Patrick McDonnell - The Acting in Peanuts
Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. This is Unpacking Peanuts and I'm your host, Patrick. Hey, guess what? I'm also a cartoonist. And, and you can Pre order not one, but two of my books right now over on gvillecomics on substack.com it's, in the real Dark Knight, book one and the first new Amelia Rules comic book in 14 years.
And 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, the 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, Harold Buchholz.
Harold: Hello.
Jimmy: And making sure everything runs smooth and keeping us out of trouble is our producer and editor, Liz Sumner.
Harold: Howdy.
Jimmy: Well, guys, it's a special day here in Unpacking Peanuts land. We have a repeat guest. One of the best cartoonists in the whole wide world is visiting us today. He has a new book coming out right now collecting all his Sunday comic strips from the early years of Mutts. And he's here to talk with us about our favorite cartoonist, Charles Schulz. Please welcome to unpacking peanuts. Patrick McDonnell.
Patrick: Happy to be here. It's always a, pleasure to talk to you guys about one of my favorite topics. Peanuts.
Jimmy: Well, it's a pleasure for us to have one of our favorite guests.
Harold: Yes.
Jimmy: So, so this is for the. One of the reasons we wanted to have you back. First off, we'd have you back every week just because we love you and your work. But you have a new project that has, is coming out around now. What can you tell us a little bit about that?
Patrick: Yeah, I'm really excited by this and very happy with it, but Abrams Books is going to start like the, the Mutts library of Sunday pages. It's called the Mutts Sunday Funnies. And the first two volumes are coming out, this October. Volume one and volume two, which is the first four years of Mutts. Actually, the first four and a half years of Mutts. Mutts started in September 94. So it's the first four and a half years worth of Mutts Sunday pages. But it's in, it's. I have to say it's the best looking books I've ever done. The design of them are just really gorgeous. They're like 5 inches by 12 inches. So they're like long thin horizontal hardcover books. And each, when with each two volumes there's gonna also be a box set. So you can get these really nice looking little boxes that the first two volumes go in.
Harold: Oh my gosh.
Patrick: Yeah, it's just. And the other thing, I've been wanting to do it for a long time and my editor Charlie Kochman, I insisted on it but you know those throwaway title panels I do, I always, yeah. You know, would base it on some famous painting or book cover.
Harold: Yeah.
Patrick: you know, and so there's a tribute guide perfect to actually know what each title panel was based on. And I have to say it was a lot of work because I didn't keep records and I had to like, oh no things try to remember what the heck was that. And some of them are, some of them were pretty obscure like Japanese book covers and old album covers from the 50s and. But I think there was only one or two I couldn't identify and admitted to it. But. Yeah, but these, these books, you know, are the start now. I'm already got it. They're going to come out every six months. And I'm already working on, ah, right now I'm working on the volumes five and six.
Harold: Now I'm trying to visualize this. You said it's five inches tall?
Patrick: Yeah, five inches tall, 12 inches wide. Like thin horizontal hardcover book.
Harold: So when those are printing. And these are Sundays, right?
Patrick: Yeah.
Harold: How is that broken out for in a, in such a wide format?
Patrick: It's broke. It's broken out the way they appeared. That's why I really like the format.
Harold: Oh man.
Patrick: Idle panel. And then the strip follows it in the horizontal.
Patrick: You know, so it really looks like the way my originals look, how they were printed in the newspaper for the papers that printed the title panels.
Harold: And you work fairly, fairly small.
Patrick: Yeah, I do. So they're smaller than the originals for sure. But I just think it looks really nice. Actually was inspired by in France. A French publisher did these books that way, but they just took random strips. These are chronological. You know, it starts from the first one to the last, last one and knock on wood will. We'll do all 30 years of them.
Harold: Oh, amazing.
Jimmy: Well, and for those of you out there listening whom papers maybe didn't have those first panels of the Sunday strips. They are really beautiful. And so, you know, as we talk about on, the podcast all the time, Schulz would have the top tier that it would have to be removed. And at some point, I guess, it seems like it's somehow connected to Bill Watterson and his sabbatical or whatever. At some point, someone came up with the idea to be able to have the unbroken strip on the right and the, title panel on the left. The first strip I ever remember seeing, that was yours.
Harold: Do you.
Jimmy: Do you remember how that decision was made?
Patrick: Well, you know, actually, it was a format that was proposed to me, and I jumped on it because, you know, unlike Sparky, you know, the format Sparky had in most cartoonists had, you know, there's those panels that weren't used in some papers. So you really. And also, you know, that stopped you from doing. You know, what I liked about the format I picked was that area that the strip was going to be in. I could do anything. I could do one panel. I could do circles, I could. You know, it was more like Krazy Kat in the sense that the design was totally open. I didn't. I wasn't forced to get rid of a panel, so I had to. When I saw I could do that, that. That made me very excited about doing Sunday pages, I think, you know, you know, what Sparky had to do, and he was great at it, but that made it a little tricky, you know?
Harold: Yeah, yeah. To be able to. So basically, what Schulz was up against was that not only was the. The top potentially going away, but he had to create that little mosaic of panels so that it could be stacked vertically, it could be done horizontally. And so he had a real puzzle. And the genius of what you got to work with then is you have that image on the left, which is its own thing, and then you've got the block of the strip to the right. And as you were saying, that's never going to be broken up or rearranged. So you could do a full page image, you could break it up however you pleased, which I think is great. I mean, I feel for Schulz that he had this kind of put upon him, and it never generally didn't get taken away for a while. I mean, he did some of those single panel Sundays later.
Patrick: Yeah. And. But, you know, he was. It worked for his strip. I mean, he was just good at that. And his storytelling was more direct. You know what I like about that? And especially now, you know, putting these books together. And I really. I did get to play with this space. You know, there's some single panel things. Things tilted. It just was, There was a lot of freedom in that format, which, you know, when I started Mutts, I didn't know you could do that. And I was really encouraged that I was going to have that ability. I played with it as much as I could.
Jimmy: I got a free merchandising idea for you. You can take this, to the bank. Those. The title panels, you pick five or six of your favorite ones of those that are parodies are really like, I think you did a Meet the Beatles one and stuff like that. Those are T shirt designs, my friends. I would wear them anyway. I don't know.
Harold: Have any of those been turned into merchandise on their own?
Patrick: you know, on our website, they sell things, and I think we've done different items using some of the title panels. And actually, you know, now that these books are coming out, they were talking about maybe, you know, doing some things based on the title panels, because it's a big part of the book. I mean, the covers are really nice, and the part of the cover is. One of my favorite title panels is on the cover. So we're really, promoting the idea of the title panels because, you know, when I go look back on it, what a crazy idea. Those things took me as long as,
Jimmy: I bet, you're like, setting yourself up for now, an entirely separate challenge. You have to now come up with this entirely other thing, which is not a comic strip even. It's a clever visual, you know, pun or trick or whatever it is joke every single week. That's completely, It's almost like you're doing a bonus far side or something once a week just for the heck of it.
Patrick: And it was fun. I mean, the way I did it is I would write the joke in the strip first and then try to think, you know, whatever joke was about, like, what class they came in, you know, might add to that and relate to it and. But I tell you, the tough part was, you know, a lot of them were, like, based on famous paintings by Renoir. But, the tough part was trying to figure out how to get them look like the paintings used, you know, comic book. And it was, It really made me a much better colorist because trying to figure out how to get fades and, you know, how to make something look like a beautiful color, you know, oil Painting in comics was a challenge, and I, really. It really taught me what you can do with the. Because, you know, I was a big admirer of the old guys. I mean, Winsor, McKay Sunday pages, color wise. Yeah, gorgeous. And it's really almost impossible to do now. You. Even though we've advanced so much in technology, it actually not necessarily means it got better.
