0:05

VO: The podcast for three cartoonists, take an in-depth look at the greatest comic strip of all time, Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz

0:15

Jimmy: Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.

0:21

Jimmy: We have something special for you today.

0:23

Jimmy: We are going to do a little re-release of 1950, Parts 1 and 2, which was our first foray into this podcasting game.

0:32

Jimmy: Guys, what do you have to say? Jimmy: If you think back to the late 1960s when we started this podcast, what was it like?

0:40

Michael: Well, none of us had done this before.

0:43

Michael: I think we over-prepared.

0:47

Michael: Yeah. Michael: We felt we needed to set up what Peanuts was.

0:54

Michael: There's a lot of information before he even got to doing the first Peanuts strip, sort of the Charles Schulz story and establish who our protagonist is.

1:07

Michael: Then we got into it. Michael: We were all amazed that Jimmy could pull off reading it so well.

1:16

Michael: That was the one part we weren't sure of. Michael: We thought it would be nice if we could show the strip and do a video or something.

1:25

Michael: But it turns out that having Jimmy read it worked out really well.

1:29

Jimmy: I intensely did not want to read the strips because I thought the only version of that I'd ever seen was Estes Kefauver when he was reading them.

1:40

Michael: Wasn't it Governor- Jimmy: It was LaGuardia.

1:42

Michael: Yeah, LaGuardia. Jimmy: It was LaGuardia, right.

1:45

Jimmy: He was reading it, there was a newspaper strike in New York and he was reading the comic strips over the radio and Dick Tracy has flat top cornered, he did a good job, but it wasn't something I wanted to do, but I do it.

1:59

Jimmy: Now, it's kind of fun. Liz: I remember you suggested that maybe I could read it and I said, okay, great, write me the script and you said, are you crazy?

2:13

Jimmy: Yeah, so now it's like first thought, best thought, just wing it.

2:17

Liz: It's really good. Jimmy: I love that I have tons of these little skills that only apply in one very specific setting and are non-transferable to anything real.

2:28

Harold: Yeah. Harold: The thing I remember most about recording this very first one is we were still trying to feel each other out in terms of the banter and the back and forth, we didn't quite know when to come in or where the delay was.

2:42

Harold: That was the big thing that we just had to learn our way into.

2:46

Harold: I was hoping that we would find this place where we could joke with each other and all of that.

2:51

Harold: We're finding our way here in this first episode and it's kind of cool to look back.

2:55

Liz: You also did it on Skype, didn't you? Jimmy: Well, that's what I was going to say.

2:59

Jimmy: We have to point out that like what Michael said, we did not know what we were doing.

3:02

Jimmy: I had done a podcast, but it was like super amateur, no frills at all, and it was just me talking.

3:08

Jimmy: We had never recorded anything with people in various locations.

3:11

Jimmy: So if Liz hadn't stepped in and said, hey, you guys are clueless, you need me to do this for you, we would just still be in 1950 saying we should do that someday.

3:22

Harold: That's right. Harold: Thank you, Liz. Harold: It's really become a part of our lives and it's like Jimmy says every week, it's his favorite day of the week.

3:31

Harold: It's, it's a wonderful place to be to know you're going to come together with friends and talk about something you love every week and I'm so grateful for it.

3:39

Liz: I am very, very happy to be part of the team.

3:43

Jimmy: All right. Jimmy: So with that preamble, here it is before we knew what we were doing, if we know what we're doing now.

3:50

Jimmy: So sit back and enjoy Unpacking Peanuts 1950.

3:55

Jimmy: Welcome to the first episode of Unpacking Peanuts, the podcast where we go deep into the world with Charles Schulz and the Peanuts Gang.

4:03

Jimmy: I'm Jimmy Gownley. Jimmy: If you know me from anything, you might know me from my comic books, Amelia Rules, The Dumbest Idea Ever, or Seven Good Reasons Not to Grow Up.

4:13

Jimmy: And joining me, as always, are my two co-hosts.

4:16

Jimmy: First, we have the composer behind the band, Complicated People, as well as this very podcast, and the cartoonist behind such strips as Tangled River, a Gathering of Spells and Strange Attractors, Mr.

4:30

Jimmy: Michael Cohen. Michael: Hello there. Jimmy: And we also have with us former vice president of Archie Comics, executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and creator of the Instagram strip, Sweetest Beasts, Harold Buchholz.

4:46

Harold: Hello. Jimmy: Do you feel nervous?

4:53

Jimmy: Do you feel excited? Harold: I feel excited.

4:56

Harold: Peanuts is something that has been such a big part of my life.

5:00

Harold: And to be able to unpack it and take a look at it and understand a little bit of what that impact was, I think it's going to be super helpful to me.

5:10

Harold: And I think I'm not alone. Jimmy: So just to give us some background, Michael, why don't you tell us where and who you were when you first discovered this comic strip?

5:20

Michael: Well, I was very young. Michael: I'm the elder spokesman of the group, by the way.

5:24

Michael: And as you'll figure out, because Peanuts debuted almost exactly a month after I was born.

5:32

Michael: And I remember quite distinctly going over to my aunt and uncle's house and playing on the floor with these little plastic toys.

5:41

Michael: And I think I was around five or six.

5:44

Michael: So we'd be talking 1955, 1956.

5:47

Michael: And I remember being on the floor and looking over at their bookcase, seeing this little green volume.

5:55

Michael: And I went over there and it was just called the good old Charlie Brown.

6:00

Michael: That's right. Michael: Which I think was maybe the fourth volume from the series.

6:09

Michael: And I was just like totally captivated.

6:11

Michael: They also had Snoopy, which might have been the third or fourth, and Peanuts and More Peanuts.

6:19

Michael: And I remember, I think I just asked if I could have them.

6:25

Michael: Or I stole them, I don't know. Michael: But I ended up with those copies and read them like thousands of times.

6:30

Michael: And up through the late 60s, they bought every volume as they came out.

6:39

Michael: So I had quite a big collection of those. Michael: But to me, it was just so amazing because I don't even think I was following any newspaper cartoons at the time.

6:48

Michael: It was just a whole new world.

6:51

Michael: And I still learned a lot about the world from reading these things.

6:55

Michael: I mean, there was words I didn't know, and Schulz was dealing with some pretty heavy subject matter.

7:02

Michael: So to me, it was like the best school I ever had.

7:06

Jimmy: Harold, how about you?

7:09

Harold: Well, from a very young age, I was fascinated by the printed word and cartoons.

7:15

Harold: When I was a toddler, my mom caught me on the floor of the house with the upside down Time magazine, picking at the letters.

7:22

Harold: I was just fascinated with prints. Harold: And when I was three, I remember I was reading the Sunday Comics section, it was Nancy, and trying to make sense of this strip, and it didn't make sense.

7:33

Harold: And I knew enough that it didn't make sense that I was close enough to making sense of it.

7:37

Harold: But I went to my father and I said, what's, why did this happen?

7:41

Harold: And he said, oh, you're reading it exactly backwards.

7:44

Harold: I was like in the lower right corner reading. Harold: This is before anybody adult had even thought to tell me, here's how you read in order.

7:51

Harold: This is so pre-reading. Harold: But I was trying to make sense through comics of a story with a mixture of the picture and the words.

7:58

Harold: And I discovered that I was reading it backwards and it was something that for some reason is a memory that I have that's so strong, how comics tied into my life.

8:09

Harold: And I was drawing my own comics from the age of three.

8:12

Harold: I was that little bird, named Birdie, of course, with a sideways V for a beak and a little turtle kind of looking like the head of a Pac-Man pre-Pac-Man and two sticks coming out of the bottom of this little head for legs.

8:27

Harold: And looking at those comics from my earliest years, I still have some.

8:31

Harold: I was struck by the power of emotion in them as a little kid.

8:35

Harold: I wasn't very articulate, but I felt things very deeply.

8:39

Harold: And I think as adults, we sometimes forget how much is actually going on inside us here, trying to live your life as a little kid.

8:48

Harold: And this is where Peanuts comes in. Harold: Because I think by around the age of seven, I began to receive these little Fawcett Crest Peanuts mass-market paper bags, little 50 cent books.

8:58

Harold: And I was reading large chunks of this journal for the first time.

9:01

Harold: I think that's when it had the first major impact on me.

9:04

Harold: I think Schulz's world opened up to me and the depth of feeling in those strips communicated to my soul in ways that no human interaction yet had.

9:14

Harold: So again, it's like comics are kind of pre-experience of anything else.

9:19

Harold: And Peanuts was speaking to me in a way that I had not yet processed as a kid growing up.

9:27

Harold: So without an irony, I can say that somehow Charlie Brown and Snoopy and Lucy and Linus were more real to me than anybody I knew.

9:34

Harold: And that's a strange thing to say, but I think that's true, especially Linus.

9:39

Harold: I connected to and related to Linus like nobody else in my life at that time.

9:43

Harold: And somehow Charles Schulz through Peanuts was let me know somebody and be known.

9:51

Harold: And that is a very strange thing to say about a little black and white comic strip, line art comic strip, but looking back on it 45 years later, I marvel at the impact that that strip had on my life.

10:03

Jimmy: Yeah, no, absolutely. Jimmy: For me, I remember it predates almost everything.

10:09

Jimmy: It really predates almost everything. Jimmy: And I wonder if that's one of the reasons when you find this particular strip really, really young.

10:17

Jimmy: Is that why you're drawn to make them yourself because it imprints on you so young?

10:22

Jimmy: For me, what happened was my cousins from Philadelphia would come up to visit our mutual grandmother every Memorial Day and then every Labor Day.

10:30

Jimmy: They're big into any holiday. Jimmy: They could go to a cemetery and mourn someone, so they would come to visit.

10:36

Jimmy: But they brought these Peanuts books. Jimmy: And the one that struck me was this thing called What's It All About Charlie Brown?

10:43

Jimmy: And I don't know if you guys know this one, but the cover of it is Snoopy's dog house burning and saying, you know, my books, my pool table, my records, my Van Gogh.

10:53

Jimmy: And it was half the comic strip and half some sort of bizarre, you know, self-help pop psychology book.

