With Patrick McDonnell, Creator of MUTTS

Jimmy: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. This is Unpacking Peanuts and it's a special day because we got a special guest and I'm gonna be the host for these proceedings. My name's Patrick. I'm also cartoonist. You can find my work over there on substack where it's Gvilel Comics. I've done things like Amelia Rules, 7 Good Reasons not to Grow up, the Dumbest Idea Ever. And my new book in the Real Dark Night is available on said substack. 

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

Michael: Say hey.

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

Harold: Hello.

Jimmy: And, making sure everything runs smooth and we stay out of trouble, it's our producer and editor, Liz Sumner.

Liz: Howdy.

Jimmy: Well, this is a really special day for us here at Unpacking Peanuts. We have one of the greatest comic strip artists of all time in the House, Patrick McDonald. Patrick McDonald's comic strip MUTTS celebrated its 31st anniversary having appeared in over 700 newspapers across 20 countries. McDonnell has New York Times best selling picture books, including the Caldecott honor winning Me Jane a childhood biography of Jane Goodall. He's also worked with people like, oh, I don't know, Eckhart Tolle with Guardians of Being and the Dalai Lama with Heart to Heart, a conversation of love and hope for our precious planet. And he's had two picture books published this year, the Gift of Everything and the 20th anniversary edition of the Gift of Nothing. Please welcome to the show Patrick McDonnell. Patrick, welcome to Unpacking Peanuts. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Patrick: So happy to be here. It's, always great to talk about Peanuts.

Jimmy: It is. Well, let's, let's start here. I remember in around 1996 or 1997 reading an interview with Mr. Charles Schulz that said your strip MUTTS was the last great comic strip of the 20th century, which is pretty good pull quote for a book. Let me ask you this. Let's take us back to the very beginning of that journey. Where were you when you first encountered Schulz's work? And how did, what impact did that have on you deciding to become a cartoonist?

Patrick: Oh, my God, the main impact, you know, I'll go a little further back. Some of my earliest memories as a baby, actually, as, I mean like a two year old, three year old was, you know, my mom and dad met at Cooper Union Art School in New York City. Neither one of them went on to become professional artists, but art was encouraged in the house. And my mom had collections of Walt Kelly Pogo books and Jules Feiffer books. and those are some of my earliest memories. Just looking at how alive those black, you know, pen and ink, black and white drawings were on the page. And I was just fascinated with it. And then as I grew up, you know, I'm a child of the 60s, so, you know, when I grew up, it was Peanuts in the newspaper. And you know, at that point, the, I mean, just like today, Peanuts was, you know, at that point exploding. It was everywhere. And I was just totally enthralled with Peanuts. And, God, every night I would read the paperbacks before I went to sleep. And it was just everything to me was Peanuts.

Jimmy: Did you have a favorite era of the books when you were reading those? But first off, were you buying the books? Were they secondhand? Where did you get the.

Patrick: Oh, I'm, I'm talking really young. You know, they were gifts from my mom and dad and my aunt and my. I had an aunt who, would cut out the daily newspapers and paste them in a book. And I still have that book. And I'm talking, you know, this is like early, early 60s. So. Yeah, no, and then, you know, as I got older, I would buy the books, but, no, they were all gifts. And actually it was like part of my Christmas. And in every Christmas stocking there would be a Peanuts paperback. You know, so that was one of the things I look forward for Christmas. I knew I was going to get a new Peanuts book.

Jimmy: Oh, that's great. Yeah. Some of my best Christmas memories were getting comic books in a stocking and spending the day doing it. So when did you decide that comics were more than what you just wanted to read, but that's maybe something you wanted to pursue, you know, really, really.

Patrick: Early on again, because my mom and dad both went to art school, you know, art was encouraged in the house. And, you know, I, you know, As a little kid, remember? You know what was funny? I don't. You know, obviously, I'm sure there were times I tried to copy Snoopy and Charlie Brown, but right from the beginning I was inventing my own characters, enjoying my own silly things. but yeah, I mean, early. I wanted to be a cartoonist at the age of probably three or four, which is true of a lot of cartoons. I once, with the National Cartoonist Society, we once did an interview with like 12 cartoonists. And that was one of the first questions. And I think 11 out of the 12, you know, pretty much set around 4 or 5 years old is when they decided they wanted to be a cartoonist.

Harold: Yeah, three for me.

Liz: Yeah.

Jimmy: Ah, it's, it's such a--. What do you think it is about that art form that hit, when it hits you that way, so young that it just sticks for life? Do you have a theory?

Patrick: You know, maybe the magic of it. To me, what I love about cartooning is the magic how these little abstracts, pen and ink drawings come alive on the page and you really connect with the characters. And I guess as a kid to try to, attempt to do that magic to make these little doodles come alive, that's what it was for me. And no one was better at it than, Sparky. Those characters are so alive on the page.

Jimmy: Did you have a favorite one of his characters?

Patrick: You know, two. Snoopy. Because I wanted a dog my whole life and my mom and dad didn't think my brothers and I were capable of having the dogs. We had cats. So I mean, Snoopy was my dog until I was 30. And you know, my first dog was Earl, the dog that inspired my strip. But I waited a long time to get my Snoopy. but then as far as the other characters, I was always taken with Linus, you know, is, is spirituality and his quiet. And he seemed like the only sane. Even though he had his blanket, he seemed like he was the most sane out of the group.

Jimmy: Yeah, it's definitely a sliding scale in that cast. But I, I hear what you're saying.

Patrick: You know, I, I loved Charlie Brown. I mean, obviously, but you know, he was depressed a lot and I don't know, as a five year old I wasn't that depressed.

Jimmy: Well, that's good to hear. Now what the first I, I, maybe not the very first I heard about you, but the first thing that I read of yours, even before I saw, MUTTS, because I grew up in a tiny little town that didn't have much going on. What was it, was your, your book about Herriman, your Krazy Kat book? And we know we talk a lot about how Schulz was so influenced by, by Krazy Kat. What's your feeling about Herriman's work and can you. What do you see in common between him and Schulz?

Patrick: Well, those were probably my two biggest influences. And, you know, it's funny, I, you know, I was growing up with Peanuts, and then it wasn't until I was a teenager that I discovered Krazy Kat. And it's funny, you know, as a teenager, I started losing a little my interest in cartoons and started playing drums and wanted to be, you know, in a rock band and all that. But discovering Krazy Kat and discovering Robert Crumb kind of got me back into like, oh, yeah, cartoons are crazy and could be a lot of fun. But, yeah, when I first saw Peanuts, I mean, Krazy Kat, you know, it's, it's an amazing comic strip. I mean, it still looks so new and fresh even today. When I saw It as a 13 year old, I blew my mind. What you could do with comics, I'm sure, you know, I've, I've talked to Sparky about Krazy Kat, and it was the same thing, just like how far you could go with a comic and how personal you can get with the comic and, and, and to tackle different topics, you know, that Krazy Kat would tackle different topics. No, no. And I think underneath it, the kindness and the love, and I think that's underneath of all the great comics.

Jimmy: It's funny because we talk about it not infrequently on this podcast, Krazy Kat. And I always think that for our listeners who aren't super aficionados of the forum, but are just Peanuts fans, I always picture they have some weird image of what Krazy Kat is, possibly a slightly older Garfield or something like that, but it's so far removed from what you could even explain to people.

Patrick: Yeah. And Sparky was just a cartoonist through and through. Most of our talks were about other cartoons, and Krazy Kat was a big one. He loved Popeye. We loved talking about Popeye and washtubs.

Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah. What did he have to say about, Popeye, for example? Do you remember any.

Patrick: You know, he said that Popeye, and this might even be in one of his interviews, but Popeye gave him the freedom that you could get a little surreal and still keep the strip. That strip. He said that Popeye gave him the liberty to have Snoopy get on top of the doghouse and make believe he was, flying Ace. Because Popeye, even though it was kind of set in its own reality, would have really crazy episodes with the Goon and just invent crazy, surreal things, but still hold true to, you know, the strip itself. And I think he thought Popeye gave him the. The opportunity that you can get. Get a little surreal with your strip, and it could still work.

Harold: That makes total sense.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, could you tell us, because, we talk about-- Obviously, Schulz doing this day in and day out for decades. It's an abstract thought for us. You're possibly the one person in the world right now who understands what it's like to be Charles Schulz and be a daily cartoonist at that level. Can you take us back to the beginning of turning MUTTS into a comic strip? Like, how. What was that process? Like, how long did it take? Ah. What was your learning curve? Like? Could you just tell us about that?

Patrick: Sure, sure. Well, the first thing I'll tell you, and it's a. When I think about it, it's really kind of funny, you know, as we all talk. So we all wanted to be cartoonists since we were five years old. and mainly for me, because of Peanuts. And when I finally got to do MUTTS, you know, all those years, and I didn't do MUTTS until much later. I was in my 30s when I started MUTTS. But that whole time, I never once thought about the reality of the job. I mean, I kind of knew you had to do a comic strip every day, but then when you actually have to do a comic strip every day, my God, if I always wonder if I would have kept that dream alive if I really thought about what it was, the insaneness of, you know, it really is a crazy job. I, mean, it truly is to do.

