With Andrew Farago

Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. It's an exciting day here because we have a guest, and I'll be your host for these proceedings. My name is Jimmy Gownley, and joining me, as always, are my pals, co hosts, and fellow cartoonists Harold Buchholz.

Harold: Hello.

Jimmy: And Michael Cohen.

Michael: What, I get demoted, now?

Jimmy: I don't know what I'm doing. I'm trying something new. And joining us and making sure I don't get into any further trouble, it's editor and, what's the other thing? 

Liz: Producer 

Jimmy: Producer, Liz Sumner.

Liz: Howdy.

Jimmy: So today we have a very special guest in studio. Andrew Farago is the curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, and he's the author of more than a dozen books on comics, cartoons, and popular culture, including Teenage Mutant Ninja, the Ultimate Visual History, the Art and Making of Awakening, the Complete Peanuts Family Album, and the recently released the Story of My Life, the Myth, the Legend, the Beagle. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Andrew: Yeah, thanks for having me. Longtime listener, first time caller.

Jimmy: Well, thank you very much. Hey, so tell us, where were you in your life, when Charles Schulz and Peanuts, first collided with you?

Andrew: You know, it's one of those things. I really can't remember a time without Snoopy or Charlie Brown. And some of the very earliest drawings I ever did were Snoopy and just. Yeah, the. My older siblings had the paperbacks, those whole paperbacks in the. In the early 80s. I had. They bought them in the 70s. I read them in the late 70s, early 80s. And as soon as I found out there was a new Peanuts strip, every day in the newspaper, I read the newspaper comics section. And I'm sure. And I know, Yeah, I know we watched every one of the annual special. So I remember, yeah, it's the Great Pumpkin and Charlie Brown Christmas from very, very early on. So there's like, 90% of America. I don't remember a time without Peanuts.

Jimmy: Now, when you started reading Peanuts in the newspaper. And you started looking at other strips, were there other ones that, captured your attention? Was there, like a number two strip or number three strip?

Andrew: It was right around. It was around the rise of. It sounds dramatic to say it this way, the rise of Garfield, but, you know, Garfield was the first comic strip collection, you know, that I had that was just mine. That was, you know, my mother was out on a rare road trip. And she came back with a, Garfield book for me. I hadn't seen the character before, but I read it. Like most wannabe cartoonists, I copied everything I could from Garfield, including the style, the eyes, the pacing, the jokes, the food humor, you know. And then by middle school, it was such a great time to be a newspaper comics reader because the Far side and Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom county, the big three for Gen X, those were. And it's hard to explain this to kids today. Like this was, this was appointment viewing. Like after school you ran, got the newspaper, you read those three strips and you wanted to see like, what craziness Berkeley Breathed was getting into and the fun stuff that Bill Watterson was doing. And, old favorites like Peanuts and Heathcliff and Garfield and anything with an animal in it, you know. And is the Far Side going to be one that you want to clip and put on the fridge for the next week?

Jimmy: Yeah. And so often it was. That guy had such a huge batting average. It's insane.

Andrew: Yeah. And it was, you know, it's not like once a year. Well, you know, it is, it is once a year. You do get a collection at Christmas or for your birthday or something. you know, Foxtrot came along when I was in junior high and that was that one I loved. Like Bill Amend just, he got it like, he really understood kids like me. And when I got to meet him in person, it's like, oh, yeah, he was absolutely a kid like me who was into, you know, into comics and into Star Wars and video games and all this, all this stuff. And yeah, again, it was such an amazing time to be reading comics every day in the newspaper.

Jimmy: Yeah. I mean, the 80s in general, I think is such a golden age of comics. The comic book scene was terrific at that time too. Was, that something else you were into? you know, that whole like black and white boom of the 80s or the superhero, the, you know, reconstruction deconstructionist stuff.

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, I always like to say, like, you know, you, you like to tell, you always like to tell people. Oh yeah, I was, I was into Love and Rockets and you know, Eightball and I was reading all this, but, you know, I was reading Youngblood and, and X Men spin offs and everything else. But I also had, you know, I had, I had cool older brothers. I, you know, my, we collected baseball cards. We, you know, I like to think it's like a well rounded classical education.

Jimmy: Right.

Andrew: Sports, Sports, honestly is, it's, it's like being able to speak a second language. I can be around comics people and rattle off, you know, baseball statistics and standings and they're looking at me like I'm speaking--

Jimmy: Well, Peanuts is a perfect place for a confluence of baseball and the comics, though. There's no.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Jimmy: Now how does one go from being an enthusiast to end up being the curator of the Cartoon Art Museum, which I've been to. I did an event at, years ago and love every second of it. So tell us about that.

Andrew: So I, yeah, I didn't. That is a good question. How did I end up here?

Jimmy: We all ask ourselves that every day.

Andrew: Well, you know, I mentioned, yeah, I mentioned drawing Snoopy and drawing Garfield and you know, and I think, I think everybody who ends up, you know, in comics or comics adjacent things, I think, you know, they do have the dream at the beginning of, you know, I'm going to be Charles Schulz, I'm going to be Stan Lee, Jack Kirby. I'm going to make my own comics. And that was, that was my goal for a long time. So that was, you know, I was the, I was the A student in art class. I majored in art studio art. When I went to college, they were, you know, I was, I was in art class in college with a bunch of printmakers and photographers and my professors really didn't know what to do with somebody who just wanted to draw comics. And I was probably five or 10 years ahead of the curve on that. It's one of those, that's what I like to tell myself, like when the Marvel movies caught on. It's like I was into this stuff back in high school and junior high and you didn't know it was cool yet. Yeah, I really wanted to be cartoonist and you know, I worked at it. I didn't have any game plan other than like, oh, I'll have, I'll have some type of a day job and eventually I will be, you know, I'll have my own character. I'll have rotary phones shaped like my characters. I will have, I'll be wearing, you know, I'll be wearing pajamas with my characters on. Nobody will know who I am, but they'll all know who my world famous comic strip character is. But yeah, along the way I had some art, history classes. I was doing more and more writing and actually I ended up in San Francisco because one of my teammates from my high school cross country team, so I told you I was an athlete. He ended up in San Francisco for a college internship and he Said, you know, I could use a roommate. Can you come out here and we'll hang out? So I did that and I actually hit Craigslist and I was looking for, you know, I had a day job I really didn't like. It was just temp work. And I thought, you know, I need to find some way to connect to the city. So I need something like volunteer work. Cartoon Art Museum was looking for volunteers. I showed up one Saturday morning and I never left. That was ah, 25 years ago and just kind of worked my way up through volunteering with events. And then when the staff expanded, they needed a gallery manager to. That was kind of a catch all term for working with the volunteers and writing press releases, writing exhibition text, helping the curator and. Yeah, and worked my way up. I studied under Jenny Robb, who now is in charge of the Billy Ireland at Ohio State University. So learned, learned a lot from her. And when she went from San Francisco to Ohio State, I was kind of nex man up. Yeah. Have done 100 something exhibitions since then. I've worked with thousands of artists. So I get to, yeah, I get to be creative in different ways. Great.

