Welcome to Unpacking Peanuts, the podcast where 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. It's Unpacking Peanuts, and we're here in 1990, and I couldn't be happier about it. My name's Jimmy Gownley. I'll be your host for the proceedings. I'm also a cartoonist who did things like Amelia Rule, seven good reasons not to grow up in the Demist idea ever. You'll now be able to read my brand new comic book series, Tanner Rocks, over there on gvillcomics.substack.com, and it's all for free.
Joining me, as always, are my pals, co-hosts, and fellow cartoonists. He's a playwright and a composer, both for the band Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast. He's the co-creator of the original Comic Book Prize Guide, the original editor for Amelia Rule, and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, a gathering of spells and Tangled River. It's Michael Cohen.
Say hey.
And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics and the creator of the Instagram sensation, Sweetest Beasts. It's Harold Buchholz.
Hello.
Well, guys, welcome back. We're here in 1990. I think there's going to be a lot to discuss this episode. There's some there's a big shake up that goes on and they cast all kinds of exciting stuff. Are you guys as excited to get to the strips as I am?
Sure.
Not sure.
Well, with that attitude, I can certainly say no, you are not.
You're awfully hyped.
I am super hyped.
What are you taking?
Two bowls of Snickers next. Boom. Mainline them right before I got on. Hey, actually, you know what I'm excited about? I'm excited to tell our listeners out there that we're doing a special event. There's a PBS American Masters documentary about Charles Schulz that came out around 2007, 2008. We're going to watch it together. I watched it just last night and made a bunch of notes. And we're going to do a little commentary, our Unpacking Peanuts commentary on the Charles M. Schulz documentary.
So it'll be a lot of fun. The way you can have access to that is you got to be a member of our Patreon. I know, that's how they get you, right? Look, it's late stage capitalism. I didn't invent it. We're all just swimming in it. But if you join our Patreon, you can have access to the four of us goofing around, talking about this movie. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Spoiler alert to you guys. As I said, I watched it last night and I remembered really loving it.
Mine might have some hot takes in this documentary, having watched it again. So I think that could be interesting for everybody. We would love to have you be a part of it. And actually just being a part of our Patreon helps us out tremendously. So if you want to go over there to unpackingpeanuts.com, check it out. There will be information for the Patreon there. So with that out of the way, how about we get right back to the strips?
All righty.
April 23rd, Linus and Lydia are sitting in class and Linus leans back and says to Lydia, I watched Citizen Kane again last night. I like the scene where the older man talks about seeing a girl on a ferry. Linus continues, he said he only saw her for a second, but for the rest of his life, not a month went by when he didn't think of her. And then Lydia says, and that made you think of me? To which Linus replies, not really.
Okay, he's learning Lydia's game.
Yeah, I love the Lydia strips. This is Linus getting a little jab in there.
Absolutely, he's figuring it out.
Which is rare.
He's working on it. I'm a little uncomfortable about eight year olds talking about this kind of stuff. In my world, this did not happen.
How about you other two? What do you guys remember of childhood romance?
I remember loving from afar a great deal.
This is not atypical from my memories of that weird place where you didn't know exactly what to do with somebody else, and you're trying to feel out how they feel about you, and this totally resonates with my memories. Not at eight years old, but-
Eighteen, more likely.
Yeah, sure, but then, you know, it's Linus and Lydia. They're very advanced for their age.
Here's what I would say. I think it is far more likely for a little boy and a little girl to have a crush on each other at eight years old than to be discussing Citizen Kane and the fact that he's watched it multiple times. I mean, that's the insane thing.
How about that newspaper ad that Michael sent around to us with what was the animated special that was on at the same time with Citizen Kane?
No, it wasn't Citizen Kane. It was-
The Caine Mutiny.
Oh, I beg your pardon.
Yeah.
Okay, cut that.
Yeah, it was a big double feature of Charles Schulz interview and the Kane Mutiny.
Yeah, what a great evening of entertainment. Yeah. It would make a lot more sense for the Citizen Kane-Kane Mutiny double feature.
Pop the popcorn, kids. Get in here.
Brought to you by Raising Canes. But what I like about this strip is now that Linus has kind of gotten into Lydia's vibe, then this is more unevenly matched. I kind of think these two have a chance. They've got this really dry playfulness with each other, and it's a little more even, and that's pretty cool.
