Mean Girls 3 - Now 33% Meaner
Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. This is Unpacking Peanuts, and today we're doing another episode of Mean Girls, and I'll be your host for the proceedings. My name's Jimmy Gownley. I'm also a cartoonist, and you can find all of my new work over at Gville Comics on Substack. 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 the Instagram sensation Sweetest Beasts.
Liz: No, no,
Michael: wait a minute.
Harold: We are born.
Jimmy: It's just that much easier to just merge you in the one. Say hello.
Harold: We're keeping this in.
Jimmy: I was actually doing something else while I was saying that.
Harold: You were multitasking.
Jimmy: That is how on autopilot I am at this point.
Harold: I was actually drinking Carnation Instant Breakfast Drink while I was speaking this.
Jimmy: Oh, come on. That's seasons ago. Seasons. What? So, he's, Oh, okay. He's also the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells, and Tangled River. It's Michael Cohen.
Michael: Say hey.
Jimmy: And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former Vice president of Archie Comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation Sweetest Beasts. It's Harold Buchholz.
Harold: What? Hi.
Jimmy: And unsuccessfully, keeping me out of trouble. It's our producer and editor, Liz Sumner.
Liz: Aw, shucks.
Jimmy: You know, the funny thing is, I was planning to do a funny introduction today, but then I was late, and then I just forgot about that. I don't want to get into it. And then I did end up doing one anyway.
Harold: Just did it naturally. That's the way it should be.
Jimmy: Exactly. So we're here. We're going to do another episode of our Mean Girl season. Michael, you got anything to tell us about these particular strips up front?
Michael: Yeah, I focused on Patty and Violet for the last two, and that brought us up to 1959, and I decided, okay, we're gonna go do some other characters. So I thought I'd just start in 1960 and see what happened.
Harold: Uh-huh.
Michael: And so these start in 60. They're almost all in the 61. 62. And I got plenty of them, so. And then I stretched into the future, as far as I could, and found a couple more.
Jimmy: Excellent. Now, we've talked about. Well, you've mentioned specifically that you think one of the big parts of Schulz genius is just that he is just, is that he is a genius comedian. And you've said at some point you feel like the funniest person possibly in the country.
Michael: Yeah, well, judging by the fact that I, actually laugh out loud right
Jimmy: now, my question is this, and we may have talked about this in the past a long time ago, but, like, who would you guys put up there now? Who, if you, if we were to ask you right now, who do you think is the zeitgeist-setting funniest person in the country, who would you pick?
Michael: Who makes me laugh? Give me a minute to think about that.
Liz: Or do you have an answer?
Jimmy: Do I?
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: No, not really. No. I thought that's one of the reasons I wanted to ask.
Harold: It's a good question.
Jimmy: I was thinking, like, I could see that, from Charles Schulz and I could kind of make. I was thinking about this and go, God, I could pick people from, like, every five years, basically from the 40s all the way up to, like, the beginning of the 21st century, that people would generally go, oh, yeah, I understand why you would say they're the, the top comedian or they're the person that's, But I don't know that in the last 25 years I could pick someone that everyone would go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Harold: I don't think there's an everyone anymore.
Michael: Yeah, comedy comes to me. It usually comes in these specials, comedy specials, and we generally don't watch them. Occasionally I'll watch one and there'll be some guy I don't know, but he's got, like a packed audience and they're all like, you know, talking, cracking the jokes along with them. So this person's obviously super popular. I've never heard him before, so I'll hear him once and that's the last I'll encounter them.
Liz: We watch them
Michael: Yeah, I mean, I like some shticks,
Jimmy: but even though it doesn't even have to necessarily be, obviously Schulz wasn't a stand up comedian. but I can't even think if you widen it out to the larger group. Like, if I said I think in 1980, let's say, or, you know, I would say to anyone, you know who. What I think, I think Johnny Carson's the funniest person in America. I might be wrong, but a lot of people would understand. Okay. you know, sure. But I don't. If I looked, if I went, I'll tell you who's the funniest person is Jimmy Fallon, everybody. Are you out of your mind? I don't think anybody would go, oh, okay, sure. And he's the host of the Tonight Show.
Michael: People probably say Adam Sandler, who actually I find completely unfunny.
Jimmy: And your best friend, like, produces all of his movies.
Michael: Yeah.
Harold: Right.
Jimmy: That's embarrassing. But okay.
Harold: Well, in terms of numbers of ticket sales as like, a standup comedian, a guy who's really kind of broken a bunch of records in the last, like, two years or so is Nate Bargatze. And a lot of people don't even know who he is, which is kind of the way the culture is right now.
Jimmy: Yeah, he's dead to me now.
Liz: we have watched, at least one special with him and we enjoyed it.
Jimmy: Yeah. Brilliantly funny.
Michael: Yeah. But I, like, I already forgot all about it.
Liz: Yeah, but you don't like humor.
Michael: No, I don't like humor. And actually, I don't, find someone making me laugh has any value except.
Jimmy: Yeah, well, you realize that. Absolute insane. You are also the person that goes, why do people eat food just because it has good flavor.
Michael: Yeah. That's ridiculous. Yeah.
Jimmy: Okay, well, there you go. So that's. That. That makes everything else you say about this irrelevant.
Michael: Well, I'm totally irrelevant to everything going on in the world.
Harold: That's what makes you so fascinating.
Jimmy: Exactly.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: I don't know. I. I mean, I. I guess I figured that would be the answer. but it's crazy that it's a really, really hard thing to. To say. The. The person I thought of, is Josh Johnson, who does a four-- Basically a 45-minute new standup special every Friday.
Harold: Wow.
Jimmy: Live. And he's.
Liz: He's on The Daily Show, isn't he?
Jimmy: Yeah, he'll host The Daily Show, you know, occasionally, because they don't have a formal host anymore. But. But I don't think people would all agree. Look, most people wouldn't know who he is either.
Liz: Well, I. I think Harold was right before when he said that there is no everyone anymore there.
Jimmy: But there isn't everyone. I see us all around. They're every. You know what I mean? They're watching something.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: The things I have seen actually that people say are funny aren't even comedy.
Harold: Like, what's an example?
Jimmy: Well, the Joe Rogan podcast. How that's the number one comedy podcast in the world.
Harold: Oh, that's still labeled comedy that's. Yeah, that is. That's the funny.
Liz: That's like the Emmys calling The Bear a comedy.
Jimmy: Right.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Harold: Well, yeah, well, as we know, there's so much content being made and there's so many platforms. You know, it's no secret that we're. We are just spread our attention spread further than ever, which is in some ways really cool that there are that many things that people have found a way to make that are sustainable in the sense that there's.
Harold: We keep making more and more of these things and they find enough of an audience, you know, you didn't have that luxury.
Jimmy: Like what we're doing right now. I mean, we can bemoan the fact that not everyone knows one great thing, but we are allowed to do, you know, 200, 300 hours on the most obscure, you know, the letter W in the six year old comic trip.
Liz: What do your daughters think is. Or who do you.
Jimmy: Oh, they would pick John Mulaney, I think.
Liz: I like his wife
Jimmy: who says, oh, Olivia Munn. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. She's very good. Well, he's good too. You can like him for himself. He has the darkest. Well, we don't need to get into that.
Liz: Okay.