Michael: Could you tell us a little bit about who founded the museum? Just a little bit about the history?

Andrew: Yeah, sure, yeah. It all started in, officially in 1984 and that's when Malcolm White, who was a San Francisco-based, is a San Francisco-based publisher, writer, collector. But he, he and some of his friends drawing inspiration from Mort Walker and his International Museum of Cartoon Art. He said, you know, we need one on the west coast, so we need a place like we have these amazing art collections that we get to share with each other. But it would be great if everybody else knew. Yeah. How fun and exciting this is to see, to see a Charles Schulz or Maury Turner or Robert Crumb or Cathy Guiswite or whoever. Like see, see one of their illustrations up close and you know, get, you really get to appreciate. He used the term the invisible hand. You get to see what the artists do, what they, what the thought process is, what, what work goes into. You know what I like to think that we're not treating it this way anymore. Like what, what people did think of as a disposable art form. Like you read a newspaper comic, you threw it away. Comic books were for kids. TV cartoons were for kids. But yeah, we've had. And again thanks to visionaries like Malcolm White, I think we've seen a real change in that thinking and that approach. Like we have. I do and I'm sure you do too. I'm looking at my Complete Peanuts hardcover collection on my bookshelf, like every, every strip in chronological order in nice, A nice permanent edition.

Andrew: Yeah. And it's, it's, it's, it's been great to see such a change in the appreciation, I think from the general public.

Michael: was the focus always comic strips rather than comic book art?

Andrew: No, and I think they chose the, I think they chose wisely. They chose the name Cartoon Art Museum because it is, it is such a nice catch all thing. And I get these questions about vocabulary all the time from museums and from archives that haven't really dealt with this material before. But you know, I love the, I love cartoon because that can be, that can be comic strips, that can be animation, that can be comic books, political cartoons. And so yeah, we've always, right now I'm working on exhibitions with New Yorker cartoonists, Edward Gorey, Pixar animator, and we're talking to some publishers in Japan. So, so it's great that it's such an all encompassing term.

Jimmy: Now, before we move on, to your own writing, your own books, do you have a favorite exhibition out of, you said hundreds, Is there one that without thinking too hard, just pops in your mind and go, oh, that was amazing to see?

Andrew: Yeah, this actually, I'll say it's not necessarily the absolute favorite, but it's fresh in my mind and it is way up on my list. But in 2007, and my wife co curated this with me, we worked with the son of Disney concept artist Mary Blair. Oh, oh wow.

Jimmy: I love her.

Andrew: Yeah, they're an exhibition of her work and you know, she was, she was getting to be more and more widely appreciated thanks to animation historians like John Canemaker, really putting her work out there. But the exhibition that we did here in San Francisco led to a major retrospective of her work in Japan that we worked on. And then the Walt Disney Family Museum opened its doors not long after all that. And you know, we, it's, it's exciting that like, I don't want to say we changed, changed history, but you know, the, the show that started with with me making a phone call to Mary's son really kicked off this, you know, this really renewed appreciation or first time appreciation for her work. And I'm really proud of what we accomplished with that one. So that's, yeah, that's way up there on my list.

Jimmy: Oh, that's.

Liz: Congratulations.

Harold: Yeah, that's fantastic.

Jimmy: yeah, for our listeners out there who aren't familiar with Mary Blair, you're familiar with her. you've definitely seen probably the, Disney Alice in Wonderland movie, which she did most of the concept designs for. And, probably most famously, she did It's a Small World, the ride for Disneyland.

Liz: Oh, no.

Jimmy: Oh, I. That is my favorite thing. If I was president of the United States and there was. There were, like, peace, talks, I would just put them on It's a Small World, and if they didn't get it together, we'd run it again, or.

Michael: They'D all go crazy if the ride got stuck. I did listen to that song for, like, 45 minutes.

Liz: I stood in line for two hours at the 1964 World's Fair Coke exhibit to see that.

Andrew: Oh, well, there you go.

Jimmy: Well, Mary Blair, that's. That's a great pick. So. All right, so tell. So, okay, that's one side of. Of your. Your life and your work. Tell us about. How did you become an author? you know, leading up to this exciting new Peanuts book with Snoopy.