Jimmy: no days off, 365,.

Patrick: no vacations And just keep on working. But anyway, how I started, so, you know, I was thinking about wanting to become a cartoonist. I always loved doing art. So I went to the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and I, you know, I was open. I took paint. I took everything. Painting, sculpture. I mean, even though I was thinking about doing comics, I also just wanted to learn about art in different forms. And I did have. Had Will Eisner, the, the artist of the Spirit, as a teacher, believe it or not.

Jimmy: Wow.

Patrick: For a cartoon class. And he was great. Will was great because, you know, Will was one of those unique human beings that have a right brain and a left brain.

Harold: Yeah.

Patrick: Because he was really into business. What was great about his class. You know, he not only taught us, taught how to tell stories and draw, but he really talked about how do you make a living at this? Which was very, very, smart way to teach kids because you just think about art and you don't think about how to make a living with it, Right? So. So I did that. And at that point, the newspaper comic strips. This was before Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side. So comics were-- And even before Doonesbury, if I think about it. So comics were kind of looking a little dull to me as a, you know, a teenager in art school. So I didn't immediately do that. I, you know, I took illustration classes. So I went out with my portfolio and I started getting illustration jobs in different magazines. Like, the first one was the Village Voice in New York.

Liz: Oh, wow.

Patrick: So then I. I mean, it was paying the bills. I mean, I was a. You know, I started working for Sports Illustrated, Time magazine and Forbes. And it was an, interesting, fun way to make a living with art. And I had a cast of characters. You know, it's funny, I. Even though I was doing illustrations for different magazines, I had this guy with a big nose and a mustache who eventually became Ozzy in MUTTS. And I also drew what I thought was a generic little crazy dog with a circle around his eye and who eventually became Earl. And I did that for about 10 years. I also did a. A monthly comic strip for Parents magazine called Bad Baby. And so I was getting to do that a little bit, but it was just once a month. And here's. Here was a sobering thought for me. I did Bad Baby for 10 years, and I eventually just ran out of baby jokes and didn't feel like doing it anymore. But 10 years of a monthly comic equals about three and a half months of it, right? When I thought about that, when I started months, it was like, oh, my God, three and a half months. So anyway, after my poor wife had to listen to me complain for about those 10 years, saying, I really should do a newspaper comic. I should really do a newspaper comic. And finally I took some time off and, came up with MUTTS. 

Now, the other thing that happened in the meantime was I finally got a dog. And the dog was Earl, who was everything I'd want a dog to be. He really was Snoopy. He was just a fun, great Jack Russell terrier. And at that point, it's funny, I was drawing this little dog, and the art director told me that I, was drawing a Jack Russell And I didn't know I was drawing a Jack Russell. This was way before Jack Russell's became popular. I had to go this before the Internet. So I had to go to the library and look up Jack Russell. And, I was like, oh, my God, it's my cartoon dog. So then eventually we moved out of the city and moved to the suburbs so I could get a dog. And I got this little character named Earl. And I don't know if you know this, but, Charles Schulz, named Earl.

Jimmy: Oh, God, I did not know. Wow. Tell us that.

Patrick: Yeah, well, going back to the Bad Baby comics, so they did do a collection, a paperback collection of my Bad Baby strips, and I got that to Charles Schulz. And Charles Schulz used to have a great friend named, Mark Cohen.

Jimmy: Oh, the art dealer, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick: And he was sort of like, he would. He would, you know, contact people that Sparky liked, and he would hook people up with Sparky, and we'd all go out to dinner, Mark and Sparky and me. But so he invited me to dinner before I did MUTTS, when I just did the Bad Baby book, that Sparky liked. And so I got to meet Sparky before MUTTS. And then I started working on MUTTS, and I was having a hard time naming the characters, and Sparky said, well, why don't you name them after your own dog, Earl? And I said, this guy might know what he's talking about. So Sparky named Earl. I had a whole bunch of different names. And to tell you that I didn't want to do Earl because I didn't think Earl was, like, a really great comic strip name when Sparky gave it the blessing.

Jimmy: That is so cool. Oh, it would have been great if you would have went there like, hey, Sparky, I think I got this. All right. Keep it to yourself. That is amazing. That's. That. Well, that is definitely a sign, I think, from on high that you are on the right track. That was it a struggle to sell it once you had the sample.

Patrick: But, you know, tell you the truth, I did get to fly out to California and show Sparky what I was going to sell. And he. He gave it the seal of approval. And I'll tell you the truth, right then, I felt like I didn't even have to sell it. I got Sparky. Sparky liked it. I was done. but, you know, I sent it to the syndicates, which are strange, you know, I don't know if I've ever told the story, but Universal who had Calvin and Hobbes at the time, wrote me and said, we don't do talking animal strips. But King Features took it and. Which I'll tell you when you say how long it took to make. I once had the pleasure to meet Chester Gould's daughter. Oh, you know Dick Tracy?

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah.

Patrick: And she invited me. There was a Dick Tracy museum. I'm not sure if it's still there, but there was a Dick Tracy museum in Illinois. And she invited me to come out and give a talk. And then I went out to dinner with the family, and they asked me, oh, tell us how you started MUTTS. And I told them, well, you know, it was the first strip I did, and I sent it to King Features. And they said yes. And the whole family was so quiet. Like, I said something horrible. I said, what? You know, what's wrong? And his daughter told me, you know, the story with Chester Gould and Dick Tracy is that he did a hundred strips before they accepted Dick Tracy. Wow. So when they heard I only did one, they were like, what?

Harold: So, Patrick to choose one. Why did MUTTS come up top for you? Why do you think you picked that one and say, this is the one I'm going to create and submit. What. What was it about?

Patrick: Well, you know, because I had. In my illustrations, I've been drawing this little dog in this guy with a mustache for a long time. And I knew the dog would be. And especially now that I had this dog Earl, who was so much fun and giving me ideas. I thought to do a strip about a dog would be the way to go. My initial drawings that I showed King had Ozzy and Earl. And Earl, I just had him like it was a Little Orphan Annie ish in the sense that he would leave the house and go on adventures. And I had him meeting elephants and rhinoceroses. And finally my editor said, where does this dog live? And he suggested maybe it should be a little more domesticated. So then I played with the idea of that maybe next door there was a cat. And, I literally, when I first did it, I thought it was good for maybe two weeks worth of jokes. But, just the way cats are, they come into your life and take over. Before you know it, Mooch became the lead of this strip. And then I realized I had a cat and dog strip.

Jimmy: And then it.

Patrick: You know, as you know, when you do a daily comic strip, it's not like a novel. You don't know where it's going. So it's like life every day. You don't you don't know what's going to happen next.

Harold: Was MUTTS always called MUTTS? Or when you started out, did you have a different name?

Patrick: You know, again, I could show you my notebooks. I've actually had one of my. The Art of MUTTS.

Jimmy: Oh, I love that book, by the way. Sorry.

Patrick: That book has one of my pages from my notebook where there's probably like 50 names for mud stuff trying to choose. I forgot how much went to the top, but, much went to the top. But it took me a. Took me a long time to. To name the characters and the script.

Harold: Yeah, I. I feel for Schulz not liking his own title. The whole run of his story.

Jimmy: Isn't that.

Patrick: That's such a sad story that his whole life he never liked Peanuts.

Harold: And I guess so strange that we. We engage with it because, Peanuts equals the strip. We don't think about it for him, but for him it was an abstract thing that is attached to his strip that he looked at so differently than, say, I would as a.

Patrick: Is that funny? I mean, ‘cause Peanuts is the perfect name because he never liked it.

Jimmy: No, I like. I love that Art of MUTTS book. And one of the things that, really stood out to me that is. Is your Sunday strips. Looking at some of the stuff in that and the color you do for it. Can you talk just a little bit? One of my favorite parts of being a cartoonist is just being a colorist. And I know this is a little off the topic, but I think you're one of the great colorists of comics. Can you talk a little bit about where you got your sense for that? Because it also, you know, it kind of carries over to your children's books and stuff like that too. You just have an amazing color sense.

Patrick: Thank you so much. Well, I'm going to give one of my first plugs here, but I'm. Right now I'm working on. Abrams is coming out next fall. We're going to start doing all the Sunday pages, starting with the first. So two volumes are going to come out next October. The 94, 95, 96, 97, and 98. So I've been looking at those and you know, again, when you do a comic strip, you know, you definitely learn in public, you know.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: People see your mistakes. So it took me a while to, to get the colors. You know how you Printers, you know, now. Now people do it on the computer. But back then you had to, like, do a. I used watercolors. I would Watercolor the whole Sunday. And then I had to number each color with the number the printer had, you know, and. And I had to learn how to do fades and took a while, but.