Jimmy: So anyway, yeah, so I was just thinking about this because, you know, looking at these strips, the other thing about comedy is that it, I think, feels very ephemeral. You know, a lot of times you have to explain y' all had to be there or whatever. But I don't feel that you have to have been there for the strips we're going to talk about today. I don't think they necessarily are dependent on time at all.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: Which is amazing too, because like, another thing is like, maybe Robert Klein is still really, really funny. You know what I mean? But he comes out and he's wearing like a 70s suit and he's like, it's. It's hard to get the content through the time where that's not the case.
Harold: Yeah, well, also, I mean, when you said time, I think about timing. Right.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: You know, so much of the comedy we experience now is heard or heard and seen. And Peanuts is a block of little blocks on a page and you've got to make the timing. We've talked about it before, but I'm still in awe of him that he is able to get enough people to follow along and he doesn't. We don't get tripped up on our own bad reading. And it's still funny. I think a study of that, you know, is. Is Worthwhile, because he somehow knows how to do it in a way that he doesn't lose his audience. And that's incredibly hard. Anybody who's tried to written, right. Even, like, even if you're writing, you know, remember the. I mean, the comedy books that people used to write, you know, Bob Hope would put out a hardcover book.
Liz: Take my wife.
Harold: And there's a little bit of that still, but not a lot. Like, the humor section is so bleak. I m mean, it was vibrant in the 70s and 80s. You went over to whatever your local. Whatever version of a bookstore was at the time, and the humor section had bestsellers. And now it is a ghost town.
Michael: People would buy comedy records, which meant you'd listen to it. You want to get your $3 worth
Jimmy: do again and again and again.
Michael: Yeah, yeah, the same.
Harold: That's amazing to me.
Michael: The same thing.
Liz: Well, I think we're also showing our age here. Oh, yeah. I mean, books and records of comedy are not really the trend, and they aren't.
Jimmy: Yeah, but that's bad. Like, because there's a. There's. Here's the thing. There's also, like being an old man complaining, yelling at the clouds. But sometimes the clouds are actually, you know, toxic smoke from a giant fire. And you're right to go, hey, this isn't good. I remember when the sky wasn't on fire, you know, and it's not like, shut up, old man.
Liz: Well, I also wanted to say that the strips for today were not necessarily chosen for their humor. I mean, Michael picked them well. But also, I mean, the topic was mean girls. So let's see if we laugh out loud.
Michael: They are hilariously funny.
Liz: Okay.
Michael: The fact of little kids being just this out and out, cruel and mean to me is very funny.
Harold: Laugh riot
Michael: Yeah, I don't want sweet little kids.
Jimmy: I mean, I remember discussing it years ago in a college course. The, the joke from Annie Hall where it's the, he. He's having like a fantasy flashback. And it's all the little kids telling what they are when they grew up. And the little boy comes up and I used to be a heroin addict, now I'm a methadone addict. There's not a funny thing about that except the fact that it is just this little kid saying it. And it's so funny because it's so inappropriate and yet feels kind of because some little kid will grow up to be a methadone addict. Yeah.
Oh, well, this is funny. I'll tell this just to get off the whole thing about humor and what isn't is not current and appropriate. It's really funny. I posted a drawing from, the upcoming brand new Amelia book. Oh. Which has a release date. Oh, 11:26. 26. Thanksgiving Day, people.
Michael: Yay.
Harold: Hey, congratulations. Thanksgiving Day.
Jimmy: Very exciting. But so I posted a drawing of it up on Instagram and it was a little Amelia on the moon. And, and she's yelling to someone, we can't see who, and she says, why don't you lick his face? It'd be more dignified. And I wrote, ha, ha. This one will probably get cut. And then for end of the show, Joshua Stauffer wrote, yes, I can see why this one would be best left on the cutting room floor. And then I wrote, well, now it's definitely going in.
Liz: Joshua, you should know by now.
Jimmy: Right? But that's part of it. It's like, oh, is it almost offensive? That's pretty good. And people don't want to take a risk, but I think people are very much interested in. I can see why some people would be upset about this. And I'm like, wow, I can see why some people would be upset about this. So if you guys want to follow us as we go down this journey into. Into Mean Girls, a couple of things you got to do. You got to go sign up for the Great Peanuts reread on unpacking Peanuts. That'll give you one email a month and it will let you know exactly what we're going to be covering and then you can follow along with us. And if you want to talk to us, you want to suggest something for an upcoming season or something like that, you can give us an email. Shoot us an email rather. We're unpackingpeanuts@gmail.com so with all that said, how about we go right to the strips?
Liz: Let's do it.
Harold: Sure.
January 31st, 1960. It's a Sunday. It's an icy snowy day. And Snoopy is playing around on the ice. We see him zip right across on his belly. Then he's skating on his back paws like he's Peggy Fleming or something. Then he's skating on his belly again and on his back. And he's just having a grand old time. And then suddenly Lucy comes up and she yells, hold it. And stop Snoopy right in his tracks. And she starts yelling at Snoopy, is this all you have to do? Are you going to spend the whole day sliding back and forth on a piece of ice? And Snoopy is forlorn. And he walks away shamed as Lucy yells at him, do you think these days were given to you to waste? Doesn't life mean more to you than this? And then she watches as the, depressed Snoopy walks away. And then she looks around a little bit, thinks about what's going on, and decides she's gonna play in the ice. And then Snoopy zips right back with her and says, ha. It is fun, isn't it? And, she's embarrassed by the fact that Snoopy has caught her.
Michael: Well, we were doing Patty and Violet last time, and so we're mostly going to get into Lucy here. And, my theory was that whereas Patty and Violet are just malicious for no good reason.
Jimmy: Uh-huh.
Michael: Lucy always seems to have some sort of lesson she wants to impart when she's being mean. And it's certainly the case here.
Jimmy: Uh-huh.
Michael: That, you know, she doesn't want him to waste his life. He should, like, go to college and get his job. Yeah. So. And that's. I don't know. Let's see if it carries through, through these other Lucy strips, if she's ever just malicious for maliciousness’s sake.
Liz: Maliciousness’s.
Jimmy: Now, why do you think, like, for example, if this were a Patty and Violet strip, what would you think the difference would be?
Michael: Oh, they could. She could just insult him. Hold it. You're worthless. Nothing. Right.
Harold: Lower than the low. I'm having an ice skating party and you're not invited.
Jimmy: Right.
Harold: But no, yeah, I agree with Michael. I think there's an extra layer here of Schulz, and this is, you know, this is all conjecture, but we know he's got a lot of strong women in his life, and he likes that he has a strong wife in his life at this point, and it feels like he's maturing, that he's seeing underneath at least, that it's not just being mean. There is something there that attempts to be, Something that attempts to be constructive, and that just makes the strips all the richer. And then I love that it turns around here where Lucy makes her strong argument as if she absolutely knows what's what. But then she starts to reconsider that. Boy, that did look like a lot of fun. Right. And then she goes out on the ice and she's learned something from Snoopy. And then Snoopy has the final laugh when he skates by her with a big, smug grin. But, I mean, that's a lot more complex in terms of character interaction than what we were seeing in the last episode.
Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely. And it's great because it's just as funny, but it Just adds, a richness to it. Off the, topic of, mean girls, just those 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 panels of Snoopy sliding around. They're great.
Harold: They are wonderful. And I mean, looking at that very first drawing of Snoopy skating with his muzzle all the way down to his. Almost his belly flat on the ice and his butt up in the air. The smile. The smile is way, way, way further away than where it should be on the mouth. It's way up front, which does give you kind of, a self satisfied look. But he's breaking the rules. This is like we talk about UPA, the old animation studio, and the artists that were kind of Picasso- esque. Schulz is kind of Picasso-esque in some ways, right, because he will break anatomical rules for whatever, whatever is fun. And I love it here.
