. hey, that's the character he's following. It's about. It's the life of these characters. There is no story.

Jimmy: It's just a life that's, like, so special. Particularly with Maggie in Love and Rockets. It's. It's almost unique in comics.

Harold: Would you call that losing control or just the fact that the character takes on a life of its own?

Michael: That's what you want? I'd say that complete opposite of what he's saying. That's what you want. When your characters start telling you what to do, you've got it, You've made it. You've created something that has some life in it.

Harold: That's really true. I hear a lot of artists say that, and I've heard a lot of other artists kind of. That is a point of contention that is a fascinating one to anybody who's tried to create or do storytelling. Is. Is it a good thing when your character becomes so rich that they start to take the story out of your hands and tell you what the story is? Or is there some point at which you, as the overseeing, can't let a character just take over the entire thing away from your intention? But that's a really interesting question.

Michael: It doesn't matter if it goes off the rails. Cerebus went off the rails. So Bad. He lost all his readership. To me, it doesn't matter. Because he was doing what he wanted to do. Yeah.

Harold: Or what the character was telling him

Michael: to do, or it doesn't matter.

Jimmy: Well, the character is you. That's. The character cannot actually go out of control and start doing things. All there is, every prop, every character is just the artist. Right. If you. I had not drawn Amelia for 12 or 13 years, and I had drawn. I had written 2,000 Donald Duck pages, all that other Disney stuff, two graphic novels for Scholastic, and I sat down to do Amelia and Rhonda talking to each other, and it was just like five pages just in a notebook in, like, 20 minutes.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: almost on autopilot.

Harold: Yeah. Because you know them so well.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah. They're just there talking, and it's like, oh, my God. Well, first off, what idiot would give this up? Right. And secondly, all, Even though that was the right thing to do because I was burned out and had no ideas. But. But. And it allows me now come back and go, oh, yeah, no, no. These characters are rich and they can. I can trust them because they're not separate from me. You know, anything that's there in them,  I put there.

Harold: right. Now, if you had written 25 pages, there is some aspect of you that would say, okay, I'm not going to lose control, because the characters, as I wrote them initially here, because they were talking and I was following the line of these rich characters, I got to edit out 80% of this for the sake of the story. There's a control level there that I think is legit.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: You know, people can indulge a line of thought through character or whatever.

Jimmy: Yep. So you know that. Yeah, that is true, too. It doesn't imply that everything you then think of is genius is genius and gold.

Harold: as rich as the characters are and are filling in those spaces, automatically. And that is a sign of amazing character. I mean, anybody who discovers characters that they can write and draw that have that kind of life in them, that really is, I think, a tremendous measure of success and enjoyment as an artist. Right.

Jimmy: Yeah. I think people would be shocked if they looked in my notebook. Well, first off, they'd be shocked and appalled at my handwriting. But if they got past that and thought, wow, this guy has issues, I think they would be shocked at how much gets cut.

Harold: Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good thing that, you know, the editor in you is strong. And that's. That's. That's a good thing. So I'm going To Step--

Jimmy: Scott Weinstein who was the guy who. Well, he's still, I guess, the Weekend Update anchor on, snl, said once they. They feel they're in a good position when they're cutting good jokes.

Harold: Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's definitely a good position to be in. Yeah.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: And I'm going to now step back and say Charles Schulz. Did Charles Schulz avoid the problem of losing control?

Jimmy: No. 1 look at that 1970s strip, the Beagle Dinner, where Snoopy's the speaker and it's being broadcast on tv.

Harold: That was lost.

Jimmy: The blanket that becomes a hand. Or I think he was much more. Because he does have something that CC Beck doesn't have in the fact that the next day they were gone and he was able to do stuff and then truly abandoned the things that he didn't want to incorporate going forward. But I think he lost control.

Michael: There's one factor we're ignoring here, and I don't know the answer to this, but who wrote those Captain Marvel stories?

Harold: Otto Binder wrote a bunch of them.

Michael: All right, so keep in mind, CC Beck did not write these stories.

Harold: That's correct. He is just trying to make them. Make them come to life and augment the story. Script was supreme to CC Beck.

Jimmy: Yeah. Which is a different perspective.

Michael: That's a whole different story. I mean, what would Schulz. Schulz would never, you know, even if a reader sent in an idea that was the funniest thing ever, Schulz would never do it.

Harold: Well, I think Schulz. I think Schulz, he tested his own boundaries of his own world. I wouldn't say he lost control, though. I mean, he seems like a guy who is, just by his nature, very much in control of his world in a pretty tight way.