Jimmy: But that is actually one of the parts I think your coloring in that period didn't for some reason suffer from. It seemed like everybody else was struggling with the fact that as it moved from the watercolors to the digital, a lot of the fades got ridiculous. A lot of people were sort of like into the little things they could do. And I don't feel that MUTTS ever had that problem. It always felt like painterly. I don't know if there's a question in this, but it just looked so beautiful. I don't know if there's a way you could describe how you avoided those digital traps.

Patrick: You know, again, I'm not a tech person at all, so I never did the computer. I think, the computer color. Yeah, that, that felt like for a while there looked really dark on the page. you know, it was too much. So I did it the old fashioned way and just learned tricks on how to get fades and different and adding blacks and stuff like that. And for me it was. Obviously I'm, I'm a big fan of the old comics and my God, when you look at the colors in Little Nemo.

Jimmy: Oh, God.

Patrick: and you look at the colors of those old comics, I mean, you know, it's. Yeah. You know, we talk about, you know, that we keep on getting more technical and improve this, we improve that, but we haven't improved. I wish I could do the colors that Little Nemo. You can't. You can't do it today.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: for whatever reason how the printing press worked back then, but so I tried my best to try to copy those Little Nemo colors with the process, the printing process they had while I was doing it.

Harold: So you were, you were looking at Little Nemo and saying, how did, how does. Yeah, do this? And I want to recreate that.

Patrick: yeah. How do you get. How do you get a red like that? How do you do a fade like that? And some of them I'm proud of. I don't think I ever. I don't think you can capture with the way, you know, when you look at those things and they're like, you know, lithographs and engravings, you know, color's so gorgeous.

Harold: Yeah.

Patrick: But I managed to, to fake some of that. But thanks for, you know, I did. It was an important part of the process to me to make. I mean, you know, again, I'm going old fashioned here but you know the excitement of having the Sunday comics, they're in color now so like you wanted to them to be as fancy as possible. At least I did, yeah.

Harold: Ah, well, Patrick, when, when MUTTS came out, it was such, it was such a breath of fresh air on the, in the comics page. And it was, it was, it had a real sense of innocence and joy and, and thoughtfulness to it. And I, I, I was in a town that didn't have MUTTS and my, my mother in law, she knew how much I loved it. She would clip it for me every day, drop it in an envelope every two weeks and I had MUTTS, she'd do that for years for me.

Patrick: So you know, when I, when I do book signings that, I mean that's how a lot of comics people, that's how a lot of people got to see their comics. Or dad or an aunt who loved it would mail them to him. It's such a sweet old fashioned way to see an art form.

Jimmy: It sounds like something we're talking about from hundreds of years ago in my town. We had to travel by cart for four days to get our clippings right.

Patrick: Hey, we're talking about newspaper comics. It is old fashioned. Yeah. I live in Princeton and just last week I gave a talk out there's a graphic novel class at Princeton and I asked, you know, I asked the students if you know, any of them read the comics. And you know, of course they didn't. But even worse was no one in the class ever held a newspaper.

Jimmy: Oh my God.

Patrick: Wasn't that scary?

Harold: None of them never held a newspaper.

Patrick: None of them ever read a newspaper.

Harold: That is, that's print. That's crazy.

Jimmy: Yeah, really.

Michael: Hey Patrick, this is Michael. I was looking at your bio and I found a very curious item there. It says you wrote a graphic novel for Marvel, focusing on Jack Kirby. And I'd really like to hear more about that. 

Patrick: That was the most fun book I ever did. It's called the Superhero's Journey. And you know, with my editor at Abrams, you know, he has the Marvel license and he just off the top of his head one day asked me what I want to do a book with the Marvel characters. And I said, oh my God, who wouldn't want to do a book with Marvel characters? So I put together it's a, I was surprised Marvel said yes to this, but I, I did a book where it's a, I took pages and panels from the original 1960s stuff. I grew up with the Kirby and Steve Ditko stuff and made a new story with my art. New panels, new pages, and weaved it together as, like, a big mishmash. And it's a really interesting, I think, spiritual story about Mr. Fantastic trying to find, love, to tell you the truth. 

Michael: Does it work as a story? 

Patrick: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was. It's a lot of fun to do. And, you know, it's funny, you don't see any Kirby in my. In my mind. 

Michael: Can you draw in that style if you felt like it? 

Patrick: well, no, actually, I think I became a comic strip artist because I was good enough to do Kirby stuff. Like, I could do silly cartoons, but to do actually anatomy and superheroes. And you can see in the book, I draw this book sort of like I would have drawn when I was 9 or 10 years old. Not that I was trying to be 9 or 10 years old, but I just kept it very free, didn't do any penciling, and kept it loose like a kid was drawing it. So combination of those drawings with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and somehow it still reads as a continued story. And I think it's just the power of the costumes and the characters that you'll just follow anything that looks like Spider Man. 

Michael: So you colored that too, right?

Patrick: Yeah

Harold: sure. Well, I mean, we were talking about that with Peanuts and how Snoopy is not on model. Every pose, he got a different size stomach and leg. And, you know, you have the right to change to whatever feels right and whatever looks good. And I got the Superhero's Journey from you, I think, in Baltimore.

Patrick: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Harold: And that, Yeah. I mean, I thought it was so cool that you got the opportunity to do that with the Marvel characters, like you say. I hadn't seen anything, ever do anything like this. So it seems like. Was it Charlie Kochman or. Who do you work?

Patrick: Yeah, Charlie was the, editor.

Harold: Okay. Yeah. So he's like, hey, you know, he had the vision, like, oh, yeah, what if Patrick did this? And I thought it was so cool that it came together and you got to do it, because it's like, unlike any other Marvel thing I've ever seen. Right?

Patrick: Yeah. Like I said, I was surprised. We took a gamble. We gave them, like, a one page synopsis of what I planned on doing.

Harold: Yeah.

Patrick: But then when I was actually doing it, Charlie decided, you know, this is so strange. I don't. You know, they're not going to understand if I Just sent them random pages. So, we didn't send them the book it was till it was done. And there was a chance they might have said, we're not gonna print this. We got lucky. They were actually really easy to work with. They only changed like one or two things. And actually they were, you know, some mistakes on my side. I think I said Bruce Banner became the Hulk with. I think I said gamma rays, but, I forget again.

Jimmy: But it was gamma rays, definitely. Yes. Yeah.

Patrick: So then I said something, I said different kind of rays. And they were saying, oh no. But they were really easy to work with. And like I said, it was the most fun book I've ever done. 

Michael: Well, they couldn't keep it straight either. The Hulk’s secret identity name kept changing, forgetting what it was.

Jimmy: Well, now you have been doing children's books for some time now. What was that transition like? What did you learn from the comics that was able to make that transition? And what, what's, what are you working on now and what's, what's just out now?

Patrick: Well, with, with children books, I mean, as much as I wanted to be a cartoonist and a comic strip artist, I also, you know, just love drawing silly pictures. So doing a children book was always my list too. But boy, I tell you the again, the reality of doing a daily comic strip kept me really busy.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: And it wasn't until about 10 years into the strip that I started having a little time and realized that maybe I could do other things. And I had done a two week long story around the holidays about Mooch wanting to give Earl a gift. And Earl had a dog bowl and a chewy toy. So much thought he had everything and decides to give him nothing. The story was him looking at during the crazy holiday season to try to find nothing amongst craziness. And so he ends up giving him a box of nothing. But it's also, you know, the gift of sharing your time with somebody and Mooch finding this stillness underneath all the noise. It's a little bit of a Zen children book. But, so I had that idea and I actually sold it to Little Brown. 

So the first picture book I did was a MUTTS picture book. And that was called the Gift of Nothing. And believe it or not, boy. So last Thanksgiving my niece said to me, well, you did a book on nothing. Why don't you do a book on everything? I laughed and thought that was a funny idea. But boy, that idea stuck. So. So this year there's the gift of nothing 20th anniversary edition coming out. And I did a book called the Gift of Everything with Mooch, once again trying to, find the perfect gift. And this time he goes from inside to outside. And this time he finds everything. Everything is a gift. So, yeah, those are, those are both out right now. And there's a lot, soon, you know, the. What's nice about the children books, you know, one thing with a comic strip is, you know, it's always the same size. It's always about three panels. You use them pen and ink. You know, there's, there's not that much experimentation on the Sundays. You can experiment a little bit, but, you know, it's, there's a routine to it. And what's nice about the children books is I could, you know, like. Well, for instance, this gift of everything I did with four color pencils, red, yellow, blue and black. And I've never done a book in colored pencils before, so it's just, there's just room to get arty and have fun. 

So the children books, you know, not only could I do different mediums, but then just different lengths, you know, story-wise. Like I could do a 32-page story or a 40-page story. And it's, it's nice to have that room to play with and, and also do different characters. I ended up doing, I think five books with the MUTTS characters, but then I did plenty of. I think I've had 14 children books altogether.

Jimmy: Wow.

Patrick: And you know, I've done different characters from cavemen to Frankenstein. So it's been a lot of fun. You get to do different things.