And I was just thinking about a quote from Jimmy Stewart that he made on a British television show in, the. Probably in the 60s where he was asked about his acting style. And he said, I think that acting comes down to a series of moments when you remember it, because there was something that just stood out. And he said, as an actor, the best I can do is prepare for a moment. It may or may not happen, but my job is to be prepared for as many moments as possible I can make with my character. And I was thinking about that, and then I was thinking about Schulz. You know, he has moments because, basically, panel to panel, you could say a panel is a moment or maybe three panels leading up to something is a moment. But how many moments are in this strip just of Snoopy? Yeah, you just have these little snapshots of joy on the ice.
Michael: My favorite Snoopy drawing, maybe of all time is that last panel on, the second tier. Total despair and big sweat drops coming off his head. But he's faking. He's faking.
Harold: Is he?
Michael: That's like a cartoon of, like, humiliation.
Jimmy: I don't know that he's faking.
Harold: I don't think he's faking.
Jimmy: He's going because he's sad, and then he comes back because he catches Lucy.
Michael: I mean, no, I think he's faking because he turns around and he's not. He's not listening to her.
Liz: But we've had this argument before.
Harold: Yeah, I think it's, I mean, I don't know. Snoopy would have done it unless we, we. We. He waits until Lucy herself does it. But yeah, it could go either way, I suppose. But I thought that was genuine mortification by Snoopy, he's just been taken down to the lowest level.
Michael: I've never seen him like that. He doesn't get mortified.
Harold: Sure he does.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: No, I. I think he's. No, I don't. Because that's just so cartoon-y. That's like the very essence of mortification. I don't think he ever listens to Lucy or cares at all what she says. He's playing. He's just making fun of her.
Harold: Yeah. I don't think the evidence is there. He looks like he's absolutely distraught by this. And he doesn't come back until she proves herself wrong.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: That's the way I do it.
Liz: This is Michael's interpretation.
Michael: Yeah.
Harold: Yeah.
Michael: He's a brilliant actor. He's a great man.
Harold: Well, let's ask the, listeners, too, those of you who have this open, take a peek and see what you think. Do you think, he's putting on an act? Because it sure is a good one. It is an amazing drawing of Snoopy there.
Liz: Yeah.
Harold: But he absolutely dejected.
Liz: The drawing does not give you any information as to whether he's putting it on or not.
Jimmy: Well, and that's what I think, because there's no information indicating that he's putting it on. It means he's not. That's what I think. But it doesn't matter. It really doesn't. Because the bottom line is the joke is exactly the same.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: And he's such a genius. It could be that he is sad and putting it on, like does that. You know what I mean? I understand that.
Harold: Yeah. Sure.
Michael: So this is not going to destroy our friendship.
Jimmy: I don't think so. No.
Harold: I think we'll survive.
Liz: What about those two panels with yellow sky? What would that mean?
Jimmy: Well, the hold it is perfect because. Right. so the other one, it seems like it's indicating that's the moment she makes her decision.
Harold: Those are the two moments, the change of mind. Yeah.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: He often would use that really pale yellow for the sky.
Harold: Yeah, it's nice. It's a nice break, and I'm learning from that. And, Jimmy, I think you pointed me in that direction with my strip. I was just being very literal with the backgrounds. It's like, you don't have to. That can change. Just swap it out and it works. It's great. And it adds mood. I like it.
Jimmy: Yeah. if you allow yourself just 5% abstraction in some things, it opens up a whole nother realm.
Harold: I think there's a lot of truth there. Yeah.
Jimmy: Like, you'll see that in Love and Rockets, where just. It'll be the saddest moment and the character will get really cartoony. Well, we've talked about that. The Chibi characters in manga and stuff like that. We've talked about everything. We've had 200 and so episodes. All right, so that's Michael's favorite drawing. What are your favorite drawings? Harold and Liz, in that strip.
Liz: My favorite is the last panel on, the first tier.
Jimmy: Last panel, first tier. Harold.
Harold: Last panel, first tier.
Jimmy: Mine's last panel. First tier, too..
Liz: We win.
Harold: Unbelievable.
Jimmy: but that Michael would not be satisfied if he were not the different one that makes him secretly twice as happy.
Michael: Well, we've seen that before in his happy dance.
Liz: No, but it's a particularly good happy dance. I mean, his ears are really, flying.
Jimmy: Yeah, there's something. It's a dog doing that. That's crazy. You know what I mean? It's just.
Harold: Yeah.
Jimmy: Ah.
Harold: Again, the levels of abstraction, and it's interesting. Like, look at him in that panel that we like there with his paw and his leg up. And anatomically, that paw should have where the bend of the leg is. You should have a lot of drawing, to show that there's a bend and he doesn't do it. And so again, it's anatomically kind of impossible. He's kind of got this little marshmallowy body. But again, you make that abstraction and just make it beautiful. And that's the rule of cartooning. And that's something that we have to keep learning, I guess, over and over again to give ourselves some permission to just make it beautiful and fun.
Liz: I wouldn't call it beautiful, but it works perfectly. I mean, it's just completely understood what the body is doing.
Jimmy: Okay, that brings me back to one other thing. I just want to say that, ties back in with what Harold was saying about the little moments, like in a film, and how the little moments are here. Just recently, my daughter's boyfriend had never seen Star Wars.
Harold: Any Star Wars.
Jimmy: So it's like, oh, my God, this is great. so I pulled. I found the original. And like, I mean,
Harold: the best of Jar Jar.
Jimmy: Yeah, No, I found the one from 1977. Doesn't say A New Hope. There's no indication there will ever be another movie. Right?
Harold: Okay.
Jimmy: And he's like, all right, what do I want to know? I'm like, nothing. Here it is. Enjoy. And as we're watching it, I'm like, oh, my God. No wonder this clicked with me at six this is so clear and yet so involving. And it's like, oh, this is the iconic shot of them crossing the hallway while they're getting shot at. This is the iconic rope swinging it. Every. It was so much like, yeah. every time we point a camera at a thing, we want to get the 100% storytelling value of what this is.
Harold: Yeah, Yeah. I really like the idea of, once you got the idea of the story to, you know, look at the moments. Can I add a little moment here? You know, and in comedy, you know, you see it all the time. Some of the great comics, they would have a little shtick. It might be just a little anticipation before they go off to the right or the left. It just makes it extra funny and that you learn those pieces and those things, and it just adds up when you experience it. And it's a fun way to look at creation if you want to just layer it and make it maybe extra special.
Jimmy: Yeah. And so many those moments are the things you remember, like, and hang on to, you know.
Harold: Yeah. And they do add up to a cumulative effect that's pretty amazing, you know, if you pull it off. But the fact that you can build it from moments makes it less daunting to create, I think.
Jimmy: Absolutely it does. Absolutely it does.
June 30, 1960. Charlie Brown and Lucy are hanging around outside. Charlie Brown just has his famous, quotation marks around his eyes. So he's looking upset, and he says to Lucy, Violet says, I have a failure face. And Lucy takes in the magnificence of Charlie Brown's failure face and says, oh, you have Charlie Brown. You really have. It's got failure written all over it. Then she, like, spins around him, comes around the other side to get, all angles of the failure face and says, I've never seen anyone who had more of a failure face. A real fat failure face. And then Charlie Brown ends with, I can't stand it through gritted teeth.
Michael: Yeah, well, this might shoot down my theory.
Liz: No, I think it. I think it works. And it also makes me laugh out loud. So I'm not saying it's a bad strip.