Andrew: Yeah. The Cartoon Art Museum, you know, kicks things off. So one of our longtime. Or one of our former board members, I think he was. If he wasn't a founding board member, he was close to it. But, yeah, a man named Mark Burstein, who is one of. One of the world authorities on the Pogo comic strip. Another. Another thing I could talk about all day. He was working with a local publisher, local to me, called Inside Editions, and they were putting together a book called 100 Greatest Looney Tunes. So this was actually a couple books they were putting together that. And they were putting together a book called the Hanna Barbera treasury, written by Jerry Beck. And Mark said, oh. He told his editor, you have to talk to Andrew at the Cartoon Art Museum and look at their archives so we can find some Hanna Barbera art to put in this book. And I hit it off with the editor, Kevin Toyama, who was working on that Hanna Barbera Treasury. And Kevin and Mark both called me up when they were putting together this book called the Hundred Greatest Looney Tunes, which needed essays, that exact subject, the Hundred Greatest Looney Tunes. So they needed people who would, you know, who could write fun, brief historical essays on the cartoons that have been selected for this book. So that got my foot in the door. And, yeah, Kevin Toyama at Inside Editions, he called me up and asked if I wanted to write a book on the history of the Looney Tunes, which, of course, I. I don't think he finished asking before I said yes. And he said, so it's, he said it's, there's going to be some creative writing involved because this is going to be. And he and I both agreed on this. He said there aren't firsthand sources you can really interview anymore. The people who made these cartoons aren't around, their kids are great people, but they ah, all have, you know, very conflicting accounts of how these stories happen, how these characters came about. So he said, we're gonna have you tell the, tell the characters stories, but from their own point of view. So you have to write as Bugs Bunny, as Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd. And I said, okay, that's, you know, that, that means I'll have to sit on the couch and watch Looney Tunes all day and take notes and really get their voices down. Get my, get my favorite quotes in there. So that was a lot of fun writing and it was challenging writing a history book in that way. I don't want to say we almost came to blows, but my editor and I had this philosophical argument about whether Elmer Fudd would type with W's instead of R's if his speech impediment would be, would come through in his writing.

Jimmy: What side were you on in that debate?

Andrew: I said, absolutely, yes. Like that's just how it's Elmer Fudd. And he said, but yeah, but he's typing it. I said, well maybe he's dictating it. And the compromise was can I have him break the R key on his typewriter early on and then he has to type with a W. And he said okay. And that's why I get the big bucks. 

But yeah, that went well. And that led to, I thought it might just be a one off thing. But a few years later, another editor since I, since I'd written for Insight, called and said like, we're looking, we're looking for pitches for this Ninja Turtles history book. And the way, the way I generally work with this publisher is they will, they will get a license to write, to produce a book and then they will find an author to write it. So I didn't come to them with, you know, I've been, I've been really wanting to write like this book in particular. They, they get the rights all sorted out. They know, hey, we've got a license with Nickelodeon or DC Comics or Marvel. And then they, they try to find the right author for each project. So that's, yeah, I've had a really long, great collaboration with them and with many other publishers as well.

Jimmy: That is very Interesting. If, do you, you know, I'm a freelancer myself as well. Do you have certain things, it's not easy to turn down, work I guess with your freelancer. But are there certain projects or certain licensees that you've enjoyed working on more than anything else or are there, is there something out there that you still want to do?

Andrew: I try not to say no. If they, if they approach me, if they, if, if the editor. There's so many editors there that know my work now that if they think, you know, I'm going to be a good fit for a project, even if it's something I'm not too familiar with. So I'm doing. I've m got a Dune video game book.

Andrew: Coming out later this year and I'm not an expert on video games by any means and was not an expert on Dune whatsoever. So obviously when they said, do you want to write about a Dune video game? I said yeah, why not?

Jimmy: Sure.

Harold: That's a big commitment to get on top of that.

Andrew: Yeah, really. And earlier this year I had a book on the making of the Minecraft movie come out. And as the father of an elementary schooler, now middle schooler, who's crazy about Minecraft, I jumped all over that one. Yeah, that'll, that'll be fun. And you know, when I signed on I did not know anything about Minecraft other than it's the game my kid plays all the time is always talking about.

Harold: And you're co authoring that one?

Andrew: Pretty much, yeah. You know that one. I thought it was an animated movie when they asked me to do it. And I remember I thought I'd blown it during the first meeting because I was talking about it like it was animated. And they said, no, we've got live actors, it's going to be Jack Black and Jason Momoa on screen. And I said, oh, okay, I can work with that. So yeah, usually I agree to it. I'm actually working on another video game book right now where I'm learning as I go and yeah, I generally say yes. And then a week later, ah, ask what have I gotten myself into.

Harold: So is it a full time gig that you're doing with the museum and then you're just finding the time to author these books?

Andrew: Yeah, so a lot of nights, weekends, lunch breaks, you know, when I, whenever I get vacation time, it ends up being spent, you know, playing, you know, again, it's, it's, it's, it's work on us like playing video games or reading Stacks of comic books or rereading peanuts for the 20th time all the way through.

Jimmy: Now we are, focusing on. On Snoopy, this season, which is, you know, it's good, that we have you here now, because your current book, which is all about Snoopy. tell us about that. Tell us about if you were going to, you know, pitch it, do the elevator pitch for the Snoopy book. Give us that.

Andrew: Yeah, well, I mean, very fortunately for me, between the cartoon art museum and then our neighbors to the north at the Charles Schulz Museum, you know, I'm pretty well connected to the Peanuts world. You know, the 50th anniversary Peanuts exhibition was actually the first exhibition that I saw at the cartoon art museum when I visited as a volunteer. So that was such a. Such a great experience. And I had no idea that was very shortly after Charles Schulz passed away. But anyway, so, yeah, again, I'd written, getting back on track here. I'd written the Looney Tunes book, I'd written some history books, and an editor at Weldon Owen, he approached me and said, you know, we've got, we've got the Peanuts license, and I've got kind of a rough idea for a Peanuts character guide. Would you like to write it? So that ended up being, the complete Peanuts family album. And that was a guide to every single character in the Peanuts comic strip. So every pretty much every named character and a few who were named only as concepts or ideas. So some of the off screen characters. but, you know, we said we need somebody who can do a deep dive into the history and like. Right. You know, brief, brief descriptions of everybody from Charlie Brown and Linus and Lucy and Franklin all the way to the one off characters like Larry and Harold angel, the school building. And I said, yeah, that's me.

Andrew: I'm your guy.

Jimmy: That's amazing.

Andrew: So we had that and we talked for a while about doing a follow up about Snoopy and his. His many personas. And that was going to be maybe probably a small gift book kind of thing. But, you know, I had that. Had that idea kicking around and actually, oh, in the interim, like, here's another Peanuts connection. I should mention the Charles Schulz centennial stamps that came out a couple years ago. I actually got to consult on those. So I worked with. I worked with the United States post office on this oh, wow. Project and had had some great phone calls with the guy who put that together. And that was. That was a really fun project. Like, again, having to come up with like, what, what are the essential elements of Charles Schulz's biography that go into, you know, the official post office booklet that's going to be sold at, sold at post offices across the country. So yeah, lots of, lots of fun stuff like that's come up along the way.

