1990 Part 1 - Home Again Finnegan

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

Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. This is Unpacking Peanuts, and today we're starting a brand new decade, 1990s, one of my favorite decades. And I couldn't be more excited to be here. Who am I? Well, gosh, I'm your host for the proceedings. My name is Jimmy Gownley. I'm also a cartoonist. I did things like Amelia Rules, Seven Good Reasons Not to Grow Up, The Dumbest Idea Ever. And you can now read my new comic, Tanner Rocks, for free over at gvillcomics.substack.com.

Say hey.

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

Hello.

Well, guys, we are starting a brand new decade. One of my favorites. I don't think at any point in my life did my tastes and interests meet the culture's tastes and interests as it did in these early 1990s. So, you know, unsurprisingly, because I was 18 to 23, 24.

That's a good time to line up with the culture.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm excited to get into this. I was pretty actively reading Peanuts in the 90s. So I'm, yeah, I'm really, really excited to check out these strips. I picked a bunch of them for this first episode. Harold, what are you thinking? What are your thoughts as we start a new decade?

Well, it was interesting. Obviously, we'll be going through these early year strips in this episode. To be honest, as I read these, I felt that this was probably the softest block of strips I've read to date, meaning a lot of stuff just didn't land for me. It's interesting that it is out at the beginning of this new decade. So I'm just going to be interested to see how it plays out throughout the rest of the year.

They're amazing.

Which then goes on to, I believe, Japan and Los Angeles. So what an impact that Peanuts is represented not only in newspaper strips, but this is kind of unprecedented that a comic strip artist is in the Louvre, and is then moving to Japan. That shows this worldwide reach that he has, and that can't be a small part of his life, right?

I would not think so.

What also is going on, they just had the hour-long special. It was called You Don't Look 40, Charlie Brown on CBS in February of this year. There's also, I don't remember this, maybe you guys do, for the 40th birthday, the Super Bowl halftime show.

I do remember this, yep.

It's Peanuts. So let's go back here. So now, he is in Louvre. He is a Commander of Arts and Letters in France. That's not an easy thing to do. No. He is the featured part of the most watched television show in the United States for the Super Bowl halftime show. That is amazing. That's just in a period of a few months. A few months. As far as where he is in the newspapers, his editor and publisher did publish a poll that was right around the time of the strips we're reading.

That's amazing. The Lou thing is mind-blowing. In the documentary that PBS did, the American Masters documentary, Lynn Johnson tells a story about how she would tease him and say, oh, you know, I made 2000 newspapers. I'm catching up to you, Sparky. And he would say, I'll see you in the Louv.

It's actually not that hard to get into the Louv. Oh, really?

Tell us how.

Oh, you just pay like what? How much? Well, now, I, yeah, there's a line.

There's a line. Oh, that's a bummer.

Yeah, I think she's got to pass through the line.

Does like, do you ever see the line up to reach the top of Mount Everest? Do you ever see the line of people standing?

I think it goes all the way to like India.

Man, Michael, you are on fire today. Do you have a bowl of Snickers snacks? Do you got anything you want to share with us about the early 1990s, Michael, either in Peanuts World or in your own memory?

I don't think I was reading any comic strips at this period. Anyway, yeah, of course, this is all new to me. And so until the word started getting out about his impending retirement at the end of the decade, I wasn't really paying any attention to Peanuts.

Well, now we accept that I would imagine when we would discuss the old ones.

Oh, yeah, perennially, and I met Jimmy in this decade in 96. So we were self-publishing comics. So my whole focus was on comic books and comic strips would seem like just kind of something off way over there.

Yeah, I mean, that is something that's worth sort of talking about. The comic strip medium, or world rather, not the medium so much, and the comic book world are very far apart. And I think the 90s, at least on the independent side, when we were doing the self-publishing thing, but that was very much, I think, in the moment. It was very much about expanding stories and comics and where they can go into the future. And, you know, comic strips at that point were starting to feel like the past.

Yeah, but your first attempt at Emilia was for a comic strip.

Yeah, yeah, yes, it was. Yeah, yeah, I still have those strips. I think I should dig those up and put them out on Substack or something just for readers. That would be fun for them to see.

Yeah, it's a whole different thing, but it is Emilia.

Yeah, very strange.

And one thing I should mention, there was an award for college cartoonists that Scripps Howard and Schulz kind of helped sponsor in the late 80s, at least, and I'm not sure if how far it went in to later years. But I answered that, and I believe from what I've seen, at least the year following, Schulz was a judge, so it's possible he might have seen my work.

That's really cool.

I remember that contest. I do remember that contest.

It was a super special little moment for the college cartoonists because it was a thing. For those of you maybe younger or those who didn't attend college, it was a thing to have a strip in the newspaper. Some of these larger universities had a daily newspaper, or a Monday through Friday newspaper. So while you're a college student, there were certain guys who were, and women as well, but mostly guys at the time, putting out these comic strips in their college papers.

Yeah, I did a newspaper strip in college, but it was a weekly thing. It was a very small school. And it was actually just my Shades of Grey strip. I tried to turn into a comic strip. It didn't really work at all, but it was fun to do. It was very cool to do, to see it in the newspaper. And it was kind of a big deal. I mean, the other, I remember seeing the, there was like four strips, I think, that were done by students. No, that was really cool.

