Sidekicks #1- Feel a Little Freedom: Snoopy and the Beagle Scouts

Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. It's a brand new season of Unpacking Peanuts and I'll be your host for the proceedings. My name is Jimmy Gownley and. And I'm a cartoonist. And you can find all my new work, including this year, new Amelia Rules over on Gville Comics on Substack. 

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

Michael: Say hey.

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

Michael: Hello.

Jimmy: And keeping it running smooth and keeping us out of trouble is our producer and editor, Liz Sumner. 

Liz: Howdy, 

Jimmy: guys. We got a whole new season.

Harold: What?

Jimmy: Pretty exciting. It took some doings to arrive at this.

Michael: You know that spring training, right?

Jimmy: What is the official. It is. It's Sidekicks and Second Bananas. That's our official title, correct?

Liz: Yep.

Jimmy: all right, so what we're going to do is go through the Peanuts cast and find some great, you know, lead and their sidekick combos. We're starting off today with Snoopy and his beloved Beagle Scouts, which is going to be a lot of fun. Do you guys want to talk a little bit more about how we came up with the theme and maybe some of the other things we're going to be discussing this season?

Liz: We threw out a bunch of ideas to our listeners, and there was no clear winner, so we sort of threw them all together.

Michael: Don't give away our secrets.

Jimmy: All right. It was a precise algorithm that we

Michael: worked up, and

Jimmy: it should be pretty fun. I got to pick these strips this time, and it's. It's Snoopy and the Beagle Scouts. And I really actually enjoyed it. I will say this. It's a lot more work doing this show this way than it was just reading the strips year. right, because it's like you were going to do the Beagle Scouts. Great. Well, those are scattered across decades, so it takes a little bit of work, which is my way of saying we have a Patreon. And if you wanted to contribute to that, that'd be great. You could even just buy us a mud pie. And it would keep this thing going and we sure would appreciate it. 

But before we get to the good stuff, the comic strips, I want to visit our new segment, hanging out at the Thinking Wall, because I got something.

Liz: All right.

Jimmy: I want all of your opinions on that. Okay.

Harold: Yeah, all.

Jimmy: Ah, right. So here. This isn't. This is tangential, but I will bring it back to Peanuts. So a couple weeks ago, I guess, and I don't know how big a deal this was in the general, you know, like, Internet population or whatever, because there's lots of things going on in the world that people are worried about. But. And this, this kind of faded away, but it really struck me. So a couple weeks ago, an adaptation of Wuthering Heights came out as a movie, like Margot Robbie. Okay. And a bunch of Gen Z kids went out and saw the movie and then decided they were going to try to read the book. Then struggled with reading the book. Said, like, you know, is this good? Entertain. I don't understand it. what, what's. Why is this considered a classic? Posted that online and then we're got trashed by older people. Oh, like that kids are stupid. And why. Oh God, everyone's stupid. It's the end of the world. And to me, I felt like I was outraged for these kids because you can't have spontaneous Wuthering Heights knowledge. Like if, if the next generation is dumb, well, whose fault is it? Except the preceding generations, right? It's our fault.

Harold: That's a good point.

Jimmy: So I. But, but I think the struggle came with. Everything is entertainment these days. Even things that we think of as very high end just wash over us. Like the, like the, you know, the, the streaming shows that are so vaunted, you still just take them in the same way you take in an episode of Friends. You might be able to think about it a little more, but on the surface it's easy and palatable. And I don't think it's expressed to young people in school anymore that it's more like ex. Reading can be more like exercise, right? Like, it's hard to do it, but you get something out of it. You struggle to do it. Like when I sat there and read Ulysses or whatever, I wasn't. It wasn't like, what, what an amusing bauble. It's a, it's work, but I just want to, But it's also fun. So I Just wanted. What can you guys say about that? In light of the fact that although each individual Peanuts strip is very simple to read, it's very daunting to read the whole thing. But there's something comes out of it. And I just wanted to start a little bit of a conversation about that.

Michael: Well, I would say I recall feeling that I was going to be judged by my knowledge of literature and maybe it had to do with the crowd I was hanging out with, but it's like I really felt like, okay, I have to read Proust. At least I have to be able to say I read Proust to have credibility. And if that's not the case, if your peers don't know either, it's not like, you know, I felt I have to read Aristophanes because my peers didn't care about that. Right.

Harold: But Aristophanes street cred is not as important.

Michael: But it was at a time where, you know, I'm sure Romans had to be hip. And I tried reading the great books. I never read Wuthering Heights, however.

Harold: Yeah.

Michael: And recently I realized that, gee, it doesn't matter if I haven't read anything in the last 30 years.

Jimmy: Right.

Harold: It's interesting. Yeah. I mean, Wuthering Heights, I read that in college. I was a, wound up being an English composition major, which essentially means creative writing. And we did read Wuthering Heights. And I don't. I'd be really interested to know what they were saying about the book. You know, what, what it was, that was the barrier for them. I, don't know if there was a collective idea of it, but I remember when I was a student, this would have been in the mid late 80s. And reading it, for those of you who are not terribly familiar with Wuthering Heights, it's, you know, it's, it's a super intense romance. Right. And it's kind of a messed up romance.

Jimmy: I've actually never read Wuthering Heights, so.

Harold: But, so what was fascinating to me at the time, this is, you know, many couple generations back, you know, was that the students who chose to be in that class. Right. It wasn't required, generally liked the book a lot, but they liked the messed up romance. And the end of the book. Spoiler alert. You can skip ahead a minute if you want. Basically, they, they are destroyed. And there's like a next generation that comes up and they have this kind of warm, filial, romantic relationship that compared to the. What you had just read is not as intense and it's, it's just, it's, it's just kind of lovely to me. And in class everyone was like, oh, that was just tacked on for social reasons. She was really into the intense, destructive stuff, there's no question. And I was like, really? I, the whole book started to make sense to me because I read the ending. And so, you know, people were taking. Not taking the book at face value. In the 80s students M. You know, around this age. Right. So I'm wondering the students who'd be attracted to going to see the movie Wuthering Heights. And however that was sold, I wonder if they went back to read the book. If what the movie chose to represent, to try to be relevant to them is not what's in the book. And there's confusion and disconnect and that's not necessarily, again, anybody's fault. It may be a different audience that the book is for because somebody said, we've got to change this because it's not going to be relevant. And maybe they were right because they loved it enough to go back and try to go to the original source, but they could have changed it and it's just not for the same audience.