Jimmy: But yeah.

Andrew: So the Snoopy. Snoopy book had been kicking around for a while. And I talked to Lex Fajardo over at Creative Associates. Yeah. And I said, you know, I think, I think, and my editor Ian from the previous book. And I said, you know, I think what I want to do with Snoopy is kind of what I did with the Looney Tunes book. I want to have Snoopy tell his own story, but I want to put some restrictions in place. I don't want it to be. I want it to be just what we know about him from the Peanuts comic strip. So as much as possible write in Charles Schulz's voice or Snoopy's voice by way of Charles Schulz. And I said, it's going to involve reading every single Peanuts strip all over again, which I'm always up for, and then taking careful notes on what are all the books that Snoopy's written and what are all the characters that he's been. Ah. And what has he eaten and what, you know, which, which parts of his family backstory contradict each other, like which dates things and putting together kind of a, you know, and another, another guidepost was actually Don Rose's Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck where he read every Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge story and figured out, this must be the timeline because this is where he was in this decade and this is where he was when he made his fortune. This is when this happened. So I thought, okay, can we do that with Snoopy? Can we go from his humble origins, his puppyhood at the Daisy Hill Puppy farm, all the way through becoming a world famous author and. Yeah, and it was, yeah, it was so much fun doing this.

Harold: So Andrew, could I ask you, what's this? You have been given the task of being the voice of Snoopy in the longest form we've ever experienced. How does that feel for you? Trying to be the voice of someone we're so used to hearing in little snippets or in the animated specials?

Andrew: Not at all.

Harold: He's now speaking to us through a 96 page book. does the voice sound different to you when he's got a kind of a longer essay form or how do you deal with that in terms of capturing that Snoopy voice in a way we've never experienced before.

Andrew: Yeah. You know, I'd say through his. And it's, it's, it's interesting because this is, this is how we would talk about any historical figure. But I guess through his writing and through, through the historical documents and now it sounds like Galaxy Quest, but like, yeah, he, he does, he's got a very rich life. He, he thinks a lot. So like there are a lot of his own words in the comic strip. And like I did looney. Like I did with the Looney Tunes. Like I did a lot of direct transcription. So it's like, This is a great phrase here. This is, you know, I've got to use this. I've got to make sure this goes in without single edit. And so knowing that the strip was going to do the heavy lifting, so there were going to be, you know, I went through and carefully selected which comic strips I wanted to see in this book and then kind of wove the story around it. And you know, even when I look at, when I look at it right here and I see like, oh, it's Snoopy at his doghouse writing his book, I almost feel like I didn't write it so much as I, you know, I gathered like.

Harold: Right.

Liz: Wow.

Harold: You're the ghostwriter kind of taking the messages he's given you and the, he wants to cover it.

Andrew: If I'd found Oscar Wilde's journals and put it into, you know, historical document like this. This feels almost, almost like the same thing. Like there's some curatorial, there's editing, there's. But it's like it's Snoopy's book and I kind of put it together for him.

Harold: I can totally see that in Simon's spotlight. You talk about being a gift book. I mean, this thing has gilt edges and a ribbon you can pull down, in between the pages. I mean, that's a hardcover. So this really is a, a really fancy package for this. Right. How do you feel about the final.

Andrew: Oh yeah, I love what they, they did with it. Like, I wasn't sure. You know, I thought this might be another book comparable to the, the Peanuts family album. I, I pictured it as kind of like, you know, it's going to be a 200-, 300-page thing. It's going to be just, it's going to be a comic strip reprint collection that happens to have this. And they said, well, this is, this is kind of, this is which division is going to be handling it, it's going to be this type of book. And yeah, I mean, what they, what they came up with is like, this is. This would have been my favorite book at age 8. And this would have been, you know, that one nice book that I owned that I read over and over again. You know, I'm excited for, you know, kids now getting it, but also people who, this, this reminds them of that, that kind of feeling. And, you know, I'm, I'm actually excited for 10 or 20 years from now and people find out, yeah, people come up to me and say, oh, that was, that was that book that I had on my shelf.

Harold: Yeah. Because you're, you're introducing people as some of them, especially kids, this is maybe their first book version of Snoopy or introduction to the strips. And you are giving this well rounded overview of all these aspects of Snoopy with the text and then these color strips interspersed in between. And so, yeah, I mean, I remember as a kid I got the, the Dark and Stormy Night book because Snoopy's always famously starting a book and never going anywhere with it. Or, or it's a manuscript we never got to see. And just that there's now this extended book where he's telling his whole story. It's like the culmination of 75 years of Snoopy, the author in this book.

Andrew: Yeah. And it was, yeah, it was so much fun to put that together. And I'm. Yeah, I mean, I'm excited that it's out there and that people are getting it and then that it's going to be, you know, I think, I think it's going to be a big holiday present this year. And I'm.

Jimmy: Yeah, well, you know what I'm excited about? I'm excited about talking about five of, the strips that you picked for us to discuss today. So how about we take a break now, come back on the other side and we will get Andrew's, take on his five top peanut strips. Be right back.

BREAK

VO: Hi, everyone. I just want to take a moment to remind you that all three hosts are cartoonists themselves and their work is available for sale. You can find links to purchase books by Jimmy, Harold and Michael on our website. You can also support the show on Patreon or buy us a mud pie. Check out the store link on unpackingpeanuts.com.

Jimmy: And we are back. Andrew, it is customary for us to get five strips from our guests to discuss. Can you tell us what was your process like picking these five strips?

Andrew: That's a great question. Yeah, I wanted to, Yeah, I wanted to pick a nice emotional range of Peanuts strips. So I didn't necessarily want to do five. You know, they're not necessarily five favorites, but they're five. You know, I'd say that hit me right in the feels. They're. They're ones that either I can kind of remember reading it for the first time or. And again, I've, So many times in the last decade, I've read through the entire run of the Strip. Nearly 18,000 beginning to end. These are a few that just kind of stop me in my tracks when I read them. So this was, again, more for the emotional impact than anything. So these are five strips that just sort of really stood out to me. And I know if I explain them too much or explain the thought process too much, then I will be second. I'll be just like Charlie Brown. I'll be very wishy washy and start second guessing everything. Even now, looking at these, I'm like, oh, why didn't I pick this one? And why did I put this at number six on my list instead of up at number four?