Jimmy: Well, I think you're one of the best colorists of all time. Your coloring is what attracted me to the strip to begin with. Can you talk a little bit about. Is there some sort of technical, process of taking these strips that were created, you know, 25, 30 years ago with a different, you know, process, a totally different technology at work? How is there an issue in now getting those into today's modern printed hardcover books?
Patrick: Oh, no, they. They're. They're able to, you know, the. These books look better than ever, in my opinion. But, So there's. There's no problem with that. But it was a different process. I mean, I didn't, you know, it wasn't people who use computers now, but, you know, back then, you. You had a guide of each color, had a number. What I did was I, you know, made a Xerox of the black and white Sunday, and then I would watercolor it, but then I would add the numbers for the printer to see what I was doing. And, you know, again, there was different ways you can explain that you wanted to fade, you know, so it would fade from a dark red to a light red or an entirely different color.
Jimmy: Well, you're one of the few artists at that period, I think, that had success using those blends and gradients. A lot of really big strips that I love. Somehow in the 90s, when they found out they could do gradients, it just started going. And it was any two colors, they would blend, you know, and it really doesn't work. But where do you get your color sense? Like, Was that from art school? Was that from your illustration background? What's. What's that all about?
Patrick: probably a combination of everything. And, And, you know, and again, probably looking at the old comic strips, you know, they were. They just looked gorgeous. And I think that's what I was really trying to do and just keeping my fingers. I mean, you know, it's funny when. When you did it back then, it was just all numbers. And like, every Sunday morning when I would pick up the paper, I would just keep my fingers crossed because.
Jimmy: Right.
Patrick: You had no idea what it was going to look like until you actually saw it printed.
Harold: So.
Patrick: So, you know, it was a lot of guesswork, but after a while, you know, you knew what a thing looked like based on an old strip. So I always, I kept all my guides and when I colored, I always looked at old things to see what worked and what didn't work. And you know, it took quite a while, but then, I got fairly good at it.
Jimmy: Well, that's fantastic. That sounds amazing. This, these books.
Patrick: You know, I think when you were talking about fades not looking good in the, the late 90s, whatever. But I think that part of that was I noticed that, when people started using the computer to, ah, color their stuff, everyone got really ambitious and started, you know, overusing it. And they just. A lot of those strips came out really dark and kind of smudgy looking. And I think that was because they were using a new tool that printing, wasn't working as well with, wasn't
Harold: taking advantage of the purity of the cmyk.
Jimmy: Yes. you know, putting black in the colors, things can start going sideways real quick.
Patrick: Yeah, that seems to have disappeared. So I guess people have figured out how to do that.
Jimmy: Yep.
Harold: So.
Jimmy: But tell us a little bit. You picked both the topic for this episode and the strips we're going to discuss. Tell us, what made you go for this topic and what we're going to be doing here today.
Patrick: You know, the topic I picked was the acting in Peanuts. And also with that, just the idea of drawing funny pictures. And I think drawing funny pictures has a lot to do with how the characters act. And you know, the more I look at Peanuts and study Schulz, I just feel like he was probably the absolute best out of that than any cartoonist who ever lived. I mean, I think the reason those characters are so alive on the page is they were just great actors. You know, I think I might have mentioned this in the last show, but I, you know, having written two plays based on books, I realized that, you know, theater and comic strips are really close. And you know, as the cartoonist, you're the director and the, you're also the stage manager and you do the set design and, and you, and you write the script. So it's, it's, it is like a little play on paper and it really just, like in theater, it really makes a difference who's the actor, you know, how good your actors are. and Schulz was just able to get the most. I mean, when, when I, I've done the Gift of Nothing and my Me Jane book has plays at, the, Kennedy center years ago. And watching the director, you know, direct the actor and actresses was just so mind blowing. How he could get so much out of somebody, you know, they. They would do it and they said, no, no, why don't you think of this when you say it? And you would see a completely different performance. And I feel like that's what cartoonists do. I mean, you know, when you look at the cast, I mean, Lucy Linus, I mean, how he drew them with the body languages, language and the expressions, they really helped tell his jokes, you know, and, I think that's what really made Peanuts among everything else that he was great at. But I think one of the things that really stands out after, you know, my years of looking at it is that, you know, not only are they well designed characters, boy, he knows how to let them tell the punchline and the setups better than anything.
Harold: Did your experience, in translating this into theater come back around in any way into. In how you were telling stories through either your storybooks or through. Through the comics? Did it inform anything the other way around?
Patrick: But that's a good question. I'm sure it did. But right off the top, I think what I was fascinated by was just how close comics and theater is, you know, as far as how little you need to have on stage to give a sense of place. And you see that with Peanuts. I mean, there's like, you know, one little blade of grass and a tree in the background, and you know where you are or, you know, you don't have to draw much to show someone in Charlie Brown's house. You know, it's like a chair. And, you know, maybe there's a frame on the wall, but, And just like the theater that you don't. They can get away with just a table and a chair on that set, you get a feeling of where. And the lighting, you get a feeling of place.
Harold: Yeah, that's interesting. And Jimmy, you. You did a. Ah. With. With kind of the three of us were involved in one way or another. When you made Amelia a musical and performed.
Jimmy: Michael did that, all of that. I just watched it.
Harold: Are you. Are you guys relating to what. What Patrick's saying, having been through that yourselves?
Michael: Well, yeah. And I mean, it's. One person cannot do a musical usually. You know, you have all these tech people and lighting people and all that. Yeah. I mean, what's so appealing about comics is you're everything.
Patrick: And, you know, maybe you have to
Harold: be as good or bad as you are.
Michael: And if an editor doesn't butt in it's your show.
Liz: total control.
Michael: Yeah. For all you control freaks out there.
Jimmy: Well, you know, it's funny. Someone recently was talking to us about the lack of funny comic books as opposed to comic strips. Like, why aren't there more funny comic books? One of the reasons I think it might be is, to be a funny cartoonist, you really have to do all of it. Like, I think it's very difficult to make a comic work if there's a. That's funny, if there's a script writer and a penciler and then like, a different letterer, because they're all taking an, opportunity to tell that joke, and they can't. They're not all gonna be on the same page. And unless there is someone, like a director, like you're saying, who's sculpting it with intent, it's gonna come out however it comes out. And nine times outta 10, I don't think that's gonna be funny.
Michael: Yeah.
Jimmy: So, Patrick, let me ask you this. When you were writing your jokes, did you, did you have a process by which, when you were working on it, ever, it would happen that, well, this is a really funny idea, and I think this is a really funny punchline. But as I'm drawing it, it's not translating to be as funny. And what would happen if you got in that scenario? Would you work at the drawing until it became funny, or would you go
Patrick: to something else that's interesting? you know, I mean, the way I work, and I'm very visual. So I would get my sketchbook. I used to walk. There's a park next to me, a garden, and I would just sit in that park and wait few hours until I had at least 10 jokes.
Michael: Wow.
Patrick: And I would. You know, it goes back to the other part of the topic today is funny drawings. I mean, I usually started with funny drawings, you know, like, sketching Mooch. And you think of where he might be or what he might be doing, and then just try to make it as funny as possible. And I wouldn't go to a finish, unless I knew the joke worked. So it would be in the sketchbook that you could say, oh, that's not working. And you start sketching.
Harold: Or else would you ever capture something in that sketchbook that took you to the humorous place? And then you were like, I have to recreate what is in that little, tiny rough sketch.
Patrick: Oh, my God.
Jimmy: And you just can't.
Harold: You can't quite relive it. I mean, will you take a rough sketch and actually blow it up and try to trace it or whatever, because you know that every little nuance of that is. Just works. And you have to. You have to be as true to it as possible. Or do you just redraw it?
Patrick: Yeah, no, that's. That's one of my. I don't, miseries on comic strips. I. I feel like the sketchbooks are old. I mean, that's why.