Well, they're foreign legionaries.

Oh, yes, they are. Sorry, they are the foreign legion. You can tell by their hats.

Yeah, you can always tell anything by their hats.

Hey, speaking of, Harold, do we have an update on any approachable hats?

No, I checked out the Bob Dylan hat and I said no, thank you. Thank you for the option. Yes, I don't think I would look good. Bob, of course, rocks it, but I don't think it's for me. Thank you for the suggestion.

All right. Well, guys, get on it out there. We need an approachable hat.

So I think to the Schulz people, if you're out there listening, Pitch of the Week. There's big money to be had. Turn this strip into a video game. You're a lioness, you have to throw snowballs and knock the little legionnaires off before they overrun the castle.

That's a brilliant idea. I love that our pitches are now branching out into multimedia.

This is great.

I'm sure they're super grateful for all of our ideas.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure.

Just sitting there every Tuesday when it drops. Oh, boy. He was taking notes. We got an intern working on this.

But I think it's a mistake. This strip in particular, I think this cheapens Woodstock. He's not a unique little bird. There's like an infinite amount of clones.

Well, is that different?

There's 22 little birds in here, which is probably maybe a record to have 22 birds in a single panel.

That's a lot. And it's really cool.

How many snowballs are there?

We got six visible.

This reminds me a little bit of the old strip where Linus is ranting somewhat similarly. I can't remember who it is. It was Lucy, I assume, comes up from behind him and hits him with the snowball and says, you'll notice you'll have to use strategy there. So it was fun to see Linus doing kidlike stuff. I noticed that there is some real kidlike activities this year, which I thought was cool and I just love the image of 20-some woodstocks just wandering around.

He used to make much better snow forts than this.

This is kind of weird.

Well, global weirding, that's the best he could get in the 90s. There was a hole in the ozone, Liz. January 5th, Linus and his friend Lydia are sitting in class and we can actually officially say it's Lydia because the strip starts out with her saying, My name is Lydia, but for today, you can call me Snowflake. You can call me Snowflake because there's only one of me in the whole world. And Linus contemplates this for a second and says, I'll have to get back to you on that.

Boy, has she got him flummoxed. He does not know what to do.

Lydia is some sort of relationship genius. One of relationship genius is the right word, but she can certainly keep a boy on the hook.

Yes, I'm glad to see that Lydia made it into the 90s.

Yeah, and there was like we picked three. I can't remember how many there were. Maybe we picked them all.

What part of this do you think is Linus having to ponder?

What do you say to that?

That's one thing I could actually go along with with Lydia. Yes, you are the only one in the whole world.

Yeah, that's true.

Maybe he's imagining what if there were more of them.

Yeah, boy, that could be mind-blowing.

Or also, he's been tortured by quite a few females in various different ways. So maybe he's thinking, well, are you that different?

I love his expression. I haven't seen this a lot, or at least I don't remember it, where he always has the two little ellipses on either side of his eye, but he has one eyebrow that's straight across and the other one is arched. And it's just kind of the thinking, slightly bugged version of Linus.

That's an eyebrow.

Nice cartooning.

It could be a hair.

It's definitely an eyebrow, but yeah, I love that expression. And when you look at how tiny it is, wow, crazy.

Yeah, Lydia drawing that first panel, you know, that's such a cute design.

Lydia is a great character design and could be from any decade. She seems like completely timeless. I could have seen her in 50 strips, you know? She would have fit right in.

Classic hairstyle.

Classic hairstyle. Always love a cartoon character with a hairband. January 17th, we see Snoopy crawling along on his belly in the snow and he's thinking to himself, here's the fierce snow snake sneaking up on a victim. Linus is the victim and he says, just the other day I was reading that there isn't such a thing as a snow snake. And then last panel, Snoopy sneaks away on his belly in the opposite direction.

So Linus was reading the paper and the headline was, there are no snow snakes.

It was a slow news day.

You know, finally, journalism got together and debunked the snow snake myth.

It's like those health food things that say, this product is free of 130 additives. Why did you choose 130? It's free of like 1000 additives.

No, it is not.

870 are actually in it. I don't know. But yeah, this is the classic. And I don't know of another strip that does this or another piece of art that does this where you have a character thinking, and then the other character seems to be knowing what the character is thinking. We see it all the way through Peanuts. But again, there is something strange and magical about the strip that Schulz has set up over the years that breaks all of the rules that everybody else would follow.

Yes, he does. And I really love the drawings of Snoopy crawling through the snow. I think it's really cute. And I love this other one.

A little trauma for an eye when he's looking up at Linus making his comment is really, really fun.

Well, just look at that. I mean, if we're going to get into insane detail, the eye, you know, it's the same drawing except for reversing the angle in the third one. In all three panels of Snoopy, right? But the thing that changes is the eye and that's all it is. Right. The first eye is him being the snake and being, you know, sneaky and determined or whatever it is. Then the next one, he's listening to Linus and, you know, taking that in. And then he slithers away sad.

Well, this sheep looks surprisingly like a cow. He did a cow once. He did moo in the last panel.