Jimmy: We had to do this process ourselves. Recently. We, went through Harold, Michael and I and picked our top 10 strips. And I can just tell you that this are no wrong answers. So, you know, you cannot go right. You can almost throw a dart and hit a great strip from this comic strip. So. All right, well, let's get started and, get into these comic strips. 

September 8, 1959. Charlie Brown is looking forlorn and leaning up against the stone on the ground, and he says, this is the worst yet. I've really hit bottom. Then we see him with his head in his hands, sitting on a log, and he says, my mother is mad at me for running out of my job of pushing my baby sister around in her stroller. Then he's at the thinking wall, and he continues. And now all the kids are mad at me for striking out and losing the biggest game of the season. And then in the last panel, he leans his forehead against a tree and sadly says, suddenly I feel very old. 

Jimmy: All right, now tell us about what. What made that jump out at you?

Andrew: Yeah, again, this is. This is, you know, this is. This is Charlie Brown at his Charlie Browniest. This is really, you know, he's. He's got his internal. Yeah, he's got. He's got his running monologue. He is feeling like he's. Again, he has let everybody down. And so his. His dreams of, you know, oh, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna win the big ball game. I'm gonna be the best big brother. I'm gonna be the best son. Everything kind of just fell apart spectacularly. Like probably in the worst possible way it could have. So from, from these dreams of like being the base, being the goat, not in the modern, greatest of all time sense, but in the. I suddenly feel very old when I'm explaining that that like goat. Goat was not something you aspired to be.

Jimmy: No, this is a, great cartooning strip. This is something that you'll see in Archie comics and then gets like picked up by Jaime Hernandez where if he's in four different locations saying a continuous monologue. So if you thought about this in real life, it's, you know, this is the worst yet. I've really hit rock or hit bottom. Then he has to walk over to another place, sit down, continue his spot, then go to a third and then a fourth location. It's absurd. but in a comic strip, it's perfect.

Harold: If this were a Chris Ware strip, there'd be about 60 panels, right.

Jimmy: And the leave.

Andrew: The leaves are falling. So it's, it's all the, it's, you know, it's the, it's, it's the end of the baseball season. It's, it's, you know, it's not, it's not one of those spring or summer days where. Okay, we'll get them back tomorrow. This is.

Liz: Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah. And that's, that's so relatable. And it was, I was exactly the type of kid who related to you let absolutely everybody down. Like you are just, just having that, m. You know, and, and yeah, and I still, I still. And I think we all do. Like, I still, I still relate to Charlie Brown when I read the strip. And like there's those sad days, those sad moments of like, you know, why, why did I get out of bed today? Yeah.

Harold: It's hard to imagine this strip in a 1959 newspaper around all the other strips. Yeah. How this must have stood out just so starkly is hard, is really hard to comprehend.

Michael: Now nobody else would have done it. I mean, there is no joke.

Harold: Right?

Michael: It's just all about the character.

Jimmy: Yeah. Yep. Yes. And it's, it's so bold. You're right. There's no, there's not even an attempt at humor. It's just to feel this kid's pain. and boy, I'll tell you what, 1959 is a good year for Peanuts as a good looking comic strip. Right. I mean, yeah, man alive.

Andrew: And, you know, I almost, I almost picked again, again during the wishy washy second guess. I almost picked five 90s no punchline strips. Like, just where, yeah, you know, Schulz was like, you know, this is, you know, these characters now, you know them very well, and they can just lean up against a tree and talk. And that's, that's, that's what you're getting today. Again. Again, like, this is, this is such. This is a perfect, four panel short story.

Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely. 

November 21st, 1974. Okay, now this is in the middle of a very long sequence, one of my favorites, where Peppermint Patty is, enrolled in, in a skating competition. And she has, hooked Marcie into making her dress, even though Marcie has never sewn anything in her life. So we picked this up with Peppermint Patty standing there in Marcy's, dress, which is basically just a big sheet of fabric with a hole cut in it for Peppermint Patty's head to stick out. She's with Charlie Brown and she says to Charlie Brown, tell me honestly, Chuck, does this look like a skating dress? And then she doesn't even wait for Charlie Brown to reply. She just buries her face in the fabric and says, excuse me, I think I'm going to cry again. And Charlie Brown, reacts to something off panel and says, is that the phone? And then Marcie is on the phone and she looks upset as well. And she says, hi, Chuck, this is Marcie. I'm in a bad way, Chuck. I need someone to talk to. I, I'm, I. And then we cut to Peppermint Patty at Charlie Brown's house crying. And then Charlie Brown holding the receiver of the telephone. And we hear, Marcie coming through from the other side.

Andrew: Yeah. And they're, they're, they're such. And again, as the, as the parent of a, you know, elementary school just turned middle schooler, there's so many big emotions at this age, you know, and these, these are adult emotions too. But, you know, it's a very emotional strip. And like, I, like Charles. Charles Schulz drawing Peppermint Patty crying. I copied that so many times like that. And the Ed Emberly books of, like, character throwing their head back and wailing and. Yeah, there's such, such intense emotion here. And, you know, these characters all care for each other so much. And this has led to. Some of the other strips I was looking at were when Marcie was feeling the pressure from her parents of having to be, you know, perfect A student. And here she's feeling the pressure from her best friend, and her friend is feeling the pressure of not having a mother to make a skating dress for her. And, you know, so Peppermint Patty wanting to do these typical feminine things, but, like, not having that role model. And so every. Everybody's just distraught. And it's again, like with. With the previous strip, like seeing this in the newspaper next to whatever gag a day strips you had.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Andrew: Going on and seeing like this. This raw emotion on the page. It's just. It's again, it's. It's one of those stop you in your tracks. And the strips.