Liz: And Jimmy, I'm curious about what your daughters do. Your daughters read, do they like to read? I know that, I mean, you certainly wouldn't be a model for being a person who reads.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, they like to read, but not like I like to read. I mean, they've read like, you know, because like Harold, you read it in class and you had people say, I like this and I don't like this. And then you were able to say, oh, you're wrong because I like this and I don't like this. And there was a discussion. Maybe you changed some people's minds. They had the potential to change your mind. It's a different thing. I think if you just read it in isolation, it's tough, right? Especially if you're reading something that's over 100 years old.

Harold: No. And I don't know if the people that chose to read it got to talk to each other at the time they were reading it and they were getting each other through it. The thing I remember about being in class, this was so typical of me, especially in college. It was like I felt like I was the only person in the room who had this opinion.

Harold: And I felt, you know, it's like, how much do you say, do you just. When do you just shut up?

Jimmy: You know, that's the difference between you and me, you think, oh, I'm the only person that had this opinion. I should keep it to myself. And I'm like, I'm the only person who has this opinion. I'm a genius.

Michael: How's this really being at. I don't see the, the relationship 

Jimmy: Because it's difficult to read 17,897 things. And there are periods of, that are going to be less interesting to you and periods that are more interesting to you.

Michael: But we did it. We did over three years.

Harold: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael: If we had to do it, I mean, you'd read a book. I don't know. You'd read that book in a month at the most. If we did it in a month, it would be a whole other thing.

Harold: Yeah. Do people feel like they have to binge read like you binge watch? I don't know. Is there a feeling that you have to get through something?

Jimmy: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But I'm going to actually do a podcast about this on my Dumb ideas podcast, because I do think I had the best English teacher. You know, I had 55 kids in my class. I had the same English teacher for three of the four years. And in that class there's New York Times bestselling author, a professor of Shakespeare, and two, professional journalists.

Liz: Wow.

Jimmy: So she must have been a good teacher.

Michael: Wow.

Jimmy: So I'm going to try to do a faux Sister Mary B. Keeley literature class on my podcast. We'll see if it works. All right. That's all I had to say. Thank you. We should probably get back to Peanuts now.

Michael: Yeah. No.

Jimmy: All right, so if you guys want to follow along with this, what you can do is sign up one for one email a month. Over on unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread. It'll get you-- Our newsletter comes out once a month and it'll let you know what we are going to be talking about. And today what we are talking about is Snoopy and the Beagle Scouts. Harold, why don't you tell us your initial impressions on Snoopy and the Beagle Scouts? How do you feel about them? What do you think?

Harold: I don't know. I just have mixed feelings about it. It was. It's Snoopy as the big brother, which is an interesting contrast to when he was really on his own against the kids in the 50s and, and through the early 60s. And now all of a sudden, he is the scout master to these, these adorable little birds. And yeah, it was something that, of all the things you might relate to. And, in Peanuts, I didn't relate to the Big Brother character so much, but I don't hate him, but I just wasn't drawn to it. Having said that, we selected a fair amount of Beagle Scout's strips throughout the reread, and I enjoy it. I enjoy the Birds. I enjoy that there's. Snoopy is interpreting for us, that there's. Even though they all look the same, they each have their own personalities. And it's kind of fun to see it through the lens of a character telling you what. Oh, that one's Harriet.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harold: that's a neat little device that Schulz was able to figure out. He's got a lot of constraints on himself. Himself in some ways with this, since, you know, 1. 1. They all look alike. They don't. They don't speak where we hear them directly. It's being interpreted by Snoopy. So these. These layers you have to get to. To get to a joke. You know, it's not. Not a simple thing you said.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah. Now, Michael, as someone who became a, a Woodstock devotee as it went on, I remember you saying you feel that the addition of the other Scouts lessens Woodstock a little bit. Is that true to you still?

Michael: No, I. I'd really much. I pretty much stopped reading Peanuts before they were introduced. And I sort of saw the coming of Woodstock as part of the end of the great era, which I realize is wrong now. Reading it again, I started to appreciate him. I think the Beagle Scouts for me was a really good springboard for jokes. But it also, on reflection, it shows Snoopy in an adult role. And he was very much a child, kind of a wild child the whole period I was reading. And, I don't know if this is the first time he acted as an adult and was responsible for these kids. I didn't have any strong feelings about their adventures. I'd never been a Scout. I never did that kind of thing. I think the gags came off generally pretty good.

Jimmy: Yeah, that's sort of what I think. I do think it's a good. A good springboard for. For jokes, certainly. And always fun cartooning. Well, all right. Well, let's start with the first one that I selected, and then we'll discuss as we go along. So this is the first time anyone ever mentioned a Beagle Scout, and it is 

May 14, 1974, and Snoopy is lying atop the doghouse with a little Scouting cap on. And Lucy comes up to him and says, you can't be a tender paw forever. You know, you have to work your way up. You also have to earn merit badges and things. Snoopy sits up on his doghouse with stern resolution and says, I know that. I'm going to work and work until I've reached the top. Then he stands up, places his paw over his heart, and says, beagle Scout.

Liz: Brilliant.

Michael: So this is like a pun, which I,

Jimmy: Yes.

Michael: I didn't pick up on because, Eagle Scouts were not in my consciousness.

Jimmy: Well, I was going to say, I got a book with this strip on the back cover. I remember it very clearly because it's on the back cover. But it was a collection, you know, just one of those Fawcett Crest books. And I had already seen Beagle Scout strips with the birds, so I didn't. And I also didn't get that this was a pun, so I didn't understand this at all.

Liz: My brother was an Eagle Scout, so I.

Jimmy: Hardcore.