Jimmy: Peppermint Patty. Accidentally going to the dog school.

Liz: Yeah.

Harold: Yeah. I think he's testing. He's testing boundaries. He loved going into the kind of the sillier spaces, and sometimes, you know, we'd come along with him, and sometimes you're like, no, thanks. Thanks, Sparky.

Michael: Right.

Harold: But it seemed like. It almost seemed pretty calculated.

Jimmy: Oh, I think it is. Yeah.

Harold: So controlled. But maybe, yeah, test. He'll…

Jimmy: Maybe skate towards the edge of chaos or you're not gonna know.

Michael: Right.

Jimmy: You're not gonna. I was listening to an interview, a baseball interview, and they were. Cause it rain delay. And, you know, so they're just killing time. And the one guy talks to one of the former players, and he goes, you know, what is it that causes someone to go on like, you know, just a, bad streak. you know, they go over 10 or whatever is it. They just lose something and the guy goes, actually, sometimes it's someone that's at such a high level and what they're doing is trying to push through to the next level. And you never know when you've gotten to the point that there is no next level to you.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: Until you get there and can't do it.

Harold: Yeah, I think that that's true. And I think Schulz constantly was testing his. His own personal boundaries for sure. So, yeah, I think, I think he generally followed this rule, in the sense that Beck is saying. But I think he's more adventurous than Beck. And we are all beneficiaries of that.

Jimmy: Absolutely.

Harold: Sin number five, tastelessness. The best thing that can be done is not to offer the public things which are in bad taste and which degrade both the public and the producers of products. There are no subjects which ought to be barred from books by edict. Sex, rape, murder, incest, crime, perversion, all that stuff is legitimate for books and pictures. But not everything is suitable for presentation in, comics. Then he kind of goes back to the idea that comic strips are a different sort of art and are read mostly by adults. But he sees comic books from his perspective as mostly for children just by the reality of things in 1980. But he said, even if you're doing a comic strip where, you know, most of the adults are reading it, you should be presenting this with taste and restraint.

Michael: Well, talk R. Crumb..

Harold: Right.

Michael: Yeah. he's had a. He's an old curmudgeon. This is a curmudgeon y thing.

Jimmy: Well, or he's also talking to people who are specifically trying to follow in his footsteps. Right. I don't think he's. I'm getting the feeling that he's talking specifically about. If you want to do commercial full four color, you know, comics in the 20th century, this is what you'd have to do.

Harold: Or newspaper strips in this case. He goes specifically there. Yeah.

Jimmy: You know, again, going back, like, defining tastelessness, I think that X Men comic that we talked about earlier is pretty close to tasteless. You know, it's garish, it's violent, it's. It's not well written. And all this sort of stuff, all of that can be considered tasteless. And it was successful. Yeah, but I, But I think he's right in that, that. Well, the R. Crumb thing is. That's another example. If you're R. Crumb, you can do it. If you're not. Maybe you can. Or Eddie Van Halen. Oh, I love hearing Eddie Van Halen play. Do you want. I don't want to hear anyone try to play like Eddie Van Halen because it always becomes tasteless.

Harold: Right. Okay. Because it's not yours, and it's. It's just.

Jimmy: Yeah. You're putting on suit that doesn't fit, and you're. And then it's like, look at me, look at me. I'm doing the shocking thing. Look, look, look. Where Crumb feels like he's compelled to and doesn't even necessarily want to.

Harold: Yeah, yeah, I can see what you're saying about that. And we've talked about this quite a bit. The idea, things that are. I appreciate what he's saying here. It's something to keep in mind, Right. That if something that's in bad taste, that could degrade both your audience and yourself, you know, think about that when you're creating. Can you avoid that? That's probably a good thing to do.

Michael: Can you. Totally. About debasing himself. That's what most of the strips are. Is Crumb debasing himself.

Jimmy: Yeah. But again, he's working at such a high level that through that it somehow elevates him. But he's one in a million artists.

Michael: Oh, he's the genius of the 20th century. Forget this Picasso guy I've been hearing about.

Harold: All right, so Charles Schulz, did he avoid the sin number five with tastelessness?

Michael: Him and Crumb. Not quite in the same ballpark.

Harold: Okay, so we'll say he's pretty much avoided sin number five. Sin number six, pandering. Oh, I think he avoided that. Such comic book publishers. Yeah. So basically, if you're pandering, that basically means giving readers what they think they want. Right, Right. So he's saying if you cater to the taste of the lowest members of society, one who wants sex, violence, razzle dazzle. It's the Freddie silverman Years of ABC 1979.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, right.