Jimmy: I love this sequence. I remember the first time I read it. My, school had had a scholastic book fair and there was a little box set you could buy with four of the Fawcett Crest books in it. And one of them had this storyline in it. And it was amazing luck because the book fair was one day and I got this and I took it home. And as luck would have it, I had a sore throat the next day. Oh. Yeah. So it was unbelievable. but so I just sat and I just read the books. It was like one of my great childhood mem is just fake and sick and reading this long skating, story of Peppermint Patty. And it ends great too, because we talk sometimes the stories kind of putter out to an ending that we're just done. But this is a great ending where it ends up being a roller skating contest. and, she has been planning for an ice skating contest the whole time.

Harold: Who knew that Scholastic book fairs led to juvenile delinquency?

Jimmy: Oh, absolutely.

Andrew: You know, I'll make it. I'll make a confession. I actually skipped junior high basketball game because there was a new. There's a. The second part of the. The Wolverine vs. Punisher Journal comic was coming out at my local pharmacy. I didn't. I was small town, so I didn't have a comic shop. And it's like, I didn't want to miss that. And it's like, okay, I'm gonna. I'm, you know, I'm fourth string on my basketball team.

Jimmy: You gotta have priorities.

Andrew: Yeah, I can say that. I've got a sore throat. Exactly. And I, You know, and now, like, since I'm talking to you as a cartoon art museum curator and not an NBA all Star, I think I made the right.

Jimmy: Yeah, but you never know. There's some alt alternate universe out there where you, you scored 30 points that game. And you know, LeBron is inducting you into the hall of fame. So you never know.

Andrew: We've got that, we've got the Northeast Ohio connection, So.. 

Jimmy: There you go.

April 11, 1995. This is another sequence. This is the one Charles Schulz was very proud of in his later years where Charlie Brown, has to come in and beat the kid who's been like the marvel, the marble rather sharp in the neighborhood, taking everyone's marbles. So we start. This is a daily. But we have five, panels at the beginning of just Charlie Brown in a, very serious looking marble shooting position. Plink, plink, plink, plink, plink. Knocking this kid's marbles out of the circle. And then Charlie Brown stands there, he's holding all the m marbles. Cause he's won them all. Eyes closed, with confidence. And the kid he's just beaten says to him, who are you, kid? Where'd you learn to shoot like that? And Charlie Brown says, cool thumb Brown. Just a stranger passing through. 

Jimmy: Sorry, I laugh at that.

Harold: That's very true.

Michael: Yeah, this is the time he is actually is a hero.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, it's the one time. Really.

Andrew: Yes. There's a lot to love here. Like this is. Again, like this is, this is. He's no longer confined to the four panel format. So like he says, I need, I need a little more room for Charlie Brown here. This is. We've got Joe Agate, who's one of those strange character designs. Later in the strip. You've got, you know, this expressionist background, like just the sense of background established in the first panel with these plank sound effects. This is probably the, you know, it's already like kind of a strip out of time because who's playing marbles in the 90s?

Jimmy: 95. Yeah, really.

Andrew: And you know, Rerun having literally lost his marbles, you know that this is a traumatic event for him. But yeah, this is Charlie Brown getting to be the hero. I picked this over the controversial Roy Anne Hobbs home run sequence and that whole backstory. But this is just Charlie Brown getting to like, I've got this, you know, I've got this skill, I've got this responsibility. I can step up, I can be. You know, I'm confident here. The whole. The thing wraps up with the Shane reference, which again, another. Yeah, 50 years previous back in the 90s kids. But yeah, this, this is also this. I wanted to have like kind of a balance with the. That really sad strip at the beginning, you know, I think, I think things even out for Charlie Brown a lot more than he probably ever acknowledged like he was. You know, as much as we get the sad sack, you know, I get a rock on, like, who's giving kids rocks on as much as that local geology. He's got these kites that are constantly destroyed and everything else. Yeah, he's got parents that love him, he's got a sister, he's got, he's got a lot of friends. He does have sad moments, but, you know, he. He has moments like this too.

Harold: Yeah. That's so cool that you picked this one because it shows us that range from that very first strip to this strip. And it's interesting. Like you say Charlie Brown by the 1990s, he's different. It seems like where he always got caught up was when he was focused on himself. And here the thing that seems to keep his confidence all the way through is I've got to do this for Rerun. And so the kind of the responsible kid, is what he becomes kind of good at. You know, he can be the big brother who gives the good advice. And you know, when it's not focused on him, as soon as it's focused on him, it seems to always fall apart.

Jimmy: Right. Right now I'm looking at these and looking a little ahead at the other ones you picked, you picked strips from long sequences. Are those your favorite parts of Peanuts? Do you like the long stories?

Andrew: You know, it took all my restraint not to do the Mr. Sack storyline and just do five straight strips from that or haha, Herman or Thompson is in trouble. So. Yeah, I don't necessarily think of them as graphic novels, but just the idea of these stories, you know, Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes too, those are strips where the, the longer sequences where again, having. Having seen the other side of this, like, just knowing the artist was having a lot of fun with it, letting it, letting a story breathe and have all the, you know, some, some of these would end on a Wednesday or a Thursday. Like, it's just. This is, this is how much space I need to tell these stories. Yeah. And it's probably, it's probably the comic book reader in me that appreciates the serialized nature of these.

Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's funny, I was looking, I was just kind of cleaning up my studio the other day and I came across the book that has the Mr. Sack sequence in it. I just kind of flipping through it and I realized, you know, the big ending with, Alfred E. Newman in the sky. The whole sequence actually ends the day before. He didn't have to do the. Because it ends with, he takes his sack off and his bunk mate says, that kid's our camp president. Or something like that. That would have been like an ending just as fine without going to the, to the, Alfred E. Newman thing.

Andrew: I did a San Diego Comic Con panel with some artists, friends, including Jeff Pigeon, who's a story artist at Pixar, and Brian Fees, amazing cartoonist, graphic novelist. And we could seriously could have had a three hour discussion of Mr. Sack and, you know, Brian Fee. And I'm looking over at the Mr. Sack action figure that I have in my.

Jimmy: Is that officially authorized?

Andrew: It’s an official product.

Jimmy: Really?

Jimmy: That's fun. There's such. There's so little Peanuts marketing out there. It's nice when they have something special like that.