Liz: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. Looking at the strip, though, boy, I would have thought this was much later. The art style from. You know, we haven't recently gone over too many 70s strips. This looks way, way, way rougher than.

Jimmy: Uh-huh.

Michael: You know, the late 60s stuff.

Jimmy: like the Beagle Scout word balloon, for one thing.

Harold: Yeah. Look at Lucy's hands. I mean, he's going fast.

Michael: Snoopy's ears at panel three, I wouldn't even think was Schulz if someone showed it to me.

Jimmy: I want a T shirt. I've decided I want a T shirt. And it's just a little cartoon Michael screaming. And it's. That's not Schulz. The big lettering across the top. Amazing.

Michael: It's way, way, way rougher than. It's super rough any 1960s.

Jimmy: And a lot of it's rougher than a lot of 70s strips.

Michael: Yeah. It looks rushed. And so maybe it was.

Jimmy: Yeah, it could very well have been rushed. Like, even the.

Jimmy: How quickly he did those little, clouds in the background.

Michael: Yeah. With the little squiggle thing in there.

Jimmy: But it's crazy. This is probably. This is at least the third time or fourth. Well, this must be the 500th time I've seen it, and it never occurred to me once.

Harold: Well, yeah, I mean, I think it also may have to do with how. How we're looking at it now. You know, if we're looking at it on a screen, we're not looking at it in print. It may be a different size than you would look at it. And that makes a huge difference. Right. The bigger the,

Jimmy: That's true, yes.

Harold: The bigger the art looks, the more you see the individual lines and stuff stands out to you. That absolutely wouldn't. And that's the things that's crazy about Schulz that you can drop this down to sub postage stamp size and still read these.

Jimmy: He'll read it.

Harold: He know he. I think he's a master at that. I love looking at tiny, tiny Peanuts strips and that you, can read them no matter how infinitesimally small they are. It's like, then you start going back and saying, how did he do that? What did he do? So that nothing blurs out, nothing gets lost.

Jimmy: He's a, master of composition with lots of white space. Like, I feel like when I'm doing my best work, I have to add I have a really good amount of black on the page because it balances the page. It makes it seem richer and deeper. And he just. It's. Most of it's nothing, you know, most of it is paper.

Harold: Yeah. Most of it's white space. And he also. Yeah, there's just something about him also setting the rules of the universe. I was just a judge the first time I ever did this for the National Cartoonist Society. Got together with some other artists and we did it online on Zoom initially. Right. So we're. We're going through these, looking at them together. You have the opportunity to speak and say, you know, stop saying, wait, wait a second, look at that. Look at how they did the backgrounds here or whatever. And so it gets us to think. And then we can go back at our own leisure and look at these a little more in depth. But it was a really interesting process. And what stood out to me was the art in that, in that situation seemed to trump the storyline. Just because you're. You're burning through them, you can't absorb the story.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: And, you know, we were talking about that amongst ourselves, and one person said, well, yeah, I am. I think I'm pretty much going to be going by the art. And I was like, I can't imagine-- I said this out loud. I was like, I can't imagine judging Charles Schulz just by the art.

Michael: Oh, wow.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: You know, and it was. And then they kind of laughed like, yeah, yeah. But when you look at Peanuts, the other thing that he does visually that I think he would have gotten dinged for if people didn't know him until they were scrolling through, you know, 500 panels of stuff that got submitted to vote is that, you know, you have to get to know the world. And the way he draws is so simple. He doesn't change up the angles and stuff, which seemed to be what people were kind of giving points to. And I'm like, well, that's one of the things I think that makes him work so well, is that he doesn't change up angles. He's not going to confuse you. Even if you don't quite know what you're seeing. If you're looking at a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little picture of Peanuts, you know that that's got to be the doghouse, right? Those three lines. And that's Lucy in profile. I could see that. Can you imagine how tiny you could go and know what that is?

Jimmy: Yeah. The thing is, genius can't be pulled apart. You know what I mean? When you listen one of my favorite.

Harold: Unless it's like a genius cinnamon roll

Liz: or a genius podcast.

Jimmy: Now we're talking.

Liz: I mean, we've just spent four years pulling apart genius.

Jimmy: Yeah, but not. But, but you can't just look at one part. What I mean by it.

Harold: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah, yeah. You know what I mean?

Jimmy: You can't go, what makes Peanuts great is the inking.

Liz: Oh, right, yes. Okay.

Jimmy: You know, it's, it's all of it put together.

Liz: Yeah. I have a question.

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Liz: So Snoopy's a tender paw in, in the May 74 one we looked at.

Harold: Yeah.

Liz: Does he go instantly to scout leader or is there some transition period?

Jimmy: Well, I bet if, if there was a podcast that documented that sort of stuff, we could refer to it. But 

February 6, 1978, now we see the full on Beagle Scouts, Woodstock, and at least two of his friends in this one. And Snoopy's leading them. And he now has his official scoutmaster hat on. And he's saying, here's the world famous Beagle Scout leading his troop on a hike out to the wild country where man has never trod. And he is in fact doing that. We see him going into the woods and then we see them, the woods are getting a little thicker. That's indicated by three trees. As Snoopy says, beyond civilization. And then as he continues to walk, he passes a beat up old shopping cart. 

Jimmy: which if that's not in our gallery of perfectly drawn 20th century images, it should be.

Liz: It will be now.

Jimmy: Awesome. Yeah.

Michael: So this is an ecological comment on Schulz's part.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Liz: People dumping their trash.

Harold: Yeah.

Michael: And they're really floating along here.

Jimmy: Yes.

Michael: it's funny because these birds don't generally walk. They tend to hop which sort of makes sense for them. But Snoopy being up there, too, is kind of strange.

Jimmy: I, you know, having gone through this podcast and I'm doing new Amelia stuff now, I thought, I'm going to do it. I'm going to have Amelia. It's Amelia and Kyle walking down the street, and they're having a very bouncy conversation. I'm gonna have them bounce along like the Peanuts characters. No, I'm not. It just looks wrong. It just looks like they're floating. And I don't know why this gets accepted. I don't. I don't understand why.