That's right.

He did.

Yes, yes, yes.

So what line would we put into Woodstock's mouth in that second panel if we could understand what he said?

That's a good question. Well, you started the exercise, so you come up with one.

Will you be my sheepy?

If you need dialogue for sheep, Harold's your man.

Michael, what do you think about the third panel where you've got Snoopy saying bah and thinking something in the same panel? Does that work well for you?

No, I don't think they're simultaneous.

Does it bother you that it's in the same panel? Like, should there have been a fourth panel or?

Does it bother you?

A little bit. When I was reading it, it seemed a little strange, but...

Should it have been a fourth panel?

I was trying to think about that. I mean, there really maybe isn't a good way to do it. You could be saying, I must be out of my mind before he does it, but then it's too obvious that he's saying bah, so I don't think it works that way. And he says bah, on the third panel, he says, it must be out of my mind, maybe. I mean, I can see this choice, but for some reason, it was odd that Schulz had to let us know what Snoopy is thinking when he applies with that stuff.

I think it's...

It's unusual...

. is what makes it more awkward. If he was able to show clearly that that was a sheep somehow, like I don't know how, and he wouldn't have to do the baa, and if it was just Woodstock asking and then Snoopy just being the sheep, saying, I must be out of my mind.

This is definitely a failure, a sheep failure. No, for the first time, he's not saying bad. I mean, this looks like a moo, the way his mouth is. Bad, his mouth would have to be open wider.

But there's wiggles on the speech balloon so that you get the bah.

Yeah, you really do get the, you know, that is an underrated thing out there changing the way the speech balloon looks or the word balloon. That can totally change how the person reads the dialogue.

I think Schulz is so good at body language of having a character show embarrassment or whatever. And I think maybe what was working against Schulz here is he's got to take the stance of the of the sheep.

Yeah, right.

And so he can't do the body language because he got to look as close as he can to a lamb. And then he has to maybe tell you what he's thinking. I guess the other way you possibly could have done this in a four panel is maybe Snoopy is showing a little disdain or with the idea, but then he gives in in the last one. I mean, that's another way you possibly could have done it. You know, where he's doing it for his friend, but he's embarrassed or thinking it's silly.

Could you imagine if we were Charles Schulz's assistants and we're standing there talking as he's just mailing it?

He's like, get out, out of my sight. What if you just be gone?

What if he's listening? He's really pissed up there.

I think he's probably got better things to do at this time.

January 21st, it's a Sunday. It's a nice looking Sunday. And Charlie Brown and Linus are walking around outside. And Charlie Brown says to Linus, that happened again last night. Of course, I expected it. And they're at the thinking wall now. And Charlie Brown says to Linus, whenever mom and dad come home, as soon as they pull into the driveway, mom says, home again, Finnegan. To which Linus asks, home again, Finnegan? And then Charlie Brown says, grandma used to say it too.

All right, Jimmy, you're the only Irish person here. Is this part of a song?

No, it's not part of the song. It's about coming home. But every time we would pull in from wherever we were going, my mom would say, Home Again Finnegan. And I say it now to this day.

I've never heard it in my life.

Home Again Finnegan. Yeah, now there's so one of the reasons I wanted to bring this up is because, of course, that's weird because we would do it and I still do it to this day. And I'm sure my girls will when they have kids say Home Again Finnegan for God knows what reason. But here's my question. How long was the discussion in the editorial offices that he spelled Finnegan wrong? And he spelled Finnegan wrong multiple times.

Well, is it wrong or this might maybe this is the original spelling?

Or maybe it's just the pronunciation. I mean, he spells it that way to make it have a certain sound.

Well, it looks like maybe he spelled it wrong. No, Finnegan of Home Again Finnegan is...

Well, I think we have to go back to the old Irish. How do I know?

Yeah, how do you know how the traditional Home Again Finnegan is spelled? I don't know.

How do you know cat is spelled C-A-T? It's spelled like Finnegan. F-I-N-N-I-G-A-N. Finnegan.

You're assuming it's not? Wouldn't it be F-I-N-N-E-G-A-N?

No. F-I-N-N-I-G-A-N.

Well, Jimmy, I have to say, if you Google it, it is F-I-N-N-E-G-A-N.

E-G-A-N.

Sorry. Yes, yes, yes, no, I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah.

And if we consult James Joyce, he would agree with that.

Right. So it's from something, right? Can we trace this back to a song or a poem?

Well, the only thing I can think of is the song Finnegan's Wake, which is where Joyce takes the title for the book. And the only thing I could think about why it would relate to, but I have done no research on this despite having said it for 50 years of my life, is, you know, Finnegan wakes up, he dies and then is revived, and then it's a cycle that goes on forever. Coming, you know, going on a trip and coming home, and you say home again, Finnegan, could be that.

Let's ask the guy who was on that plane with you.

For those who don't remember, I once fell asleep on a cross-country flight with my earbud falling on my ear and the song Finnegan's Wake on loop for five and a half hours.

That could do things to you.

Yeah. Let's do Google home again, Finnegan.

Yeah, I'm trying to find it because people are asking this question.

No one's asking this question.

People are wondering.