Andrew: But we had this. We had this whole conversation. I think Brian talked about, you know, he, he loved it because it's like he related it to Charles Schulz of like this. This shy kid who suddenly is now world famous cartoonist. And it's, it's not a profession where a lot of people became world famous. And. Right. he thought like, he, he worked through that with Mr. Sack. Like this is, this is Charlie Brown. And like he reinvents himself at camp and he becomes this whole-- has to develop this whole different Persona. And people are listening to him in a way that they never did before. Yeah. Again, we could. If, if they hadn't turned off our microphones, we'd probably still be on that stage having this discussion. But yeah, it's, it's such. There's so many amazing directions that he took these characters over the years.

Jimmy: Absolutely. 

May 11, 1981. another sequence, this time the World War I Flying Ace and, his brother, the infantryman Spike has, they've run into their sister Belle, in the field of World War I, who is a nurse. And they're sitting at a cafe. And Snoopy says, I know what we should do. We're all together here, so we should have our picture taken. And they line up a beautiful little, lineup for the photograph. two of them smile. Spike just stands there and Snoopy says, we'll send it home to mom and dad. And then we see Snoopy atop the doghouse, who's. He is now finishing this tale of World War I. And he says, and that's the story of how two soldiers and their sister met in France during World War I. And then in the last panel, he says, and I don't care if anyone believes me or, or not.

Andrew: Okay. And I, I almost, I almost tear up when I see this strip. This is, this is just a very sentimental favorite. And, you know, that last panel, I don't care if anyone believes me or not. That's. That's Snoopy. Yeah, that's, you know, weather. And I was just talking the other day as, as I do about the strip, and one of the interesting characters that we only see for one storyline is, is Snoopy's brother Marbles. And Marbles had a really interesting storyline because Marbles does not believe Snoopy. Marbles does not buy into, you know, when he sees a shopping cart, it's just a shopping cart. And it's not, it's not whatever Snoopy's imagining it to be and Marbles looks. And it's like, why is, why is my brother just sitting on his doghouse and why are we running through bushes? And it's a very jarring sequence because you have a character who does not. Everybody else, every kid who sits on Snoopy's doghouse is just fine with, we're gonna sit here and then we're gonna land in, England or Nebraska or Petaluma, wherever. Wherever we need to go.

Jimmy: Petaluma.

Andrew: But, yeah, Snoopy, you know, Snoopy kind of establishing like, this is, these are, these are the rules. This is, this is the reality. You know, whether. Whether you believe it or not, it doesn't matter. This is, this is, this is, this is how I met. Met up with my sister and brother during World War I. And that's, that's my story. And it's just, it's, it's just, it's, it's very sweet. It's very sentimental. And, it's after. Yeah, nice, nice extended. And that's, that's another, that's another multi hour conversation is why Schulz, a World War II veteran, favored World War I when he was released.

Jimmy: well, do you have any theories on that?

Andrew: You know, I, I do, and I think it's, you know, it's, it's a way he can talk about his experiences, but with a little more distance. Literally a little more distance.

Jimmy: Like MASH is really about Vietnam, but It's set in Korea or whatever.

Harold: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one of the most memorable parts of, of your, your new book with, Snoopy is you. You have this strip, but also in the text, you use that line, and I don't care if anyone believes me or not. And it's really striking.

Andrew: Yeah. And again, it's. This is. This is one of those Just Stop Me In My Tracks strips. Like, I'll be reading. I'll be rereading this whole sequence, and I'll forget this one's coming up. And then it's like, oh, I got to. I'm going to put the book down and I've got to, you know, to take a. Take a walk. I need to digest this one.

Jimmy: It's amazing to me, it's something that I think about a lot, as a Peanuts fan and as a Beatles fan and even is lesser. Lesser. So as, like a Star wars fan as a kid. But there are these things that are these huge, huge pop culture phenomenon that everybody knows in some way, but yet they're so personal. Like, there could be 10,000 people that read this strip, and it's not going to bring them to tears. It's not going to even stop them short. Like, I've been Talking about the 1955 Be of Good Cheer, Snoopy, Be of Good Cheers, strip for, like, 45 years. A lot of people wouldn't think about it twice. I don't even know if there's a question in here other than just to kind of say it's an amazing work of art that can do that. and there aren't very many of them. Can you think of others in your life that are so big that somehow still feels personal to you in this way? Looney Tunes, maybe.

Michael: I think Salinger can do it.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Michael: I mean, it was vastly popular stuff, but it felt like, you know, he's letting you in on a little secret.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Andrew: There's that you meant. Yeah. You mentioned the Beatles. Like, everybody, you know, your favorite. Your favorite high school, band. And I say that as your favorite band when you're in high school, not your favorite. You know, that it's. It's like I. I look back at high school and college, and it's. It's like you, You have. There's a way you feel about that music at that time that I think hardly anybody is going to like. I don't think you're 50 and you're listening to, you know, Taylor Swift today. I'm, like, just saying, this is me. This is my. This. This is. This is my definitive soundtrack. Maybe you are. And if you are more. More power to you. But, you know, there's something about, you know, comics that you encounter at a certain age and in a certain way. I still do. I still do encounter media, like new media, that affects me and yeah, it's. It is. It is amazing. Like, this is. This is, you know, the most popular comic strip in the world. But, yeah, I love that. I love that personal connection to a strip that maybe, maybe 100 million, maybe 500 million people have read this.

Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah. It's quite a gift that we got to have an artist that could do that for us for so long.

June 22, 1952. It's a Sunday, and we see Charlie Brown headed to, the drugstore, rather, because he's having a rough Sunday. And he says, I'm discouraged today. And when I get discouraged, a comic magazine is the only thing that will revive me. Then we see him standing in front of a huge selection of comics, with names like Mangle, Terror War, Hate, Gouge, and Kill. And a sign at the top that says for the kiddies. As Charlie Brown says, what a beautiful, gory layout. Then we see him rifling through the comics, tossing them over his shoulders as he goes, saying, this druggist is awfully fussy. He won't let you look at the comic magazines unless you buy one. Next panel, we see Charlie Brown accidentally ripping the COVID off one. And he says, gee, the COVID came off this one. I hardly jerked it. Those on the top row look pretty good. And we see Charlie Brown basically trying to scale the magazine rack to get to the top as he kicks the. The bottom rack of comics all over the floor, and it sends him flying whoops as the comics go everywhere and he lands amidst them. They're all scattered all over the store floor. And he says he should sell these for half price. Who wants a magazine after it's been lying around on the floor? And then he walks up to the cashier and says, I guess I'll take this one. And then as he leaves with his magazine, he looks over his shoulder and says, boy, did he ever glare at me. He probably isn't feeling well. 