Jimmy: Well, your color pencils look great. I looking at the PDF here, and it just looks fantastic. Was it hard for you to switch and considering you have been doing pen and ink and by the way, I want to talk specifically about your pen and ink technique and your tools, but we're going to wait for the strips for that. But was it, was it difficult for you to switch it up like that after so much time? Go. All right, now I'm a colored pencil artist. Here we go.

Patrick: No, I think, you know what's great about art is it's, it's just fun to have a new medium and see where it goes. I also feel like the less you know about art, sometimes the best art.

Jimmy: Yeah, you don't know what you can't do.

Patrick: Exactly. I look at my early MUTTs art. I'll tell you something funny about the difference between me and Sparky. I love my first years of MUTTS with all the mistakes and all that. it just looks so loose and silly and free, and I didn't know what I was doing, and it shows. But there's, like, an art to that. And I think, like, if you look at most art mediums, it's usually the first few years that the best stuff comes out, because there's no rules. People don't know what they're doing.

Jimmy: So, yeah, it gets codified after a while, I guess, and then you get in your. Your own groove.

Patrick: Yeah. But, you know, I had the pleasure and honor to. Sparky asked me to pick the strips for the 50th anniversary book. 

Liz: Wow.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: Oh, wow. Great. The golden celebration in my hands right now. There you go.

Patrick: And, you know, he. He told me if it was up to him, there'd be nothing before 1960 in that book.

Harold: Wow.

Patrick: You know, he was such a perfectionist that, you know, he didn't feel like he knew what he was doing yet, and he would rather not see where. I'm the exact opposite. I love my early stuff.

Jimmy: That's crazy. Well, we love the fact that Peanuts, too.

Patrick: You know, it's my. I disagreed with him. I think early stuff's fantastic. And. And I tell you the truth, I mean, I think if you really asked him, you thought his early stuff was great, too, but, you know, he didn't think it was on par yet of what he was able to do. And you could see, I mean, the growth in those 10 years is a lot.

Jimmy: Yeah, sure.

Patrick: But still, those really early ones have such a charm to them.

Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, listen, how about we take a break right now and then come back? Patrick has selected a handful of favorite Peanuts strips that we are going to, go through one by one and have some more fun. So how about you characters out there, go get a, beverage and a snack and meet us on the other side?

BREAK

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Jimmy: And we are back. Did you miss us? So, Patrick, we have asked you to, select a number of good, old Peanuts strips, and you've picked some for us. How did you. How did you go about this process of winning winnowing, what, 17,897 strips down to just six or so?

Patrick: Well, you know, I had a little practice because, as I mentioned, you know, Sparky asked me to, pick the strips for the 50th anniversary book. So I went to that book because I knew I already whittled them down to how many were in. Yeah, we're in that book. And I have to tell you, that was an interesting process in terms of. This was before the Internet. So United Features literally mailed me. There was two boxes, and each box was probably about 4ft high. It was just, you know, reprints of, you know, Xeroxes of every, you know, the whole 50 years. So my apartment, was just filled. There was just piles of Peanuts, Peanuts drawings throughout the whole thing. And it was nice to be, you know, just immersed in that, you know. So, and there was, you know, strips I did, you know, I. The newspaper every day and didn't have every book.

Jimmy: So there was, you know, those early ones. Some of them had never been reprinted.

Patrick: Exactly. You know, like the Charlie Brown ones he didn't reap. You know, there were certain ones that he didn't want to be. You know, it was. I'll tell you another interesting thing with the book. He. He told me he did. I picked it. You know, there was a series where Charles Charlie Brown wanted to be a cartoonist and would show his gags to people. And I didn't ask him why, but he didn't want. I. When I saw him, I said, oh, my God, this is going in the. Those were the only ones he took out.

Liz: Wow.

Jimmy: Wow.

Patrick: Isn't that interesting?

Harold: My only theory on that is that he knows he's a cartoonist among cartoonists and that we would have a bias toward the strips, not based on their quality, but based on the content that he wouldn't trust, the choice as it being a good strip.

Patrick: But anyway, when, you asked me to pick a handful of them, and that is a tough thing, I don't know, I went to my 50s book and just flipped through it and just picked things that stood out for me. So those are the ones you got.

Jimmy: Awesome. Well, I'll tell you what. We're gonna start going through them right now. I'll read them, and then we'll talk about them on the other side. So here is Patrick's first pick. You may be familiar with it out there. It is 

October 2, 1950. Patty and Shery are sitting on the little steps in their neighborhood, and a tiny little Bald headed figure is coming down the road and Shermy says, well, here comes old Charlie Brown. And then Charlie Brown crosses in front of them as Shermy continues. Good old Charlie Brown. Yes sir, good old Charlie Brown. And then in the last one, Shermey's mood changes to utterly and he says, how I hate him. 

Jimmy: So what is it about that that makes it so special?

Patrick: Well, I mean, other than being the first strip that started it all, you know, for this really mild, guy from Minnesota, Charles Schulz was a revolutionary, that strip. When you think about what was in the newspaper at that time, I mean that, that humor, everything about it was different, you know, and started off the strip in such a, you know, a great way to start this trip because it just said, hey, here's something you haven't seen before. And you know, when we look at it now, it just looks like a cute little kid strip. But you know, I'm sure when that came out that was powerful statement. And all those early strips just had a, you know, a different feel about them. You know, the less is more school, and just the sentiment of that and it's, it's just a more sophisticated joke. You know, most comics then were a little more slapsticky and yeah, it just has a very 50s feel to it. I feel like I always, you know, it's funny like I mentioned that my mom had Jules Feiffer books in my house and I feel like Feiffer and, and Schulz had had a lot in common. It just had a feel of the psychological moment of the 50s and how artists were rethinking what's funny and what's art. And boy, Sparky was right there for such simple newspaper strip from a guy from Minnesota. Really was out there.

Jimmy: Yeah. In 1950. So it's not like he's responding to the general zeitgeist of the 50s. It's so early, you know. Yeah, he's kind of creating it.

Patrick: Creating it. Yeah, I feel like that strip really says that. You know, it's such a funny, truthful, you know, serious strip. At the same time.

Jimmy: Do you remember when you first saw these really early? Because they were hard to come by. They weren't reprinted for years and years. Do you remember the first time you saw these really, really early Schulz ones?

Patrick: Well, you know, actually the Holt Rinehart books started with the 50s stuff. Right. And I mean, those are real.

Jimmy: Not the first year. I think he cut a lot of that stuff out, like.

Patrick: Yeah, okay, well, we're still kind of 50. So, yeah, yeah, it's so, you know, to me, I feel like as a kid, I was looking at these really early when I probably didn't know I was missing the first two. Two years. But, you know, that. Now that you're asking that, but I, you know, I do feel like I knew a lot of them, so I must have seen him somewhere, but I don't know where.

Harold: Artistically, Patrick, when you look at like 1950, 51, 52, what artistic influences do you see on Schulz that he was carrying into his work? Or does he just seem like he's out of the blue his own thing?

Patrick: You know, artwork wise? That's a tough question. I never gave that thought. You know, I think story wise, you know, he talked about Percy Crosby’s Skippy a lot. and I think, you know, the idea of, you know, you know, the. The looseness of Skippy, but also, you know, just the psychological. You know, Skippy had a lot of different ways of telling cartoons. So I think you could see Skippy in it a little bit. But, boy, artwork wise, I'm not. That's a good question. I never gave that thought. I think he kept the box kind of looking unique.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: Have you thought about it? Have you ever.

Harold: Well, when we went through these, bit by bit, it does seem like Schulz is Schulz. It really does feel that way. But the one thing that popped out in the first couple of years was when Schroeder was introduced. I kept thinking of Gerald McBoing boing in UPA.

Patrick: Yeah, that. That's interesting. Now that you're thinking about it, that does have a little bit of that Animation feel to it.

Harold:, because he certainly doesn't live in that kind of squash and stretch line of action school that animators just had baked into their work because they. They lived that. There is a stiffness to it that you wouldn't see in animation. So it just seems to be very, very unique that he came up with something that worked for him.

Jimmy: One of the stylistic things I really noticed looking at this really early is how far apart the eyeballs are compared to by the time the 60s come. They're almost touching the noses, you know.

Patrick: Well, when you look at them, you just realize that, I mean, how strips develop over the years. You know, we were talking about it earlier, but, you know, I look at my early MUTTS strips, and, you know, what's funny about it too, is, I mean, if you put a gun to my head, I wouldn't be able to draw them like that.

Jimmy: Yes.

Patrick: And I'm sure Sparky wouldn't be able to draw these, you know, later in life. And, you know, I was listening to your podcast recently when you were talking about Snoopy. It. It is amazing how the characters just develop and you don't even know that they're developing. It's never, conscious decision to say, I'm going to draw Snoopy different today. It just happens. And I've noted, and I've seen it in my own strip, but, like with Peanuts or a Krazy Kat, it does seem, as the artist gets older and the strip gets older, the characters get a little more hefty.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: And a little more. They get solid. They never get looser. They get more solid.