Michael: I'm saying she, I don't think she's trying to help him at all.
Liz: No, but she's. But it isn't cruel. It's just observation.
Harold: Okay, okay, that's interesting. So she's actually. She's actually respecting Violet's opinion and taking it in and being quite, impressed
Michael: with the insight created this idea.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Liz: And she's not thinking at all about Charlie Brown's feelings.
Jimmy: Right. so I think Lucy's caught up in the moment here. Like, yeah, yeah, you do have a failure face.
Liz: But how about Charlie Brown's face in the last panel?
Jimmy: That's great.
Harold: Gritting his teeth.
Jimmy: Yep. Through those gritted teeth and those weird eyes.
Harold: Yeah. Well, Michael, what's your take on this, then? So. So do you. Do you feel like she's just in the moment, or do you think she is just absolutely digging the knife in and she knows exactly what she's doing?
Michael: Well, this wasn't her idea. I think that changes it. So I, I don't think she's being. I think she is being mean. Especially that fat failure face. Because that's. That's the punchline. Because that for some reason, someone's saying you have a fat face.
Jimmy: And she just looks so happy to say it.
Michael: Yeah.
Liz: And her arms are up in the air.
Harold: Yeah. it's like her Eureka moment. You know, she's some scientist exploring him.
Michael: Yeah. She's enjoying destroying him here. So I might be wrong. We'll see if Lucy actually has people's best. Has best intentions.
Liz: Well, and William Pepper said that in one of our very earliest episodes, Right?
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: he planted the seed there.
Michael: Yep.
Jimmy: Hey, still cranking out episodes of It's a podcast, Charlie Brown. Still Great. Give William a listen if you're a peanuts fan.
Harold: Yeah.
July 1st, 1960. This continues. Now, Lucy is talking to her brother Linus and says, now, remember, what you are about to see is an authentic failure face. And she brings him to Charlie Brown, who's just standing there minding his own business. And she goes, they're very rare, and you should learn to recognize one when you see it. She continues, Charlie Brown looks totally chagrined. and she says, notice how failure is written all over it. Notice how the years have etched failure into every line. Notice how. And then Charlie Brown says, get out of here. Sending them flying.
Michael: Yeah, well, she is trying to help Linus.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: This is, school teacher mode, right?
Liz: Yeah.
Harold: Yeah. So maybe that she genuinely is like, this is a. This is an important insight. I must share this with my little brother. It's not absolutely mean. It's. It's crazy. I love that. I love the generic expression on his face where he's like. Almost like he's standing for a statue. And yes, in panel two, Charlie Brown as. As Linus puts his hand to his chin to consider the failure face. It's just such great cartooning.
Liz: But his smile sort of his cheek pulls in in the third panel, the smile turns into a different expression.
Michael: I think he's looking at the reader in that panel.
Jimmy: It's definitely, yeah, like a reaction shot. Like, can you believe what's going on here?
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: Well, here. Okay, so here is my hot take. That might be. I might be one out of four in this instance.
Liz: Drum roll, please.
Jimmy: I can see that Lucy, I, could see Lucy doing this entirely as a bit in the same way Michael saw Snoopy. As you see what I'm saying? But there's nothing that necessarily says that is true in the context either. But that's my interpretation. But I wonder if that's wrong. That could very well be wrong.
Harold: from this era, I think what Michael was going back to about Lucy really having layers of intention that we didn't see with Violet and Patty. Yeah, it does seem like. And it makes to me, it makes it funnier the fact that she's so insensitive, ah, about this. and she's genuinely thinking this is something that needs to be understood for Linus. She's turning it into this teachable moment without the sarcasm. That actually makes it funnier to me if that's.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah.
Harold: If I read it that way.
Jimmy: Right.
Liz: But if we're speculating, I bet if we asked Schulz, he would say it means whatever we think it means.
Harold: You think?
Liz: Yeah. That there is not a definitive answer about what she means.
Harold: Yeah. I wonder if Schulz was that kind of guy where he was like, yeah, whatever you read into my work is what's there. I don't know that he was like that or not. That seems to be more popular in recent years. To where do you guys fall? Leave it to the audience.
Michael: I fall all over the place.
Liz: No falling. You promised.
Michael: Do comic strips generally have thought balloons? Yeah, because we don't know what's in their head. We're speculating on their actions. In a novel, you would know what they're thinking.
Jimmy: Well, if it's told that way, yeah.
Michael: Yeah. I mean, just. Would you ever use a thought balloon in a comic strip?
Jimmy: I use them all the time.
Michael: Well, that's a comic book.
Jimmy: Oh, I see what you're saying. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Michael: In a gag cartoon.
Jimmy: Yeah. I mean, people.
Harold: Yeah.
Michael: You don't want to get into people's heads because you don't have time. You want to do it with facial expressions and what you know about the characters. He's delivering information through what people say and how they react to things. And, you were talking about, is it true or not? We don't know, but he's giving us as much information as he can.
June 6, 1960. Lucy and Charlie Brown outside. Lucy has some advice for Charlie Brown. She says, you should start thinking about becoming president. Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown, very stately, with his hands behind his back, says, not me. I could never become president. But Lucy encourages, sure you could, Charlie Brown, but you have to begin planning for it now. Charlie Brown thinks this over. Maybe you're right, Lucy. Maybe if I begin to study now while I'm young, I can become president someday. And then Lucy screams, you, president?
Michael: Well, maybe I was wrong about Lucy.
Liz: This is mean.
Michael: Yeah, because she's goading him, into betraying his feelings and then laughing at him.
Harold: Or not. We're proving that sometimes you can see whatever you're gonna see in here. I would agree with you, except the look on her face in panel three. It's almost like. It's like, oh, you know, oh, this
Jimmy: is a terrible idea. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Harold: And yeah. And that she just has no filter. And just like she changed her mind with Snoopy. She's like, oh, wait a second. Coming out of your mouth. It sounds insane.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: It made sense when I said it.
Michael: So she's trying to help him maybe realize that, Boy. Yeah. That you don't want this person.
Liz: Yeah.
Michael: Being helped.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: And whatever that little bush is, I want in my yard. I think I love that. I don't know what that is. Is that an aloe vera bush?
Jimmy: Yeah, I think it's just a pile of Romaine.
Harold: Okay.
September 25th, 1960. It's a Sunday. Charlie Brown's sitting on a rock in a field next to a river, it looks like. And he says--
Michael: that's the sidewalk, I'm afraid.
Liz: Oh,
He says, nobody likes me. Nobody really likes me. As they're walking. Then they're at the thinking wall, and he says, all it would take to make me happy is to have someone say he likes me. And then Lucy, as they're walking away, says, are you sure? And Charlie Brown says, of course I'm sure. And then Lucy says, you mean you'd be happy if someone merely said he or she likes you? Then they're getting a drink at a water fountain, and she continues, do you mean to tell me that someone has it within his or her power to make you happy merely by doing such a simple thing? Charlie Brown says, yes, that's exactly what I mean. And then Lucy says, well, I don't think that's asking too much. I really don't. And she continues, but you're sure now? All you want is to have someone say, I like you, Charlie Brown, and then you'll be happy. Charlie Brown, arms wide open, says, and then I'll be happy. And then in the last panel, Lucy says, I can't do it.
Michael: She's a more complex character than we're giving her credit.
Liz: Yeah, she's being true to herself.
Harold: Yep.