In the world of Google, everything is collected. If four people asked, it looks like a million people did.

I don't know.

Home again, Finnegan. Yeah, a lot of people are writing little blog posts about it.

Yeah.

It's a thing, but there's reference to this children's poem called To Market, To Market, but it's not in there that I can see. I don't understand why that popped up, but that's when you use Yahoo to search instead of Google. Then there's a Michael Finnegan song or poem, but I don't see the home again part.

This must be like See You Later Alligator for at least my parents' generation. They used to do that, and then there was a song.

It doesn't mean anything. Maybe, I mean, this Michael Finnegan thing, the last thing is there was an old man named Michael Finnegan. Find a little tree and barked his skin again, took off several yards of skin again, poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again.

The Finnegan, begin again.

Maybe home again was a way of saying, go back to the beginning and start over and just one of those things that goes in loops. I don't know.

Well, yeah, and that track tracks with Joyce too, because one of the big features of the book Finnegan's Wake is that it ends in the beginning of a sentence and you have to start over again and you read it forever. So that idea of a completed cycle is somehow connected to Finnegan across all these things.

Thank you noted Joyce Scholar, Jimmy Gownley.

Oh, yeah, you know. I like the way this strip looks. I think he put a lot of effort into it. I love the way the thinking wall looks across the board. Michael, he's keeping it consistent, not changing it to black ink in some panels.

No Zip-A-Tone.

No Zip-A-Tone. Looks really nice.

All the houses in the background. Yeah, this is classic Schultz.

Yeah. And he's doing more of what you call the symbolic panels that are actually starting with dialogue this year, I noticed.

Yeah, you're right. That is interesting.

But it's not like necessary dialogue.

Yeah.

Maybe they're not cutting the two panels anymore.

Oh, that's interesting. It's possible. That was the other thing I saw in the editor publisher. This was the period when people were fighting the syndicates to get their rights back. Was it Cathy? I saw something that she had like an 18-year contract that she was trying to amend.

Oh, wow.

I think the guy, Bill Kean, who did the Family Circus, he got the rights back to his strip from the syndicate. This was definitely a moment when if you wanted to make a move and ask for something or demand something that it was definitely in the zeitgeist, all the cartoonists were talking to each other about this stuff. Who knows? Maybe he did say, okay, if you're going to run the strip, you're going to include that top tier.

Well, the 90s also was when people started coming up with clever things to do, like the Mutt Strip. Instead of having a top tier that was able to jettison, it had a large panel that would run on the left-hand side. That was just an illustration. In Mutt's in particular, he was able to do spectacular things with that one panel, but it was able to be removed. People were definitely experimenting. I have to say though, as I understand it, the syndicate deal was 50-50 split. That's pretty good.

50-50 after syndicate expenses.

Of course.

If you're charging against the sidewalk in front of the building in New York City.

Yeah. Well, all of these deals only work if everyone's being on the up and up.

Yeah. You won't mess with the mob either.

It's run by a big Eastern. January 22nd, Snoopy and Woodstock are atop the doghouse and they're hanging out and Woodstock asked Snoopy a question. Snoopy answers, sure, why not? Then Woodstock flies away and Snoopy says to him, well, put it on and let me see. Then in the last panel, Woodstock arrives with a gigantic stocking cap that is about three times the size of him. Snoopy says to him, yes, it does make you look taller.

Is this his tribute to Dr. Seuss?

That's a definite Seussian hat. You know, I was thinking of another antecedent influence on Woodstock.

What's that?

Ignatz. You know, Ignatz Mouse from Crazy Cat is a tiny, tiny, tiny little character with little dot eyes and stick legs and was a huge influence on Schultz. So I was wondering if maybe he was thinking of Ignatz when he was developing Woodstock.

Yeah, that's interesting. Are there any other tiny characters in comic strips that might have influenced him?

Well, Pogo always had little bugs, little dog bug, walking the little baby bug to school, things like that.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. And there's a gorgeous little dog that was in Bringing Up Father. It was this little black dog with a long little snoot and super designy.

Yeah, yeah. Well, Woodstock looks very cute in that hat. That would be a great Christmas tree ornament. You know, you could just hang them from a bunch of Woodstocks by the by the house.

Is that something you'd consider, Harold?

For an approachable stocking cap that's three times my height, I'd have to get a taller tent. But yeah, I'll consider anything. Yeah. The other thing that stands out here for me is that Woodstock in the hat is looking kind of strangely forlorn. I would think most cartoonists would have chosen to give the bird a big cheesy grin or something. But it makes it funnier when Woodstock is not super proud of this thing that makes him look taller. He's just kind of confused.

It really does make it funnier. There is, and I know Michael and I have talked about this in the past, but there is an element when you have the character smiling, when maybe you're not quite sure that the joke is going to land.

Yeah, it's a real temptation. You know, hey, come along with us. This is fun.

Yeah, right. Exactly. But that looks great. OK, yeah, here we go now. January 25th.

Here we go.

I can't wait to talk about this one. A bunch of randos that we have never seen are standing in line to sharpen their pencils. The first one says, why do we have to stand in line for everything? Then the next one says, what's the hold up? And then the next kid says, probably an overturned vehicle. I mean, he really needs to get his pencil sharpened because he's like the whole handful of them. Then another kid says, push him out of there.