Harold: a little more earthbound.

Liz: Yeah.

Patrick: Yeah. More heavy. And I don't know what the reason for that is, but it happens to just about everybody.

Jimmy: I'm trying to figure out the reason in real life why that happens.

Patrick: Well, I wondered if there's some connection there. You know, it might be.

Jimmy: Absolutely. Because we do talk about how, like, he becomes kind of like old man Snoopy, you know, where he's golfing and, like, taking care of the birds. He's not so much running around being a terror.

Patrick: Well, not even what he does, but how he. Just how he looks.

Jimmy: Yeah, he's power. Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick: More solid and heavy. And, boy, you really could see that in Krazy Kat, too. I mean, I love the earlier ones where he's just like this loosey scratchy little thing. And then as he gets old, he just gets, like, heavier and more solid. And I got. I didn't want it to happen to my characters, but it happened to my characters. He can't avoid it. But when you look at these, I mean, they almost look like babies. You know, they look so young and, you know, so. So far from what was going to happen to them, you know?

Jimmy: Yeah. And poor Shermy only has a few more years left in him. 

November 3, 1961. Charlie Brown sitting at his table. He's got, a little inkwell and his dip pen, and he's writing to his pen pal. He writes, dear pen pal. But then, of course, he smudges the word pal. And then he writes. Today I take pen in hand to write, how have you been? It is getting more, sloppy and smeared as it goes along. And then in the third panel, it's. Everything here is fine. The weather has been warm. Which is blocked out, please. Which is smeared out. Right. And then the last panel, underneath all the smeared ink, is Regards, Charlie Brown. And the ink is not only covering all of his signature, but it's covering all of Charlie Brown.

Patrick: You know, I. I know we're on a podcast, there's no visuals, but I think all the ones I picked are. I'm a visual person. I think all the ones I picked are really more visual than, you know, words.

Jimmy: That's, a comic. That's perfect. Yeah.

Patrick: Ah. But I mean, I picked this one just for the. How gorgeous is as a piece of art. You know, even his abstractions are like beautiful abstractions. you know, they're like abstract paintings as the ink, you know, is all messed up on top of Charlie Brown and his face covered in the ink is just. And also, you know, one of the things Sparky told me was that he was most proud of the strips he did that didn't have any words.

Jimmy: Oh, yeah.

Patrick: That he thought, you know, pure cartoon comics was a visual medium. And, you know, if you could tell a gag that way, you, you accomplish something. And even though this has words in it, the words really aren't important to me. It is wordless gag, really.

Harold: I never noticed this before, but it's cool to see that he has that little smudge at the end of his own signature.

Liz:: Yeah, that's what I was...

Jimmy: So here's my question. I. Now, I don't know if this is still true, but I read in an interview with you years and years ago that the way you ink is you had a fountain pen that you dipped in ink. You didn't fill it, but you dipped in ink, and that's what you inked with. You still do that?

Patrick: Yeah, I still do that.

Jimmy: Wow. Tell us, how did you arrive at that? What's the pen, all that kind of geeky stuff.

Patrick: Well, the pen's changed over the years because they stopped making them. right now I buy the cheapest pen on Amazon. The reason that came about when I was an illustrator magazine illustrator, I used crow quill pens.

Jimmy: Uh-huh.

Patrick: And was dipping into ink. And then I realized for the comic strip, because there's so much work involved, I said maybe a fountain pen that could hold its own ink.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: You know, would be the way to go. And just, you know, more like drawing with a magic marker to a certain, you know, like a little more.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: And. But then I found out your fountain pen inks weren't waterproof.

Harold: Right.

Patrick: And I didn't want my originals not to be waterproof.

Jimmy: Right.

Patrick: So. But then I sort of got used to the fountain pen. So then I just took the fountain pen and stick it into the bottle of ink like it was a regular pen.

Jimmy: I have never heard of anyone doing that. It's so, I mean, your work has such a clear visual style. You can tell it from one panel. How much of it do you think has to do with the fact that you're inking with such a non traditional tool?

Patrick: I guess that might have a little do, you know. But, you know, when I use. I feel like my work looks the same whether I use a no matter what or a magic Marker or fountain pen. 

Jimmy: That's amazing. 

Patrick: So, it just was a quirk of mine and I just liked the way the pen felt. The fountain pen's a little sturdier. You know, when you use a real quill pen that they, you know, they have a habit to splatter. And the fountain pen nib was a little sturdier. So I didn't really have that many accidents happen like Charlie Brown in this.

Jimmy: How long will one hold out for you? How many strips could you get?

Patrick: No, they, they. That was the other thing about it, because they're sturdier nibs. They lasted a long time.

Jimmy: Right? That's great.

Patrick: Yeah, so that, that was one of the reasons. And they broke in faster. So, you know, for me, I can recommend it. Charlie Brown should use the. Maybe he was.

Harold: Yeah, Yeah, I did that for lettering. I had an old Esterbrook that was a, vintage one, and I, you know, it only took that ink for so long. Yeah, it would cake up and it's done. And then I said, okay, I'm going to. I love the look of the lettering. So. Yeah, you just dip.

Patrick: it. Yeah, it was definitely easier for. Yeah, lettering with the quill pen was definitely tougher than the fountain pen.

Harold: Now, your lettering changed over, over time. Was that your own choice or did someone say, hey, we want this to be more consistent?

Patrick: Well, I'll tell you. And I feel like it's. I feel guilty about it and I'm upset about it, to tell you the truth. But at some point I, I had a font made. So there's, there's quite a few years where it's, you know, it's computer lettering, which I didn't do. I'm not a computer person. I hired my brother to do that for me. 

And the reason I did that was for two reasons. One was I, really don't like lettering. It's. It's hard. But two, that happened at some point. I was not only doing children books, but Fox animation, hired me to do a MUTTS movie. They bought the rights for MUTTS, and it took me about a year with my lawyer to get the right to actually write the movie because I didn't trust Hollywood to do it right. So for eight years, or maybe even nine years, we were working on, this MUTTS movie. And it was just taking up so much time. I had to find a, you know, I like Sparky. I believe the whole strip should be done by me and nobody else. But there were quite a few years where I had to, had to do. I mean, it was, you know, it was still my lettering, it was my fault. But, But I do feel like those don't look as good as when I lettered myself in the, the last couple of years. I went, you know.

Bbut what happened was we finally got the green light for the movie, and then Disney bought Fox. and when mergers like that happen, your projects go out the window. 

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, 

Patrick: yeah, MUTTS went out the window. So when that happened, I was able to have, time again to do my own lettering. But for those, like, eight, nine years, it was, it was fun. On occasion, I did my own lettering if I felt like the strip really called for. Yeah, you know it. But, so for a while there, I didn't do my. And that's probably the reason why it looked different to you.

Jimmy: I do a monthly, comic strip for Scout Life magazine, which used to be Boys Life magazine. And the first two I handed in and they were hand lettered, and the guy's like, oh, you made a typo here or whatever. Just send me the font. There's no font. And he was like, why is there no font? I'm like, oh, I do it by hand. Why? Like, he's the younger guy, he's like, are you out of your mind? You know, you could type it. I'm like, I know.

Harold: Yeah. Jimmy's been nominated, what, eight times for.

Jimmy: No, just four. Just four.

Harold: Oh, just four. Just four times for best lettering. Because it's tough. It's, it's just, it's so organic and fun and.

Patrick: Yeah, well, I, I admire letterers for sure, because I feel for me, it was such a tough part of the strip and, and going back to Sparky. Oh my God, he has such a beautiful font.

Jimmy: Yeah. And that's what he started with doing lettering. Timeless topics.

Patrick: Yeah.

Jimmy: Now tell us, just before we go on to the strips more, tell us about the very first time that you met Schulz. What was the, what, what was your stress level like? How did that go? You know?

Patrick: Well, this this is a classic first meeting. So I was doing magazine illustrations and wanting to become a car, newspaper cartoonist. And I was at a Sports Illustrated party in. Do you know the illustrator Arnie Roth?

Jimmy: Oh, sure. Yes.

Patrick: Yeah. So Arnie was there. I got to know him as an illustrator, and he and his wife Carolyn convinced me that I could join the National Cartoonist Society. I took it for granted you had to be a newspaper cartoonist to do that. And he goes, no, no. If you. If you're doing humorous illustrations like him, that you could still become a member. So, my God, I was never a member of anything. National Cartoonist member. I. So I jumped on that. He sponsored me, and I got to become a cart. You know, become a National Cartoonist member. So I went to my first Reuben's. You know, that's where all the cartoonists got together to give out the awards. So. So for the Reuben's dinner, you have to wear a tuxedo. So I'm. My wife and I were all dressed up. I'm in my tuxedo, and was in Washington, D.C. and I pressed the elevator button to go down to the award ceremony, and the elevator opened up, and the only person. The only people in the elevator was Charles Schulz and Jeannie, his wife.

Jimmy: Oh wow.

Patrick: And Charles Schulz was wearing a plaid tuxedo.

Liz: What year was this?