11:00

Jimmy: And I couldn't read any of that stuff. Jimmy: I mean, I was three years old or whatever, but the strips within them, I absolutely loved.

11:08

Jimmy: And I remember to this day one in particular, I remember coloring it in the book.

11:13

Jimmy: I still have the book. Jimmy: I'll post it in the show notes, my actual copy I had, which I believe it's Schroeder, or it's Charlie Brown and Linus, or Charlie Brown and Schroeder, actually, I think it is, because it's in the middle of winter, and you can't see who they are because they're wearing hats and it's snowing.

11:31

Jimmy: And they're like, oh, we should go. Jimmy: There's Snoopy. Jimmy: He looks up to the cold.

11:34

Jimmy: We should go and comfort him. Jimmy: And they walk over and they say, be of good cheer, Snoopy.

11:37

Jimmy: Yes, be of good cheer. Jimmy: And they just walk away, and Snoopy has a question mark over his head.

11:42

Jimmy: And I read that. Jimmy: I'm like, I don't get this at all.

11:47

Jimmy: But I think when I understand that, I will understand something important about life.

11:53

Jimmy: And the thing I loved about it was that it always felt as familiar as the kids I played with in my town and always also a little bit beyond me, a little bit out of reach.

12:05

Jimmy: And I love that. Jimmy: But the other thing I have to say is, I also can't remember a time when Charlie Brown Christmas wasn't in my consciousness, because my other earliest memories would be watching a Charlie Brown Christmas and going out with my dad to cut down our very own Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

12:23

Jimmy: We'd find the rattiest, weeviest looking tree and bring it home.

12:26

Jimmy: And I'd decorate it with hand-drawn peanuts ornaments and a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

12:31

Harold: That was the only tree you had? Jimmy: No, we had a real tree.

12:33

Jimmy: No, mom wasn't going to go for that. Jimmy: But yeah, so those are my absolute earliest memories.

12:41

Jimmy: So I'm really excited about the fact that we're going to get to go on this journey together.

12:45

Jimmy: We're going to get to talk about it because we all love it.

12:48

Jimmy: And I hope, and obviously, if you're out there listening, you guys love it too, right?

12:53

Jimmy: So we're taking you back to October 1950.

12:56

Jimmy: Everybody remembers October 1950, of course.

13:00

Jimmy: First class postage was just three cents.

13:03

Jimmy: So Harold, what do you think? Jimmy: What would it be like for someone like Charles Schulz, who's at this point, he's just about to turn 28.

13:09

Harold: So he's 28 years old and we're just about to.

13:12

Jimmy: He's living in St. Jimmy: Paul, Minnesota, which is not a place that is not...

13:16

Jimmy: All the syndicates, all the people that put the comic strips out into the newspapers of the world are in much larger cities, Chicago, New York.

13:24

Harold: Right. Jimmy: So tell us, what would it be like for a guy like that to get this...

13:29

Harold: So we need a picture of Charles Schulz.

13:32

Harold: Here's this mild-mannered kid who's grown up in St.

13:35

Harold: Paul his whole life. Harold: He's taken a course on a school in art, specifically apparently because it had a good section.

13:45

Harold: And he wanted to be a cartoonist, it's something he really wanted to do.

13:49

Harold: And here he is in St. Harold: Paul. Harold: And interestingly, in the Twin Cities, that is where the art instruction school is.

13:57

Harold: So it's kind of funny that he's taking this and sending this stuff in, even though the actual course with the instructors is in...

14:04

Jimmy: And I'm certain that an element of that was his personal shyness.

14:08

Jimmy: He talked through his life about how shy he felt and how he felt invisible in crowds and stuff like that.

14:13

Jimmy: I think a cartooning correspondence course is a perfect Charles Schulz solution.

14:21

Harold: And that is a relatively new thing.

14:24

Harold: If you were an artist, you usually had to go to a major city and traverse that city and be able to figure that city out and be willing to go into that kind of environment.

14:33

Harold: To be an artist, this is a unique thing, where here's somebody, a shop guy, and he's just doing it all out of his apartment above his dad's barbershop.

14:44

Harold: That's a different artist than the type of commercial artist that was usually getting work prior to that.

14:54

Harold: They were probably a little more extroverted on average.

14:57

Harold: They had to be in order to do what it took to become an artist.

15:03

Jimmy: Interestingly, the National Cartoonist Society is an organization of professional cartoonists.

15:10

Jimmy: It was known as one of the hard, drinkinest, wildest bunches that you can imagine.

15:17

Jimmy: This was at a time when a newspaper syndicated cartoonist was a celebrity position.

15:23

Jimmy: They would make money hand over fist.

15:25

Jimmy: Guys like Al Capp and Ham Fisher and all those guys.

15:29

Jimmy: So this is a whole different world.

15:31

Harold: He's aspiring to something in this field that has really big upside.

15:38

Harold: This is a dream, but he's committed to this dream.

15:41

Harold: And then World War II comes along. Harold: He's finished the correspondence course, but he's now in Europe during World War II.

15:49

Harold: As this very young kid, I think his mother passes away right around the time of going off to war.

15:55

Jimmy: Yeah, well, she says to him as he's leaving, well, Sparky, everyone called him Sparky.

16:00

Jimmy: And one of the great ironies of his life or synchronicities of his life, I guess you could say, he was nicknamed after a comic strip character, a horse in the comic strip Barney Google.

16:10

Jimmy: So she said to him, well, Sparky, I guess it's the last time we'll see each other.

16:14

Jimmy: And then he went off to war. Harold: That's brutal. Jimmy: Yes, it is brutal.

16:17

Harold: And talk about loneliness. Harold: I mean, he's obviously, you know, there's this mixture of loneliness being surrounded by people that he has in World War II.

16:26

Harold: He continues to draw. Harold: He's not forgetting his goal.

16:30

Harold: He comes back after World War II. Harold: And he actually gets a job with the same place.

16:36

Jimmy: Which is Art Instruction School is the name of the course behind this.

16:39

Jimmy: And I would just say, just tangentially, I don't know if either of you guys have ever seen one of the courses, but my neighbor, I live in this little tiny town, Gerardo, Pennsylvania, a very creative town.

16:49

Jimmy: I lived on A Street. Jimmy: Literally, they could not even bother to name it.

16:52

Harold: Just called Street. Jimmy: A Street, right. Jimmy: But like three doors down, the neighbor's daughter took the famous artist's course, and I got to see all the binders of it.

17:01

Jimmy: It's legit. Jimmy: It was really an impressive course.

17:05

Jimmy: If you, it was all on you. Jimmy: You had to do it.

17:08

Harold: Right. Jimmy: But boy, if you did it, I think you would have gotten a legitimate art education.

17:13

Harold: He obviously took that extremely seriously, and he must have been a good student and a very fastidious student for him to come back to them and say, you know, I just graduated from your course a few years ago, and I'm easy to try to take on the job, basically doing the instructor side of what he had taken not too long ago without really a whole lot of experience under his belt.

17:37

Harold: Other than he was a very good student, that was probably all they had to go on.

17:40

Harold: So that kind of speaks to who he was.

17:43

Harold: So he's working locally trying to find his way into cartooning, which is not easy in St.

17:48

Harold: Paul, Minnesota. Harold: But to his credit, I think it kind of speaks to who he was as a person who's very committed.

17:55

Harold: I think there was a Catholic kids comic, and I think it was based out of St.

17:58

Harold: Paul Comics, and he was lettering pages at the rate, not per page, but $1.50 an hour.

18:05

Harold: So he was working on guessing pretty fast and not getting a whole lot of money, but at least he was working in comics, and he sold, I think, a couple of $10 pages of single panel jokes to them as well.

18:16

Harold: Some of them featuring little children, so it's kind of the first time he's getting published with the kind of comics that we know him for.

18:23

Harold: And one of the cartoons on this page shows this girl running a potato sack race, but instead of her jumping in, she's got the sack upside down over her head and her legs are sticking out below, running at full speed, and it looks like their parents are just standing by trees.

18:36

Harold: And the mom says to the husband, are you sure Judy understood the rules of the sack race?

18:41

Harold: It's genuinely funny, it's absurd, but it's got those elements of peanuts that we see later.

18:50

Jimmy: One of the other things that's really, it's happening at the same time or roughly at the same time, is he starts doing newspaper strips for his own local paper, the St.

18:59

Jimmy: Paul Pioneer Press Gazette, Post Gazette.

19:02

Harold: St. Harold: Paul Pioneer Press. Jimmy: Now, Michael, have you seen the little folk stuff?

19:06

Jimmy: Have you ever read those? Michael: I don't know if they've been republished.

19:10

Michael: I do have an issue with the Comics Journal with the huge Schulz review, and they print some of them.

19:17

Michael: They're actually funny. Jimmy: They are pretty funny.

19:20

Michael: They're peanuts. Michael: They're one panel. Jimmy: No, but would you recognize it as Schulz art?

19:25

Michael: Oh, absolutely. Jimmy: Right.

19:27

Jimmy: I think so, too. Jimmy: I think it's interesting because he's doing this, as it's essentially a gag strip, but multiple panels.

19:35

Jimmy: I think you have two or three different little vignettes in each strip.

19:38

Harold: This is weekly. Harold: Weekly. Harold: The women's section, I think.

19:41

Jimmy: Yes, exactly. Jimmy: Right.

19:44

Jimmy: And at the same time, though, he's submitting these gag strips to major market magazines like the Saturday Evening Post.

19:49

Harold: And so he has quite a success with that. Harold: That's his first national success, is that Saturday Evening Post picks up these single-panel cartoons that it's little kids in big people's settings.

20:00

Harold: You know, they're wearing oversized skis and they're into a comic effect where a little girl, I think the famous one is a little girl standing in high heels and she's angled at the angle of where her feet are in these giant shoes.

20:11

Jimmy: Right, and his first one that he sold was actually, the gag is it's a tiny little kid sitting on a giant lounge chair but with his feet hanging off, resting on an ottoman in front of it that he obviously didn't make.