Well, this is part of a sequence. So this is the finale of a sequence with this pencil sharpener, which is probably the weirdest sequence of dailies he did. I mean, it certainly wasn't worth a week's worth of strips.

So how does it all start? How does the sequence start?

I don't remember anything.

Well, it didn't have something to do with the little red-haired girl. He was trying to get her attention, and he was going to go up and sharpen his pencil. That's what I remember anyway.

That works usually.

So she's in the classroom again. So little red-haired girl who's hopping around from being in the schoolyard or just being in the neighborhood. Now it appears that she's in his class.

Oh, no. You know what? I think I just figured it out. Charlie Brown has face blindness. And they just knew red-haired kids moved into town, and he's like, the red-haired girl's back. He doesn't know it's a different person.

Okay. Man. Well, that kid in the middle of the five kids waiting in line, I think, is Marcy's brother.

You think so? Well, what about someone calling him Charles like Marcy?

Well, that could be Lydia without the hairband.

Could be Marcy without the glasses.

They are all having a rough day, whoever they are. They look disheveled.

This is weird. This is the least Schulz-y peanut strip I've ever seen. It's so weird. It breaks every rule. If someone said, this is what the 90s is going to look like, I would have run the other way. I mean, one panel, zip-a-tone characters you've never seen before, and this bizarre headless Charlie Brown.

What has happened to him? What do you think?

Isn't he trying to get out of his clothes because he's strapped?

So I don't know how this works, but he's wearing a short sleeve sweater, right?

Well, they say it's a sweater, and then later we see that it actually now has a long sleeve. I'm not sure if that's because it's destroyed by the pencil sharpener, but whatever. Yes, he has a sweater, which has his trademark stripe on it.

With a collar.

And that's what's caught in the pencil sharpener.

Yeah, it's very odd. And then his other sleeve does not show any fingers or hand or arm.

No.

So I don't know.

He's struggling to take it off.

Yeah, I suppose.

OK, so OK, so you guys are saying Charlie Brown is tucked in there, or is that like the top of his head we're seeing?

Well, he's talking, you don't see his head. Well, yeah, you do see a little curve there. Yeah, he's trying to he can't get away. And he's trying to take the sweater off.

I got it.

Oh, OK. Yeah, that would. This definitely goes in our weirdest strip.

Yeah, like, no, I'm not joking. Like, I could not tell you what was happening. I was very confused. I'm like, is like, did he sharpen his hand off? It looks very grotesque to me.

Yeah, you could you could read it that way, I guess. It's so surreal anyway, so you can put your own rules on it, trying to make sense of it. Boy, I do remember that the pencil sharpener was an important part of the schoolroom. You know, it was a big deal for me to go up and sharpen my pencil and the smell of the wood shavings and the graphite and oh boy, I don't know why we didn't have those little tiny pencil sharpeners where you just had it at your desk.

They work better, the mechanical ones, those little ones that you-

They have apps for that now.

You know, I don't think you can buy a Boston pencil sharpener anymore. Which is the best pencil sharpener, as my illustration professor would say, it makes a fine Roman spear point. But I was looking for one recently and you can only find them used.

No way. Wow.

All right. Well, while we ponder with whatever is happening there to Charlie Brown, we're going to take a little break. Then we'll come back, answer in the mail and do some more strips. So meet us on the other side.

Hi everyone. We all love listening to Jimmy describe what's going on in a peanut strip. But did you know that comics are actually a visual medium? That's right. You can see them anytime you want at gocomics.com or in your very own copy of the complete Peanuts available from Phantographics. Plus, if you sign up for our monthly newsletter, you'll know in advance which strips we're talking about each week. Learn more about the great Peanuts reread at unpackingpeanuts.com. All right.

We're back. So Liz, we're hanging out in the mailbox here. Do we have anything?

We do. We do. But first off, I want to do a shout out to Laila Siddique and John Esparza for sending us their fan art. It was just wonderful and I've posted it on social media, but we love to receive your fan art, your ideas of what we look like in our studio, and what we look like crossing Abbey Road, or doing the Ministry of Funny Walks. Thank you to them and to anybody else who wants to send us stuff.

Yeah, those were really great.

Thank you.

They're very cute.

Then we also received a message from Rob Zverina. He writes, been enjoying your podcast since I stumbled upon it about a month ago. Now up to 1975, taking it in order. Born in 69, Peanuts paperback reprints were my entree into comics and literacy in general.

All right.

It's wild how 50 years later, I can still anticipate the punch lines as you discuss certain strips. I dabbled in cartooning as a kid, but put down my drawing pen long ago, except for that time in 2005 when I took a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Prague after eating a space cake in the station that set me up for a 10-hour ride. I found myself trying to conjure the spirit of Charlie Brown.

Wow.

Those space cakes.

Look at how— Now, a lot of people don't know, but space cakes are made by the Snickers Snack Company.

Yeah.

And he sent a strip with that, and it is— It made me laugh out loud.