Patrick: And the Art of Nothing in my first book with Abrams, the Comic Art of Mutts, but the Art of Nothing in Particular, I included a lot of sketchbook drawings because the sketches are always. That. That spontaneity and intimacy is always more exciting to me. And,
Harold: Yeah.
Patrick: You know, so. And. And I could see it with. I mean, especially these first four Mutts books I'm putting out for the Sundays is. Well, I. A lot. A lot of back then, I sometimes didn't pencil anything. Those are spontaneous drawings because, I don't know why it is, but when the ideas just magically happen, you usually can capture it. You know, if you work on. Labor on something, it usually doesn't work. Yeah. So I do very loose pencils and kind of hope for that spontaneity with my children's books. They're all done spontaneous. I'll do 500 drawings and pick the one I like the best.
Jimmy: Oh, wow.
Patrick: I don't, you know, pen. I don't pencil sketch first. It's a little different with, you know, I mean, what's nice about children books is, you know, they're more free form, where with a daily, you know, you have a certain plate, you have the dialogue, you have a space at certain size. So it's a little harder to
Jimmy: not,
Patrick: sketch out some of the things so it fits in the space correctly.
Jimmy: Okay, so we are going to get into talking about some of these funny drawings by our pal, Mr. Schulz. But before we do that, Patrick, you have something you wanted to talk about. One of our previous episodes. You have something to say?
Patrick: Yeah, I was listening to your latest episode that was about the tributes the cartoonists did after Sparky passed away. And I thought you might be interested in some of the background on that.
Jimmy: Oh, absolutely.
Liz: Please.
Patrick: I'll tell you how that really started. So, you know, the cartoonists have their Reubens Awards every year, and right before Sparky passed away, they announced that they were going to give Sparky the Milton Caniff Award, which is the lifetime achievement award at the next Reubens. So I thought it would be a great idea. if all the cartoonists did a tribute to Sparky so that that would appear the day he got the award in that. But, I thought how great if he woke up that morning at the whole News, you know, and it was, that was that Reuben was at the World Trade center in New York.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Patrick: And I just thought if he picked up the Daily News that morning, and who wouldn't and read this, you know, read the paper that, he would see every cartoon was attributed to him the night he was going to win the Milton Caniff award.
Michael: Wow.
Patrick: That, that's where the idea initially started. But then, as we know, Sparky passed away and, but we thought that. And, you know, that idea, probably we were talking about it in November, December, because, you know, cartoonists work so far ahead. We had to let the cart because that was going to appear in May. So we had to let people know sooner than later to get started on it so people wouldn't miss the deadline. But then when he passed away, we thought it was still a nice tribute to do and that, that, that's how it happened.
Jimmy: Oh, that's amazing. Well, I, I had no idea that, you were, you were the spark that started that. What an incredible tribute. It would have been beautiful for him to be able to see this.
Liz: Yeah.
Patrick: Don't you think? I mean, I think, you know, Sparky had such a great life. Probably be hard to surprise him with something. I, I think that might have, that might have made his day.
Jimmy: Oh, absolutely. Because what could matter more to him than the newspaper, comic strip page and, other cartoonists? Right.
Patrick: Yeah. Well, can I.
Jimmy: This is personal and you don't have to necessarily answer.
Patrick: If you.
Jimmy: But when you think back to that time when he was sick, were you aware or were people around him? Aware of. This is probably going to be the end sooner rather than later.
Patrick: You know, you, you. I actually saw him pretty soon. Pretty, you know, before he passed away, but like maybe a week or two before.
Harold: Oh, wow.
Patrick: and I mean, you try not to think of that, but he kind of talked like that, I think. I'm. I don't know if I mentioned this in the last show, but when I. The last time I saw him, you could tell that he was, you know, sad.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Patrick: You know, actually was. You know, told me how he really. And he was, you know, breaking up a little bit when he told me, but he was really disappointed that Charlie Brown never kicked the football. And, and he was telling me that he wish he had done that.
Harold: Oh, wow.
Patrick: yeah. And then you know, it's funny. I, you know, I finally freed my chained dog, guard dog in my strip, a year ago, and I was promising people for like 20 years that I have guard dog go free. And for a whole bunch of reasons, I didn't do it until recently. But when I finally freed him, I, I felt like I was free. And it really was a special moment for me. And I think if Sparky had Charlie Brown kick the football, if he felt like me, it probably would have been a pretty, pretty special day for him if he ever did do that. And he had the power to do it. And I understand why he didn't, but he did have some regrets that he did.
Jimmy: That's wild.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: And as someone who has never created anything remotely like, either of, your examples, yours or his, I think that you both handled it exactly right for your particular situations.
Patrick: Yeah.
Jimmy: Do you know what I mean?
Patrick: Yeah. No, you're probably right. And even when he was telling me that I was wondering, he probably wouldn't
Jimmy: have done it, right.
Michael: Yeah, yeah.
Jimmy: Or he regret it.
Patrick: Yeah.
Jimmy: But like, because yours is a fulfillment and his would have been a refutation or something. I don't know if that makes.
Patrick: No, no, no, you're absolutely right. It is two different things. But, but I still think if he did it, he would have really enjoyed that Charlie Brown got to do that. I'm sure it would have gave him some satisfaction.
Jimmy: Here's my example. Here's what I think. Do you remember in early, I guess 1990 or 91, I guess Charlie Brown hit a home run. A year later he retcons it so that it wasn't really a home run. The girl just let him hit it.
Harold: No.
Jimmy: And I, I don'-- never met the guy anything like that, but I pictured him for 364 days going, I've made a horrible mistake. I have to wait till next baseball season to fix this.
Patrick: I think you're right.
Jimmy: Well, thank you so much for letting us know that. Inside Baseball on, on how those tributes happen. That's just amazing. And, I'm so thrilled that you were able to do that too. Too bad he didn't get to see it, but I'm so glad we did.
Harold: That's just so cool.
Jimmy: All right, so before we go into these strips, how about we take a little break and then we come right back with more Patrick McDonell.
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Jimmy: and we're back. Hope you didn't miss us too badly. Patrick, tell us about how you picked these strips and what made you decide that you wanted to focus on this topic in general.
Patrick: well, I decided to pick these strips based on the acting and also funny pictures. You know, Charles Schulz always said what his real job was to draw funny pictures and how everyone loved funny pictures. And matter of fact, that was how he ended every phone call he had with me. And I guess he probably said the same thing to other cartoonists, but he would always end the phone call with, keep drawing those funny pictures.
Jimmy: Amazing.
Patrick: That was his end line. And, you know, he was. He was the best at it.
Michael: Yes.
Jimmy: Yeah. one thing we were talking about before we started recording is Patrick, picked these strips, and then I just picked a few in case we needed some more to talk about. But out of 17,897 strips, we both picked, the same Lucy strip as one that just defined good acting and funny drawing. And here it is,
August 15, 1954. It's a Sunday. Violet and Patty are sitting out in the curb, and Violet says to Patty, did you know that Lucy was going to dancing school? Patty says, huh? Uh-huh. It's just one more way for her mother to get her out of the house. And Lucy's walking down the street with a big, ridiculous grin on her face. And Violet says to Patty, ask her to do a few steps for us. As Lucy passes, Patty says, how's dancing school, Lucy? Fine, says Lucy. Patty asks, how about showing us what you've learned? And Lucy says, well, I'm not sure I can remember everything, but. And then we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Six panels of just gloriously silly Lucy doing her dance steps. She sort of, you know, shakes one foot in the air, then she shakes the other foot in the air. She points to the left, she points to the right. She does a little shuffle, ends with a flourish, and then says to Patty and Violet, we're sitting there completely stone faced. That cost my dad $12.
Patrick: Classic. Yeah. So, I mean, I picked this for many reasons, but again, when you look at those six panels of her dancing. Call it dancing. I Mean, they're just perfect. Like Elaine Bendix before-- Elaine from Seinfeld.