The problem I, and I agree with all of that, the problem I have with it, though, is I get jealous for Sally and I want her to, you know, shove Lydia down an elevator shaft.
No, Sally, they are the picture now.
No, that's true love. This is just, this is just...
She's biding her time.
Exactly.
I wouldn't mind seeing a cat fight, though.
Well, what was that? Oh yeah, it was Lucy and Frida all those years ago.
Oh, that was great.
That's one of the all-time great sequences. May 3rd. Oh, looks like we're in a very fancy room, possibly downtown here in the Peanuts village, wherever they live. And there's Charlie Brown and Snoopy, who's dressed up in his World War I flying ace and outfit. We realize that actually Snoopy has been called for jury duty.
Of course.
As it happened.
Just a matter of time.
Exactly. It gets all of us. Not me, though. Charlie Brown says to Snoopy, what we're looking for is the jury assembly room on the second floor. They go up an escalator. Charlie Brown says, I sort of wish you hadn't worn that outfit. And then as they continue on to the jury assembly room, Snoopy thinks, you get more respect if they know you served honorably in World War I. I love it. I love the escalator. I don't know why I really feel them moving on that escalator. Really, really fun.
And the nice little touch, I was just thinking about this. He has arrows pointing in the direction they're supposed to go on the first and last panel. And I was thinking, why did he do that? And I was thinking, then that is actually pretty smart choice. Otherwise, you just feel like you're in this random space. It's somehow, in such a minimal way, gives you this sense that they're heading towards something that is meaningful versus them just kind of randomly being in this building.
Yeah. I mean, that first panel is a real masterpiece of composition, considering he's not really drawing anything.
Right.
You know, it's a couple walls, a poster, a baseboard, an escalator and an arrow. But we're all intuiting that. It's really just a bunch of straight lines and an arrow. Yeah. Really clever. And the arrows actually continued into panel too.
You see just a part of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was really good.
But his arm on the escalator is what makes you can tell it's not stairs, because he's just riding there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That's what it is.
That explains it.
Boy, Harold, that's pretty smart. Yeah. It's just the fact that he has his entire, Charlie Brown we're talking about, has his entire forearm on the escalator, which you would not ever walk up steps like that.
Yeah. That Schulz removes things that could take you out of the strip or confuse you with these little choices is pretty cool.
I want to correct you that once you turn 70, you might walk up stairs like that.
This is the Citizen Kane era. Peanuts.
Well, you don't know anything about that, Liz.
No, I certainly do not.
So there you go.
I've heard till.
May 12th. A very sweet and ornate looking little girl's room in which Sally is tucked in her bed, her very frilly and comfy looking bed, and Charlie Brown is reading her story. And Sally asks the immortal question, why would anyone want to say good night to the moon?
I really identify with this. In my entire life, I had never had any idea what that book was. I've heard about it a million times. And I imagine it's got to be some deep, profound mystery of childhood gets unveiled. And somehow, I read it like six months ago for the first time, thinking like, wow, this is going to be deep. This is going to change my life. And I'm going like, what is this? I mean, it's like a list. It's a list of things. And how did this even get passed on to the editor?
Well, it's possible you might be outside of the target audience for that book.
What do you mean? I'm a kid at heart.
But I will say, yeah, I mean, it's only for the tiniest little kids, I think. But yeah, like when the girls were born, a couple people got them Good Night Moon, because God, it's a classic. And I had never read it either. And I was like, huh.
You can write something like that.
So how did the kids respond to Good Night Moon? Was it a become a regular of you going, you know.
I mean, it was literally only when they were the littlest, did they read stuff like that.
They couldn't object.
Yeah, well they could. Yeah, right, because it was quick. I think that's the reason it's a classic. You can read it in two minutes, you know.
The parent has fulfilled the obligation.
And it's boring as heck, which is kind of what you want. One of the things I found that was fun reading with the girls is reading just a little bit higher than their, because they could read Good Night Moon themselves pretty early and stuff like that. And it's interesting to them and they're excited in it, but they also fall asleep because they get just a little bit lost into their own head, you know.