Harold: Yeah, well, I mean, if. If you looked at this first panel of Snoopy with the three little birds behind him and all that white space between the ground and their. Their feet, and you were drawing it, I think you'd have exactly the same feeling, right? You go, ooh, that's not right. I can't do it. I can't do it. That's just not right.

Liz: Well, but if Snoopy were on the ground, they'd look like they were flying.

Jimmy: If you had what if you did Snoopy on the ground, One bird up, one bird down. This is insane. I mean, we're fixing a problem that doesn't exist. but it's so weird that it can work for him, and it just. Just can't work for them.

Harold: I bet if you did it and you put it in the book, no one would question it. They would accept it, and it's not part of the world. It's just. You have to spend too much time on it, and then you start second guessing yourself.

Jimmy: Second guessing

Harold: Yeah, I think that's it. I mean, there are things that Schulz does that when I, as an artist, am spending, instead of two seconds or three seconds to read a panel, I'm spending 40 minutes on the panel. I start taking away the ingenuity and the invention, because, I mean, they're now floating in that white space you were talking about, and they pop. They just totally pop. Every single one of them. And Snoopy in the second panel, his beagle scout hat is touching the bottom of the panel, and it's overlapping and covering up part of the panel, but the board balloon lines. And so it's weird. He's almost, like, connected to above, and he's not connected to below. And I would be questioning myself all the way through drawing this, but. But it. It works. And I'm glad that he will choose the thing that. That makes the most sense for the audience. He's so good at that and he doesn't second guess. Maybe. I mean, maybe he gets second guess himself on a million things we'll never see. But just the idea that this works. The other thing, this is a classic one. I'm gonna know if you guys have ever been into this where you have a bunch of people walking together and I'm like, oh, I've gotta mix up where the feet are. I don't wanna look like they're marching. Yeah, it's definitely all be in the same order. And then I look at Schulz and I go to all this trouble. I'm gonna mix it up. Or even from panel to panel, you know, it's like, okay, Charlie Brown's foot is here. When I go to the next one, his foot's gotta be in a different place, right? No. Schulz chose the most iconic version of that with whichever foot, the front or the left, you know, the front of the back foot. If you're seeing it from profile, if you look at it, it's like every single drawing is in exactly the same place because it's the one that looks the best. And I was like, that's freeing. Thank you. Thank you, Sparky. I don't have to feel, I have to draw it in a different location. and from panel to panel, if that's the one that looks like the walking pose that looks coolest.

Michael: Well, you're saying, okay. And all of these. Snoopy's left foot is forward. Is. Do you think that carries out throughout the strip?

Harold: I noticed this within strips when. I don't know. It was exactly that idea that just struck me. It's like, oh, man, I always have a problem with this because I feel like I'm cheating or whatever, you know, this is the easiest one to draw. It's the clearest one to draw on.

Jimmy: Everyone we picked.

Liz: Wow. Wow.

Harold: Isn't that crazy? So you artists out there, if you want to feel a little freedom given to you, take a look and say, well, if you struggle with that, here's the master. He made his choice and we didn't question it.

Jimmy: I think if you struggle with it and your first attempt is to get better at it, if that doesn't work, avoid it forever.

Michael: So he has no. Well, he has perspective. But you would never find like an aerial shot looking down on him.

Jimmy: Never.

Michael: Never. Which is like, isn't that interesting? Something I always feel. Yeah. I even realized that last week, like, yeah, everything's straight on. Because I can't. The perspective is so hard, from looking down. But when I'm reading comics, you want variety in the camera angle. I mean that's something most people do.

Jimmy: But like Jaime Hernandez doesn't anymore. But he used to.

Michael: Oh yeah, he used to.

Harold: It's really interesting. And it's funny that when you do do an aerial, if you're just trying to do it for variety because you're getting bored or you feel like it's. People aren't going to accept your story, maybe your story's weak. You got to have interesting art. You know, there's all sorts of reasons to decide to do the. But theoretically, having a shot from up high where you got the camera looking down, it's like, is that saying something that you didn't intend to say?

Michael: It says you can really draw because it's really hard.

Harold: That's true, yeah. Does it pull you out somehow, the story? Or maybe you're not even reading the story. You really are just looking at the pictures.

Michael: Well, it establishes the background. You can get a lot more setting in if you really want to establish what, you know, a room looks like. You look at it from the top.

Jimmy: And the thing is though, that has to be so perfect. Like I think there's a, panel in Cerebus where they're making a giant like 40 foot gold sphere for some reason. And they had a background art or Dave had a background artist named Gerhard and he drew a machine, a medieval machine that would make a gold sphere in perspective from a bird's eye view. And it's the most amazing thing ever drawn. But I think if any line of it was off, it would have wrecked the entire thing. It's such a hard, hard thing to do because it's a technical exercise and if you fake it and it's wrong, it's just wrong.

Harold: Yeah, yeah. After looking at it for four years, just to. Something else will just pop out of me and go, oh, yeah. He's following his own rules. And it does seem like it constantly comes back to what reads best in every single panel. Who cares about variety? Who cares about bird's eye views or whatever? What reads best in every single panel to get you into the characters and what they're doing, saying, well, yeah.

Jimmy: And if I could just one other thing. I think, Michael, when you like for you and me when we're doing a comic. Well, I should speak for me and ask you-- for me, when I'm doing a comic page, part of my interest is the overall layout and appeal of the page rather than just the content of every panel. Would you say that's true for you as well.

Michael: The layout of the page, I think in terms of balance, black and white. Yeah. If there was, you know, the bottom half didn't have black in the background, I think it would look weird to me. I'd throw. Yeah. And it's like the Hernandez rule, because he was so influential to me, is you can put, you know, black rectangles anywhere you want. And they read. They read as architecture. They don't have to make sense.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Michael: And they save you a lot of time.

Harold: Yep.

Jimmy: But that whole concept is something Schulz doesn't have to deal with because he always has one. I mean, maybe a little bit on the Sundays, but not even then. And you know.

Harold: Have you guys ever seen the rules that CC Beck, the guy who did, you know, Captain Marvel in the 40s and early 50s, he made for the crew of people working with him?