Jimmy: Here's what I would do to, fix this disastrous strip. No, you're. Here's what. My arrogance. I'd put a silent panel between. And then I'll be happy. And I can't do it. Of just Lucy looking at Charlie Brown, maybe even smiling. And then cut to.
Liz: Then she doesn't have to repeat it again.
Harold: I kind of like it as it is.
Jimmy: Well, yeah, I like it as it is, too.
Harold: I mean, that there is no beat. She's like, 180 degrees instantly.
Michael: Yeah, she doesn't have to think about it. your blank panel would imply she's pondering.
Harold: Yeah, I didn't answer you right away. I had to think about it.
Jimmy: Yeah. Or it would imply that she's letting him hang there for a while.
Liz: well, but she's going from this discovering how he really feels to then applying it to herself and realizing that, nope, can't do it.
Harold: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like the blank panel. It's great. You know, I. I'm trying to think of other. Other places where I've seen this kind of interaction with this type of character. These are so unique characters. I mean, even all after people have copied Schulz.
Jimmy: Yes.
Harold: This feels unique.
Jimmy: One thing I would suggest, don't color the pathway blue.
Harold: Yeah, no, that was something that.
Liz: That was.
Harold: Yeah, it's clear. It is the pathway. Later strips actually walking on the water to a fence. It's like. Okay, I see what you're doing there. Yeah. I think he switched to gray after that.
Jimmy: Yeah, that's the way to go.
Liz: So she's just not intentionally being cruel. She just doesn't care enough. I mean, she doesn't take his feelings into consideration.
Harold: Right.
Jimmy: She doesn't have it. With her capacity to be that kind of.
Michael: Yeah.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: I. I actually. I'll tell you, I'm thinking of a real person. I know right now that I adore. That I've known my whole life. Can't do things like that.
Harold: Just couldn't.
Jimmy: If you were. If, you were trapped under a car and. And you had 45 seconds to live, and you said, the only thing I want you to do is say you really liked my drawing or whatever. Or you thought I would, and they could. Would not be able to do it. Couldn't do it.
Liz: I'm not sure Michael could. If I said Michael, all I really want you to do is to say, I love you.
Jimmy: Oh, Michael, here's your big chance.
Michael: uhhh
Liz: See, I think he's Lucy.
Michael: I can't do it.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: I mean, there are. And that has nothing to do with meanness.
Liz: No. That's who he is.
Jimmy: Well, this person. I once said you're emotionally constipated.
Michael: Is she a sociopath? That's the question. Patty and Violet are clearly sociopaths. She's not.
Jimmy: No, no. She has layers. She's like an onion.
Michael: Yeah. Complex character. And Linus, too. So, the Van Pelts. We've got to get into what their parents are like.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: We should do a whole season about the Van Pelts someday.
Liz: Good idea.
Jimmy: And you know what else we should do, though, before we do that? We should take a break.
Liz: Yay.
Jimmy: So, do that and then come back and we'll still be here, and we'll still be talking about Peanuts.
Liz: Sounds good.
BREAK
VO: Hi, everyone. I just want to take a moment to remind you that all three hosts are cartoonists themselves, and their work is available for sale. You can find links to purchase books by Jimmy, Harold, and Michael on our website. You can also support the show on Patreon or buy us a mud pie. Check out the store link on. Unless you unpackingpeanuts dot com.
Jimmy: And we're back. I'm hanging out in the mailbox. Liz, do we got anything?
Liz: we do. We got a couple of great things. There was an email from super listener, Aaron Forringer, who sent us a link to his story about listening to unpacking peanuts and being attacked by a snapping turtle. It's really funny and I'm going to put a link in the show notes.
Jimmy: Why don't we read it?
Liz: Oh, well, okay. It's long.
Jimmy: Well, that, it is the mail segment though. I mean,
Liz: Okay. It's how Boy Scout life saving helped me destroy my noise canceling headphone or a turtle messed with my meditation, Oon a regular basis I use the Headspace app, a way to quiet my mind, lower my blood pressure and make me feel superior to people who do not meditate.
Jimmy: That's the only reason to meditate.
Liz: Yeah, really. An additional practice I've been doing for several months now is walking to my apartment complex's pool in the morning, submerging myself up to my neck, placing my expensive noise canceling headphones on my head, closing my eyes for 15 minutes and zenning out. Afterwards, I swim a few laps and continue with my day. Yesterday I headed for the pool, headphones on my head, towel over my arm, kick off the flip flops, lay my cell phone down by the pool and walk to the steps to ease into the weightless environment, to delve into the mysterious depths of my mind. At the top of the stairs, there's a black object. No discernible details, thanks to my sunglasses. It simply looks like a deflated ball. Being the public minded and conscientious human being that I am, I decide to take out this piece of trash and throw it away. I reach for it and it shoots away. It's a turtle. A large turtle, about a foot from head to tail. There's a turtle in my pool. I should help the turtle get out of the pool. Research note: later identified as common snapping turtle. Common snapping turtles are omnivorous, with a bite pressure of roughly 45 to 50 psi.
Jimmy: Is this David Foster Wallace? Is he secretly.
Liz: It continues. I fall back on my old Boy Scouts of America life saving merit badge skills. The classic mantra of life saving reach, throw, go. In order to help the drowning swimmer, you first reach for the swimmer from a safe location and distance. So applying this first principle, I grab the skimming net from the side of the pool and chase the turtle around the pool for a few minutes, trying to scoop him up and out. This does not work. Every time I get close to him and try to scoop him up, he swims away. I try getting him into a corner but due to the length of the pole, I just cannot react quickly enough to get him into the net. Time to change tactics. The second principle of throw will not work in this case. Turtles stay below the surface, only coming to the surface once every few minutes to breathe. And he is not going to grab onto a life preserver I throw him.
Now, dear reader, you may be asking, hey, Aaron, why don't I just report the unauthorized Turtle to the apartment complex? He clearly is not paying rent and he probably does not have a visitor's pass. Let the landlord deal with Turtle. Or why don't you just meditate in a different area of the pool than Turtle? A. I am a man and I started a project and I have my pride. I. I just wanted to finish what I started. In this case, rescuing Turtle, even if he doesn't want my help. I do not feel entirely comfortable getting into the pool with Turtle, who might be hungry. No telling how long he has been in the pool. Then closing my eyes to meditate while he swims silently around looking for a snack. So throw will not work. So I continue with my boy scout merit badge training. Go. I will get in the water, but keep my distance. So I will stay armed with my skimming pole and herd Turtle with my body, but scoop him up from a safe distance. I follow Turtle around for a while, trying to corral him, getting the skimming net underneath him so I can get him out of the pool. So picture this. Me, swim trunks, sunglasses, my Pittsburgh Pirates Bradenton hat, and my noise canceling headphones. While I am chasing Turtle around the pool, I am listening to a podcast, Unpacking Peanuts, a semi scholarly analysis of the Peanuts comic strip. I corner Turtle in the corner of the pool and the skimming net is closing in. That is when Turtle does the unexpected and turns toward me and begins swimming at me.
Jimmy: My kind of turtle.
Liz: I'm not saying I panicked. I did not retreat. I simply and quickly backed up in a hasty manner, tactically dropping my skimming net and unfortunately stumbling a bit at the same time. Noise canceling headphones go kerplunk into the water. Turtle swims out of the corner and back to the shallow end of the pool.
Anyhow, to read the rest of it, you must go to his blog. Aaron Forringer..
Michael: Oh my God.
Liz: And I will. Oh, you. We'll put the link in the show notes, but I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you, Aaron.