And Anne from Pennsylvania writes, I'm doing a bit of catch-up after falling behind on episodes, and I'm really having fun listening. My lunch has been at risk from a spit take more than a few times. During the run where Charlie Brown and Linus' teacher is having a rendezvous at the baseball games and then gets dumped, it occurred to me that if the kids wanted to play matchmaker, they should have introduced her to Peppermint Patty's dad.

That's true.

That would be very cute. See, there's a show. It's the reverse. There you have Muslao Atmar and Peppermint Patty's dad, and all the kids are just off screen all the time.

Wow, that is a concept. Yeah. Peanuts in reverse.

I like that she describes it as she's having a rendezvous with.

Yeah, and you start to wonder about the wisdom of that teacher in the first place, that that's where you meet outside, where all the kids are hanging out with your students when you're meeting some guy.

Yeah, I got a perfect place.

Well, that's it for the mail this week.

That's it? All right. Well, if you guys want to write to us, you can do that by sending us an email. We're unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com. We love to hear from you. Of course, if you want to follow us on social media, you can do that. We're at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and Threads, and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky, and YouTube. We want to hear from you, because remember, when I don't hear, I worry. How about we get back to the good old strips?

Sure.

All right. Charlie Brown eventually resolves the whole pencil sharpener issue, and we're on to other things.

But we don't see his right hand in this.

Oh, no.

But that would have been his left hand.

Oh, yes.

Well, but the strip, it's his right hand. He's hiding it.

February 7th, Charlie Brown and Sally are sitting on the couch watching TV, and Sally asks her big brother, does a grandma have the right to criticize a grandchild, or should she criticize the kid's mother, who, of course, is her own child? Sally continues, in my opinion, I don't think she does, and I think I'm going to tell her. And then Sally turns to Charlie Brown and says, unless, of course, you want to. I have often been the person who has been turned to with once, of course, you want to.

This all came out of Sally being late in sending, I think it was six weeks out, in sending her thank you notes for Christmas. And boy, I was terrible at this. I remember as a kid.

I still haven't sent out my thank you notes for my first communion.

Well, there's still time. This was an interesting strip to me because we have Sally having strong opinions about things here and this is the squeaky wheel, gets the grease kind of thing when she's thinking through, what's acceptable? Is it okay for my grandma to criticize me and let me know that she doesn't think I'm up to snuff when there's somebody in between? Maybe my mom is responsible or my dad is responsible for this, and she should take it up with them, which is a fascinating concept.

It is, absolutely.

Have that logic and you have to stop and consider it for a bit.

Here, this is, I think, amazing and am I reading too much into it? Perhaps, but what else do we have to do? If you zoom in super close, if you're looking at this on a screen, and you look at Charlie Brown in panel two and Charlie Brown in panel three, ostensibly Charlie Brown does not move or react through this entire strip. However, if you look very, very, very closely, he does have a subtle change of expression in the third panel that makes all the difference.

There is a different expression.

But yeah, there's one sixteenth of an inch, one thirty second of an inch longer mouth. And I don't think this is just variation in drawing. It's Schulz having that level of precision when it comes to facial expressions. And then the eyebrows, that one eyebrow, you know, Charlie Brown's left eye or the right is slightly up. You know, the right from us looking at it is slightly up. So it has a very, very restrained, but quizzical and slightly surprised look.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah. Second panel looks like he's looking down, his eyebrows are raised. First panel, he has no eyebrows. And you can see this very gradual change in his expression based on what Sally is saying.

Harold and I were just talking about this during the break, is with a few exceptions, these characters are very, very restrained in their expressions and movements. It's like minimal. It's the least you can get away with. Nobody's like flailing their hands around or anything.

We were talking about how maybe that helps pull you into the strip when the characters have so little expression versus a strip where somebody has just got crazy, crazy reaction, right?

I mean, and I do crazy reactions all the time, especially in the Amelia stuff.

The question is, does the more reserved strip possibly allow you to pull you in further into the characters and into the strip because it's such a quiet space? And does a really strong reaction sometimes kind of push you back? Yeah.

I think it's partly like, well, I mean, if it's a really good reaction and you're great at doing it, you know, Jaime Hernandez can do a strong reaction in a completely different style and it'll work.

Yeah.

But I think it takes a real master to be able to do such a minimal thing because you really have to be confident that that's going to read, that people are going to follow you, that you're just confident enough in this stayed version of this, that I'm drawing basically the same panel three times with minor variations, is enough to bring people in. And I think your own internal artists, criticisms of yourself would probably push you towards not doing it.

Yeah. Michael was saying, it seems like maybe more inexperienced cartoonists will maybe, I don't know, feel a little less confident about what they're putting in there and so they'll tend to go overboard with that. And yeah, I think there's truth that I certainly know I've done that.

Well, there's also, I think a lot of people are influenced by, well, these days, honestly, the biggest influence on cartooning is like manga and anime. And subtlety is not the name of the game and a lot of that stuff.

Right. And a different experience for the reader because of it.

Absolutely.

There's one other thing I'd like to mention about this strip. I'd like to suggest a new segment for Unpacking Peanuts. I'm calling it Zip-A-Tone One. Okay.

Are you going to talk about the one dot that's missing in the third panel?