20:25

Jimmy: So, as personal of a strip that Peanuts actually eventually became, it's interesting that really I think one of the reasons it's about kids is because that's the thing that was selling.

20:36

Harold: Yeah, and consistently, I mean we don't see anything else he's doing that doesn't have the kid element in it.

20:43

Harold: And he sold like 17 of these single panel cartoonists.

20:47

Harold: And the competition to get into the Saturday Evening Post by cartoonists was fierce.

20:51

Harold: It was probably one of the top five paying spaces you could sell into and probably the best paying spaces you could sell into.

20:58

Harold: He sold 17 of these things over the course of three years.

21:01

Harold: And I think that was the thing at the time where there were certain strips that would start out in a magazine or panels, and they became so much a good seller that the same like Hazel, I think, that made was in the magazine cartoons and then ultimately got pulled out and became its own thing because they kept buying these funny cartoons from the same artists over and over again.

21:26

Harold: People got to know these new characters.

21:28

Jimmy: Little Lulu, Henry, there are a couple like that.

21:32

Harold: That's fascinating that he was that successful.

21:34

Harold: That is so hard to get even one joke in there and he got 17.

21:38

Jimmy: But what he's not doing is creating characters, which I think is really interesting.

21:42

Jimmy: So basically what happens to kind of cut to the chase and get to the peanuts of the matter is he asks for a raise from the Pioneer Post Gazette and they tell him to go take a hike.

21:53

Jimmy: So he loses his spot in that paper, in his hometown paper, and now if he wants to be a cartoonist, he is going to have to sell it.

22:02

Harold: And for some perspective, what he was paid in today's dollars over the three-year period post-war when he really started getting into trying to get published from 1947 to 1951, Peanuts debuts, he made about $25,000 in today's dollars.

22:17

Harold: Being a guy who had no background from St.

22:20

Harold: Paul, Minnesota, that's not bad for a cartoonist.

22:24

Jimmy: What was the average salary, like $4,000 or $5,000 a year, probably?

22:28

Harold: Well, I'm talking about today's dollars, just to kind of...

22:33

Harold: But for a freelancer who's super young, he's determined, he's really working hard to get something going.

22:40

Harold: And I believe what he said was, all through this time, he's also, not only he's got this job, he's doing art instruction schools, he's getting all these cartoons into the local paper of Regular Feature.

22:52

Harold: He also has the stuff in Saturday New Post, but he's also sending things out to syndicates to try to get national...

23:00

Jimmy: So, right, to get nationally syndicated. Jimmy: So he decides he's going to take a trip on a train to New York City.

23:05

Jimmy: He goes to United Feature Syndicate and he has two packs.

23:08

Jimmy: One pack contains basically little folks, gag strips.

23:11

Jimmy: Another pack contains daily comic strips, okay, which don't really have still defined characters.

23:18

Jimmy: He arrives too early at the offices of the syndicate, United Features, so he goes out for breakfast.

23:23

Jimmy: By the time he comes back, the editors that be have opened the packs and said, hey, if you can do a comic strip and create some definite characters, we would like the strip.

23:33

Jimmy: And just like that, boom, Charles Schulz is a syndicated cartoonist.

23:37

Jimmy: But I want to talk for a minute about the things that were beyond Schulz's control.

23:42

Jimmy: First thing that was imposed upon him that I can think of, that he had no control over, was the name.

23:47

Jimmy: The syndicate named it Peanuts. Michael: That seems to be the case.

23:52

Michael: And a lot of people can't even figure out why it was given that name.

23:58

Jimmy: I have heard it had to do with the Peanut Gallery from Howdy Doody.

24:02

Michael: Possibly. Michael: But I met somebody recently who to this day had no idea that Peanuts was actually kind of a term for little kids.

24:13

Michael: It would be like a pet name, a peanut.

24:19

Michael: They didn't associate it with kids in any way, so it was a great mystery.

24:23

Jimmy: Right. Jimmy: It never occurred to me that it was associated with kids.

24:26

Jimmy: It just sort of seemed like it was a Kleenex.

24:29

Jimmy: I don't know why it's called that. Jimmy: It just is what it is.

24:33

Jimmy: But he hated it to his dying day.

24:35

Jimmy: He hated the name Peanuts. Jimmy: Other things, the fact that Peanuts, every single day, was four panels.

24:42

Jimmy: They were the exact same size, never varied.

24:45

Jimmy: Talk to us a little bit about why that was a thing.

24:50

Harold: Apparently, one of the things that the editor was looking at when he saw the strip and he saw this new version of this strip form was he was looking for an angle, I guess, to sell a new strip to these newspapers.

25:03

Harold: It's super competitive to get your strip in the newspaper and editors are hard to get to switch out one strip for another.

25:09

Harold: This was at a time when post-war newsprint prices were through the roof because they put caps on newsprint all through World War II as a commodity during the war.

25:19

Harold: Then as soon as they took the prices off of it, it skyrocketed.

25:23

Harold: It went up like 70% from 1945 to 1948.

25:26

Harold: It was starting to go up again in 1950, and the newspaper people were going nuts over this because all of their profits were being eaten away.

25:33

Harold: So this editor decides, hey, let's try to sell a strip that is somehow more efficient, uses less newsprint than anything else because if you can imagine, it's pretty the same thing, 100,000 times every day.

25:50

Harold: If it's smaller, you can still have the entertainment value.

25:53

Harold: Supposedly, that's a sales point to a cartoon editor.

25:56

Harold: And so that is, it's kind of strange, this utilitarian approach to this strip is kind of an indignity for Schulz.

26:06

Harold: That's the main thing they're selling. Harold: It's not Schulz's brilliant work.

26:09

Harold: It's the fact that this thing is tiny and can be reconfigured any which way.

26:14

Jimmy: Yeah, it can be printed vertically, it can be printed horizontally, it can be printed as a square.

26:19

Jimmy: You didn't have InDesign and Photoshop, so that was a big benefit to the editor theoretically.

26:26

Jimmy: But it only ended up in a handful of papers. Jimmy: I've always heard seven, but the Wikipedia article says nine and then later says seven, so we're going to have to double check on that.

26:36

Harold: Apparently, they batted in in New York and Boston, which others, the account saved, was not initially there when it first debuted.

26:44

Jimmy: But basically, less than ten papers.

26:46

Harold: Which is very low for a launch of a paper.

26:48

Harold: Now, to his credit, he got into the number two market, Chicago, number four market, Washington Post.

26:54

Harold: So he was probably in the metro area, reaching up to 12.5 million people.

26:59

Harold: So that's 8% of the US population to start out.

27:03

Harold: Not terrible. Jimmy: It's crazy when you think about what shows that are considered culturally huge, Game of Thrones or whatever today, compared to his audience at its peak, was something like 300 million people.

27:14

Harold: Right, and 12.5 million is just the all the people that could be there.

27:18

Harold: So how many actually did? Harold: But still, those are some big cities and some major circulation.

27:23

Harold: Even though he had not a lot of strips and not a lot of cities, but he wasn't in tiny, tiny markets.

27:29

Harold: So he was making decent money to start, even though he had such a low paper count.

27:37

Jimmy: So that brings us up to October 1950.

27:40

Jimmy: One of the things you might not know out there if you're just coming to Peanuts now or if you're a millennial or something, something ridiculous like that.

27:50

Jimmy: But these really early Peanuts comic strips had never been reprinted in their totality until Phantograph started releasing the complete Peanuts volume.

28:01

Jimmy: So Michael, can you talk to me a little bit about what it was like the first time you saw these very, very early strips and what it was like when you were reading them from this podcast?

28:12

Michael: Okay, they reprinted Peanuts and more Peanuts that probably the first two volumes of the, was it Valentine, of the books, which I always consider clearly less brilliant material.

28:31

Michael: It was like, I always thought, well, okay, it took him a year or two to get the engine running and figure out who these characters were and establish, you know, his sense of humor.

28:45

Michael: So Peanuts and more Peanuts were, you know, like early Beatles or something, even though, like, you know, occasional versions of brilliance, but still needed a little work.

28:54

Harold: So are you reading those, are those like 1952 or so, those first Peanuts?

28:58

Michael: Well, I read that when I discovered Peanuts in 55, 56, I had, I got all these and I wasn't too clear on the order, but it was pretty clear that Peanuts was the first one, and more Peanuts was the second one.

29:12

Harold: And then we bring strips from 52.

29:16

Michael: Yeah, they didn't tell you that. Michael: So I just had to guess it.

29:19

Michael: But anyway, I always figured these were, yeah, these were okay, you know, a few laughs here and there, but definitely I would not ask someone to start with the first one.

29:32

Michael: And then when the Panagraphics books came out, of course, they're doing it chronologically.

29:38

Michael: So the first volume came out, I had to get it, and discovered that those books that I read thousands of times, those early Peanuts books, were not complete.

29:49

Michael: I didn't realize that. Michael: And so there was, I'd seen maybe 30, 40 percent of them.

29:55

Michael: So yeah, I'm reading the Panagraphics books.

29:58

Michael: I was just fascinated with these, because first of all, they were funnier than I remember.

30:03

Michael: And actually, he did have quite a sharp sense of humor from the beginning.

30:09

Michael: And what was just so interesting to me was that he didn't have the final versions in his head.

30:16

Michael: I mean, the versions we know had to develop slowly.

30:21

Jimmy: Right. Michael: So it's just like you think, okay, this is Charlie Brown.

30:27

Harold: But you realize this, is this Charlie Brown?

30:30

Michael: I mean, he's got the same name. Michael: He looks the same, but he's not quite the same personality.

30:34

Jimmy: Right. Jimmy: A lot of that comes out of the fact that he was originally a gag cartoonist.

30:39

Jimmy: And creating character was way, way down on his list.

30:43

Jimmy: But I don't want to get too in the weeds. Jimmy: I just want general first impressions.

30:47

Jimmy: Harold, how about you? Jimmy: Tell me about the first time you saw these particular strips.

30:52

Harold: Well, as a little kid, they reprinted, I think, just a few of the 1950 strips, particularly the first strip.