Jimmy: Yes, exactly.
Liz: Yeah.
Patrick: But, you know, just again, acting like it. It's just so funny. And then the punchline, my God, like, does nothing. That it cost her dad $12.00. The way she says that with the biggest smile on her face.
Jimmy: So proud.
Patrick: Yeah. And like we said, even, you know, the, Violet just, you know, with Stone Face. With it, you know, it's like.
Jimmy: Yes.
Patrick: He just knows how to set up jokes and the characters play their parts so well. And. And then, you know, the funny drawings. I mean, those dance drawings of Lucy are just perfect and funny. Funny little trend. I'm sure he enjoyed doing that strip, you know.
Harold: Oh, absolutely.
Patrick: Very proud at the end of the day that he did those silly joints. And for me, personally, my wife went to a college and majored in modern dance. And she would just say, like, her dad would come and not understand it. Actually, when she wasn't dancing, he'd sit in the audience and read his newspaper. This one's a little personal for me. My wife lived through that.
Jimmy: That's so funny. Now, Michael, this made your top five when we selected it. What do you have to say about it at this point?
Michael: Yep, just brilliant cartooning. Surprisingly early in his career. I mean, a lot of his classic strips were in the mid-50s before he introduced a lot of the more popular characters later on. Yeah, it's brilliant. It's funny, it's beautiful, and it's totally true. Yeah, she's younger than them.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Michael: The little kid can't do anything right.
Patrick: Yeah. You know. You know what else I noticed when you were reading it? Boy, that opening panel. That's. That's a really funny kind of Not Peanut's remark where she says, oh, one more way for her mother to get her out of that.
Jimmy: Yeah,
Patrick: that's like a really honest, funny statement. And. And I guess all those kids, when you think about it, it doesn't happen today anymore. But the fact that kids would spend the whole day by themselves outside, like, it's. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Liz: And we've been talking about Mean Girls for the series that we just recorded. And with Patti and Violet, you know that they're thinking about making fun of her when they say, ask her to do a few steps for us.
Patrick: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michael: But they don't pick on Lucy very much. She was not a target.
Patrick: She was younger.
Michael: I, mean, she was still a little kid to them.
Jimmy: Yeah. Right. When I had. I had twin daughters, and when they were, like, 4 years old, they took ballet classes. And I remember once watching, and there was just a room full of kids just spinning around on their butts. And you're like, all right, that's what we're doing today. Okay, looks fine. Now, can you talk to us, Patrick, a little bit about, you know, you talked about Violet, and Patty, and they're sitting there stone faced. How important is it to get not just the reactions and the acting that you want in the person delivering the joke, but also, you know, the supporting characters or the people who are there as the straight men, all that sort of stuff.
Patrick: Yeah, I mean, that. Well, what makes the joke. I, mean, when you think about the great comedians Abbott and Costello and Burns and Allen and, you know, the straight man was as important as the guy making the joke, you know, how they.
Michael: How they.
Patrick: How, they reacted to it, you know, and Lucy says something and how Charlie Brown takes it or Linus takes it. I mean, that's. That interplay is all part of the magic of the joke.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah.
Michael: Showing no reaction is actually a very strong reaction.
Patrick: Yeah, without a doubt.
Michael: Yeah.
Harold: Well, Patrick, you have a real subtlety often in how you. You show characters. You'll. Where another cartoonist might really play something big. You'll. You'll. You'll go small. Do you have any theories on comedy, on how maybe doing it less in terms of the reader is actually benefiting you as the one telling the joke? Have you thought about that?
Patrick: Yeah, no, I. I do that a lot with Mutts. A lot of times I'll show the back of their heads. And, I think it's partly that you have the. The reader participate, you know, that, instead of, like, hitting them over the head with the character acting really silly or flam, you know, it's part of cartoonies. You go overboard and make big smiles and big laugh and big gestures. But I think that was one of Schulz's innovations, too. I mean, how quiet his trip was and how intimate the characters were. And I definitely played that up in Mutts. You know, I don't do too many big smiles or big frowns. You know, I keep it a little subtle. And I think. I think that helps tell the sense of humor that I do.
Jimmy: And it feels like draws the reader in and becomes more intimate when it's that way.
Harold: Yeah, I agree. I mean, do you feel like if you do it bigger and it's not necessarily where the reader is in the moment, especially if they're. Maybe they're just zipping across the strip. Right. They're drinking coffee and reading the newspaper that it almost pushes them back away from the strip when the characters are bigger than, say, where the reader is when they're reading it.
Patrick: Yeah, I agree with that.
Harold: Yeah. And it seems like making it intimate and pulling people in has gotta be a huge part of why we love these characters so much. We're drawn to them. And there are a lot of other cartoons where you, you don't feel drawn in at all.
Patrick: Yeah, I mean, there's some cartoons where they're just cartoons and you might enjoy the joke, whatever, but you never feel close to them or, you know, you don't adopt them as one of your own. Where again, I think the reason Peanuts, as big as it is, he was able to make you feel like you knew all those characters and they were alive and you felt like you knew him, you know, And I think part of that is that he, he kept them really didn't go too far. Too far out.
Jimmy: Moving on to
February 16, 1958. Oh, it's a classic setup. Another Sunday, we have Schroeder at the piano, Lucy in her classic, position leaning against the piano, and Snoopy, atop the piano with a violin. And we have five, six, seven wordless panels of, Schroeder pounding away at the keys and Snoopy playing the violin. And you really need to look at this to get the full effect. But, you know, his ears are up, up, and he's alert as he's getting into the piece, and then he's smoothly proceeding. But then towards the end of the next tier, he can no longer contain himself and he just starts rocking out, doing a little bit of the happy dance for two panels before coming right back in to finish up the piece. And then Lucy says, but is it art?
Jimmy: by the way, I just want us, before we talk about this, Snoopy, this is a shocking strip. He is fully nude throughout this entire strip. There is no dog collar at all on him throughout this strip. And it's really weirding me out.
Patrick: You know, you're right about that. And, I'm wondering if it's because the violin was under his neck.
Jimmy: I think that is it. Yes. Yeah.
Patrick: Because it really is weird.
Jimmy: Very weird. Right? Of course, I've seen this 5,000 times, and this is probably the first time I've noticed that. But you know,
Patrick: you know what else is weird? It's, it's the long Snoopy, which, yes. Different than where Snoopy was going to end up. And, and I know Schulz has made comments. Sometimes you wonder where what he was thinking, but something really. It's almost a different character. But I thought there's something I like about the long Snoopy too. Even though he's so different looking, he's still a great looking character.
Jimmy: Oh, yeah, it is a great looking character. And I just love all the various periods. It seemed like he was always able to get the Snoopy he needed for the moment he was in.
Patrick: Isn't that funny? I think we talked about it last time, but. And I'm going to speak for Sparky, maybe I shouldn't. But it's not something you plan. It just happens.
Jimmy: Right.
Patrick: Like, I. When I look at Mooch over the years, it's like, yeah, he definitely changed, but I never sat down and said, oh, he needs to be chubbier. It just happens. Yeah.
Harold: What do you think of big jaw Lucy in this era where her jaw’s way fat further than her nose? Do you. Do you like that? Does it make it funnier you or.
Patrick: Yeah, you know, I did. I guess you're right because I'm. I'm looking at my A book with these strips in them and yeah, she did have a big jaw back then.
Jimmy: Yeah. We were really looking. This era, this, like, late 50s, he was going through a period where everybody has those big jaws except Charlie Brown. I mean, if you look at Schroeder. Yeah. Schroeder has a big panel especially. His skin is flat. Like, the bottom of his jawline is completely 90 degrees.
Patrick: Yeah. And. And Snoopy too is.
Michael: Yeah.
Patrick: You know, snout there is really long. who knows? but like you said, each period has its own. You know, I love. I love these. I don't know if they're my favorite look, but they're a good look.