Harold: constant titillation of senses. That's what makes civilizations go down the drain. History proves this. When literature and art.

Jimmy: Bad news, CC. When literature picked up since then, well,

Michael: we did go down the drain. That's right.

Jimmy: He nailed it.

Michael: It's nice.

Harold: It's a sign that the public is not getting what it needs, but what it needs least, pandering to the wants of the lowest, most mindless of its members. So there you go. That's CC Beck's take on, pandering.

Michael: Nancy.

Jimmy: Well, I get that, you know, like, I, I. Well, I mean, I've had real opportunities to pander. I mean, I remember with, with when Amelia was just. Well, when we got the 2006 books out and we signed. We didn't sign on, but Ben Haber was working with us, who's a movie producer. He produced the Smurfs movie and stuff like that. And he's like, okay, well, I can take you to this publisher, and you just do Amelia, but do it exactly like the wimpy kid format. 

Liz: Ugh

Right. But that's a lot of money to say ugh to. And I, did.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: And I don't, know what was

Harold: it that would have been pandering in that case, it would be, you're the

Jimmy: guy who happens to be standing here, so we're going to take your talents as whatever they are, and we're going to apply it into this, jam it in, regardless of whether it fits or not, because we know it'll be a success.

Harold: Okay.

Jimmy: And to me, that would be disrespecting Amelia, which I feel like I got magically.

Harold: Could you say that that is. I don't even know what you call it. A genre, a medium. It's doing it in a different way that's more text heavy for those not unfamiliar with wimpy kids.

Jimmy: Oh, yeah. It's a hybrid book, and I've written them. I've written Donald Duck hybrid books and stuff like that. It's mostly textbooks.

Michael: It doesn't seem like comic.

Harold: What about it was. It said, hey, this is a bridge too far for me, and this character who has been given to me. Why is this a betrayal of the integrity of that?

Jimmy: It was just the whole vibe. It was, Because. Not him. He was. He is great. I love Ben. He's a great guy. But then talking to the people in publishing, and I was like, oh, yeah, well, it's. There's gonna be the next one. So doing the. Being the second person to do it is great, you know, because the. And, this is just openly talked about, you know, like. Yeah, the barriers are broken and people are looking for it. So you put in this.

Harold: Yeah, it's now a genre.

Jimmy: And by the way, they. Someone did that. It's called Dork Diaries.

Harold: Oh, my gosh. There's tons of them. Yeah.

Jimmy: And Simon Schuster published it, and it's a monstrous success, but I. I don't want to be that person.

Harold: So, in other words, it's really how you see the work yourself. I'm assuming there could been an artist who saw it from a different light and saying, this is a new genre, I can apply my talents to it and make it my own and I'm great with it. Yeah, I hear you. you really have to have your own way of seeing it that makes it work for you. Otherwise it's pandering.

Jimmy: Right, Exactly.

Harold: Yeah. So Charles Schulz, pandering. Did Charles Schulz pander to his audience?

Jimmy: I don't think so, Michael?

Michael: I think he let people pander for him, which, I disapprove of.

Jimmy: So you're talking about merch, that kind of thing.

Michael: Merch, animation, the animation. He let other people. Because, Would he have said no if they said, well, we're going to start drawing Snoopy, like cuter? So.

Jimmy: Oh, yes. I think he would have been a nightmare to work with, on those animated specials, especially in the early days. Just keep in mind.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: All of them are, are taken from his strips. There's nothing else that's like that. Yeah, he might not have been there every day, but he was like, you're doing my work or we're not doing this.

Harold: Right. Don't, don't go off on your own flights of fancy. Although, you know, I don't know. In some cases, I think there was some more collaboration in that regard, I think. Was it the, was it. The Thanksgiving special was the first one that they did that was just entirely original, but it was from his ideas. But once it got later and later into the system, there was such amount of product. There was actually a TV series coming out. Those are incredibly strip oriented. They just kind of fade in and out of four panel rhythms and it's like nothing in animation you've ever seen. Because they are following the rules that Schulz set up and he was not going to allow them to just go hog wild.

Jimmy: Which is the opposite of pandering. Hey, we're going to put a show out on Saturday morning that's going to be like unlike every single show around it.

Harold: Because our artist requires it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jimmy: That's amazing.

Harold: Okay, we'll give him a pass on this one at least for his own. Certainly for his own strips. Final Sin, Sin number seven, Breaking the rules. Okay. Many of the rules governing the production of literature and art are broken because of ignorance. Okay. And there are exceptions to rules, but you need to follow the rules of the medium you're working in. Right. So he's saying, although comics have never been placed very high on the list of worthwhile reading material, the art in them is not regarded as much value by most art experts. It's not highly regarded even by some of the people who produce it. They make things worse than they already are by, not following the general rules.