30:59

Harold: And I was disappointed as a kid, because, oh, there's stuff that goes all the way back, and then I'm like, oh, that's not the peanuts.

31:06

Harold: And, you know, I think my view of it was like, this is, it's crisp.

31:11

Harold: It's very crisp. Harold: It's kind of bland compared to what I was used to with peanuts.

31:16

Harold: But again, looking at it as a little bit older, there's something that's so unique in the personality of it.

31:23

Harold: It's kind of stoic, and there's this honor and humility and smallness that Schulz puts in there that I really don't see anywhere else.

31:32

Harold: And to find that in the early strips is really beginning stages of Schulz's run with peanuts.

31:40

Harold: It's pretty fascinating. Jimmy: Yeah, to me, looking at them, I think the one thing I would just say is they look the most 50s to me.

31:48

Jimmy: You know, I could sort of see this coming out of the UPA studio.

31:52

Jimmy: This doesn't... Jimmy: It looks like a cleaner Jules Feiffer maybe, like a New Yorker kind of feel.

31:57

Jimmy: So it doesn't feel Schulz as much as it feels just generally 50s.

32:04

Liz: 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.

32:12

Liz: You can find links to purchase books by Jimmy, Harold and Michael on our website.

32:16

Liz: You can also support the show on Patreon or buy us a mud pie.

32:20

Liz: Check out the store link on unpackingpeanuts.com.

32:26

Jimmy: We're going to start now just go through the strips and I want to get everybody's general impression.

32:30

Jimmy: I think the first one's famous.

32:33

Jimmy: We read it in our introduction. Jimmy: October 2nd.

32:37

Jimmy: Shermie and Patty are sitting on some steps.

32:40

Jimmy: Charlie Brown approaches, a smile on his face.

32:43

Jimmy: Shermie says, well, here comes old Charlie Brown.

32:48

Jimmy: Good old Charlie Brown, yes, sir.

32:51

Jimmy: Good old Charlie Brown, how I hate him.

32:55

Jimmy: Good old Charlie Brown, how I hate him. Jimmy: I think this is amazing because it introduces two gigantic themes of peanuts in the very first strip, The Cruelty of Children, which goes on forever in Peanuts, and the fact that Charlie Brown is kind of despised by his so-called friends.

33:13

Harold: Yeah, it's really a striking first strip, given the look of it.

33:19

Harold: It's just not what you'd expect. Harold: It's got the boldness of this childlike duplicity.

33:24

Harold: Kids are not saints. Harold: And that's definitely a unique take on children, I think, in pop culture.

33:32

Jimmy: It's brutal. Jimmy: It's a brutal joke.

33:35

Michael: Yeah, it's a brutal joke. Michael: It seems to point out to me how little he knew his characters, though.

33:42

Michael: Because Shermie, who is fairly a bland character, and eventually pretty much gets written out.

34:01

Michael: He's not somebody who'd hate anybody.

34:04

Jimmy: Yeah, I don't think there are characters at all at this point.

34:06

Jimmy: I think they're interchangeable.

34:10

Harold: And the idea is that he's not going to be living with these characters for the next 50 years.

34:13

Harold: It seems like a one-off. Harold: And you'd think, if you were making any kind of story or continuity strip, if we've set up that this guy hates Charlie Brown, then throughout the next weeks, we're going to just see how does he hate him.

34:27

Harold: Why does he hate him? Jimmy: Instead, though, we cut away.

34:29

Jimmy: The only thing we know for sure in day one is that he wanted a character named Charlie Brown.

34:36

Michael: We're going to have a rest. Michael: Unpacking October 2nd podcast, because this is really interesting.

34:42

Michael: You'd think right from the beginning that this strip, because Charlie Brown is the only one named here, good old Charlie Brown, it almost sounds like a catchphrase right away.

34:54

Jimmy: Right. Michael: You'd think that would be the name of the strip.

34:57

Jimmy: Right. Michael: And he doesn't show up again for a week.

35:00

Harold: Right. Harold: Right. Harold: And that's interesting. Harold: And did he want to call it good old Charlie Brown at that early point?

35:05

Jimmy: He wanted to call it Little Folks, but somebody else already called it Little Folks.

35:10

Jimmy: And by all I know, Little Folks, anyone who's out there seen Parks and Rec, Little Sebastian?

35:15

Harold: Yeah, I mean, it's so funny. Harold: I mean, Schulz has this dignity to him, and Peanuts is horrible, but Little Folks, to the modern ear, it seems like that's the thing that could have been imposed on him by the syndicate.

35:27

Harold: Oh, absolutely. Harold: This is the thing that he would have chosen for his own strip.

35:31

Harold: But of course he did, and that's what he called the St.

35:33

Harold: Paul version of this thing. Jimmy: Someone, I guess, in the 30s already had done a Little Folks strip, and they said to the syndicate, no, we want to, we might do something with Sunday.

35:42

Jimmy: And the syndicate president, I guess it was Larry Ruttman, said it's Peanuts.

35:46

Harold: Well, interestingly, United Feature Syndicate, which picked this up, one of their probably top three strips at the time was Will Adner.

35:55

Harold: So this was already derivative in why Schulz was so insistent on something like that.

36:01

Harold: It's always been a mystery to me, but there's something that he just, it seems like he absorbed the nature of what was popular in comic strips, and because that was part of the zeitgeist, that he was just trying to insert himself there in some way that he thought had some dignity.

36:17

Jimmy: Yeah, with In Again, all these massive limitations put on him by the syndicate.

36:22

Jimmy: He had to have it in four panels. Jimmy: It was gonna be reproduced tiny.

36:25

Jimmy: He had to have characters rather than just gag a day stuff without characters.

36:30

Jimmy: He had to call it a certain thing. Jimmy: It's unbelievable the amount of limitations he has, and he just launches into it.

36:38

Jimmy: Clearly, this is Tolkien-esque, I think, is that I'm just gonna start and figure it out, you know?

36:46

Jimmy: October 3rd, Patty is walking down the street smiling.

36:50

Jimmy: She sings to herself, little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.

36:56

Jimmy: Then she punches a little boy right in the eye and says to herself, just as happy, that's what little girls are made of.

37:04

Jimmy: Because we get to day two and Charlie Brown's nowhere to be seen and here we have Patty slugging a guy in the eye, 1950s.

37:13

Jimmy: At this point, Peanuts is pretty much punk rock.

37:16

Michael: Yeah. Michael: It's bizarre also the fact that he doesn't name the other characters for a while.

37:23

Michael: Right. Michael: I mean, that's the first thing you got to do is say hi, Patty, but no, he goes, because I wrote this down, October 26th, Patty gets named.

37:32

Jimmy: October 26th, so we're almost a month into the strap.

37:35

Michael: Yes. Michael: Snoopy gets named November 10th.

37:38

Michael: Shermie doesn't get named till December 18th.

37:42

Michael: You know, his first year. Jimmy: It takes a while to come up with the name Shermie.

37:45

Jimmy: I mean, that's a solid name. Michael: Yeah.

37:48

Michael: So really, it's all very puzzling.

37:51

Michael: So is it maybe possible that these were printed out of order?

37:56

Michael: Didn't he, the way he intended? Jimmy: No, because he actually numbers them.

37:59

Jimmy: If you look at the Phanagraphics books, they are numbered by hand by him.

38:04

Jimmy: Not by date, but by strip number.

38:07

Harold: And they look like they are indeed in order, that the syndicate didn't bother shifting them.

38:12

Jimmy: Well, why would they? Jimmy: Because there's no characters at all.

38:14

Jimmy: Like, I mean, he's really trying to figure out not just, you know, he's just trying to figure out the form.

38:20

Jimmy: He had never done a strip.

38:22

Harold: Yeah, this was before. Harold: Now, I don't know.

38:24

Harold: Again, like, we don't know. Harold: Maybe there's something historically that maybe he had made 12 submissions in the Venture Strip.

38:32

Harold: I mean, I've never heard about that. Harold: But it sounds like he was trying to submit stuff up until now.

38:37

Jimmy: This was not the first idea that he's not the first idea, but I wonder if it's the first he showed.

38:42

Harold: They actually sent out to send it. Harold: Yeah, maybe because that's that's three years and he so wanted to be syndicated.

38:47

Harold: Maybe he was biding his time. Jimmy: I mean, yeah, I'm not sure either.

38:50

Jimmy: So, you know, but here we are on day two, we still have we have no characters, we have no names except Charlie Brown, but we do have three great themes.

38:57

Jimmy: We have an aggressive female. Jimmy: We have everybody's Charlie Brown and we hate that we have these kids are cruel.

39:03

Jimmy: So he did. Harold: You know, what was that?

39:06

Harold: Self-deluded. Harold: She's swapping this this Charmian in it and say, I don't know if it's Charmian Charmian is a Charlie Brown.

39:13

Harold: We can't exactly tell who this character is that she's hitting.

39:16

Jimmy: Maybe she maybe he's never seen again. Harold: Maybe she kills them.

39:22

Harold: But yeah, just the fact that she's saying little girls are made of sugar and spice.

39:26

Harold: Everything nice. Harold: That's what little girls are made of. Harold: And then in the middle of that, she's she's kicking hitting this kid in the eye and he's he's wounded.

39:32

Jimmy: He has a black eye.

39:34

Jimmy: So this was so we know he didn't know who how he was going to talk about it.

39:40

Jimmy: You know who he was going to use as his mouthpiece, but he knew what he wanted to talk about.

39:43

Michael: Yeah, because we go have he actually does I mean, right away, this is sort of consistent with her personality, right?

39:52

Michael: It's pretty mean, right? Jimmy: One thing it's just saying just along the lines of talking about Patty is it as you read the first few months, it could easily become peanuts could become a romantic comedy about Shermie and Patty with Charlie Brown as a third wheel.

40:10

Jimmy: Yeah, it could easily have gone that way. Harold: Did not.

40:14

Jimmy: Yeah, thankfully. Jimmy: But the next day, we have one of the great days probably in what in world culture.

40:23

Jimmy: We have the first appearance of a little dog that eventually becomes Snoopy.

40:28

Jimmy: What do we think about the gag guys? Michael: Cute.