Jimmy: Absolutely. Now, do you have a favorite of these panels showing Snoopy doing all this great action? Do you have a favorite, Something that really trips your trigger?
Patrick: I. I like the last two. I like when he turns his back and gets serious. Yeah. When you think about again, he's just so funny. If you, you know, if this was a live action thing and that, you know, some actor was doing these. They're just great motions, you know, So I like that he starts serious and then he has his little tongue sticking out. And then he's enjoying his music so much. He goes into. And my God, you know that this was the years he had Snoopy do a lot of happy dancing. Just such great drawings of the dog being happy. But then when he turns his back to Lucy and gets really serious, that his face in that one, that's my favorite drawing.
Jimmy: Yeah, it's great. You know, I just. This is. Steve Martin ripped this entire thing.
Patrick: Yeah, you're right off.
Jimmy: Right.
Patrick: You're absolutely right.
Jimmy: You know, Happy feet. And then he'd go back to being serious, you know, in quotes for a second. Yeah. That's a great. By the way, if you're gonna rip stuff off, ripping off from a different medium is the way. Don't make the connection at all.
Patrick: And, you know, again, going back to funny drawings, the whole premise is funny. I'm sure when he came up with that, he made himself laugh. I mean, Snoopy, Snoopy on the top of a piano playing a violin. I mean, he's never. I don't think he's ever. Has he ever done again?
Jimmy: right. And we don't even question that. Of course. Violinist as well, you know.
Harold: Yeah. I love that very first panel where Schroeder is waiting in anticipation.
Liz: Yep. First violin is going to tell him when to begin.
Jimmy: Yeah
Patrick: It's a normal thing.
Liz: It is.
Jimmy: When you stop and think, because, you know, we just accept all of the stuff that Peanuts made. Just part of the culture is just part of it. But it is very strange at almost every bend, you know, every chance he gets to add something that you've never seen before, you know, he'll do it. And if it's a dog playing a, violin on top of a toy piano, then sure, we're gonna go there.
Patrick: Yeah. And. And he, I mean, he worked out a strip where it was, like, real that you identified with the kids. But then, yeah, it was throwing total surrealism and, and feel like it's still part of this drift. Yeah, he, he, he told me. And maybe he also said this in interviews, but a lot of that. He said he got permission for that from Popeye because Popeye had really surreal moments, and they still worked in this, this story that he was telling. And I think he's. He said that Popeye gave him the permission to do all this crazy stuff.
Jimmy: Do you have any idea what makes those instances work? you know, there aren't that many examples of someone who can pull off flights of fancy and still keep you emotionally connected to the characters. I mean, do you have a secret sauce that. That allows for that type of thing? Because it seems like a lot of times when you're pushing for something that's a bit more creative or fanciful, you're by default going to distance the reader. But. But when you don't, that's real magic.
Patrick: Yeah. And, that's the magic of peanuts. And I guess Peanuts, when you think about it, it was really Snoopy, you know, so, yeah, you know, the kids didn't go to the moon, you know.
Jimmy: Right, right.
Patrick: But Snoopy went to the moon. And I think he had that magic character that Snoopy was really able. And I guess the whole idea was that, you know, Snoopy's, you know, imagining talking and imagining being part of. So I guess it was just the dog has imagination that he could imagine anything.
February 22, 1959. It's another Sunday. And Patty and Lucy are hanging around outside in the yard. And Lucy's holding one of Charlie Brown's T shirts. And Patty says, where did you find it? Lucy says, he left it at our house one day last summer when we were all playing under the sprinkler. Then Violet comes up and Patty says, can you get it over your head? And Lucy says, if he can, I can. And then Patty says to Violet Lynn, Lucy's putting on one of Charlie Brown's T shirts. And sure enough, that's just what she does. And there's Lucy wearing the shirt. And she says, look, I'm Charlie Brown. Now she's acting like Charlie Brown. Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. Poor, poor me. And the girls start cracking up in the background. And Lucy continues, I wish I had a friend. Everybody hates me. Nobody likes me. Patty and Violet are clutching each other. They are laughing so hard at this performance. Performance. And then, off panel, Violet sees someone coming. She says, hey, here comes Charlie Brown himself. Oh boy, just wait till he sees Lucy. And then Patty says, this ought to be good. And Charlie Brown walks up, looks, at, Lucy, who is dressed just like him, and he says, well, hello there, Charlie Brown, you blockhead. And then he continues on his way. The girls utterly collapse in the background and leaving Lucy to stand there alone, saying, sighing to herself, much like Charlie Brown,
Jimmy: another classic beautiful looking comic strip.
Patrick: oh, yeah. And I picked this because in particular, when you look at, the panels, the two panels where she's making believe she's Charlie Brown, what's amazing to me is that, you know, he's drawing the Charlie Brown frown face in the first one and then the other one too, of, you know, just screaming that no one likes her. But even though it's the same face, the way he drew it, you know, he's exaggerating that face. Yes. That, you know, that Lucy's not sad there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That Lucy is. Make him believe she's, you know, like, how do you. How does that possible that you could draw the Charlie Brown face, but you're. It's like an exaggeration of an exaggeration.
Jimmy: Right.
Harold: And he somehow makes it look like a different. A cartoonist. A different cartoonist is drawing the character than himself. Like, it almost looks like a. Like a Melendez animator doing a Lucy face.
Michael: Yeah.
Patrick: That he's. He's drawing something that when, you know, the person's may not really experience that feeling, but exaggerating and making fun of that feeling. I got, I don't know how you can do that, but he did it. Amazing work of art that those two panels are like, wow.
Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah. I never even really thought about it.
Patrick: And it's just fun that he's making fun of his own character that he, you know, whittles down Charlie Brown. Just. Nobody likes me. Everybody, you know?
Jimmy: Right.
Patrick: Yeah, it's. It's a, lot of good acting in this one.
Liz: I love Lucy putting on the shirt. That, that's a great panel.
Jimmy: And I just love the lettering. I love the hahas in the panel. I love the colors of it. all looks so pop art and just so friendly and fun, you know.
Patrick: Now that. Looking at it again, though, another interesting panel is the one where. Because he. I don't know if he's done this too often, but that panel work, Patty and, Violet are up close and Lucy's in the background. He doesn't do that too often.
Jimmy: Almost never.
Patrick: Almost never.
Jimmy: And I love that she's acting still in the background, even though she doesn't have an audience. Even she's just met. And then instantly so proud of herself. when Charlie Brown shows up, just great.
Patrick: And, you know, deciding to have Charlie Brown just walk away again with no expression. Yeah. Yeah. You know, he could have had a big smile like he got over on her, but the fact that he just did it and walked away just makes it so much better.
Jimmy: I think his blank expressions are one of the real aces up his sleeve. Because when he can't. When he does that, it almost always somehow makes it funnier.
Patrick: Yep.
Jimmy: Charlie Brown's not walking away annoyed or proud of himself or anything. He's just walking.
Patrick: Walking away.
Harold: In the. In the third to last panel, what do you think of the exclamation point in the balloon with Where Charlie Brown's showing really no expression, but we have that. I don't know. He would have done that in later years. What do you think about that?
Patrick: That's an interesting point. Yeah. I don't know, because he's got.
Harold: He's got Violet coming up with the question mark in the second panel. And I don't know if he needs it or not. I'm guessing in later years he would have thought, I don't need that.
Patrick: But yeah, I think, I think you're right. It's a little old school cartoony.
Harold: Yeah. Yeah, I love it because. Yeah, it's just a, I use them all the time.
Jimmy: Oh yeah, they just graphically look cool when you can. Yeah, they do.
Harold: Yeah.
Liz: And it balances out the panel too.
Jimmy: It does. But the other question or the other part about it is, is that it's, it's showing that he is acting stoic.