Jimmy: yeah, gave me a little bit of a ptsd. That or the reach, throw, go thing I had to take. Red Cross Life or you Know, swimming lessons all the way up to lifeguard when I was a kid. For what? I think just because my mom was insane and was so afraid that, something bad would happen, I had had the maximum level of training. And, you know, this is where they teach all that stuff too. And I remember you. I was standing in full clothes, jeans, socks, boots, swim trunks underneath it, T shirt and then a flannel shirt over it, standing on the top of the diving board at Norskill High School and looking out. And my parents were there and they're like, encouraging me because I had to jump in fully clothed, take all these clothes. It was this insane test and looking at everyone encouraging me to jump into the pool fully clothed. And I swear I was like 10 at this point. I was like, the world is insane and I can trust no one. So anyway, thanks for the ptsd. Sorry about the headphones.
Liz: Well, there's more to the story and everybody should go to his website and check it out. And we also heard from Todd Webb, who wrote to us on YouTube about the Seven Deadly Sins episode and our discussion of the Internet, influencer and Todd writes, big difference between content and art. Yes, there can be overlap, but they are not one and the same.
Jimmy: Hear, hear. Friend of the show, Todd Webb.
Michael: Can't argue with that.
Liz: And that's it for the mail. is there anything on the hotline?
Jimmy: Nothing on the hotline this week, but if you guys want to ever leave a message or send us a text, you can do that. It's 717-219-4162. And of course you can email us at unpackingpeanuts@gmail.com and remember, when I don't hear from you, I worry. So. Yeah. So give us a shout out and let's get back to the strip. Oh, wait. How about Unpacking Peanuts recommends? Does anyone have anything to recommend?
Michael: I recommend Unpacking Peanuts.
Jimmy: That's a great podcast. Ah. I'm going to recommend our pal Joshua Stauffer's podcast, Kids TV and Me. He goes through and he talks about classic children's television shows. He gives insight and information about their production, and he talks about his experiences, he analyzes them, talks about his personal experiences with them, and he's doing a great job.
Harold: Well, that's cool. Oh, one last recommendation. Is anyone discovered MeTV tunes? It's like a cartoon only channel on MeTV.
Jimmy: No.
Harold: And they are showing in some cases, curated old cart-- like theatrical cartoons as well as TV cartoons. But my, I'm having a blast watching stuff I read about in Leonard Maltins of Mice and Magic book from the, you know, what was that in the 80s? But they've got. They've got. They've got the Fleischer cartoons like the Popeye ones, the Betty Boop cartoons. They've got the Woody Woodpecker, the Terry tunes. They've got mgm and they even have Columbia films which were almost impossible to see until recently,
Jimmy: I can’t even think of what a Columbia animation…
Harold: Well, that's just it. Yeah. Yeah. There's an old comic that, Michael, you might know, called Fox and the Crow that D.C. put out for years, for, like, 25 years. And that was actually based on a Columbia cartoon, like, and there was a series, and nobody knows those cartoons because they were not available. And now they're just kind of randomly in the mix at, MeTV, on their Tunes channel. And it is. It's just fun to see these old cartoons. And.
Liz: Michael, didn't your aunt work for Fleischer?
Michael: Yeah.
Liz: What was her job, do you know?
Michael: I think she was a colorist for some reason. It was all women. Yeah.
Harold: It was all like, an ink. Ink and paint.
Michael: Yeah.
Jimmy: A lost art.
Michael: Yeah.
Harold: Thank goodness. That was a tough, tough gig. Yeah.
Jimmy: Yeah. All right, so that's Unpacking Peanuts recommends. So go and experience those things for yourself.
Michael: All right.
Jimmy: What do you say we get back to the old strips?
February 25, 1960. Now Lucy is berating Snoopy, and she says, the trouble with you is you don't show enough respect. If it weren't for humans, you dogs wouldn't even be here. Snoop is just taking this in. And then Lucy, as she pounds on her own chest, says, from now on, I want respect. To which Snoopy snaps to attention and salutes.
Harold: And Lucy rolls her eyes. This strip, talking about dialogue and timing. 1960. Charles Schulz is using bold lettering to emphasize things so that you can kind of understand how he wants you to read it. I wonder why he dropped that later. Because, it's very effective. Right. You know, because it's. The trouble with you is you don't know. You don't show enough respect.
Michael: I love bold lettering because it's the one thing. Well, there are many things comics can do that books can't do, but one is to show where the emphasis is.
Harold: Yep. Yeah.
Michael: And I use it a lot. I probably use it too much.
Jimmy: I use it too much, for sure.
Harold: I like it here. It helps me. It helps me understand his, intention. And that, I think, helps me make it funny. But for some reason, he got away from that. He was like, no, that's not what I want to do anymore.
Liz: Or he just believed that his audience would understood now. I mean, that they were.
Jimmy: Or he's drawing 10,000 of them, and I'm not changing the pen name to get them.
Harold: Well, you know, that could. That could be it. Yeah, yeah. As my dad says, you don't want to put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's, But I like it here. And it does help me get to where he's thinking, and I like it.
Jimmy: Oh. I mean, I couldn't do it. I couldn't write a comic book without doing that. Now at this point, it's like, so baked into actually even the way my comics look, that it would, you know, be the same.
Harold: Yeah. I think it's. It's a tool in the toolbox of the cartoonist. And I'm kind of sad he dropped it. I don't. Maybe it's because he got better with how he did word choices and stuff. Or maybe because he didn't want to break out the other pen dam. Yeah,
Jimmy: you have to wipe it off and then you know it.
Michael: Right.
March 16, 1961. Frieda is here, and she's now yelling at Snoopy. She says, it's disgraceful the way you hang around all day doing nothing. Now you get out there and chase some rabbits. Snoopy takes off. Arf, arf, arf. And then he comes back the other way. But now he's acting out the part of the bunny to which Frieda yells, you're not fooling anybody but yourself.
Michael: Well, poor Frieda. She didn't have a good career, but she was a one joke character. And then Schulz found a second joke for her, and this is the second joke is she wants Snoopy to chase rabbits. And after a bunch of these, I think he just ran out of Frieda jokes and dropped her.
Harold: Yeah. Well, kudos to anybody who can make a character work who has. Just because she has naturally curly hair.
Jimmy: Yeah, that. You're right.
Liz: Yeah.
Harold: But I like this additional one. These. I remember really fondly, her pushing him to go out and go after the rabbits. There's a lot of great strips that came out of it. I like Frieda. I wish Frieda had stuck around a little longer.
Liz: You don't usually see a front face on view of Frieda in that third panel.
Harold: It's a good look. How would you describe that look on her face? As Snoopy hops by as a Rabbit.
Liz: What the heck?
Harold: Yeah, what the heck?
Liz: Arf. Arf. Arf. Is very funny.
Harold: Now, if Lucy had done this, Michael, do you think anything would be different?
Michael: I don't know if he would have had Lucy do this. I don't know. I mean, it's just a Frieda gag.
Jimmy: but if you take away the fact that it is and you just, Because this could be if it, you know, if there were no other ones.
Liz: It's the same as the ice skating one. But in this one, it's clear that Snoopy's not paying any attention to her. But. So maybe this gives more information about whether Snoopy is actually feeling chastised for skating.
Harold: Although I will say, in this one, he doesn't mock acts anything based on her command. It just looks like he's out doing it. Yeah. Before the sarcasm hops back into the panel.
Jimmy: You know, if you want to extraplicate. Extraplicate. I just made that up.
Harold: I like that. Can we. Let's mint that word.