40:31

Michael: It's all cute. Michael: And that's all he was going for here.

40:35

Michael: It's not particularly funny. Michael: I'm going to be keeping an eye on Snoopy because he mutates rather quickly into the Snoopy we know.

40:50

Michael: I think in two years, it will be very recognizably Snoopy.

40:55

Michael: And I'm trying to watch, trying to follow what I think is Schulz's mental process.

41:03

Harold: That's huge. Harold: I mean, just for the people who don't have the strip in front of them, the number three strip is Snoopy walking along happily on a sidewalk.

41:12

Harold: It has this very tall flower that we don't know how or why there's this flower sticking through his collar.

41:19

Jimmy: Which for years I thought was coming out of the top of his head.

41:22

Harold: I did too. Harold: Very clearly tucks it into the, if you're looking, into that little collar thing.

41:30

Harold: I hadn't noticed that either. Harold: So somebody must have put it in there in this non surreal world of Snoopy.

41:36

Harold: Someone put it in, but Snoopy is happy that he has this flower.

41:39

Harold: And then Patty is up against, inside a house, right outside the sidewalk, watering her flowers.

41:45

Harold: And she waters Snoopy's flower, which then makes it wilt and fall onto the ground when Snoopy's unhappy.

41:51

Jimmy: And that's the whole gang. Jimmy: And one thing I would like to say, if you're listening out there and you want to follow along, you don't have to buy the Phantographics books, although I highly encourage them because they're beautiful and they have fantastic introductions and Phantographics should be rewarded for putting those books out.

42:07

Jimmy: They're remarkable. Jimmy: But they're also on gocomics.com.

42:11

Jimmy: You can read all of Peanuts. Jimmy: And they're also now doing a version called Peanuts Begins, which has these strips, but in color.

42:19

Jimmy: And if you're a purist, I'm sure you're probably screaming into the void.

42:22

Jimmy: But I got to tell you, they look really nice in color.

42:24

Jimmy: So anyway, so you can find them for free at gocomics.com.

42:28

Harold: Another thing with a little Snoopy comic here is, you know, this is Schulz showing kind of his sensitive side, those small little moments, talking about how others can inadvertently ruin your joy.

42:39

Harold: You know, Patty doesn't mean to be pouring water and ruining Snoopy's day, but she did.

42:44

Harold: Correct. Harold: And that seems to be another theme of Schulz is already getting set up.

42:49

Jimmy: Already getting set up. Michael: It's amazing. Harold: It's a unique voice.

42:53

Michael: But Snoopy is still recognizably a dog, even though dogs don't have little question marks coming out of their heads.

42:59

Jimmy: Yeah, but you would see that.

43:02

Michael: Pretty much dog-like. Harold: Right. Jimmy: October 5th, a disconsolate Patty is walking in the rain.

43:10

Jimmy: She says to herself, rain, rain, rain, rain.

43:14

Jimmy: In panel two, Shermie is walking towards Patty, holding an umbrella.

43:18

Jimmy: The next panel, Patty is walking away.

43:21

Jimmy: But now she is holding that same umbrella.

43:24

Jimmy: Panel four, Shermie is now the disconsolate one and says to himself, rain, rain, rain, rain.

43:33

Jimmy: October 6th, Patty is watering a flower in a flower pot as Snoopy sniffs it.

43:40

Jimmy: Over the course of three panels, it grows several feet.

43:45

Harold: Two days later, Snoopy, there's probably the first surreal element in the strip where Patty is again watering a flower and Snoopy is smelling it and loving it.

43:54

Harold: But it grows so fast, it grows out of smelling range and Snoopy can't smell the flower anymore because it's now like three feet high.

44:02

Jimmy: Yeah, we're looking at these. Jimmy: The day before is just simply kids saying the word rain, rain, rain and crossing each other and Patty steals Shermie's umbrella and he says rain, rain, rain.

44:15

Jimmy: It is the most minimalist thing. Harold: And we don't know, did he get through it?

44:20

Michael: She's evil. Harold: Well, did she take it or did Shermie give it out of obligation?

44:25

Michael: No, she took it. Jimmy: Well, but that's a masterful use of the art of cartooning, right?

44:29

Jimmy: Because you guys can have that conversation between the panels.

44:33

Jimmy: And then follow that up the next day with this bizarre flower thing.

44:36

Jimmy: He's into long flowers. Jimmy: You thought that might be his thing.

44:39

Harold: That was second group, yeah.

44:43

Jimmy: October 7th, Charlie Brown and Shermie are standing under a sign that reads, Watch out for children.

44:49

Jimmy: They look to their left. Jimmy: They look to their right.

44:52

Jimmy: And then walk away with Charlie Brown saying, Let's leave.

44:56

Jimmy: I don't think any are coming. Jimmy: And the next day, I think, is the first strip where I actually laughed out loud.

45:03

Jimmy: It's two kids standing under sign. Jimmy: The sign says, Watch out for children.

45:08

Jimmy: And then Shermie says to Charlie Brown in the last panel, I don't think they're coming.

45:13

Jimmy: October 18th. Jimmy: Shermie is sitting at a little child's lemonade style stand.

45:20

Jimmy: Only he's selling root beer. Jimmy: And he has a sign on the front that reads, Root Beer for Sale.

45:26

Jimmy: In panel two, we see Charlie Brown behind a similar booth.

45:30

Jimmy: Only his says, Flowers for Sale.

45:32

Jimmy: In panel three, we see Patty at her booth.

45:35

Jimmy: And it says, Lemonade for Sale.

45:37

Jimmy: And in panel four, we see Snoopy. Jimmy: And his booth says, Bones for Sale.

45:43

Michael: This is the first one that I think could conceivably be a slightly later Peanuts maybe.

45:50

Michael: This gag would have worked, you know. Jimmy: That could work at any point in the series.

45:53

Michael: Well, I think I was looking for the first sign that Snoopy is not just a dog.

45:59

Michael: So I was thinking, OK, well, he's sitting there smiling.

46:03

Michael: So clearly a dog wouldn't do that. Michael: But then again, they could have.

46:08

Michael: They made the booth and they sat him down and he's sitting.

46:12

Michael: So if they say sit and he sits there, then.

46:16

Jimmy: Or it's a Calvin and Hobbs style thing and Snoopy maybe.

46:19

Harold: You can take it anywhere you want, because, you know, it looks like whoever made these booths, they were all made by the same person who was it.

46:31

Harold: To me, this is actually a daring strip to end this little thing.

46:36

Harold: It's standing up for smallness and gentleness.

46:40

Harold: And I mean, one of the terms that always struck with me, it's such a strange term.

46:44

Harold: You said, I wanted to prove that there was a market for innocence.

46:48

Harold: And this strip kind of embodies that.

46:51

Harold: But with an intelligence behind it, again, I don't know anybody else who would have done this gag.

46:56

Harold: 1950, even though it's not this psychological strip or not eggs, but he's just taking advantage of this incredibly cute dog design he's created.

47:10

Harold: And that he doesn't mind adding little hints of surrealism in the strip.

47:15

Harold: It's just a norm for him from the very beginning.

47:18

Jimmy: And I promise you all now that we have now given bones for sale, more thought than Charles Schulz every day.

47:28

Jimmy: October 23rd, Shermie and Patty are playing a game of checkers.

47:32

Jimmy: Patty looks happy and says, Yes, sir, this is a real game of skill.

47:37

Jimmy: In panel two, Shermie looks contemplative.

47:39

Jimmy: In panel three, he smiles. Jimmy: He's found a good checkers move.

47:43

Jimmy: Ha, he says. Jimmy: In panel four, Patty tips over the board in frustration and says, Luck, luck, luck.

47:50

Jimmy: It's all a matter of luck. Jimmy: Oh, I think we have a little checkers game between Patty and Shermie.

47:59

Jimmy: And this is something that ends up getting recycled years later.

48:02

Jimmy: In a checkers match between I think, or no, it's a marbles game between Charlie Brown and Lucy.

48:12

Jimmy: That's another thing that I think it'd be interesting to talk about right now.

48:14

Jimmy: We're talking about four characters, two of which are not famous quintessential Peanuts characters.

48:21

Jimmy: Linus is years away. Jimmy: Lucy is years away.

48:24

Jimmy: Schroeder doesn't happen yet.

48:26

Jimmy: It's amazing how many of the elements that we think of as classic Peanuts just are not in these strips.

48:33

Michael: One element, he always had a younger kid.

48:37

Jimmy: Yes. Michael: A slightly younger, and in this case, when he started, it was Charlie Brown.

48:41

Jimmy: Charlie Brown. Jimmy: I never thought of it that way, but you're right.

48:44

Jimmy: Yeah, that's really interesting. Jimmy: I wonder what he was getting out of that, if it was just the fact that there was a power struggle he could play off, there would be kids who were clearly superior, and he could have a little guy.

48:55

Jimmy: But Charlie Brown is not shown as the loser all the time.

49:02

Jimmy: He also can be a wise guy at times, he could be a romantic rival for Shermie.

49:08

Harold: He comes out on top. Jimmy: Right, yeah, several times.

49:12

Jimmy: October 30th, Shermie and Patty present Charlie Brown with an empty plate.

49:17

Jimmy: Shermie happily says, Happy birthday, Charlie Brown.

49:20

Jimmy: Charlie Brown replies, Well, in panel two, he looks at the empty plate.

49:25

Jimmy: Don't I get to blow out any candles? Jimmy: In panel three, Patty replies, We don't know how old you are.

49:31

Jimmy: So we left them off. Jimmy: Charlie Brown asks, Where's the cake?

49:36

Jimmy: In panel four, Shermie answers, We weren't even sure it was your birthday, so we didn't bring one.

49:41

Jimmy: October 30th is a non-gag, and I think it's one of the best ones, where they give Charlie Brown an empty plate for his birthday, because they weren't sure if it even was his birthday.

49:54

Harold: Why do you call that a non-gag? Harold: That baffles me.

49:57

Jimmy: I guess what I mean by a non-gag, I don't mean it as a pejorative.