Jimmy: But internally he is shocked.
Harold: Yes.
Jimmy: You know, it is two different emotions that we're seeing and he's just being good at concealing it in this moment.
Harold: Yeah.
June 26th, 1959. Okay, now this is a daily. And this is a middle of a sequence where Snoopy is dressed as a baby.
Jimmy: I don't remember the specifics of why he's dressed as a baby.
Patrick: Oh no, the premise was great. It was Charlie Brown, Sally was born.
Jimmy: Right.
Patrick: and you know, Charlie Brown, you know, being a new brother was like all of a sudden getting some status in the neighborhood. Of course, Lucy had to put him down so she, she wanted her own new baby. So she picked up Snoopy to be her baby to make him through. Yeah, a great idea.
Jimmy: Well, here we are on June 26th.
Charlie Brown's getting annoyed by this whole thing. And he's holding Snoopy, in his arms, but not like a dog. Snoopy's just laying out flat like he does on top of the doghouse, but with the baby bonnet. And he says to Lucy, look, this is your baby, not mine. I have my own baby sister at home. And then he puts Snoopy down and pushes him towards Lucy and says, you were the one who put the bonnet on him. Now you take care of him. And Lucy walks away saying, I'm not interested anymore. I have other things to do. And Charlie Brown is left alone holding his puppy slash baby's paw. And he yells to Lucy, you're a poor excuse for a mother. And a, distraught Snoopy says to himself, mama?
talk about weirdness. That we just accept. Holy cow.
Michael: Well, one of the things that we read because we're old is that bonnet. Yeah, I don't think babies wear bonnets and probably haven't happened for 30 years. And why? I have no idea. And where are his ears?
Jimmy: Yeah, it's hiding in that bonnet.
Patrick: I mean, I picked this one again for the funny drawing aspect and the funny premise, too. That Lucy was going to make the dog into her own babies is just a funny idea. And just. I'm sure when. Again, when Sparky drew that little bonnet on Snoopy, he knew. He knew he had something. And for whatever reason, like you said, that first panel, why Snoopy is, like, so flat and rigid, just makes for such a funny drawing that, I don't. That was a great idea, man. He could have been cuddly, more like a baby, but he's just as totally rigid on Charlie Brown. Yeah.
Harold: It's like he's sleeping on top of the doghouse with a box. Every. Every drawing of Snoopy here is. Is classic.
Patrick: I mean, yeah, that last face with Mama
Jimmy: and that. I think that's one of these things when you. You know, we've done over 200 episodes looking at the work of one artist, but the closer you look at it, the more there is to appreciate. I mean, like we were saying here, just the bonnet is funny, the drawing is funny, the premise is funny, the punchline is funny. It's crazy that it's like fractal. Any part you look at it, has qualities that kind of imbue the whole thing. It's amazing.
Michael: Well, and also, it fits his personality because he's actually role playing.
Harold: Yes.
Michael: A baby. He's actually into it.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah.
Patrick: He was happy to do it.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like the role of a lifetime. Right.
Liz: And he's got the smile in panel two, and then when she's not interested, his face. His face falls.
Harold: Yeah, yeah. And the ink line on Snoopy on panels two and three is just gorgeous.
Patrick: Yeah. well, for me, the late 50s, early 60s was him at his. I mean, God, everyone was a masterpiece in every. In every way. The drawing, the writing, the premises. He was just on a roll.
Harold: Well, when I look at that panel three of Snoopy, I think of you and Mutts.
Patrick: Well, you know, how could it not happen? I mean, when you draw comics, all the stuff you looked at as a kid, you can't help but it appears somewhere in the strip.
Harold: Sure, yeah.
Patrick: it took me a little while to realize, but if you look at Butchie the butcher in Mutts, the deli owner, you know, his elbows are Dennis the Menace elbows. Didn't realize it till, like, a year of doing them. that. Oh, yeah, that's where I got those elbows.
Harold: So is there anything from Little Orphan Annie that you. You. You feel aspects of it that Inspired you in terms of shading or.
Patrick: Yeah, that's funny you should mention that. I mean, with Little Orphan Annie, you know, the fact that he didn't give her pupils, you know, was part of that thing of letting the reader do some of the work. he inspired that. And actually, in the beginning, sometimes Earl and Mooch did have, like, eyes that didn't have pupils. Like, I was still feeling them out in the beginning. And, you know, I think, again, showing them from the back of their heads was part of the little.
Harold: That's great.
March 17, 1960. Charlie Brown just out for a casual walk by himself, when suddenly he's confronted by his own dog speeding at him upside down in the air, propelled by his spinning ears. The hella Snoopy spins around. Charlie Brown a few times doing a flyby with Snoopy looking ridiculously happy about it. And then I guess he flies away, leaving Charlie Brown to just yell out after him. Now you cut that out.
Patrick: that was a week of Snoopy being a helicopter, which, again, just funny drawings. I'm sure when Schulz did that in his sketchbook and made him laugh, he thought he had at least a week's worth of jokes with that, such a funny little premise and just drawn
Jimmy: so nicely, that third panel with the Snoopy coming right towards us. So cute.
Patrick: And that gimmick, cartoonish use of, like, one head but looking in three different directions. Yeah, yeah.
Jimmy: Before I die, I want to do that. Well, once.
Harold: It's not easy.
Jimmy: It's not.
Patrick: No, no. It's so abstract when you think about it.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah. And you have to really let yourself lean into that abstraction, I think. And don't think too much about it, you know?
Patrick: Yeah. And it's also nice how, you know, readers just take it, you know, that there's, like, a language to comics not based in reality, but, you know, what, you're trying to convey.
Harold: Absolutely.
Michael: Yeah.
Harold: And I love that with this particular strip, he does allow Snoopy to have the most pure, gigantic smile looking straight at us that I can think of in the history of the strip. He's. And it's. I'm sure it's because he's so clearly enjoying this himself.
Patrick: Yeah. You know, I'm gonna have to go back and look because I, I wonder what the first day was, you know, like, how did Snoopy know he could do that? Yeah. I'm gonna go back, and I have to re. You know, re. Look at that. I picked this one, but I forgot how he started that. I mean, what made him become a
Harold: helicopter and it so works, so works so nicely when he's still doing the kind of the peanut head version of Snoopy. Like you're saying, like each era lends itself to its own humor because of the look of the character. If he was drawing Snoopy from 1990, I don't know if he could get there.
Patrick: Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right.
Jimmy: Well, he needed bigger propellers because Snoopy was a lot chunkier in those last few years.
Patrick: And his ears got fatter and smaller rather than longer. Yeah, yeah. So he probably couldn't be a helicopter. You're right.
October 10, 1961. Lucy is doing some pure science and medicine right here because she's standing there and she has Linus lying on the ground on his stomach. And she says, all right, now cough. And Linus coughs three times. Cough, cough, cough. And Lucy stomps where Linus has coughed on the ground. Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp. This shocks the heck out of Linus. His hair goes shooting straight up. And then Lucy says, there's a batch of cold germs that will never bother anyone again. Linus looks out at us, or at least off panel saying, what on earth is happening here?
Patrick: You know, again, it's the funny, funny picture idea, I'm sure. Again, when he sketched, sketched that out, he knew he had something. Just how funny Linus looks laying there and being forced to cough and then, you know, stamping out the cloth germs with your feet. And it was a whole week of it and everybody had to do it. Right. I had to lay on his stomach and coughing ping pen and Charlie Brown just so she could stomp out germs.
Liz: She's sort of doing some of her moves from the dancing school.
Jimmy: Oh, it was like a Mr. Miyagi Karate Kid situation.
Liz: Yeah,
Patrick: yeah.
Jimmy: A nice lettering again, too. I like the, the cough lettering and I love the double outline stomps.