Jimmy: No.

Harold: When I look at those old Captain Marvel, which are now, I guess, known as Shazam because of weird trademark reasons. it was. He's so clear. It's like he's not losing a single kid reading the strips. And his rules for other artists was really interesting. He's like, always had the characters moving in the direction of the panel, unless it's for reasons of conflict. He said always make the. I think he said, hopefully I'm not misquoting him and mixing things up. But the last panel has to drive you to the next page. yeah, that's right. And it's really, really clean. Clean. It's just like this little mini masterclass in 10 minutes that you can learn from somebody who was a master at clarifying that.

Michael: Yeah. But I think we all make our own rules. I mean.

Harold: Yep.

Michael: One thing I do, and I haven't even noticed if anyone else does it. If I have a profile of characters speaking in the upper. In the first panel, they're going to be facing right.

Jimmy: Right.

Michael: And if on this second, third panel there's someone else speaking, they're going to be facing the opposite way.

Jimmy: That makes total sense to me.

Harold: Yep.

Michael: Even if it doesn't make sense, you know, technically, where they are.

Jimmy: Right. But it leads the reader. Definitely. It does.

Harold: Yeah.

Michael: So, I mean, Schulz probably had his own rules about when to use black and when not to use black, and

Liz: sometimes he breaks them and makes you mad.

Michael: Well, but everyone has different rules. Recently, as people were posting some early Frank Frazetta comic pages.

Harold: Uh-huh.

Michael: And Frazetta, you know, did not do a lot of comics after, you know, the early 50s. So you know, they're pretty rare. And so if, someone's posting from the original art in black and white, you can really study his use of black. Cause he's probably. He might be, like, the best artist ever to do comics. There's very little black I was looking at.

Jimmy: Yes, there is.

Michael: There's, like, a Johnny Comet page, Sunday page, and it's almost all white. And maybe just, here and there, a little bit of a shadow. Yeah, it looks great.

Harold: Hey, I found it. It's called the Seven Deadly Sins of Comics Creators. What I would love to do is do an episode or a part of an episode where we go through his seven deadly sins and apply it to Peanuts and see what. See what we come up with.

Michael: Okay, 

Jimmy: done.

Harold: Because it'll be enlightening from this master what he says, and you'll learn a lot. And then you'll also learn how Schulz lines up with it. And maybe we had some pushback for, back based on what we see in Peanuts.

Jimmy: I love it. That's a great idea.

Liz: Alrighty.

Jimmy: All right, but let's move on to the next strip. 

August 18, 1978. We see Snoopy and the Beagle Scouts. And it seems to be at night, and they have, been on a long hike and, have set up a little camp to have something to eat. And Snoopy says to them, incidentally, how do you guys like the grape jelly I brought along? And then as he's chowing down on his PB&J sandwich, he says, it's a new brand called Smurk. If someone gets jelly on his face, you can say to him, wipe that smirk off your face. And then there's no reaction from the Beagle Scouts whatsoever. And Snoopy glances out towards us and says, just a little joke there to boost sagging morale. 

Jimmy: All right, I want to see how closely you people have paid attention to unpacking Peanuts. And I'm talking about my co hosts and producer.

Harold: What?

Jimmy: Twice I have mentioned what that type of hat is. Oh, Snoopy's wearing. What is it called?

Liz: Oh, it's like station or Ranger or commander.

Michael: Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Jimmy: It begins with the C. That's it. Campaign hat.

Michael: Campaign hat.

Harold: no, I thought. I was thinking it was crims. It's smirked spelled backwards.

Jimmy: So this is another thing that it gives Schulz an outlet for. And he's spoken about this is he likes basically dad jokes, corny dad jokes that if it was just in the context of the strip, it wouldn't be funny. But if it's in the context of the strip as someone telling an unfunny joke.

Liz: Yes.

Jimmy: It then adds another layer which makes it.

Michael: Yeah, a lot of cartoonists would make that the third panel, the final panel. So there's a joke. Ha ha.

Jimmy: Yeah. And he.

Michael: Yeah, he undermines it.

Harold: And let's face it, some dad jokes are hilarious.

Jimmy: What's. Here's the funny thing that I've discovered now. My kids are graduating college. You start out as your kids get older, doing an ironic impression of your own dad for yucks.

Michael: Uh-huh.

Jimmy: And then it stops being an impression and it stops being ironic.

Michael: I don't think my dad, my dad never told the joke, so I was like, really?

Liz: My dad had a great wit.

Jimmy: Yeah, well, everybody in Girardville was funny. It's just the. You had to be, otherwise you would just be sobbing all the time. What do you got? Now we're looking at this as one of the recolored versions that they've done since Schulz, passed. And you know, they're still putting these out into the world. What do you guys think of the, the, the color?

Michael: I don't like. What's that little red thing on the ground?

Liz: Thermos or something?

Jimmy: Oh yeah. I bet if it was a better res, you could see it was. I think it is. Yeah, it's a thermos.

Michael: Thermos. Bigger than the bird.

Harold: I like the color and I also like his, his shading in panels two and three. It's like shoe. It was really popular when this came out.

Jimmy: That's a very panel too, especially. Yeah.

Harold: It just feels so much like what he would do for a tree and shoe. Jeff McNelly, the editorial cartoonist who also did that kind of. Was it a newspaper office of birds,

Jimmy: if you guys have seen that newspaper office of birds. I mean, you gotta love comics. Come on.

Harold: Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy: I don't know what Joyce was going to write next, but it wasn't going to be about a newspaper office of Birds.

Michael: Yeah.

Jimmy: That's what we have to have comics for.

Harold: Well, let me ask you, if you. If you would think of one comic strip that is the epitome of just one giant dad joke, what would it be?

Jimmy: Okay, let's. Oh.

Liz: Family Circus.

Jimmy: Oh yeah. It could be. Well, or maybe something like Moose. I don't know. I'd have to think about that actually.

Harold: Listen, that's like, that's. That's kind of got the vibe. Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy: But listeners, what's the most dad jokey comic strip out there? Unpackingpeanuts@gmail.com or 717-219-4162, call or text the hotline. All right, so with that said, let's take a break, and we'll meet you on the other side. 