Well, that was where I started. There's a dot that is missing between Charlie Brown and Sally, which is in both the Fanta graphics and in the Go Comics version. But then the thing that really fascinated me was Schulz is piecing together Zip-A-Tone above Charlie Brown's head in both panel one and panel two. And I was wondering, you could see the angle of the Zip-A-Tone changes. And its effect actually is to kind of give you the sense that this is a cushion that has an angle on it.

I remember, I mean, I used it for a while. You usually end up with a little box full of scraps. All the little pieces you've cut out. And sometimes you just, at least I did, you know, try to put them together so you don't waste your valuable Zip-A-Tone.

Because it was expensive. I mean, I know that's irrelevant for Schulz, but it was expensive stuff. It's like, how much was it, like $5, $6 a sheet?

I think so, at least when I was using it.

And that was 30 years ago.

Right around this time, actually, for me.

Yeah.

Are we going to ask Benjamin about what the actual art looks like?

I think we just did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This does absolutely look like it's a patch job, but we could get some confirmation if somebody has access to this.

He probably has better things to do in his name.

He might have better things to do than do our Zip-A-Tone watch, Benjamin. But thank you for listening.

February night, Sally is talking to Snoopy in their living room. Sally says, each family has a chain of command, and do you know who's the lowest on that chain? Guess. It's the dog. The dog is the lowest. Do you understand that? Snoopy does not respond at all. Sally says, I said, do you understand that? Snoopy does not move, but thanks to himself, they hate it when you just stare at him like this.

This is super subtle.

Yeah.

It really is. Snoopy does not react at all. Sally hasn't thrown around her weight all that often, but she must be tired of being the little one and be told what to do. Yeah, I like this one a lot.

Now, they're constantly updating the musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and several years ago, my kids took me to see a local production for my birthday, and this was adapted in it, in the new version. The woman who played Sally really got full value. This is really funny.

It's interesting. We say there's no change in expression from Snoopy, which is kind of the joke, but Shukralla does take away his eyebrow. Which is more just the plain blank stare. That's great.

By the way, they hate it when you just stare at them like this. Also works with people, especially if you're a parent. If you could let someone who already knows the answer to their query, just think about it silently for a while. They'll come to the conclusions that they need to without you weighing in at all.

Hard to do on a podcast though.

February 13th, Lydia and Linus are in class, and Lydia is handing Linus a valentine. She says, Here Linus, I want you to have this valentine, but don't misunderstand. This doesn't mean I love you or anything. Linus asks, What does it mean? And Lydia says, It means I happen to have an extra one left over. I don't believe her. Yeah, I think he totally loves him.

I think there's something going on there.

Absolutely.

I don't even think she knows that. That's the kind of the fun of it.

Oh, absolutely. Yes, this to me, I think actually this is really very, very sophisticated understanding of childhood and romance because she clearly does have feelings for Linus, but she doesn't know how to express them. So she comes up with this game.

Yeah.

And yeah.

Yeah, I think back to that strip where she's calling him on the phone and she's telling him one thing, but the big smile on her face kind of says something else.

I was just wondering if we'd ever seen her in Anything But Profile.

Except in that phone call, maybe not. She's right, because I'm pretty sure she does. We see a full on view in that, but we see it 90% in profile or more. February 18th, Snoopy is atop his doghouse and he wakes up. And he thinks to himself, am I awake? And Charlie Brown hears something in his bed, we cut to that, and it turns out it's Snoopy kicking away at the door. Bam, bam, bam. Charlie Brown answers the door and asks Snoopy, are you feeling lonely again?

So Harold, I noticed this is one of your few picks.

Yeah.

What was it about this that appealed to you?

Well, I started out the podcast today saying that I felt like the strips this four months or so that we're reading, the beginning of 1990, felt very soft to me, kind of a smaller world that's already very small. And just the few things I know about Schulz in this period, other than all these crazy things happening around him, all around the world, celebrating what he's doing, is that, he said, these are the things I think at night. This is Schulz.

Oh, I don't think it's just about the cookies. But the cookies are a bonus and also I think Charlie Brown has taken care of everything for Snoopy at that point. Whatever anxiety Snoopy did have, now he's inside, he's tucked in, everything's good. So now Snoopy's on to the new thing, but poor Charlie Brown still has his existential angst.

Yeah, wearing his Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club pajamas.

Yeah, they are really into those weird pajamas. It just needs like epaulettes on the shoulders.

Yeah, I don't think you want all those buttons on your front, unless if you're a stomach sleeper or anything.

It would not be comfy, I don't think. Although what does look comfy is Charlie Brown and Snoopy just tucked in bad, I love that.

It's lovely.

March 3rd, Snoopy's at the mailbox and he's got something and it says, dear contributor, we are returning your dumb story. Note that we have not included our return address. We have moved to a new office and we don't want you to know where we are. Oh, that just made me laugh. And also, I just wanted to mention, I've just had a little chat with an editor of mine at Scholastic, and I'm going to be able to serialize Seven Good Reasons Not to Grow Up on my sub stack.

Oh, the director's cut.

Yeah, the 75 extra pages that are absolutely insane and has robot Miley Cyrus' and stuff in it.

Wow.

At last.

Hooray.

Wow, that's so cool. I can't wait to see that.