Jimmy: Oh, yes, this. This definitely. I'm shocked that none of us put this in our top 10. This.

Michael: This should have made it assumed there wouldn't be anything from 52 that was gonna make the list.

Jimmy: It's a classic.

Andrew: I wanted to pick an early one. You know, the first strip I think is just. Is absolutely perfect. And, yeah, I was reluctant to pick this because I thought, oh, this is going to be such a popular choice. This is going to be on so many lists. But this is one I remember seeing in those paperbacks that I was reading in the 80s. And again, as a kid who my pharmacy was my comic shop as A kid. So there's a lot of, sentimental favoritism and then nostalgia there. And again you get to see. That's a. That's a pretty spot on depiction of what comic? Early 1950s. So this is.

Michael: Yeah, it's the pre. The pre code. That's for the kiddies were reading this stuff.

Harold: I think the Dell comics were on the other side of the.

Jimmy: I love his backgrounds in this era. Just that middle panel on the second tier, it reminds me of another great strip that could have made our top 10 where, Patty and Lucy go to the 5 and 10 store putting.

Andrew: “Some nice screws into the”

Jimmy: Yes, exactly. He could really draw these things. You know, I'm, Just beautifully done.

Harold: And it's weird how, I mean, that middle panel, it's almost like. I don't know if he's doing it subconsciously, but he says, I hardly jerked it. And then you see the little soda jerk fountain and a little picture of the soda on the floor pointing toward him. it's like, I wonder if he did that on purpose or he just kind of, as soon as he had jerked, it was just in the back of his head.

Jimmy: It's definitely there somehow subconsciously.

Andrew: I'm thinking of the movie National Treasure. And that's probably, that's probably some sort of clue that. Yeah. For future generations to discover. But yeah, this is just, it's just such a nice. Yeah, nice early 50s America right here. It's just kid walking into the pharmacy that has again, the soda counter. It's got the amazing Mangle, Kill, War, Choke comics Rack and Schulz later on, I know people who worked at comic shops. I think Bob Beerbohm said Schulz was a regular visitor at his comic shop. So he kept up on, whether it was the competition or whether he just wanted to read. Like, find out. You know, I've heard across the board from people who knew him and met him. If you were, if you were a cartoonist, he, you know, you're part of the club. Like, he wanted to know all about you and what you did, whether you were self publishing your first zine or. That's so cool, you know, right. Right next to him in the newspaper.

Jimmy: That's amazing to hear. Now let me ask you this. As we draw to a close here. You have spent, a lot of time with Snoopy, you know, arranging and telling, his life story. Do you have a favorite era or personality of Snoopy from all the stuff you've read? And putting this book together, if you had to pick, something that was your favorite, what would it be?

Andrew: Yeah, I'd say the, you know, the 70s is just such a sweet spot for Peanuts. And that's, you know, you've got Snoopy walking around on his hind legs. Woodstock is his friend of friends. He's got the, he's the world famous author. He's the World War I flying ace. You know, that's, that's such, that's such a perfect era. Like he's got, you know, he's got his, he's got that balance of family life and, and his, his career and you got Joe Cool in the mix. So, you know, I'd say almost, almost, any given year in the 70s you can find a really iconic, wonderful Snoopy strip. Although, you know, literally, literally any decade, I will, if you ask me 10 minutes from now, I'll say, oh, this 60s was actually where he like really nailed it. You know, like I, I was looking at the First World War I flying a strip the other day and was amazed that that's all there. In the first strip, he's got the he names the Sopwith Camel. He's going off to fight the Red Baron, he's flying on the doghouse. He's got the goggles and the scarf. And it's interesting with some of these other ideas, it takes a little while to get going. But sometimes, and actually the very first time we see Snoopy with a typewriter, he drags it to his doghouse, puts it up, and panel four is him typing. It was a dark and stormy night.

Andrew: So it's amazing that some of these take a little time to get going. You'd see. And again, this could be another hour talking about characters like Charlotte Braun. There are characters that like came and went and it seems like their real purpose was to set up, you know, kind of set the stage for. Oh, this is, this is going to work better with Lucy's personality or you know, Lucy sort of works for this. But if we have an, if we take this aspect of her and like we develop it and take it in this direction, we get Peppermint Patty, we get--. Yeah. So, yeah, and that's again, it's, it's such an amazing thing about the strip. Like, I could, we, and I know we, we could all, we could all talk all day and sometimes we do any, any year, any aspect, any, like, so many different things to discuss.

Jimmy: We probably talked six or seven hours about the pen point.

Well, Andrew, thank you so much. for coming in and being a guest on our show. it just means the world to us. And if you folks out there are looking for a killer Christmas present, the book is called Snoopy the Story of My Life. The myth, the legend, the beagle. And you can order it now. so, Andrew Farago, thank you so much for being on Unpacking Peanuts.

Andrew: thank you so much for having me.

Liz:  and for being a listener.

Andrew: Oh, yeah.

Jimmy: Well, that was fun. Thank you so much to Andrew for, making the time to talk to us today. Everybody's got to go out and, get this. This book. It's the. It's the pick hit to click for your Christmas session.

Liz: And, boy, he's so knowledgeable. And what a career that is. The places he's been, the people he's seen.

Jimmy: Yeah. And the cartoon art Museum, if you're not familiar with it, it's a wonderful place to go. I did an event there, actually the same time I was out at the Schulz Museum, and, it was just so much fun. So thanks again to Andrew and, for the rest of you characters, we'll be back in two weeks, with more shenanigans and fun related to your favorite comic strip. Until then. Now for Michael, Harold, and Liz. This is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

LH&M: Yes. Be of good cheer.

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

Andrew: How did I end up here?