BREAK

VO: Now, as you might know, all three of the hosts here on Unpacking Peanuts are, cartoonists ourselves. And, we would love for you to sample some of our work. If you want to do that, you can go over to unpackingpeanuts.com sample. Check out the store there where you'll find links to all our books. New Amelia Rules Books, 25th Anniversary Edition with new stories out. Harold's Sweetest Beast Books, all of Michael Stripp's Strange Attractors Omnibus. Get em all there. 

Jimmy: And we're back. Hey, Liz, I'm hanging out in the mailbox. Do we got anything?

Liz: We do. We heard from a bunch of people. We got a message from super listener Paul Hebert in Vancouver, and he says, hey, Liz, in a recent episode, you discussed a 1961 strip in which Linus says he wants to be a medical columnist, and Jimmy wondered if United Features had a syndicated medical column. Turns out that same year, United Features started running not only a medical column, but a medical column in comics form.

Michael: Whoa.

Liz: It was called Health Capsules by Dr. Michael A. Petty and cartoonist Jud Hurd, and he sent me a link.

Jimmy: I thought you were going to say cartoonist Judd Hirsch.

Harold: Jud Hurd was the guy who did a magazine for decades, I think, called a, Cartoonist Profiles.

Jimmy: He was, yes, of course. Yeah. And we've talked about that book.

Harold: These are, He was. Yeah. That was an incredible magazine. If you can get back issues of it, most of us probably not online. It's worth digging up old issues, learn a lot. Very cool.

Liz: I asked him how the heck he knew that, and he said, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking and reading about newspaper comic strips and editorial cartoons. It's a curse.

Jimmy: I have no idea what that's like,

Liz: but a good one to have. And, thanks to you and the guys for keeping me company.

Jimmy: Well, thank to you for keeping us company. Two Way Street. That's really interesting and very, very cool.

Liz: Yeah, I'll put the link in the show notes.

Jimmy: Please do.

Liz: And we heard from Marcus Entrelezo. he writes, I've recently gone to the Schulz Museum, and the inspiration in that place hit me square in the chest. It was a great place. And he continues, I can't believe you talked to Patrick McDonell, the amazing cartoonist behind Mutts. Probably one of my favorite episodes. Be of good cheer, guys.

Jimmy: It was such one of our favorites too. It was so fun and he's just a great guy and obviously, we love him as a cartoonist and can't wait to have him back.

Liz: Definitely. And then on YouTube, Steve Withrow commented on our interview with Gary Groth. He says, such a great conversation. Groth's perspective on this is invaluable. Thanks for bringing in Love and Rockets too.

Jimmy: our pleasure.

Liz: And super listener Sarah Wilson writes. Jimmy, you are clearly a man of superior intelligence and aesthetic sensitivity.

Harold: Oh boy.

Jimmy: I love how this is starting out, but I sense there's gonna be a twist.

Liz: Well, being as you are a fellow fan of the Great Gatsby.

Michael: Ah.

Jimmy: yes.

Liz: As for Michael and Harold, well, in fairness, it is not a novel for high schoolers. I didn't understand it until my third read when I was already in my 30s. Now I love it and understand why it counts as one of the greatest of all time American novels.

Jimmy: This ties in, amazingly, with the beginning of the show like we planned it. That, is incredible. I read Great Gatsby in high school as well. I didn't hate it, but it made no impression on me. Then I was going to San Diego and I didn't have anything to read and I literally grabbed it off the shelf and I thought, all right, I'll give this a try. And then it blew me away. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's an interesting. It's an interesting thing. It's a double edged sword because I think you have to introduce kids to stuff. But maybe the canon needs to be rethought a bit.

Harold: Yeah. Full disclosure, this one may not make me look good, but I read it in college.

Jimmy: Okay. All right.

Liz: But she continues. In lieu of inveigling you all in the Great Gatsby reread, here's how I'd cast a Peanuts version thereof.

Jimmy: All right.

Liz: Nick Carraway. Linus Van Pelt, 

Jimmy: obviously

Liz:  Jay Gatsby. Charlie Brown.

Jimmy: Oh, Charlie Brown is Gatsby. I love it. Okay.

Liz: Daisy Buchanan. Little Red Haired Girl, 

Jimmy: of course. 

Liz: Tom Buchanan. Joe Rich Kid. Jordan Baker. Lucy Van Pelt. Myrtle Wilson, Frieda. George B. Wilson. Pigpen. Henry Gatz, Shermy. The Spectacles of TJ Eckleburg, Snoopy. And the Green Light at the end of the dock. The Great Pumpkin, of course.

Jimmy: Wow.

Liz: You're right.

Jimmy: You know what? I like it. I like it.

Harold: You know these things. This could be licensed.

Jimmy: It could be done.

Harold: Gatsby is now public domain. You just have to license characters and

Jimmy: you're in and you get Public domain novels. I mean, not Gatsby, but. Right.

Harold: Yeah.

Liz: And last but not least, I want to give a shout out to Patreon supporter Melissa Jackson, who increased her membership level from fuzzy face to blockhead.

Jimmy: Oh, so exciting.

Liz: Thank you, Melissa.

Jimmy: That's what we're talking about. Late stage capitalism.

Liz: So that's it for the mail.

Jimmy: That's awesome. I got nothing on the hotline. so, but if you want to leave something on the hotline, text or voicemail, it's 717-219-4162. And as always, you can email us unpackingpeanutsmail.com and remember, when I don't hear from you, I worry. All right, let's get back to these strips. 

October 21, 1984. Snoopy is in one of them symbolic panels lying atop the world with the various phases of the moon shown around him in a very strange kind of diagram. And then we cut to Snoopy leading the Beagle scouts on a night, hike. And there's a big full moon in the sky. And Snoopy says, look, there's a full moon tonight. And then one of the Beagle scouts asks a question, and Snoopy answers, no, there aren't such things as werewolves. That's just a myth. And then they all sit down and Snoopy leans in and he says, but I'll let you in on a little secret. And then he looks around conspiratorially and says, you know who really comes out when the moon is full? And then he turns into the shaggiest, strangest thingiest version of himself and yells, Were Beagle and all the birds lose their minds and go hide in a tree. And then Snoopy sits there and goes, why do I do things like that?