Jimmy: Right. I'm Unpacking peanuts. We're going to extract. Well, I already forgot. Extrapolate.
Harold: Extraplicate.
Jimmy: Extra. I love.
Harold: That's great.
Jimmy: Extraplication. If they were real people, Lucy is a bigger part of Snoopy's life than Frieda. Yeah. So it's more likely that what Lucy says to Snoopy might actually hurt his feelings.
Liz: Yes.
Jimmy: I don't think Snoopy gives a crap what Frieda has to say about, him, you know?
Liz: Exactly.
Harold: Yeah. Well, I appreciate your extraplication.
Jimmy: Yep.
Michael: Thank you.
Jimmy: Now let's go contemplate this. Artisanal Refrications
May 11, 1961 now it's Frieda hanging out. Schroeder's doing the Lucy bit. And she says, schroeder, I think it's disgraceful the way Lucy bothers you. And of course, Schroeder's pounding away at the keys. And then Frieda continues, and she's always asking everyone, why does he have to play that stupid piano? I think that's terrible. Then we have a beat panel where Frieda contemplates this. And then she says, incidentally, why do you always have to play this stupid piano?
Michael: Lucy can't say that because she's in love and has still hopes that Frieda doesn't care. This leads up to one of the funniest.
Jimmy: But she is saying that Lucy is saying it. I mean, that's the joke. Lucy's always saying, why does he have to play that stupid piano?
Liz: Yeah, but why does Schroeder actually listen in that fourth panel. He doesn't, you know, he's turned out and he's reacted.
Michael: He's reacted well. I think it's.
Jimmy: He's.
Harold: It's a surprise. He's used to Lucy's response.
Jimmy: Is everybody gonna harass me about this?
Harold: Yeah, but this is new. New experience. Maybe for Schroeder here.
Jimmy: Hey, buzz off, lady. No one asked you.
Liz: I gotta lock the door.
Harold: Yeah, yeah, he's. He's very, Well, he's focused, so he's. He can't be bothered to get up from his keyboard, so anybody can walk in on it. He's very vulnerable.
Jimmy: Now, Michael, when you were picking these strips, was there any consideration of maybe not including Frieda, or was she always, in your mind, one of the iconic mean girl characters?
Michael: Well, no, I. I didn't want to do all Lucy. I mean, because we all know Lucy and Lucy, you know, main character through the entire strip. And I was trying to think, okay, his first three girl characters were not nice people. And then Sally came along, and I was. I was thinking, well, I should have a Sally. But Sally, you know, she's a baby, especially. There's nothing mean about Sally. Right. Then. Then Frieda came along, so she's the fifth. And I was looking for Frieda being mean just to see if he was carrying on the great tradition. But she's only mean in certain situations, especially with Snoopy.
Jimmy: And she feels. Seems very focused on him being lazy, like that's what bugs her.
Liz: Yeah, he doesn't behave the way she thinks a dog should behave.
Harold: Frieda seems to be, if she's a little bit unique here. I think she's about what's socially appropriate. Right. She's concerned about her looks, and she's concerned about, you know, is it appropriate for someone to always be playing a stupid piano? Or a dog should always be, you know, chasing rabbits. And it kind of would have been interesting to see if we'd had a Frieda, Lucy, Patty Violet kind of thing where they were going around processing stuff together.
Michael: Well, there's one great strip. I, think it's the silent strip, where.
Liz: Yeah. With Lucy and Snoopy figuring out what to do because Frieda's making out with Schroeder.
Michael: Well, basically, Frieda's usurps Lucy's position at the piano. And then Frieda attacks with suggestion.
Harold: Or Lucy attacks? Snoopy pantomimes what she should do, and she just pounces on Lucy and beats her up.
Harold: wait, so who pounces.
Michael: Lucy pounces, but Lucy pounces on Frieda? Yeah.
Harold: So That's a situation where we kind of see them together.
Harold: They're too. They're. They're not simpatico the way Violet. They're maybe too similar in some. In some ways that it actually makes them.
Michael: Yeah.
Harold: Competitors, Right?
Michael: Frieda had possibilities.
Harold: yeah.
Michael: I think she's a good character.
Harold: I agree. I like her.
May 18, 1961. Frieda, Charlie Brown and Snoopy are outside, and Charlie Brown says, what's the sense in getting a cat? Why stir up a lot of trouble?
Harold: Charlie Brown!
And Frieda goes, because it has to be done. Snoopy has had it too good around here for too long a time. He has to be stopped. Somebody has to put him in his place. And then Charlie Brown yells, are you bringing in a cat or a gunfighter? And then, weirdly, Snoopy looks out after Frieda and says with a sense of kind of pride in Charlie Brown, touché.
Harold: Yeah. Yeah.
Liz: That's unusual.
Jimmy: It's not really a Touché moment.
Liz: No. And you don't usually see him giving a attaboy to Charlie Brown.
Jimmy: Yeah. And a, touché would be if he zinged Frieda.
Harold: Well, he did.
Michael: That is pretty good. It's a good line.
Jimmy: It's a good line, but it's not insulting to Frieda in any way. Or. It doesn't. And it doesn't sound like a.
Liz: Like a, Well done.
Harold: Yeah, it's. It's.
Michael: It's.
Harold: Never bring a gun to a cat fight or never bring a cat to a gun. I'm not sure which. But, it's one of my favorite drawings of Snoopy. Talk about favorite drawings of Snoopy. That looking around Charlie Brown with a big smile and. Yeah, yeah. And I love. I love the balloon of Snoopy thinking Touché. And it's. It's like Schulz talking about drawing something fast that he really likes. That balloon overlaps on both sides. The lines you almost never see.
Michael: Very French.
Jimmy: What's that thing going on up in the upper right hand corner?
Michael: It’s a little beret.
Harold: A little beret on top of the balloon. But, yeah, I mean, so. So again, you know, what's this telling us about Frieda as a mean. What makes her mean here? She's. She's has this sense of what's right and wrong. And what's wrong is that Snoopy has it too good. Uh-huh. That's wrong. To Frieda, it's like she's like, into what, discipline or hard work?
Jimmy: Yeah. You know, it is. It's like she's like a military person.
Michael: Yeah, Right.
Harold: Maybe that's her Family. It's military family. She has to work out to make her hair curly. It's not natural.
Jimmy: That's another type of person, too, where it's like, well, it's my job to take you down a peg.
Harold: Right.
Liz: Yeah.
Michael: No, it's not. No, it's not.
Jimmy: Write on your own paper.
Liz: Yeah. It isn't exactly mean. It's more sort of determined, adjacently mean.
Jimmy: Yeah, it. Well, the results are mean, even if the.
Harold: Yeah.
Liz: Yes.
Harold: Right. And she's so. But, you know, and we've experienced this. We've. We've probably seen it in our lives where, you know, somebody just takes on a cause and somebody is The. Takes the fallout of somebody else's misdirected cause.
Michael: Yeah.
Harold: That happens all the time. And this is a really good embodiment of that. And again, this is kind of complex stuff for a comic strip. And m. It's just cool to see Schulz playing with things in a comic strip that you. I don't remember seeing.
Jimmy: Right. Absolutely.