Patrick: I'm gonna say much start. This was before MUTTS. I'm gonna guess MUTTS started in 94. So I guess it was maybe 92.

Liz: Okay.

Jimmy: And.

Patrick: Or maybe 93. It was close to when MUTTS started.

Harold: Uh-huh.

Patrick: But so the elevator opens and not only had a. On a plaid tuxedo, but he had on his French medal of Honor. I mean, huge.

Jimmy: Wow.

Patrick: Huge metal around his neck.

Jimmy: Oh, my God.

Patrick: And you can imagine I was just ahumminahumminhummina. So I just. What can you say? I saw him at. What an honor to meet you. Oh, don't call me Mr. Schulz. Call me Sparky. I was like, yeah, okay, Mr. Sparky. 

So that. That was my first meeting. And then, after that is when I sent him the, Bad Baby book. And then, yeah, Marco. And then I actually got to fly to. It was. I mean, God, he was so generous with his time with cartoonists. I mean, you could find so many cartoonists. That will tell you how, you know, he would spend two hours with him in his studio. When you think of how busy that. I mean, I. I don't know how did it. I. I wouldn't have cartoonists come to my house for two hours.

Harold: Right.

Patrick: But he you know, we went out to dinner and we just couldn't be more generous enough, you know, at that point, I gave him the Bad Baby book. But that's when I was thinking, I really do need to do a comic strip. That's, yeah, that's, that was the start of me working out MUTTS. That's how I got to know him.

Harold: Well, Patrick, I have to go on record before everybody here. I've never been so starstruck with meeting somebody whose work I knew, than you when I met you. And I think it was a small press expo, A, little event you had done outside of the small press expo early on when MUTTS was starting. And I, I, was kind of surprised how much emotion was just welling up all at one point. You know, it's all, it hits you at one time. It's like you've never met me, but I've met you through your work, and it just, it just kind of all builds up in one moment and you just lose, lose it entirely.

Patrick: that's very sweet of you. And if you ever want to come to Princeton, I'll spend two hours with you.

Jimmy: Not his house, though, someplace. No, no.

Patrick: And you know what was nice was, you know, Sparky was everything you'd want the guy who drew Peanuts. But he was, you know, just so kind and so funny. He really was funny. You know, I mean, I mean, you would think that, that, but he was funny. I tell you, once, towards the end of his life, they redid You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown. And, he wasn't feeling well, so he couldn't go to the premiere. And you offered Karen and I his tickets. But he said there was one caveat. I said, what's that? And he goes, at the end of the show, you must stand up and scream “author.” Which I did.

Jimmy: Amazing. 

May 23, 1967. Linus is sitting outside in the grass, and three tiny little birds come up to him. Linus gently leans over and pats them on the head. Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat. He's contented by this. And the birds are really contented. They go away smiling and smiling, sighing, sigh. And then Linus looks out to us and says, I think I found my calling.

Patrick: Yeah, well, you know, for me as a kid, you know, Sparky was a big influence in many ways. I mean, my love for cartoons, you know, much is about my love for cartoons. and my love for animals and Snoopy was a big part of that. And this, this series was a big part of it. When I was young enough when I read this that I tried patting birds on the head for a while.

Jimmy: That's adorable. How'd that work out?

Patrick: It didn't work out. I wasn't as spiritual as Linus, so it didn't work out. But, you know, just the thought of it, I would, like, quietly sneak over and see. Could I do that? But so that, that's why that strip has a person. And I just thought it was, you know, underneath Peanuts, they're just, you know, for all the yelling and depression, there's so much kindness, you know, and the idea of a kid patting birds on the head. 

Michael: But he did end up being ostracized about it. 

Patrick: Oh, yeah, no, of course, his crabby sister gave him a really hard time. But yeah, those strips were my favorite as a kid, so they're still my favorite today.

Jimmy: Oh, that's fantastic. Do you have one particular era, like, if you are, like, you had a rough day and you just want some comfort comics to read, do you have, like, one particular book or era of Peanuts that you would go to?

Patrick: Well, you know, I think it's most people, but you see with comic books, too, I mean, you love the stuff you read as a kid.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: So for me, it's. It's all the 60s stuff. And I do. And maybe you guys could do. This is the place to disagree about it. But I think that was him at his best. All that early 60s stuff was just amazing. I mean, I was able to read the first time Snoopy went on top of his dog house and was the Flying Ace, and the first time Linus was patting birds on the head. So all that early 60s. So I think drawing wise, it's just so strong.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: And then to me, that's the magic of Peanuts. Just how beautiful the art was and the stories were great.

Jimmy: Yeah. Oh, here's a strip you might have something to say about.

January 28, 1999, the whole gang is at, a museum. And we got Sally, Charlie Brown, Lucy Linus, and the little pigtailed girl all looking at--

Jimmy: What, did we decide this was? It was a Monet.

Liz: The Port at Touques.

Jimmy: Ah. Ah, There you go. So that's what they were looking at.

Patrick: Hey, I have to thank you. You were the guys who figured that out, huh?

Liz: It's true. It’s true. We get credit.

Patrick: That's fantastic. Because I had no idea what it was and never asked him.

Jimmy: So now you know.

Patrick: Yeah.

Now then way over on the right, we see Rerun, who is looking at A beautiful portrait of a little puppy. We may know because it is in fact Earl from MUTTS. 

Jimmy: What was that like, seeing that? Wow.

Patrick: Wow. It's. It's insane. I. To this day, I can't believe it. It's. It's right here in my studio, hanging near my door.

Jimmy: Oh, wow.

Harold: How did you first find out about it?

Patrick: This is a good story. So I was visiting Sparky in California and I was at his ice skating rink. And, boy, here's another thing. Sparky would joke. He would say, do you know anyone else who owns two Zambonis?

Jimmy: Well, yeah, that makes sense though, because you need a spare.

Liz: Yeah.

Jimmy: If you're going to get one Zamboni, you got to get two. Everyone knows that.

Patrick: So he, you know, at the ice skating rink, he has a little cafeteria called the Warm Puppy. And he had a reserved table, which is, which is really sweet. They still have that table with a reserved sign on it and you can't sit at it. But I was sitting at the reserve table waiting for him, and he approached me and he was hiding something behind his back and he said, Patrick, I have something that's going to knock your socks off. And then he handed me that. I mean, to do a Earl. My Earl was in a Peanuts comic. And, obviously my socks went flying across the room. To this day, they still fly off when I look at, you know. So he handed that to me and I think, what can you say? I mean, you realize how beautiful Peanuts is, how beautiful the world is, how beautiful Charles Schulz is, the kindness of doing that.

Jimmy: well, and how good you are as a cartoonist. It is one thing to say in an interview, boy, I like MUTTS. That's one thing and that's great. It is quite another thing for him to put it in his life's work.

Harold: Right in that.

Jimmy: I mean, that is the highest compliment he could possibly give a cartoonist.

Harold: Yeah.

Patrick: Again, it's mind boggling when I think of the five year old kid at Christmas Eve reading Peanuts with flashlights, and thinking that my dog is in Peanuts. Just, yeah, crazy. And he told me, he says, he says most people aren't going to know what this is about.

Jimmy: I knew what it was about.

Patrick: But He said, but you and I will know what this is about. Which is really sweet.

Jimmy: I love that he didn't care if people got it or not.

Patrick: Yeah. You know, and I think that didn't happen too often with him because.

Jimmy: No, I wouldn't think so.

Harold: Now, you know, we talked about, about this strip and how you could interpret it, because I think we came up with at least three different interpretations.

Liz: Four

Harold: Where it would work.

Liz: And it's in the trailer for our podcast now. That conversation.

Harold: Yeah. Because quite aside from it being an incredible and deserved compliment to you. What a piece of just cartooning. To be able to layer all that stuff into it. It's one drawing. Just one drawing.

Liz: One wordless drawing.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: Yeah.

Jimmy: Amazing.

Harold: Yeah. Because I think. Was it, Liz, where you're the one who said it works for anybody who knows about Rerun.

Liz: No, Michael said it.

Jimmy: Michael.

Harold: It was Michael. Michael, you said. Because we know Rerun wants a dog.

Patrick: Yeah.

Harold: So that works on that level. It works on the level of you specifically as a cartoonist and that being Earl. It works on the level that comics are art. That is a statement that he. He flirted with a lot and kind of went back and forth saying, it's a business. It's not as high in art, but it is high. As high in art, you know, And I can't remember what the fourth one was, but they all worked for the reader, wherever they were coming from.

Patrick: Well, there's a fifth reason for me.

Jimmy: Yeah, that's right.

Patrick: it worked for me.

Jimmy: That is so cool.

Patrick: Yeah. The coolest thing ever. I mean. And like, I mean, I'm not teasing when I say that every day when I walk my studio and I look at that, I still can't. It's still. It's.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: Ah. Mind boggling.

Liz:  understandable.

Jimmy: That's great. Oh, well, it's well deserved. And I'm happy it happened to such a nice guy and a good cartoonist. That's fantastic.