Liz: He looks a little like Andy.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: Yeah, he does kind of look like Andy. Or like meth Snoopy. Snoopy took a turn for the worse.

Liz: Does he have fangs?

Harold: He does, yes. The claws on his. Oh, yeah.

Jimmy: Michael was saying during the break that this could have made a play for our Weirdest Strips episode.

Michael: Yep, Certainly this might be, He has had two ventures into horror. This is one of them. Okay. The other one being the blanket.

Jimmy: The blanket.

Harold: You think they were going to get a It's A Were Beagle Charlie Brown special?

Jimmy: Probably.

Harold: And if he did this on the 21st of October, I'm assuming he had a great pumpkin thing for the following week.

Jimmy: Yeah, probably.

Harold: boy, this is so. The little birds are so adorable. You kind of feel for him. That would be freaking me out if he turned into that middle of nowhere.

May 12, 1980. Okay, we're going to find out the names of the old Beagle Scouts here. There we go. Snoopy's calling roll. All right, men, answer as I call your name. Woodstock, Bill, Conrad, Olivier. And then one of the birds chirps up and Snoopy says, Harriet? Who's Harriet? And then he sees little Harriet and says, and why, pray tell, should Harriet be invited to join our group? And I assume it's Woodstock. Or maybe it is Harriet. I don't know. One of them explains to him why. And then as they go off on their hike, Snoopy with a big smile says, right, anyone who brings along an angel food cake with 7-minute frosting is welcome. 

Jimmy: I agree.

Harold: I, love the angel fruit cake with seven minute frosting. If it fights the fights, the rule that you have to have a simple punchy thing to be funny. But as long as it is, I think it's great. That's hilarious.

Jimmy: Yeah. What do you think of these names? Are these good cartoon names? I kind of like Bill. I think Bill's a good bird name. Because, you know, Bill.

Michael: Well, I could see. I can see cartoonist references to a couple of them.

Harold: Oh, yeah.

Michael: In fact, that they're all over the place. Olivier. I can't find any kind of reference to Olivier.

Harold: Oh, I was thinking Heart of Darkness and Sir Lawrence were the inspiration.

Michael: Is there? Yeah, I mean, Bill. Bill Mauldin Conrad, the cartoonist.

Harold: And Harriet's a great name.

Jimmy: I love the angel food cake with 7-minute frosting bit and that. It's always described that way, you know,

Harold: Although why is it not in quotes?

Jimmy: Yeah, you got it. That would have added that extra little.

Harold: There's no room for it.

Jimmy: And this is a little sequence with Harriet the Gang. And it winds up on 

May 17, 1980, with Harriet atop Snoopy's doghouse. And Snoopy saying to her, really? Well, I'm glad you enjoyed the hike, Harriet. It was nice having you with us. And then she flies away chirping something to Snoopy. And Snoopy says, oh, no, you don't have to do that. And then he says, well, if you insist. And in the last panel, Harriet has apparently delivered a beautiful, cake to Snoopy. And Snoopy says, no scout leader alive can turn down an angel food cake with seven-minute frosting.

Michael: So she. She essentially bribed him to let her into the boys club.

Liz: How did she carry that cake?

Harold: That's the joy of comic strips. I don't know how they do this in. In, animation.

Michael: Just cut yeah, just cut. Yeah.

Harold: Or they don't do it. Yeah, that's a. That looks like a heavy cake.

Liz: It's lighter than it looks because of all those egg whites.

Jimmy: It's angel food.

Harold: It's angel food. Yeah. If it wasn't angel. If it were devil's food, she wouldn't be able to kill.

Jimmy: She'd be squished under it. 

July 6, 1980. Snoopy. And it's a symbolic panel. Snoopy is atop a pair of binoculars with Woodstock. And then looking through the lenses of this is like really elaborate. This is like Will Eisner Stone that Schulz is doing. Because looking through the lenses of the binoculars, you can see a smiling little pair of birds who are adorable.

Harold: I love those.

Jimmy: I picked it because of those pictures. 

But then, anyway, then it cuts to our pals, Marcie and Peppermint Patty. And Marcie says, do you think we'll see an eagle? Because they're going out birding. Marcie has those binoculars in her hand. So does Peppermint Patty Patty. Peppermint Patty Patty says, it could happen. They continue to walk out into the. Into nature. And Marcie says, I've never been bird watching before, sir. And Peppermint Patty says, well, just do what I tell you, Marcie. It can be very gratifying. Now you stand here and watch, and I'll stand over there and we'll report to each other what we see. And Marcie puts the glasses up to her eyes and looks up in the sky and says, I think I see some puffy birds, sir. Peppermint Patty Pie says, those aren't puffy birds, Marcie. Those are clouds. And then the Beagle Scouts with Snoopy walk right by Marcie. And she says, guess what, sir. I just saw, five walking birds. And Peppermint Patty says, there isn't such a thing as a walking bird, Marcie. Marcie just says, five yellow walking birds. And the last one was carrying an angel food cake. And Peppermint Patty Patty, slightly annoyed, says, let's go home, Marcie. I think you're cracking up. And Marcie looks back and says, and the angel food cake had seven-minute frosting. And we see the birds and Snoopy all enjoying some cake with the seven-minute frosting.

Liz: Very small cake this time.

Jimmy: Yes. I think there's some really nice drawing in this. I like the drawing on the first panel of the last tier. I like the shadows on the ground and the next to last panel. And I like all the. I like the Beagle Scouts walking by. Marcie, I also. The last panel is weird because you never see, you know, characters in different planes of, you know, the picture frame like that, like with Peppermint Patty Patty, the back of her head in the distance. And then the middle ground with Marcie in the foreground with the beagle.

Harold: Marcie's looking over the outline of some bushes, which is really cool. You don't see that yet.

Michael: This is a fairly self referential joke. It doesn't work unless you've seen it before. Yeah.