Yeah. So anyway, I just wanted to take this opportunity to throw in that plug.

When might that hit your sub stack?

January.

Okay.

Starting in January.

Cool.

Yeah.

March 20th, Sally and Snoopy are under a tree, and Sally is reading a book, and she says, there are too many characters in this book and too much going on. I can't keep track of them all. And to what Snoopy thinks, I like a book where there's only one character and nothing happens to him. I agree.

Okay. Name that book.

Finnegan's Wake. One character lays there the whole night in dreams.

Yeah.

And again, emblematic of my feeling about this, these four months, nothing happens relative to what he normally does. It seems like this is just such a low key, low key time.

I think what it partly is, is that he hits something and then he goes off to something else. And you're seeing a lot of the things that are big icons and symbols of the strip, but you're seeing them in very short bursts. All right. Here's one baseball strip and then we're doing something else the next day. Right.

It's not building necessarily.

Right. Right.

Unless you were sharpening your pencil.

Yeah, that we're all sharpening your pencil. I think that thing has to that it would easily make the top five weirdest strips of all time. March 31st, Charlie Brown's atop the mound and his right fielder, Lucy, comes in and she says to him, come on, Charlie Brown, strike this guy out. You can do it. We believe in you. And then she walks away saying, I've always believed in you. And then in right field, she says, hypocrite that I am.

I really like this, but she is mellowing. I don't think she would have done this years ago.

No, I don't think so. I like Charlie Brown's expression in the second panel where he allows himself the tiniest smile in the world. He's letting Lucy have a slight impact on him. He's despite all of the things that she's done to him in the past, he's willing to give it a little bit of a hope that maybe there's something to what she's saying.

Well, I'm telling you, I think I know why Lucy is mellowing out and I think she's just much more comfortable in the sweat shirt and the corduroy pants.

That does it. The saddle shoes, though.

Yeah, well, you got to stick with the trademark, for god's sake.

Why didn't they have a brand of Lucy saddle shoes? Maybe they did.

I think that's like a missed opportunity, Jeepers.

Well, we were just giving them out.

I'll tell you.

You're welcome.

You're welcome, question mark. April 1st, it's a Sunday, and we're still at the baseball field. And Lucy says to Charlie Brown, the key is concentration. Think positive. Now she's back out in the field and she says, Come on, pitcher, get the ball over the plate. Throw hard, put some stuff on it. Show a little class. Show a little class.

Very nice. Maybe she needs glasses.

It could be that simple.

Yeah, amblyopia runs the family.

My mom put off getting cataract surgery for a decade. The reason she was afraid that the doctor would tell her she was going blind. Now you go, well, she was going blind because of cataracts. You try to, can you imagine pity me people, pity me. Anyway, she got the cataract surgery and she's like, do you have anything to eat? I said, oh, I have some cheetos. Do you want some cheetos? Oh, I love those. They were never this color before. When did they start making them look like this?

Oh, no.

It's just what she does look like, mom. You've been blind for a decade.

Wow. I nominate this strip for some of the weirdest word balloon shapes around letters lettering in the history of this.

Just doesn't. Why isn't why is he not centering it?

I don't know. So strange.

Yeah, it is weird. It's weird in panel two and panel three, panel four and then panel five or not panel five. All the Lucy ones, I'm so I'm saying. So Lucy in panel two, three and four and then the final panel.

Strange.

Yeah.

April 3rd, the Beagle Scouts are out for a walk and Snoopy asked them, if many of you know a good hiking song, feel free to sing out. And one of them does.

Excuse me.

You read ahead.

And then Snoopy says, no, I don't think one more for the road is a hiking song. Which makes the bird laugh.

You better do an obscurity here.

So is this the Frank Sinatra? One for my baby and one for me. And I love that all five of the birds like the whole big smiles, including Raymond.

Yeah, I love that we're seeing Raymond again. That's so funny. And, you know, here's an idea, like if I thought of that, I'm like, I'm not going to cut a tiny little piece of Zip-a-Tone every time I have the idea to throw this bird.

But he's got a whole drawer full of this crap.

Oh, that's what it is, right?

Yeah.

And he's like, OK.

Waste not want not.

Oh, man. Really funny.

All right.

Let's wrap it up here on April 17th. And Snoopy presents Woodstock with a crown. And he says here, if you wear this crown, everyone will think you are king of the jungle. Then in panel two, we see Woodstock wearing the crown and he has a question. And Snoopy answers the question in panel three by saying, well, from a distance, they'll never know it's cardboard. And Woodstock stands looking very regal in his cardboard crown. From Burger King, I'm assuming.

Yeah. Burger King will do that to you.

When I played the third wise man in my first grade Christmas pageant, I used a Burger King crown with just the logos covered up. Oh, man, I love, I think Woodstock looks great in the crown. Very, very cute.

King of the jungle.

Absolutely. Well, that'll bring us to the end of this episode. We got tons more strips to cover before we get to the end of 1990. So we're going to be doing this for a couple more episodes. And we sure hope you join us when we come back, because it's no fun if you're not here. But if you want to keep the conversation going in the week between now and then, you can head on over to those social media things that all the kids are talking about. And you can follow us.