Harold: And. And you did a. You did a strip back to him, Right? That was,

Patrick: Yeah. You know, there. We came up with the idea that on the hundredth anniversary, you know, his hundredth anniversary is that we would. All the cartoonists would do a Peanuts tribute. And I wasn't sure what to do. And then I thought, oh, I know what I'm going to do. And I had my world in the museum, the same museum, and looking at a picture of Snoopy.

Jimmy: Oh, that's so great. 

June 19, 1960. Snoopy is lying atop the doghouse. He's asleep. But then suddenly something semi wakes him and he goes on a little sleepwalking quest off the doghouse, between two slats, on the fence, through some weeds. He must be asleep because he has weed. Claustrophobia, as we know. Walks out the weeds behind a bale of hay. Is that what he's standing on or Big, it's not a bale of hay. It's a big pile of dirt, I guess, with just a little, little feet on top of it. So someone is standing up on top of it. But this, doesn't fool Snoopy, who smells something, smiles, goes up to the top of the bale of hay. And we see at the top was Charlie Brown, who is trying to hide from Snoopy because he has a double dip of, I think, strawberry ice cream. And Charlie Brown looks at Snoopy, who's sitting there smiling, standing there smiling, waiting for a lick of the ice cream. And Charlie Brown says, you drive me crazy.

Patrick: And you know, again, it's a, it's a very visual thing. So I would hope all your listeners would go get a book. 

Harold: Yes.

Patrick: And look up that date. And again, it's just how great he drew and how alive those characters are on the page and how funny. You know, you always said the, you know, the most important thing in comics is, you know, to be fun drawings that people like to look at. And just the drawings make you laugh. And, you know, Snoopy, make believe he sleepwalks. And it's just the silliest, the silliest looking drawings. And in particular, if you go down to the. You guys will have it in front of you.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: Yes, yes. So if you go down to that last tier of strips, you know, when he stops and his nose starts twitching and he moves his head, but boy, look at the smile on that face when he smells the ice cream cone. And then the other thing, you even think about this, but his eyebrows were off his head. They're just loaded. Like, I don't think there's many cartoonists who do that. And you just take it. I don't know how human beings learn how to read this stuff, but.

Jimmy: Yeah, right.

Patrick: You just take it for granted that that's just like happiness that your eyebrows are so perky. Happy that they fly off.

Jimmy: Well, I do that all the time in my comics. And I did a school visit years ago and I was drawing the character, and the kid raised his hand and goes, hey, why is her eyebrows off her head? And I just like, froze. Like, I don't know.

Patrick: They just are.

Jimmy: I don't know, man. You broke me.

Liz: So do you, Patrick, do you think that he's making believe that he's asleep?

Patrick: Well, you know, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I mean, it could be that he's sleeping, but I love the idea that maybe it was. I mean, he seems self, you know, Snoopy's always so self assured. And yeah, it's. To me, it's even a little funnier that he might have just been faking that. I don't know.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: And why is it so cool that his. The Z for him sleeping is. Is serif. it's like this formality to his sleep that is.

Patrick: And the whole idea is silly, too, that Charlie Brown's like, on top of this. I don't know.

Liz: He knows. He knows.

Patrick: I always thought it was the biggest pitcher's mound when I was.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah.

Patrick: But the fact that he's hiding up there with his ice cream is just such a silly thought too. And again, you know, this is another script that, you know, I told you he said that he was most proud of ones that didn't have words. And. And you really didn't even need sparking. I mean, Charlie Brown has said, you drive me crazy. To me, the whole thing is a sight gag.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: And just the movement of it and the anim-- you know, it is like a little animation. I mean, as you can feel him walking, you could feel him sniff in the air. And, to me, that's. That's the magic of. Of Schulz, that he really could portray all those emotions so easily.

Liz: And we haven't talked about the second to last panel where he's defying gravity.

Patrick: Yeah.

Harold: Walking up that tall--

Jimmy: Yeah. If you just took that last panel and just removed the smile on Snoopy's face, it's totally different. You know, the fact that he's smiling there gives it that conspiratorial, hey, how about a lick of that ice cream kind of thing? And it's a 16th of an inch or an eighth of an inch of a bedline.

Patrick: Yep.

Jimmy: Crazy.

Patrick: Yeah.

April 5th, 1964. It's a Sunday. We start off with one of those symbolic panels. It's a line sculpted out of a bar of soap. And then we cut to Linus and Charlie Brown walking outside. And Linus says to Charlie Brown, have you ever done any soap carving? Charlie Brown asks. Soap carving? And Linus says, yes, it's great. I've been working on this model of an old sailing vessel. Then they walk back to Linus's house as Linus says, I want you to see it, Charlie Brown. I carved it all by myself. They're inside now. Linus continues, I'm especially proud of the good job I did on the sails. It took me three days to do just the sails alone. And then we see Lucy coming out of the bathroom having washed her hands with still soap and suds all over her hands. And she says to Linus, if you're going to get your hands really clean, you've got to work up a good lather. This is horrifying to Linus, whose hair goes straight up to the heavens. And now we see Lucy continuing to wash her hands as Linus covers his eyes. And she says, lots of soap and hot water. That's what does it. And she's back in the bathroom. She's rinsing off her hands, and she tosses what remains of the soap over her shoulder to her brother. And then Linus presents this little nub of soap to Charlie Brown and says, I had planned to show you an authentic replica of an American clipper ship. Would you settle for a canoe, though?

Patrick: There. There again, I'm. Even though I think it's a really funny premise and a great joke, I'm going to talk about the visuals. So everyone at home find the strip. And starting with the, first panel where he's. Have you ever done any soap carving? You know, it's amazing that. And you look at it on the fourth panel, too. I want to. I want you to see a Charlie Brown. But the fact that Peanuts characters float.

Jimmy: Yes.

Patrick: Like, I don't know if any other cartoonists done that. And I. I only do that when they're running because they're running so fast that, their feet aren't touching. But to have characters walk and be floating is. And again, it's a Peanuts thing. You just take it for granted. And I think that.

Harold: Yeah.

Patrick: adds to the charm of them that they're, like, walking me. Like, look, I mean, that. That. 1, 2, 3, 4th panel. I mean, if you just looked at that, like, if you just saw that without the rest of it, you'd say, what are they doing? Like, floating to home.

Jimmy: Yeah. And yet you can sort of feel the bounce of it.

Patrick: Exactly. And, you know, I'm just thinking of it now, but, boy, they captured that in the, you know, the Christmas special. Like, had that same feeling how they. They walked a different way. You know, they had a certain walk, and I mean, that's part of it. And then in that first panel, to the way Charlie Brown has his hands in his pants, which I don't think he. There's just such a nice flow to that.

Jimmy: Uh-huh.

Patrick: And then the simplicity, you know, the magic of cartooning that you. You don't need to show that much to establish a place that, you know, beautiful tree in that little bush is enough, you know, and God that gorgeous steps going up to the house with the railing is just really, really nice. And you realize you don't have to show much to show a place. And, yeah, wrought iron.

Jimmy: Just a squiggle of the pen line and, you know, it's wrought iron.

Patrick: Yeah. And I think what he was better than anybody's expression. I feel like a comic strip is really close to a Broadway, play or anything off Broadway play, probably even more so that, you know, as the cartoonish year. As a director, you design the set and like, theater, you don't need that much of a set. You know, like, you go see play sometime and there's just a chair in a window and that's enough because it's theater of the mind. And I feel like comics are theater of the mind. That, you don't need that much of a. Of a setting to get a feel of space, and you let the readers do a lot of the work.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: But then even more important is the acting. And I think what made Peanuts or made Charles Schulz was, boy, he had, the best actors for his jokes and for his writing. I mean, he really knew how to express things. And again, the magic of. It's just two little squiggles, you know, two little dots. But his characters really acted out his jokes, so, so well.

Harold: He tended to underplay the emotions. And I think that pulls you in. You absolutely do that, Patrick. I know you know that, you know, Mooch could have a smile, but you just choose not to have the mouth. And it kind of. We have to. We have to lean in to. To read where Mooch is coming from. And that is very rare. I don't see a lot of people doing it, but I think it's super powerful because it does pull you in. if it's overly, overly expressed, it almost like pushes us back. We have to step away from the work. And Schulz is always pulling us in.

Patrick: Yeah, this. When you think about, like, you know, the Mona Lisa, like painters that are using oil paint and doing all these perfect expressions and stuff, and here's this little kid drawing with just a few lines, and you know exactly what he's thinking and what, you know, what he's saying, it.

Harold: It's crazy.

Patrick: Yeah, it is crazy. I, mean, even the, like in the panel, where Linus is saying, I'm especially proud of the good job.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: I mean, Charles Schulz's hands were so abstract, but at the same time so expressive that. I mean, that head next to Charlie Brown's face is just so. Of him being so proud of this thing, and then, my God, look how great the lather of soap is. it's, like, perfect. You could feel that. That lather of soap. And then when he goes a little, you know, and he wasn't afraid of exaggerating. I mean, Linus's hair sticking straight there. And look at his hands in that one, too.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: The next panel where his hands just covering his face. What's great about it is Charlie Brown is so used to lightness and especially the craziness of Lucy, that. Damn. Just. Yeah, yeah. Another day at the Van Pelt house.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harold: Leaves all the emotion to Linus, which.