50:02

Jimmy: I mean it as kind of like the absolute minimalist reduction of what would qualify, because I don't think it's a guffawable gag, but I still think it's one of the funniest.

50:13

Harold: Well, in general, I don't think it's a guffawable gag.

50:15

Harold: I do think his stuff is very minimal.

50:17

Jimmy: Oh, and I guess what I'm saying is sometimes the more minimal it goes, the more I like it.

50:23

Jimmy: Because I do think there are interesting timing things that he does in Peanuts, because it's four panels, that he places sometimes the joke not in the last panel.

50:33

Jimmy: He gets to the point where he'll place the joke in the second or third panel, and then there's a double, a reaction joke, or something later.

50:41

Jimmy: I think it's really interesting. Jimmy: That's something I never saw in any other strip.

50:47

Jimmy: If Michael is talking about tracking Snoopy, that's one of the things I kind of want to track.

50:50

Harold: It's funny, because I mean, that strip you're talking about could be a Marx's course.

50:54

Michael: The reaction is in the last panel, reacting to the joke in the third panel.

50:58

Jimmy: Right, exactly. Jimmy: Which I don't know, is that something?

51:01

Jimmy: We were talking possibly something like Skippy?

51:04

Jimmy: Would that happen when you're reading Nancy backwards?

51:09

Jimmy: Was that something they were doing in Nancy? Michael: My theory on that, by the way, is that Nancy is actually funnier if you read it backwards.

51:21

Jimmy: And that's why some people, I guess, would say it's the perfect comic strip.

51:25

Harold: Which way? Jimmy: And it's just as entertaining.

51:27

Jimmy: I like that.

51:30

Harold: Looks pretty good. Jimmy: November 7th.

51:33

Jimmy: Charlie Brown is disciplining Snoopy.

51:36

Jimmy: Charlie Brown says, You don't seem to realize that I'm the boss in this house.

51:40

Jimmy: What I say goes, see? Jimmy: We hear a voice from off panel.

51:44

Jimmy: Charlie! Jimmy: Charlie Brown! Jimmy: Charlie Brown walks away sheepishly.

51:49

Jimmy: Excuse me, I think that's my mother.

51:52

Jimmy: Snoopy smiles. Jimmy: Going to November 7th, there are all kinds of peanuts sins.

52:00

Jimmy: When you think of peanuts, I think you think, oh, there's definitely no adults.

52:03

Jimmy: And Charlie Brown is always called Charlie Brown.

52:06

Jimmy: But right there, November 7th, we have an offscreen adult voice, and he's just called Charlie.

52:11

Jimmy: And then Charlie. Jimmy: And then Charlie Brown after that, yeah.

52:15

Jimmy: But that seems so wrong. Jimmy: At one point in the Charlie Brown Christmas, Lucy says, look, Charlie.

52:20

Jimmy: And every time that happens, it's just such a wrong note to me.

52:24

Jimmy: Really? Jimmy: Yeah, who calls him Charlie? Michael: This is actually one of my Snoopy seems to understand English jokes because he is smiling.

52:34

Michael: It's kind of the irony here. Harold: Yeah, you could definitely, definitely assume that Snoopy knows more than you expect the dog to.

52:42

Harold: The other thing is Snoopy's, this is the one time where the drawing is inconsistent.

52:46

Harold: Snoopy is huge in the first panel. Harold: And then he shrinks.

52:50

Harold: Schulz is usually so good about that.

52:53

Harold: That's the thing. Jimmy: Actually, in the head shape is even a little different.

52:56

Jimmy: That's interesting. Jimmy: Very, very interesting.

53:00

Jimmy: November 9th, Charlie Brown and Patty are talking.

53:04

Jimmy: Charlie Brown says, The future frightens me.

53:07

Jimmy: Patty replies, I don't see why.

53:10

Jimmy: You're young and full of life. Jimmy: Patty continues, You'll probably live for another 60 years.

53:17

Jimmy: Charlie Brown says, That's what frightens me.

53:22

Jimmy: What do we think about November 9th, Michael?

53:25

Michael: I think this is a brilliant, I mean, that's just like, none other character would say that line.

53:32

Michael: I mean, this is clearly a Charlie Brown lie.

53:35

Michael: But this proto Charlie Brown doesn't seem that depressed and paranoid and neurotic.

53:44

Michael: So it's, I think Schulz is starting to get a handle on the character.

53:49

Jimmy: Yeah, to me, this is the one that you could, he could redraw in 1965, he could redraw in 1975, he could redraw in 1990, and it would always feel like Peanuts.

53:58

Harold: Yeah, yeah. Harold: It's kind of supposed to war in security, we have not seen this type of thought culture.

54:05

Jimmy: And I think there's a lot to be saying about that, him defining, or whether defining that zeitgeist or catching that zeitgeist, but Peanuts in the 50s, this version of Peanuts in the 50s just start clicking and going together.

54:21

Harold: Yeah, it really is remarkable how Schulz does line up with what's going on and he kind of leads the way in so many different ways in pop culture that we think he hadn't seen before.

54:31

Harold: I mean, he represents this fresh shift from the urban to the suburban, you know?

54:36

Harold: And all of these early strips were drawn by guys in the city, and they're showing the city.

54:41

Harold: Now this is kind of a different world.

54:44

Michael: So Harold, that was going to be one of my points.

54:47

Michael: Do you confirm it? Michael: I think this might be the first suburban kid strip.

54:53

Harold: That's the way I look at it. Harold: It's either the rural or urban.

54:56

Harold: And then this, yeah, I would say that that's, there might be the exception, but in terms of the popular strips, this is reflecting all of these people who are moving.

55:06

Harold: You know, the GIs are back, and their baby boom is just about to start.

55:10

Harold: This is a perfect time. Harold: Maybe when it starts five years early, we had these little tiny kids in 1950.

55:15

Harold: He's just right on a major movement that was going on in the United States.

55:21

Jimmy: It may have been even the type of thing that some of these young parents were reading this strip to the kids when the kids were very young, and then the kids, seeing themselves as the parents sharing it with the kids, and then the kids began to identify with these characters, because clearly the baby boom and Gen X, too, were identified with these characters in a huge way.

55:40

Harold: And I've always been kind of baffled about different people looking at peanuts and saying, well, these are little kids saying adult things.

55:45

Harold: I never, as a kid, saw that. Harold: I just said, these are little kids saying the things that I'm thinking that nobody else is saying.

55:51

Jimmy: Right. Jimmy: Shultz, the one thing, I did a comic book for those that you know, called Amelia Rolls for three years and ran for eight volumes.

55:59

Jimmy: And the one thing I kept trying to always remember is that there's really no blurring between the kid world and the adult world.

56:05

Jimmy: A kid lives in the adult world, and an adult impacts the kid world.

56:09

Jimmy: And Peanuts is that. Jimmy: You know, it understood that kids have real thoughts and real fears that were no less valid or no less deep and profound than any adult.

56:20

Jimmy: In some ways more because the kid wasn't worried about a bill or whether they had a new car.

56:26

Jimmy: It's an existential fear or worry that a kid has.

56:30

Jimmy: And the fact that he gave voice to that in 1950, it's mind-blowing.

56:36

Michael: Well, part of it, I think the suburban setting is important in this case too, because if these were out on a farm, they'd be working all day.

56:46

Michael: And if they're in the city, they'd be running with a bunch of kids and playing practical jokes.

56:52

Michael: But they sit on the sidewalk and there's nothing to do.

56:56

Michael: That's why they watch so much TV. Michael: There's just nothing to do out in the suburbs.

57:00

Jimmy: Right. Jimmy: It's really interesting to look at it that way.

57:02

Harold: And there's no imminent threats to that.

57:06

Jimmy: They have the luxury to be angsty like Charlie Brown.

57:09

Harold: Yeah, everything becomes smaller and more intimate.

57:13

Harold: Their experiences are smaller, but their feelings are no less.

57:16

Harold: Right. Jimmy: Well, think about this. Jimmy: I mean, my dad grew up, let's say, 15 years previous to this.

57:22

Jimmy: When he was Charlie Brown's age, he was working in a coal mine.

57:26

Jimmy: That's, you know, that's... Jimmy: No, I would say when he was Charlie, like eight.

57:31

Jimmy: But we was eight, yes, absolutely eight. Harold: A breaker boy.

57:35

Harold: Yeah, that changes everything in terms of, you know, the experience that people are bringing to reading these strips.

57:42

Harold: The child is revered in this baby boom era, and the child, you know, we're finding a whole focus on children around this time because that's what people are doing.

57:58

Harold: And it's in these new settings that all the edges have been taken off.

58:03

Jimmy: November 13th, Patty and Snoopy open the door to see Charlie Brown.

58:08

Jimmy: He's arrived and is wearing a winter coat. Jimmy: Patty says, Well, Charlie Brown, come on in.

58:14

Jimmy: This is a surprise. Jimmy: Just hang your coat anywhere and come into the living room.

58:18

Jimmy: How have you been? Jimmy: The two friends walk away and we see Charlie Brown has hung his coat on Snoopy's snow.

58:26

Jimmy: Hey, November 13th, Snoopy looks like he lives with Patty.

58:31

Jimmy: When is it established that Snoopy is Charlie Brown's dog?

58:34

Jimmy: I think it does happen.

58:37

Harold: Charlie Brown is scolding Snoopy, and that we just talked about is the first time it hinted that it could be him because he's in Charlie Brown's house.

58:45

Jimmy: Right, but the next time we see something that could imply ownership, there's Patty with Snoopy.

58:52

Harold: Yeah, Charles Schulz maybe has not decided.

58:56

Jimmy: Is it Patty's dog? Jimmy: Is it a neighborhood dog? Michael: I don't know.

58:58

Jimmy: But I love Charlie Brown in a sports coat. Jimmy: I think that is just a snazzy look.

59:03

Jimmy: And a point for the people doing Peanuts Begins in color, because it actually does make it slightly funnier.

59:10

Jimmy: See his beautiful nice sports coat.

59:13

Michael: It's a tan. Jimmy: It's a camel.

59:17

Michael: And Patty's being a decent human being in this one.