Michael: Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Jimmy: At this point, CC, his blood sugar had dropped. Well, yeah, he had.

Harold: He had six deadly sins.

Michael: There's a huge logical fallacy here.

Harold: Okay.

Michael: It's okay. There are no rules. I'm going to make the rules. Rule number seven, don't break the rules.

Harold: Yeah, he's basically saying. He's basically chiding anybody who disagree with 1 through 6, right? He's saying, if you don't know what produces good results equaling the bestselling comics that I made, and you don't follow my rules, then you're going to get better results. If you would heed my. What I have to say.

Michael: Look at the period of his greatest success, the 40s. There were no rules. There were so many weird comics. They're just so, You look at them, and they're just so bizarre. No one could have thought this was going to be a success. The guy who created Superman, he followed up with, like, funnyman, who was a guy walked around in, like, a clown suit and had, like, little boxing gloves on, a spring come out of his chest. There were no rules. They tried. Let's try everything and see what sticks.

Harold: Well, it's interesting that, you know, they were sued over Captain Marvel looking like Superman. So obviously, CC Beck visually is taking on the superhero genre, and he's trying to codify it for the most successful accessible comics readership for kids. And he succeeds in spades. He beats Superman in his own game, and to him, that's success.

Michael: No, it's not even the same game. that lawsuit is the most insane thing in the world because there was hundreds of Superman ripoffs, right? And dc.

Harold: DC sued--.

Michael: Captain Marvel wasn't one of them.

Jimmy: Yeah, right.

Harold: DC sued a lot of people

Liz: But they had the money. They were successful.

Michael: Well, they finally gave up because, I guess sales were dropping.

Harold: Well, what happened?

Michael: Captain Marvel had no relationship to Superman whatsoever.

Harold: Even before, Captain Marvel got the lawsuit slapped on them, Fawcett was sued about another character whose name I can't remember, but because it wasn't the success that the other one was, they're like, okay, we'll just drop it and make a new one. But because Captain Marvel out of the gate was just this blockbuster they were willing to fight. And I agree. I think, you know, it goes back to that idea that the first person who does something original, second person does it is a Ripoff. Third person's now part of a genre or whatever. I think the argument that was. It went back and forth in the courts for literally, like, decade. And then there's this famous judge named Judge. I love his name. Learned Hand is the actual name of this judge. And after it had gone in favor of Fawcett and then it went in favor of dc, ultimately, her Learned Hand said, okay, to me, this is clearly infringing on Superman, which is weird, given that how many. How many characters, I guess to Learned Hand doesn't matter that there's 30 or 50 or 100 copies of Superman. I still believe that Superman was so essentially copied as a superhero that they can claim that they own that space. I mean, it seems weird to us today. I kind of think it wouldn't have held up, but they could have continued the appeal, but sales were dropping by 1953. Fawcett's like, we're just going to get out here. We're going to stop publishing this thing. We're going to pay $400,000 to DC and just be done with it. And it's so funny that 20 years later, DC's licensing the rights to those characters so they could do it again and ultimately bought the character.

Jimmy: By the way, this is going on in the world right now. Fender Guitars, having not defended their trademark on the Stratocaster for 70 years, has suddenly decided to send cease and desist letters to every guitar manufacturer in Europe.

Harold: Good luck.

Jimmy: That's, making similar guitars, because that

Harold: is the rule of the trademark. Right. If you don't defend it, you lose it.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: You've got to sue people. You got to send cease and desist or it goes. Yeah, but 70 years, that's crazy.

Michael: Yeah.

Harold: Good luck. Okay, well, let's. Let's just end this with. So, breaking the rules. Schulz. Did he break the rules?

Michael: He created the rules.

Harold: I think he kind of did. Right? He did break rules, and in ways that we accepted. Which shows off his genius.

Jimmy: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Harold, this was great. A great idea to do this.

Michael: Harold, you're a great interviewer. You should do a podcast. Thank you.

Harold: I wish. I'll consider it someday.

Jimmy: hey, and thank you all for listening lo these many episodes. 200. Can you believe it? Let's do 200 more. but right now, we're gonna rest.

Michael: Yeah.

Harold: Yes.

Jimmy: so until next time, for Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

Liz: Yes.

Michael: Yes. Be of good cheer.

VO: 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 Shukran. 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: They're shiny and they smell of brass and hope.