Jimmy: Well, you know, if you go back to those arms, too. If you see in the first panel, that last tier, if Linus stretched his arms out, they would hit the floor. Yeah. And then the next one, he can't even reach his forehead with them. and it doesn't bother anybody ever. You know, it just totally works.

Harold: It represents the emotion of where the character is. And you can do that in comics, which is so amazing. I mean, the fact that Lucy, when she's walking up to them, you know, they've been floating when they're walking. Now Lucy is walking, and she's grounded. She's right on the bottom of that. That strip panel. You know, he knows how to change it up, and he chose how to break the rules. And, like, that's that soap thing. That's no sculpture of Linus in the opening throwaway, panel. You know, that would have had to have been a bar of soap that was taller than it was in the ride. but it doesn't matter. He. He knows how to get the idea across, and he can break all the rules because he knows what he's doing.

Jimmy: Hey, now, Patrick, speaking of Sunday pages, you know, we talk a lot about how he had specific panel breaks that he had to deal with, but your strip is actually designed differently. Correct? You do not have to deal with any of those breaks.

Patrick: You know, it's the, kind of thinner version of. I didn't add. You know, I. I got to play with title panels, which was a lot of fun.

Jimmy: You know, I loved those title panels. I think they're so cool.

Patrick: And, you know, they're. They're also throw. Throwaway panels because certain newspapers didn't use them. But, no, I didn't have that. That headache of, you know, having a few panels not be part of this trip in certain newspapers.

Jimmy: Yeah. I can't imagine having to write with that one. Well, not just one more restriction. You have that restriction. And then the mandatory panel breaks on the other two tiers. Like, I couldn't. I don't know how anybody did such great strips with all those restrictions.

Patrick: Well, sometimes those restrictions make you think harder.

Jimmy: And I guess the deadline makes you not be precious about it. So you got to keep moving, you know?

Patrick: Yeah, exactly. Well, Sparky always said that as a comic book artist, if you're hitting .300, you're. You're a super, like baseball. Now, his batting average was a lot better than .300.

Jimmy: Yeah. All right, and here's our last one. 

December 4th, 1964. And we have Frieda and Snoopy out in the snow. And Frieda says to Snoopy, perhaps we should split up and plan to meet back here in about an hour. Okay. And Snoopy takes off. And we see this is actually from, the era where they were doing these little stamp sized panels tying in with happiness as a warm puppy. So this, one is happiness is loving your enemies. And we see Snoopy with a couple bunnies. Then back in the regular strip, Snoopy is actually out with a whole mess of bunnies. And they're dancing and having a good time for about four panels. And then he bids them adieu and then goes back to Frieda, Paws out explaining that, hey, I guess I just didn't see any bunnies. And Frieda says to him, didn't see any, Neither did I. Then the two of them walk past Charlie Brown, and Frieda says to Charlie Brown, Snoopy and I have been out hunting rabbits, but we didn't see any. And then as Snoopy passes Charlie Brown, he gives Charlie Brown a big wink. And then Charlie Brown says, now what was that all about?

Patrick: You know, another visual one for me. And, you know, again, it's the acting, you know, and also Snoopy. I mean, God, no wonder the world fell in love with Snoopy. I mean, that character is so alive in that. And he doesn't say a word. You know. You know, it's like a great silent, like Charlie Chaplin, you know, it's that to do all that acting and not say a word. You know exactly what he's thinking and his motivations and everything. It's like, you know, just great cartooning. And for me, the only, you guys probably know, you're the experts, but, you know, that little extra panel of happiness is loving your enemies. Like, you know, he did that for, I think, a few Sunday pages. I don't know how many, but just have that little extra bonus among among everything else is just great. But, you know, again, just the joy of him dancing. I mean, just fantastic. But to me, again, going back to the acting, you know, when Frieda says, didn't see any either. Didn't see anything. Did I look at his face? You know, totally convinced, totally convincing her that, oh, no, I didn't say anything. You're like, do that. And then obviously, again, the wink. Those little V's showing that it's a wink. I mean, there's not too many cartoonists that could draw a wink like that where just, you know, perfect.

Jimmy: Yes. Yeah.

Harold: It's like Schulz was like, he drew it, and then he's like, oh, they're not going to see that. And then how do I pay it? Make people pay attention. Two V's.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Harold: Above his head. I mean, I've never. Have you seen that before? Did he just figure that out on the fly?

Jimmy: It's crazy. Yeah. And not only drawing the wink, on a cartoon, but it's a dog, too. Who’d draw a wink on a dog?

Harold: Yeah. The eye that we shouldn't see. It's crazy. And joy. I mean, he captures joy in this undiluted way that I don't know how you get. Get someone to experience joy. Just by looking at something in a split second, you get joy. I mean, how many artists have an opportunity to do that?

Patrick: Yeah, you know, I'm. I'm sure, like. Well, you guys must know it, like, when. When you draw certain things. I always like to see a camera on a cartoonist's face because, you know, when you're drawing someone mad, you usually make a mad look. Imagine seeing Sparky drawing this one. And I. And again, it's that magic that, you know, the feelings he was feeling just like, you know, came out in his fingers on into that pen, into that just flowed on the page. He just knew how to capture that. And. I don't know. I didn't. You know, even to this day. I mean, I've been drawing MUTTS for over 30 years, but I don't know how you teach that. I don't know how. How you even. How do you do that? It's.

Jimmy: Do you think part of it has to come from the fact that you're doing it every day? Like, and not just drawing every day, but you're drawing something every day that, you know, the world will see? I mean, not many people do that.

Patrick: Yeah, no, it is. Like I said before, it's.

Jimmy: It's.

Patrick: It's a crazy job. And, you know, just doing it every day that's you know, practice, you know, practice, practice, practice. You can't help but get a little better.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Patrick: You know, and, you know, and, you really learn your characters. Like I said, you know, for me, you know, Mooch kind of writes his own jokes. And I'm sure for Sparky, you know, during Snoopy was. Was a joy for him.

Liz: And, you know, and your audience knows your characters.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah.

Patrick: That's why it's such a unique art form, you know, that people get this in their newspaper or on the line now every morning, you know, and it's after a while that's. I mean, Peanuts is a prime example that they just become part of your family, part of your, you know, you see them more than many of your relatives.

Jimmy: Yeah, well, thankfully. That's great. Well, Patrick, this has been an absolute blast for us and an honor, to have you on the show. We love your work. Listeners out there, if you don't know MUTTS, you're probably not listening to this podcast, but find all the books, read it online, read it in your paper. It's the best. Patrick, where can people find you and what is out now that they can get their hands?

Patrick: Well, you know what I should say, boy, and I should have said it up front, but, you know, there's. Did you guys pick up. There's the, 75th anniversary book called the Essential Peanuts?

Jimmy: Yes, yes. And we had Mark Evanier on talking about it.

Harold:  I so loved your introduction to that.

Patrick: Yes. I wanted to mention. I wrote the introduction for that.

Jimmy: You don't need to give Charlie Kochman anymore credit.

Patrick: And as far as far as MUTTS go, you know, you could go to MUTTS.com, you could have it delivered to your email box every morning for free. You can see in the papers that it's still in. And it's. It's still in quite a few papers. Knock on wood. And again, I have two new children books out. The Gift of Nothing and the Gift of Everything. next year there'll be the, the Sunday strips and boy, to tell you this, this was. Boy, we could talk for another four hours.

Jimmy: Let's do it.

Patrick: This is. This is one topic I get tired of.

Jimmy: Well, you are welcome to come back any old time you want. This has been so much fun.

Patrick: really.

Jimmy: Yeah. So thank you.

Patrick: I'll take you up on that. We should. We should do it again maybe when the new books come out next year.

Jimmy: That would be perfect. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Liz: It's a date. 

Patrick: And, you know, also I think I have to say that I'm on the board of directors of the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. So I need to plug if anyone's anywhere near Santa Rosa. If you, if you haven't been, you need to go to museum. Yeah, they, they did such a wonderful job. It has all the warmth and happiness of, the Peanuts strip. They really captured. Captured Peanuts in that museum.

Jimmy: Absolutely. It's a magical place.

Liz: We are, we are big fans of of the Schulz Museum, .

Patrick: and you guys do a wonderful job as you're keeping up the Peanuts, spirit. It's real. Really great.

Jimmy: Oh, thank you. That means the world to us.

Harold: Thanks, Patrick.

Jimmy: All right, characters, you come back next week when we'll be talking about something else. Well, we'll still be talking about Peanuts, but some other aspect of Peanuts. Until then, from Michael, Harold and Liz. This is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

L& M& H: Yes, 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.

Patrick: Do you know anyone else who owns two Zambonis.