59:21

Jimmy: Which is also interesting because Schulz, you could just say maybe he doesn't know the characters, or maybe he's trying to go for something a little deeper.

59:29

Jimmy: Daisy May is always Daisy May, right?

59:31

Michael: Well, that's the thing. Michael: I mean, most strips, I would think most funny strips sort of pace one or two personality traits on each character.

59:41

Harold: Right. Michael: So this is the guy who eats hamburgers and blah, blah, blah.

59:45

Michael: And he's always borrowing money. Michael: Schulz didn't do that.

59:49

Michael: So that's when you're talking about Linus. Michael: I think Linus is the most complicated character in Western literature.

59:56

Jimmy: I think you're right. Michael: Because you cannot describe him in any short way.

1:00:00

Jimmy: But you're always aware that it's Linus.

1:00:03

Michael: Yeah. Michael: And so Patty has other sides.

1:00:06

Michael: She's not just the nasty one. Jimmy: And that's a major breakthrough.

1:00:11

Harold: All people have goodness and badness baked into them.

1:00:15

Harold: And he's not asking you to type them and prejudge them.

1:00:22

Harold: That's an interesting aspect. Harold: They just are.

1:00:25

Harold: And I don't know how he does that, except maybe he does mix up the different angles of them, and he doesn't segue.

1:00:31

Harold: Here's Charlie Brown being illiterate.

1:00:34

Harold: Here's Charlie Brown being shy. Harold: Here's insecure, confident.

1:00:38

Jimmy: And it's amazing because it makes it a real person.

1:00:42

Jimmy: November 14th, three wordless panels of Shermie and Charlie Brown sitting at the curb.

1:00:49

Jimmy: They looked ejected. Jimmy: In panel four, Shermie says, Yep, well, that's the way it goes.

1:00:58

Jimmy: That is a minimal non-gag.

1:01:00

Jimmy: That's a non-gag. Harold: This was a bold little bit for Schulz to have.

1:01:04

Michael: Yeah, brilliant. Jimmy: Absolutely.

1:01:07

Jimmy: And to know that you already have so little real estate in people's time, in the paper, and to go that small is really bold.

1:01:19

Jimmy: You gotta love it. Michael: Well, it wouldn't be funny if he explained what happened.

1:01:24

Jimmy: No. Michael: In the first panel.

1:01:27

Michael: Like, well, we lost the ball game or anything.

1:01:30

Jimmy: Right. Jimmy: Yeah, but you know what?

1:01:32

Jimmy: Interestingly, I could see just a month earlier him doing that.

1:01:36

Jimmy: Having the first panel be, we lost the ball game.

1:01:39

Jimmy: Two panels of silence. Harold: That's just the way it goes.

1:01:42

Harold: Yeah. Harold: It definitely messes around with timing.

1:01:45

Harold: This early. Jimmy: Yes. Harold: In a strip. Harold: No, had this been done before?

1:01:48

Harold: Had he ever seen this done before? Harold: Maybe not.

1:01:50

Jimmy: You know what? Jimmy: It's interesting that you talk about.

1:01:53

Jimmy: It works purely because it's a comic strip.

1:01:56

Harold: No, you're right. Harold: It's a pure comic strip.

1:01:58

Harold: This joke only lives in the comic strip world.

1:02:02

Michael: Okay, but let's keep an eye on this. Michael: This is what they call a wallpaper strip.

1:02:06

Harold: Yeah. Michael: Where did that start?

1:02:09

Michael: Was that common in comic strips?

1:02:11

Michael: Wallpaper strip, as I believe it, is where the first several panels are exactly the same.

1:02:17

Michael: Right. Michael: You can photocopy them. Michael: Right.

1:02:20

Jimmy: Purely for timing. Jimmy: And it's a strength of comics because you can't in a film cut into the same moment.

1:02:26

Jimmy: So this is essentially three identical pictures of Shermie and Charlie Brown sitting on a curb.

1:02:32

Jimmy: But because it's in three separate panels, it's three separate moments.

1:02:35

Jimmy: You couldn't do that in a movie. Michael: No. Harold: It would just look wrong.

1:02:37

Jimmy: It would just look totally wrong. Jimmy: Or unnoticeable.

1:02:40

Harold: Action. Harold: How long would they have to run that for that to work?

1:02:45

Harold: And then people would be… Jimmy: And it would still be one long moment.

1:02:47

Jimmy: It wouldn't be three individual moments. Harold: And people would still go, what just happened?

1:02:52

Harold: Was that supposed to… Harold: They wouldn't even ask themselves if that was supposed to be funny.

1:02:54

Harold: They'd just be puzzled. Jimmy: Exactly.

1:02:59

Jimmy: November 25th, Charlie Brown is speaking with Snoopy.

1:03:02

Jimmy: They both look sad. Jimmy: Charlie Brown says, So long, old pal, I'm going to miss you.

1:03:08

Jimmy: Charlie Brown continues, But don't be sad, try to keep your chin up.

1:03:12

Jimmy: It won't be for long. Jimmy: In panel four, we see Charlie Brown tucked into his bed.

1:03:17

Jimmy: In fact, he says, I'll see you in the morning.

1:03:22

Jimmy: I will talk about the November 25th strip since we're talking non-gags.

1:03:27

Harold: I want to ask a Snoopy question, Michael.

1:03:29

Harold: Did you have any notes on the 15th of November for Snoopy's development?

1:03:33

Michael: Yes, he's definitely understanding. Harold: That's maybe the first time we could say for sure, Schulz is suggesting he understands exactly what you say.

1:03:45

Jimmy: Yeah, that's really, really interesting.

1:03:50

Jimmy: Right in that panel, you can see that Snoopy.

1:03:52

Jimmy: It's still radically off-model compared to the famous Snoopy, but I would be able to identify that as Snoopy.

1:03:57

Harold: Yeah, it's a good point. Michael: But he's definitely Charlie Brown's dog here.

1:04:03

Jimmy: Yes, absolutely. Jimmy: When you draw Charlie Brown, if you're going to sit and draw Charlie Brown as he famously appears, let's say from like 1965 onward or whatever, you can look, his nose and his eyes are almost connected.

1:04:15

Jimmy: They're so close together in the center of his face.

1:04:18

Jimmy: It's like the secrets of making him look like Charlie Brown.

1:04:21

Jimmy: If you look at these early ones, there's a football field between his eyes.

1:04:26

Harold: Which was something you were taught in drawing schools, you want to make someone look young.

1:04:33

Harold: The wide-set eyes was one of the things to do.

1:04:37

Harold: Although interestingly, they also say make the eyes lower set on the head, he doesn't do that.

1:04:44

Harold: It's a strange mixture of an adult and a child-like feel to them.

1:04:50

Jimmy: Which is the strip too. Jimmy: It's amazing to me how fractal Peanuts is.

1:04:55

Jimmy: You can look at that first strip and extrapolate so much of the later stuff from it.

1:05:01

Jimmy: It's strange that you see that again and again, that he really knew his themes and he knew what he wanted to talk about so early on.

1:05:11

Harold: So much of him is in the strip from the very beginning.

1:05:16

Harold: This is what I call a non-joke. Jimmy: This is a non-joke.

1:05:20

Jimmy: So I wanted to ask you guys, is this a meta-commentary?

1:05:23

Jimmy: Like I'll see you tomorrow, meaning the comic strip will be here tomorrow?

1:05:27

Michael: No. Jimmy: It's just him saying good night to Snoopy.

1:05:30

Harold: Well, he's saying I'll see you in the morning and he's in morning and evening paper, so I would think that's not a meta.

1:05:35

Jimmy: So it's literally just him saying good night to Snoopy.

1:05:38

Jimmy: That's the entire strip. Michael: But Snoopy is really sad about it.

1:05:42

Michael: Yeah. Jimmy: There's no joke though.

1:05:45

Jimmy: There's literally no attempt at humor. Harold: I would love to try to get inside Schulz's mind and say, well, why did you do this?

1:05:53

Jimmy: I love it. Harold: It adds this.

1:05:56

Harold: All it does to me is it adds importance to the relationship between Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

1:06:03

Harold: Charlie Brown would choose to have this conversation with the dog.

1:06:07

Harold: The little dog said simply because he's going to bed and you won't see it for a while.

1:06:12

Harold: Right. Harold: Then that's important. Harold: Because that's all I can get at it otherwise.

1:06:17

Jimmy: But the other strange thing about it is there's a location shift because it's just Charlie Brown and Snoopy in the void, the peanuts void where there's no background at all talking to each other.

1:06:27

Jimmy: Then in the last panel, Charlie Brown suddenly tucked in in his bedroom in bed.

1:06:31

Michael: Right, in his pajamas. Jimmy: His pajamas still talking to Snoopy.

1:06:35

Harold: I guess the only gag here is maybe what he was thinking was, he's saying, so long, old pal, I'm going to miss you in the first panel.

1:06:43

Harold: And so you don't read anything else here. Harold: The assumption, she's going away.

1:06:47

Harold: That's got to be the gag, right? Harold: That Schulz was thinking, I'm going to set this thing up where it looks like there's a really sad goodbye.

1:06:54

Jimmy: Well, it's really interesting though, because he has this spare style, but he's still experimenting within it.

1:07:01

Jimmy: But some of these panels, it's unbelievable how stark they are.

1:07:04

Jimmy: No background whatsoever. Jimmy: And then some of the others where it'll put a little more detail in.

1:07:11

Harold: He says Skippy by Percy Crosby was an influence of his.

1:07:14

Harold: It's such a forgotten strip today. Harold: And I think it's just because it hasn't been out there.

1:07:19

Harold: People haven't been able to see it. Harold: What people have said about it is remarkable.

1:07:23

Harold: It's like this forgotten piece of cartoon history that influenced Schulz.

1:07:27

Harold: And often Crosby would not have a lot of background element.

1:07:32

Harold: Or just from a little I've seen, Schulz will often have a panel, even with a background that don't go all the way to the edges of the panels.

1:07:40

Harold: And I think that was something that he might have influenced by Percy Crosby, because Percy's style was much looser than Schulz's, but it focused you in on the characters and the background became super minimalistic.