December 10th, 1961. It's a Sunday. Charlie Brown's outside, and good old Shermy comes by and says, boy, you're in trouble. And then as he passes Charlie Brown, he says, you'd better get out of town. And then Linus comes up and says, the girls are looking for you, Charlie Brown. And are they ever mad. Charlie Brown watches Linus walk away, and then sure enough, Violet, Lucy, and Patty all show up. And they all yell in unison, all right, you. And then Violet tears into him. You're the one we've been looking for. We're going to have this out right here and now. And then at the same time, they all yell, what have you got to say for yourself? And then Charlie Brown says, nothing. You girls are absolutely right, and I'm glad to hear you feel this way. They all are, baffled by this and walk away. And Charlie Brown then says, my soft answer hath turned away a whole flock of wrath.
Michael: Is that a biblical quote or.
Harold: It is. it takes me back to. I was in traffic, a traffic jam. This was probably back in, I don't know, the mid-90s. And we were just inching forward and inching forward and inching forward, and I got distracted, and I bumped the car in front of me, and, boy, that lady came out hot.
Michael: Oh, yeah.
Harold: I mean, it was. I didn't. You know, we weren't going any speed, so.
Michael: Yeah.
Jimmy: Yeah, right.
Harold: But she was like, you know, how could you do this? Are you. How could you not watch and just. Oh, my. You know, she's like, that could have affected my back or my neck, and then maybe it has, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just. I remember thinking, a soft answer turns away wrath. And I just agreed with her.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: And then she turned into the kindest person. I gave her my card and said, you know, here, if. If anything comes up, let me know. You know, blah, blah, blah. But it was like, she just. She just went from absolute, like, you are the most insensitive, horrible, terrible person to, oh, well, thank you. And then she gets back in her car.
Jimmy: I thought, the most amazing thing, this guy. And he is. He does a lot of content at, very fiery political events. And when someone gets really worked up, kind of interviews them because he's a content creator, right? So he's interviewing people back and forth. And when someone gets really, like, fired up and starts yelling, he asks them what their favorite pizza topping is. And it's amazing. Like, there's, like, super cuts where people are like, what? And he's like, I'll let you yell for five more minutes, but you got to tell me what your favorite pizza topping is. And people are like, oh, that's a pretty good deal. It's amazing. It's amazing.
Harold: That's anchovies!
Jimmy: And anyone who doesn't agree. I mean, some people, you're not gonna
Harold: see me down on the mat.
Michael: I tried something like this last week, but it was with a dog.
Jimmy: no.
Michael: I'm walking in the park, minding my own business, and at the corner of my eye, I see motion, and I turn my head, and there's this really big dog charging at me, snarling. It's going to pounce on me and kill me. Oh, no. And what's my reaction? Like, good doggy.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: Did it work? Well, the owner then whistled, and the dog.
Jimmy: Oh, smart.
Michael: No, this. This dog was going to kill me, but I wasn't. I was totally calm. I just went
Harold: thinking, on your feet. Yeah.
Michael: So it. My soft answer, turned away.
Harold: Yeah.
Michael: Wow.
Liz: I love that panel. The. The second panel, on the third tier, they're all.
Michael: Isn't it funny? you don't think of Lucy as being particularly short.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: And he really emphasizes it here.
Harold: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what year Was this again?
Liz: 61.
Harold: So when Lucy's with Charlie Brown in this time, is. Is she also that much shorter, or did you just want to really remind us that I think girls are Patty and Violet?
Michael: I mean, she is a little younger and. But, you usually don't see her. Yeah, I'm looking at her and Charlie Brown. She's a little shorter than him.
Harold: Yeah, yeah, he plays it up here, which is interesting. Yeah, he really makes Lucy pop out.
Michael: Most cartoonists don't think in terms of height. I think that was one of Jaime Hernandez's big breakthroughs. He actually had characters who had actual body types. And. Yeah, I mean, it was, Sometimes you'd have a short character just to emphasize someone being short. His two main characters were both really short, which no one had done before.
Jimmy: When you look at that, like, I'm actually rearranging everything in my studio now. And I was moving some stuff around, and I was looking at the Locas book, the giant collection of Love and Rockets stuff. And I had been looking at a bunch of DC comics from the early 80s, same exact era. And the difference is just crazy. Every DC or Marvel comic, the body types are the exact same. And maybe the hair's. The hair is different. Like, that's basically the difference in all of those characters. You know, Wolverine is short, but that's about it.
Michael: Yeah, all the guys are muscular and all the women are probably around 5’ 4”. You'd never see a 5 foot tall character. All right, but I was thinking, we ended in early 61 here, and I thought, okay, let's look into the future. Any mean girls? I think Lydia came to mind, but I want to save her for a future podcast episode. And then I found a Molly Volley, and I threw in a Molly Volley because she was a mean girl.
May 13, 1977. Snoopy's on the, old tennis court, and he's, He's. It's his service. The ball's way up in the air. No, it's not his service. I'm sorry. The ball is just coming towards him, and suddenly Molly Volley leaps into the panel and yells, mine. Pushing Snoopy out of the way. And then, whap. She smashes the ball back. And then she says to Snoopy, good teamwork, partner. We're gonna win. And we see Snoopy is just flattened on his back leg, straight up in the air.
Harold: Molly Volley.
Jimmy: Molly Volley has a strong brow. Those are some intense eyebrows.
Michael: No, not a complex character.
Harold: Yeah, and I like that Schulz. She's left handed, which means if Snoopy's right handed, that's a pretty good combo in doubles, right? So she can go off on the left side and have her strong. Her strong swing. And he's off on the right, and he's got his strong swing, but she actually runs into his side to hit it.
Jimmy: So, you say that you don't know anything about sports, but you play racket sports. You play. I know You play racquetball. You play tennis, right? Ping pong?
Harold: Yeah, yeah, in high school. I was on the high school team. I got my little JV letter for tennis.
Michael: Yeah. What?
Jimmy: I've known you 30 years, and you're telling me you were a high school letterman in a sport?
Harold: Yeah, I guess I haven't worn my jacket around you.
Jimmy: Yeah, but it come up. I mentioned, it every two days. Hey, I made the.
Harold: It was junior varsity, but yeah, I did, I did. They did give me a letter because I think the deal was if you. We had some sort of tournament and you had to win in your ranking, which was probably 11th, you know, I was. I was competing in singles in the 11th bracket and then won the 11th bracket against the other district players. So, yeah, so I got the. I got my letter because of that. Otherwise, I wouldn't have gotten it as
Jimmy: a Gvillel, in basketball, you just win it for you just get it for minutes play. You could get cremated every minute and still get the letter.
Liz: I. I got a letter for being manager because I. I was really good at cutting oranges.
Jimmy: My high school girlfriend got a letter for keeping stats. Michael, are you a letterman?
Michael: God, no.
Jimmy: We have to get Michael a letter in something.
Liz: Okay, okay.
Jimmy: You're a letterer in being swell. Oh, we'll extrapolicate that later. Is that it? Are we done talking about Molly Volley and these mean girls?
Liz: I just want to mention that Michael and I are going to be at the Festa Del Podcast in Milano on October 2nd and 3rd. And so if any other podcasters or anybody is visiting the Festa Del Podcast, come and see us. We will have an unpacking Peanuts insignia and be wearing our T shirts. So please introduce yourself.
Michael: And our Snoopy socks.
Liz: And our Snoopy socks.
Jimmy: Nice. All right, so that brings us to the end of another episode. Hope there aren't too many mean people in your life. And if they are, just tell them that we said. What should we say?
Liz: Soft answers.
Jimmy: Yes, Yes. A, soft answer to turn away wrath and come back next time to listen to us talk more about Peanuts. So for Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.
Liz: Yes, yes.
Michael: Yes.
VO: Be of good cheer. 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 Shukrala 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, Me, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts. Com. Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.
Liz: Arf arf arf.