Harold: Or it works on a different level. Right.

Michael: Well, it wouldn't work if this was the first one. No. Well, it would just be weird, right?

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: I mean it would be weird.

Jimmy: It'd be maybe. I don't know. That's be bold.

Harold: Yes, it would be bold. Which, you know, in, in fairness to us, reading this, I, I would guess 95% of the people who read this in the newspaper had not seen this before.

Michael: Right.

Harold: Or wouldn't remember it.

Jimmy: Well, I don't know.

Harold: 92.4. I'm sorry.

Jimmy: Yeah, that's much better.

Michael: It's a catch line which you've got to do often enough. So the use of the catch line becomes something people are looking forward to.

Harold: I think if I had read this for the first time, I would have been kind of delighted. Just as, as strange as it is. And he kind of sets it up where Marcie is looking at the clouds and thinks that the clouds are birds. So you can read it like Marcie is hallucinating.

Liz: Yes.

Harold: And yet you do see a tiny little animal food cake with 7-minute frosting walking by.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, that's the kit. That's what makes it, is that she first looks up and just sees. And I kind of understand that. I got a. My uncle. For whatever reason, My uncle Jackie bought me like really nice Christmas presents every year. It was always cool. One year he got me a really expensive microscope and I couldn't see through it. Like I couldn't understand how to use it. And then I went to high school and I couldn't understand how to use microscope. So I sort of relate to Marcie. Everyone else is like, you just look through it. I'm twisting dials. I've never seen anything.

July 23, 1978. Marcie and Peppermint Patty are out for a hike with their tiny little backpacks and they're walking along a huge fallen tree and then they're skipping across rocks across a stream. And then they're in the woods and Marcie says, I suppose we should be observing wildlife while we're out here. Shouldn't we, sir. And Peppermint Patty says, absolutely, Marcie. That's one of the purposes of backpacking. Then Marcie looks over some bushes again, questioning what she sees as Peppermint Patty Patty walks away. And then she pulls out one of the Beagle Scouts. I'm gonna say Woodstock in his little campaign hat and also in a sleeping bag, as he holds it to Peppermint Patty Patty and says, look, sir, I think I found a strange creature. It looks like a giant worm or something. And then they're looking at it together as Snoopy comes up behind them, and Patty says, that's a bird in a sleeping bag, Marcie. You found a bird in a sleeping bag? And then Snoopy snatches Woodstock away from Marcie, gives the little bird a boot, I guess, back to camp. And Marcie looks at them and says, I think we've disturbed the wildlife, sir, or upset the balance of nature or something. And Peppermint Patty Patty says, a bird in a sleeping bag.

Michael: All right, I've gotta say, this is one of the funniest Peanuts strips of all time.

Jimmy: Whoa. That is a bold proclamation.

Michael: I agree. If the point of a comic is to make you laugh, which seems ridiculous to me, this really works.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: I got a question. Why is Snoopy angry at the bird who's stuck in the sleeping pack and is kicking the bird? I thought he was mad at Marcie for upsetting the balance of nature.

Michael: No, he's mad it's a bird for bouncing away from the camp.

Harold: Oh, so she didn't just pick it up next to a bunch of other sleeping little birds?

Michael: No, it's, in the bush or something.

Harold: Well, the two of them. The bird is sleeping in the bush in that case. Right.

Jimmy: The stoic, emotionless bird in the sleeping bed is just funny. And I love the middle panel. Well, not the third panel on the second tier. It's very evocative, and I really like it.

Harold: Very nice. Yeah. Marcie looking over bushes and the back of Peppermint Patty again, walking for some scraggly pine trees and a mountainous area. It's cool.

Jimmy: Snoopy walking into panel with his left foot forward again.

Harold: Yep. And little dots on the rocks that make me think of Pig Pen. Yeah.

Jimmy: And then, you know, that. That panel, those first two panels, especially that one of them jumping across the stones. I mean, you know, he can bring it when he wants to.

Liz: And they have their arms out for balance.

Jimmy: For balance. Yeah.

Harold: And again, their feet are in the same positions, going over the rocks to get.

Michael: And that opening panel is different because it's not any kind of symbolic representation. I think it's just the panel. That's what they're doing.

Jimmy: It's just a panel.

Harold: Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy: It really is nice that way. I like it when you can do that. When it just flows smoothly like that. You don't have to do. There's not a joke. And the first two panels, and that gets thrown away. I like it when it just is able to smoothly flow like that.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: Very well. Guys, what do you have to say here about the, the Beagle Scouts? I think. I think I understand one thing at the end of this that I didn't understand before. A couple episodes ago, we were talking about that list of characteristics Snoopy has, and we were like, that's not how he acts with Charlie Brown, but it is how he acts with the Beagle Scouts.

Michael: Yeah.

Jimmy: So perhaps a younger generation who grew up with the Beagle Scouts in the way we grew up with, you know, the Great Pumpkin or the baseball strips or whatever it is, maybe to them, that's where they're getting those traits from.

Michael: Yep.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael: I mean, you didn't pick anything that delves into the great mystery of the Beagle Scouts, which is when they're out climbing a mountain, why don't they just fly?

Liz: And, we didn't pick any of the ones where Harriet gets beat up and loses her teeth.

Jimmy: No, that's also a great one. But you know what? You know who does have to fly? Me. Okay, I got an appointment. So you characters out there, if you want to keep this conversation going, the first thing you can do is sign up for that great Peanuts reread over at unpacking peanuts.com. You can also email us Unpacking Peanuts gmail dot com. And of course, you can call the hotline, which is 717-219-4162. And if you want to follow us on social medias, we're at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and Threads and, Packing Peanuts on Facebook, blue sky and YouTube. Remember? I, worry when I don't hear from you. Come back in two weeks for the best day of the week when I get to hang out with my pals and talk about the greatest comic strip of all time. And you get to hang out with us. So until then, from Michael, Harold and Liz. This is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

LH&M: Yes be of good cheer.

Liz: Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz, and Liz Sumner. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza 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, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.

Jimmy: Campaign hat. Campaign hat.