1:07:54

Harold: And it's almost like it's designed to make you not take it all in.

1:07:58

Jimmy: Right, and I believe that, yeah, very impressionist.

1:08:01

Jimmy: I do believe also is where Schulz got the idea of the kids sitting on the curb, which later becomes in the strip famously the kids philosophizing at the stone wall.

1:08:10

Harold: Yeah, and the fact that the very first strip has them sitting on the curb, that's like an instant.

1:08:16

Harold: I mean, I think Skippy had ended in 1945 and had run for like 20 some years, and there was no more.

1:08:22

Harold: And so he was kind of picking up the mantle.

1:08:25

Jimmy: I definitely think there's an element of that to it.

1:08:27

Jimmy: Oh, and then I like the fact that Patty is a comic book fan.

1:08:32

Jimmy: A few times they mentioned Patty is a comic book fan.

1:08:34

Jimmy: So she's like the cartoonist. Jimmy: She's a manic pixie dream girl for cartoonists.

1:08:38

Jimmy: She's cute, she's mean, and she likes comic books.

1:08:41

Jimmy: Oh, well, how about December 21st? Michael: Oh, we're all the way up there.

1:08:45

Jimmy: Yeah. Jimmy: And what happens on December 21st?

1:08:49

Jimmy: We have the first appearance of the Jagged Striped T-shirt.

1:08:54

Michael: I didn't even notice that. Michael: And I read this like four times in the last month.

1:08:58

Michael: I didn't even notice that. Harold: That's a biggie.

1:09:01

Jimmy: Yeah, and it works. Jimmy: It instantly works.

1:09:04

Harold: Yeah, it's a wonderful little graphic touch. Jimmy: And do you think...

1:09:07

Harold: And all the roundness is Charlie Brown to have those little jaggies, so...

1:09:10

Harold: Right. Jimmy: Yeah, that's true. Jimmy: And you know, this is not my observation.

1:09:13

Jimmy: I think it came from maybe the David Michaela's biography or maybe somewhere else.

1:09:18

Jimmy: Maybe Gary Gross said it. Jimmy: Do you think it's an influence of Crazy Cat?

1:09:21

Jimmy: Crazy Cat's one of the strips that Schulz absolutely adored, you know, considered one of the greatest strips of all time.

1:09:29

Jimmy: And the Jagged Stripe was a theme or a motif, rather, that Harriman used throughout that strip.

1:09:37

Jimmy: I wonder if there's a little... Harold: He was such a student of strips.

1:09:41

Jimmy: I wouldn't put it past him. Harold: Even if it was subconscious, that was something that he saw a lot.

1:09:47

Jimmy: Because again, yeah, again with the idea of picking up the mantle, because I don't think he just wanted to be a cartoonist.

1:09:51

Jimmy: I think from the minute he started, this was what he was going to...

1:09:56

Jimmy: He was going to be great. Harold: He was aspiring to something much, much higher.

1:10:01

Michael: So I'm looking to see if the zigzag shirt is consistent from here on.

1:10:07

Michael: He's wearing a jacket because it's cool. Harold: It's like once he's committed here, he doesn't go back.

1:10:14

Jimmy: And it's so amazing that even without focusing on the details, just seeing that little bit of black, it instantly reads as Charlie Brown.

1:10:22

Jimmy: What is the verdict, Michael? Jimmy: Is it consistent throughout?

1:10:25

Michael: Yeah, except he's wearing a coat. Jimmy: He's wearing a coat, yeah, exactly.

1:10:28

Jimmy: So we wrap it up on the 30th.

1:10:30

Jimmy: There was no Sunday Strip and that is Peanuts 1950, a very short one because it was only a few months.

1:10:37

Jimmy: But guys, I want to just, your general impressions, Michael, why don't you start?

1:10:42

Michael: Good gags. Michael: I mean, I couldn't come up with any of these.

1:10:45

Michael: They're pretty consistently good.

1:10:48

Michael: I mean, the punches are there.

1:10:52

Michael: The last panel punch almost every time. Michael: And I could see where this would become a popular strip, even if it stayed this way, it wouldn't be like epic, right?

1:11:02

Michael: But it would certainly be better than Nancy.

1:11:05

Jimmy: At this early stage, maybe going even to 53 or whatever, it would have like Barnaby style cult following.

1:11:13

Jimmy: People would think of it as better than average, highbrow, great example of the craft.

1:11:19

Harold: Which is amazing when you think about, okay, so we're saying that intellectuals might have made this a darling.

1:11:27

Harold: When he's doing something in probably the most accessible in terms of character and structure and simplicity, you know, that very well may be true.

1:11:39

Harold: I mean, we know that there was no merchandise that's built around this for a while.

1:11:44

Harold: These very minimalist characters to all of a sudden kind of warm their way into people's hearts and minds.

1:11:50

Jimmy: And those characters that did the worming, most of them haven't even appeared yet.

1:11:55

Harold: Right. Harold: Yeah. Harold: Yeah. Harold: We just don't know them well enough to identify with them.

1:11:59

Harold: To me, what I feel all the way through here is Schulz.

1:12:03

Harold: I just have a strong sense of this unique voice behind it.

1:12:07

Harold: But the characters themselves are not yet fully embodying them in ways that I know Charlie Brown, I know Charmaine, I know Patty, even I know Snoopy.

1:12:16

Harold: I probably feel like I know the best at this moment. Jimmy: Spoiler alert for episode, whatever it will be, the last episode of 2000.

1:12:27

Jimmy: I think that's where Schulz ends up. Jimmy: I think he ends up being, I see the last year of Peanuts as just Schulz too.

1:12:33

Jimmy: What are you thinking about? Jimmy: What are your goals from participating in this podcast?

1:12:38

Jimmy: Michael, what are you looking forward to the most?

1:12:41

Michael: I'm curious, is 1951 going to be Snoopy's first thoughts?

1:12:47

Michael: Who's born next? Harold: Yeah, it's just fascinating to hear what you guys are saying about the strip and your unique perspectives on something that we're seeing forming before our eyes and that grew into something that had such a massive impact on the culture.

1:13:06

Harold: Just to see how we weave in our own experiences with this strip and how it might resonate with other people who are listening.

1:13:18

Jimmy: Yeah, for me, the thing that I really got out of just reading these first strips was I just like being in this world again.

1:13:25

Jimmy: You know, it's one of my first memories of something that I was just head over heels in love with.

1:13:30

Jimmy: I'm just a fan of it and I love it.

1:13:33

Jimmy: And these early ones, so many of them are still newish to me and so fresh.

1:13:36

Jimmy: I've only read once or twice in my life.

1:13:40

Jimmy: The later ones I may have read a hundred times or more, but I love that.

1:13:45

Jimmy: And I'm just looking forward to the fact that I get to, you know, visit with Charles Schulz every day while we're doing this podcast.

1:13:53

Jimmy: And now for the big finale, we are each going to pick our favorite strip of 1950.

1:13:58

Jimmy: And then you will go to our social media, which will be at the end of the podcast, and vote for who is right, who has the best peanut strip for 1950.

1:14:08

Jimmy: Harold, you start. Jimmy: What is your pick? Harold: This will be a very popular one.

1:14:12

Harold: But of all of the strips, I had a hard time picking one that really, really did jump out at me.

1:14:18

Harold: But I decided to go with a Snoopy strip that is entirely visual.

1:14:24

Harold: Snoopy is surprised by a little jack-in-the-box that pops up.

1:14:28

Harold: And then the second panel, he gets this mischievous look on his face.

1:14:32

Harold: And the next thing you know, Shroomy is coming up to the close jack-in-the-box, and Snoopy pops out in the final panel.

1:14:38

Harold: Again, it's one of those things where as a gag, it's not the normal way I think someone would tell a strip, that this feels like Charles Schulz to me, but it also feels like Schulz leading up to Peanuts.

1:14:52

Harold: It feels like the little folks things that he was doing, the Saturday Evening Post strip that he was doing.

1:14:58

Harold: And it's a simple thing. Harold: He has beautifully told Snoopy's desire to surprise in this classic early iconic cute smile of him just popping up out of the thing.

1:15:07

Harold: So he's mischievous at the same time, he's guileless when he actually pops up out of the thing.

1:15:13

Harold: He says, I just find it extremely endearing.

1:15:15

Harold: And it is an aspect of Schulz that is easy to get lost.

1:15:19

Harold: I was kind of talking about this kind of the art of the cute, this kind of world of innocence mixed in with all of these deeper thoughts and themes that Schulz did with such integrity.

1:15:31

Harold: And this is just a classic little version of it where he unapologetically is just telling us this simple little little thing yet with these characters.

1:15:40

Harold: It's just darn cute. Jimmy: Michael, what is your pick?

1:15:44

Michael: Well, first of all, Harold's totally wrong. Michael: So I got to go with that November 9.

1:15:56

Michael: The future frightens me strip. Michael: And just because to me the brilliance of Peanuts is not a reflection on the cuteness and adorability of kids.

1:16:11

Michael: It's on how horrible human beings they are, and how horrible life is for them.

1:16:16

Michael: And this is really the first time we see it in full flower.

1:16:21

Jimmy: Yeah, I would have picked that one too.

1:16:24

Jimmy: That was in contention for me.

1:16:27

Jimmy: But since you picked it, I'm going to cop out. Jimmy: I'm going to go with the first one, How I Hate Him.

1:16:32

Harold: Well, that's a smart choice, I think.

1:16:36

Harold: People are voting. Harold: I think that they may win this round.

1:16:39

Jimmy: Guys, this was so much fun. Jimmy: Everybody out there, I really, really thank you for listening to us.

1:16:46

Jimmy: I hope you join us again next week. Jimmy: I'm Jimmy Gownley for Harold Buchholz and Michael Cohen.

1:16:50

Jimmy: Be good. Liz: Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen and Harold Buchholz produced by Liz Sumner.

1:17:00

Liz: Music by Michael Cohen. Liz: Have a wonderful day, and thanks for listening.

1:17:04

Aziza: You blockhead!