Harold: So what do you think of, the way he chooses to. I don't know any other cartoonist that would have chosen to draw a character lying on their stomach where their arm is straight back, not touching the ground. His chin's off the ground and it's just his stomach and his tips of his feet. It's so stiff. It's kind of like when Snoopy was being held by Charlie Brown. He knows how to make a stiff looking character hilarious.
Patrick: Well, no, you realize that that's not a position you probably ever drew him in again. It's a strange. Yeah, yeah, it's A strange position for Peanuts, but it's still drawn in such a funny manner, like you said. Like, his arms aren't even on the ground. They're just, like, straight back.
Liz: I think it's a yoga move.
Michael: Yeah.
Jimmy: Amazing core strength for Linus.
Harold: So, Patrick, let me ask you this. If you were to draw this, would you have kept it with. Cause he could have either had Linus on the left and Lucy on the right or the way he did it here. So why do you think he chooses to have Lucy on the left and Linus on the right to sell this joke?
Patrick: you're making me think that's an interesting thing, because you. You would think you read left to right, so maybe I would have had him in the opposite position. So why does this work?
Harold: Maybe it's because he. I'm just. I'm just thinking because it. Obviously, when I saw it, I was like, well, it could have been the other way around. Does he just want to have Linus have the last say in terms of the response?
Patrick: Yeah, maybe.
Harold: Or because the cough. Cough. Cough in the second panel is kind of out of order in a way, but maybe not. Because she's got her foot ready.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: She's rearing back.
Jimmy: She's ready to go.
Harold: Right. So. So it's just anticipation for the cough. But, yeah, sometimes he'll make a choice that I don't think is maybe the choice I would have first made. But then the more I look at it as, like, no, he was right.
Patrick: And I think you came up with the answer, that the punchline is going to be the reaction of the guy doing the cough, you know? So you want that to be the last image because. Yeah, I think you. That's the answer.
Jimmy: Well, that's what we're all about here at unpackingpeanutss, getting to the heart of these pressing issues, like this one from
September 10, 1963. So Lucy has her little beanie on and her little overcoat, and she's carrying a book under her arm. And Snoopy's in front of her just dancing away. She passes by him, sings, stupid dog. He's still dancing. And then he dances up to Linus, who also looks similarly attired. And then in the last panel, Lucy says to Linus, that's his. Ha ha, you have to go to school. And I don't dance.
Patrick: And again, it's just the joy of the way Snoopy dances. The Steve Martin happy feet. Now, I'm gonna always think when I see that, but in particular, that last panel, I mean, Snoopy's face. I mean, it's kind of the same smile he's doing throughout, but you really see that he's teasing them. you know.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah.
Patrick: And that, to be able to capture that again, that's what made Sparky so great. You know, he had good jokes, but they really worked because his characters sold his jokes better than anybody. You know, like they, they really, The joke wouldn't be as funny if another cartoonist had a type of dog with that expression. You know, not too many cartoonists were capable of. I think that. And, that to me, this has always been the magic of cartooning. You know, we're talking about expressions and feelings and it's like three lines of pen and ink. You know, it's not. He's not Da Vinci drawing Mona Lisa's smile. You know, it's like that's. I still don't understand. I don't know how I do it. I don't know how he did it. But to be able to convey human emotion with just three simple lines. And it's a funny looking dog. It's not even a human. And you know what he's thinking.
Harold: Well, it's such an interesting point. It's like when you put it down on paper and it's what you're feeling for the character and then all of a sudden, oh, my gosh, that nails it. How do you know and how do you know it's going to communicate to a million other people given how subtle these little lines are and how little
Patrick: space you make that eye a little different and you lost it, you know.
Harold: Yeah.
Patrick: Or you make the smile a little too big and you lost it.
Liz: Yeah.
Jimmy: Now, do you ever. Especially, I imagine back in the earlier days when you were doing something more subtle or that relied on, you know, an expression or a particular pose, really selling the strip, were you worried about the reproduction and the size and all that sort of stuff? I mean, you know, that's a real. It's not just doing this stuff and having it on a wall. You know, you're drawing it for reproduction. How much does that play, you know, factor to your thinking when you're doing it.
Patrick: I had faith.
Jimmy: Did you?
Patrick: I didn't think of that. I mean, I thought about trying to capture it correctly and making sure it worked. But, you know, I. Maybe because of reading cartoons my whole life, I mean, I didn't, you know, Snoopy always looked good to me and I was keeping my fingers crossed that Mooch would look good.
Jimmy: Well, he does looks great. It worked out real well for him.
Patrick: You know, it's. It's really fun doing this with you guys because, you know, I'm really now really looking at the thing. You know, what else is strange about this? And it might have been the years, but God, look at the first panel. Snoopy's maybe bigger than Lucy.
Harold: It's gigantic.
Patrick: Yeah, yeah. And all of these Snoopy's, like, really big.
Jimmy: Yeah. Oh, when you start looking at it, at this detail, you start going nuts. And you start thinking to yourself, like, all right, that first panel, if someone had no understanding of comics, you know, never saw a cartoon or whatever, you go, oh, that's a dog. How would they even know that's a dog? You know, and you're all right, I guess it's a dog, you know, but not only do we know it's a dog, we know, like, his inner realities and his hopes and dreams.
Patrick: Yeah, right.
Harold: Yeah. I mean, and you even look at the choices he makes in that first panel of, where the multiple versions of the tail are.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: And it's like somehow the tail is curved, is dropping as if his butt's dropping, but it's not.
Harold: But it looks, it looks best. So he just does it, you know, and that's, that's the permission that I always get when I look very closely at Schulz, is if. If something looks great, design wise and it's not quite right, go for the design.
Patrick: That's. That's so true. It's. You always go for it, and you're going for more of a feeling than accuracy, for sure. You know, and if something works and it doesn't might m. Maybe look right, but it works. That's what you go with.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Harold: It's like just the fact that Snoopy, like you said, is bigger in that first panel. It's like emotionally. That's right.
Michael: Yeah.
Harold: And I would feel, oh, my gosh, I made it too big. If I'm working in anything electronic, it's so easy to shrink something down or whatever that you lost. You lost the feeling. And he would go with the feeling. and he was so right. I mean, that stuff just, I think, is amazing.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Patrick: And to me, art is about making mistakes, making the right mistakes.
Harold: Right. Who was it that said that our mistakes are what define our style?
Jimmy: Will Eisner.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah.
January 9th, 1966. Oh, it's the World War I Flying Ace. Very exciting. Snoopy shows up at the airfield, aka his dog house in his World War I getup, and he says, good morning, ground crew. I have Another important mission to fly today. But I dare say they are all important. Eh? What? He says to nobody. And then he gets up top the doghouse and yells, contact. And it begins. Here I am in my Sopwith Camel, flying high over France. I scan the air carefully, searching for the Red Baron. I must bring him down. And Snoopy glances down around 2 o' clock and he says, aha. There he is. The battle commences. This time I've got you, Red Baron. This time you're mine. His teeth are gritted as he flies and fires at the Red Baron. And he continues. Take that and that and that and that. And then suddenly we see Snoopy's sop with Camel. The doghouse is riddled with bullets, and it's, the engine is apparently smoking because black billowing clouds are pouring out of the doghouse. And Snoopy walks away from the wreckage saying, I hate that Red Baron.
Patrick: I picked that one because, you know, we take it for granted. I mean, that's such an iconic character that, you know, it's just Snoopy as the, flying World War I ace. But I, I think about the first day he sketched that, what a smile he must have had on his face. And I, I know interviews he talked about, he knew he was on to something. But you know, it's, it's the crazy little things that you end up doing in a strip that you, you know, you don't really plan for. They kind of just happen. But I mean, I'm sure if you would have told him in 1950, right, you were gonna have Snoopy as World War I, ace flying as Doghouse, he would have said you were not. But, you know, there it is. And God, how great it looked and how just the premise is funny. But again, he had a character that you, that it worked, you know, that, that you believed Snoopy was on that doghouse fight in World War I. It's like, it's, an amazing feat. And, and in this one in particular, I mean, just how great he looks on that doghouse and that one panel where he's gritting his teeth. the whole thing is so silly and fun.
Jimmy: Well, you know, and the other thing that like, that sort of makes it because he has this surrealism which is like beyond the pale. This is the strip. I think Mort Walker said he saw this one and said he realized he didn't know anything about comics. But it's Peanuts because the super advanced film fantasy that this character has is about him failing. He gets shot down by the Red every time. only Schulz would think of that. I think, what. What imaginative, wonderful character fantasizes about losing all the time?
Patrick: That is such a good point. Wow. Yeah. And Snoopy, too, has such a positive personality. You would think the simple way to go is that, he becomes a whirlwind flying ace hero who saves the world. Right? Yeah, good point. Yeah.
Harold: He lets himself be world famous, this and that, but. But there's often that failure. I love that second to last panel where he's breaking the rules on himself again, where he has. He's got these goggles that you can't see into. They're always blacked out until the second to last panel when you have to see his expression. And then you see the two little. The two little eyeballs inside the goggles. And it works so well.
Patrick: Oh, my God. and that's another example of these. Like, there's, like, three dots there. There's two eyes in his nose, and there's. There's so much expression. It's amazing.
Liz: And this is one where the language is as important as the drawings. The script is, really gets the character across.
Harold: I totally agree. the one thing that struck me, and this is just my own personal thing, I don't want to put anything in someone else's head, and you can totally disagree with me, but since Snoopy never spoke in the animated specials, we don't know if he put on an heir to the voice of the. Of Snoopy as the. You know, as this character. But that one little panel where he's doing the, I dare say they are all important. A what? All of a sudden, he's doing Ronald Coleman. And I'd never heard that in my head before, but now it's like, oh, that's great.
Patrick: I love that. That's a nice idea, that he would change his voice for these different characters.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah. And that's something. They were never. Because Schulz was, I guess, adamant against them showing Snoopy or having any kind of dialogue for Snoopy in the, animation because they couldn't crack the code.
Harold: And that's a bold move. What a bold move that is. All of a sudden, you've limited what you can do in animation by a huge margin, and he stuck with it, you know?
May 27, 1979. Wrapping up here with a baseball strip. Lucy's out in the outfield, but she also has a sheet of paper she's perusing. And then she starts walking towards the base pitching man. And we see Charlie Brown, of course, atop the mound he lets fly the old fastball, and of course it comes right back at him, knocking all his clothes off as he lands back on the pitcher's mound with his socks attached to his ears somehow. And then Lucy says to him, hey, manager, I'm working on a special project. I'm trying to write an article about some of the funny things that happen in baseball games. Charlie Brown's just sitting there with the ears covered by socks. And then, Lucy says, if you can think of anything funny, let me know. And then Charlie Brown, sitting there in just his shorts and, with his socks on his ears, says, I doubt that I'll come up with a thing.
Patrick: And I, I picked that one for the classic, you know, baseball shot of him, you know, getting almost hit with a baseball and all his clothes coming off.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah.
Patrick: I mean, we, we take that for granted because it happens all the time. But I'm sure the first time he thought of that, like, that's just a fun. You know, it's what he said, keep drawing those funny pictures. And a kid, losing all his clothes and shoes because of face. It shouldn't work, but it works. I don't think I could do that. I don't think I could do that. And Mutts have Ozzy dodge something and always close. And then this, this, this one in particular, the fact that is the two socks, his ears is just a funny picture. And, you know, it also pertains to what we were talking about. When you look at the panel where Lucy comes back, you know, he's, he's. He's got like a silly face with a little star going over his head. But that's nowhere near as funny as the second to the last panel.
Jimmy: Right.
Patrick: With socks on his ears. You know, that's such a funnier drawing than the other one.
Harold: And it's just deadpan. Yeah, that's so interesting.
Jimmy: Yeah, we see that, that classic panel in the middle there of, of the baseball removing all those clothes. And I read an article recently about Saturday Night Live, and the guy was talking about how certain errors of Saturday Night Live that stick in people's minds or, that seem as the classic eras are actually the ones where they had recurring bits. So whether or not you just liked Wayne's World, whether or not Wayne's World that week was particularly funny, it got bonus points just because it was Wayne's World. And when they don't have recurring characters like the current era, they don't have a lot of that. People generally don't think of it as being as funny. And it's partly because this guy's theory is they're not getting the dopamine hit of seeing the recurring thing. And I think Charles Schulz really was able to do that in that. Here's the recurring thing. You're going to get it, but it's always going to be fresh, and it's always going to be different. And I don't know if that's harder, but it's certainly another level to why I think it's successful. It's that whether or not this punchline was funny, I was going to be happy to see this in the paper because I like the baseball strips where he gets knocked over by the line drive.
Liz: Good point.
Patrick: It's funny you should mention that. I'm good friends with Tom Gammill. Do you guys know Tom Gammill?
Jimmy: I don't know, but I sure know who he is.
Patrick: Yeah. So, you know, he's a comedy writer and worked for every great comedy show that ever existed.
Jimmy: Seinfeld.
Patrick: And, he. He was a writer on the early days of Saturday Night Live. And, we were talking about how, you know, Tom. Tom's a big, big comic fan. And, you know, especially Nancy. As a matter of fact, he's doing a play in October about Ernie Bushmiller that'll be in. In Broadway. So look that up. I mean, not Broadway in Brooklyn.
Liz: Uh-huh.
Patrick: And. But anyway, he was telling me that, you know, a lot of his concepts. I think other writers concepts came from comics and cartoons. You know, they. They were doing the live versions.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Patrick: Of slapstick and in the comedy that they were reading in the comic strips. In the comic books. And now when I look at those skits, I feel like, yeah, they are like comic strips. You.
Harold: Yeah. That's interesting. Well, I have to say, Patrick, one of the most lovely, surreal moments in my life was being in the Billy Island Museum at the end of the National Cartoonist Society event in a gallery looking at Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes originals in the same room as Patrick McDonnell and Tom Gamill.
Jimmy: Good evening.
Harold: I was like, how did I get. This is so lovely.
Jimmy: Patrick, thank you so much for taking time to come talk to us again. You're just one of our favorite cartoonists. And to hear you talk about Peanuts this way, it, just means the whole world to. Couldn't sleep last night. It was like Christmas. That's true. So thanks again.
Patrick: You know, I live a very quiet life, and usually just drawing, and I don't have too many long conversations, but you guys make it so much fun. I really, I really enjoy spending the time with you. So anytime you want to talk about Peanuts, give me a call.
Jimmy: All right, we're calling you tomorrow.
Liz: And where can people find Sunday Funnies?
Patrick: again, it's coming out October 6th, and it should be in all your bookstores. Or you could. The best way to get it is probably to go to mutts.com and you can get an autographed version.
Jimmy: You got to do that.
Patrick: And it's volume in October 6th, two books. It'll be volume one and volume two, and you combine both together in a box set, in stores everywhere. And, mutts.com
Jimmy: and if you're a young person who's interested in making comics, take, it from me, you want to buy those books. They're masterclasses in cartooning. And like I said, the color blows me away. So you got to buy those. Patrick, thanks again for coming. And that's it for this week. Come back next time when we're going to be talking about what. Let me check my notes. Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz for Michael, Harold, and Liz. And this week, Patrick. Be of good cheer.
L&M&H: Yes, yes. Be of good cheer.
Patrick:. Take care.
Liz: Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Patrick, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholt, and Liz Sumner. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark. For more from the show, follow Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads. Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue sky, and YouTube. For more about Jimmy, Michael, and Harold, visit unpacking peanuts.com have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.
Patrick: Keep drawing those funny pictures.