Well, I like the three of you. I'd like to hear from Liz. This was a book that was really off my radar as a kid. I didn't know. It came out in 1947. Obviously, it was the thing by the time Schulz did the strip in 1990. As a person working in publishing and dealing with kids' books, starting with Archie, it hit me. Wait. Excuse me. What?
Starting with Archie?
With Archie Comics.
I think you started with Amelia before you started with Archie, pal.
That's not a kid's book. That's for 50-year-olds.
Michael likes that one. It is, right?
Masquerading is a children's book.
It does have more James Joyce references than the average.
Let me put it this way. In the era when I was... Yeah, you're right. You're right. Amelia got me going for Archie. No, that's actually true. What I did at Archie, we were distributed through Random House, and I was getting Publishers Weekly, which was a big industry thing about books. And that's, I think, where I first saw Good Night Moon was in Publishers Weekly, as it's been this perennial bestseller.
But yeah, it was just totally off my radar as a kid, and I didn't read it either until probably a year or so ago, Michael, so it's kind of interesting that we run into this book so late. Liz, did you know it?
Honestly, not until I had friends with kids. It was not on my radar at all when I was a child.
Well, Michael, as a famous Bloom County fan, do you know the connection between Good Night Moon and Bloom County?
No.
That's when he ends whatever the final version of it was, because it was Bloom County, then it was Outland, and then maybe it was Opus. When he ended that for the third time and said, this is the real one, that's where Opus ends up for eternity in Good Night Moon.
Really?
Yes, tucked in.
Okay, I never read the Opus strip.
Yeah.
I have to go back.
Well, spoiler alert to everyone out there for my 15. Anyway, who would be worrying about what's going on in old comic strips anyway?
It makes it doesn't matter. It says, by 2017, Good Night Moon had cumulatively sold an estimated 48 million copies. That seems like a lot. That's amazing. And it was not popular in its first year, probably because it was the first of its kind, right? It was people didn't like us, didn't know what to do with it. And they realized, oh, this is what you do with it. Kids will get to bed real quick.
They're out like a light. May 22, Linus and Lydia are out and about in the world. It's not just school. And Linus says, we can cross now. It says walk. Lydia says, that's just for one person. She continues, if it meant more than one person, and it would say, everybody walk. And Lydia walks past Linus saying, I'll go first. See you later. To which Linus, looking out at the audience says, I think I've been had.
This is such a fun little playful relationship here.
So cute. I love that they're out in the world.
Right. Right. So I don't know how they got together in the first place, but they're not anymore at the end of the strip.
But you know what? Here, I can invent an entire back story for Lydia. Lydia.
Peanuts Worldwide. We're already into it.
Lydia is actually quite poor. She does not have a whole lot of money. And her mom came home one day with a dress that she found at the Salvation Army. And it's Lucy's blue dress. And she's like, oh, I can't wear that mom. And the mom's like, don't worry, I'll fix it up. So she cuts off the big bow in the back, fashions it into a hairband, and boom, that's Lydia. And suddenly it's modern.
I think Lydia escaped from the mental hospital for schizophrenia.
I think I've been had makes me think, I want to teach that to my Ukrainian student.
Been had, that's a great phrase.
It is a great phrase.
Been had, that's not grammatical.
No, but it means.
I have been had.
I have been had.
I have been had.
I have been had, yeah.
I have been had.
Yeah, interesting.
Wow, I like it. If we say it a few times, it won't even make any sense. It'll just lose all meaning.
It's like ma'am.
Yeah.
People are gonna go, what?
Yeah, that's not a word, right? That can't be right. Oh man, yeah, English is interesting, to say the least. June 2nd, Spike is out in the desert with his only friend, the Cactus, and he has what looks like a painting under his arm. Spike, that is not the Cactus. And Spike thinks, I'm going into Needles to try to sell one of my Western paintings. Then he admires his painting and says, maybe some wealthy land owner will be interested.
And then the last panel, he concludes, or some little kid who has 50 cents.
Goodwill might be interested.
Well, the only reason I really appreciate that he didn't not show us Spike's painting. Like he took a little time to draw the little landscape of the mountains and this. I always, whenever they have something, someone drawing in a TV show and they don't show the painting, used to drive me nuts as a little kid.
Yeah, I'm like, oh, he's a master illustrator and he's scribbling on this and you never see it like, or when you do see it and it's obviously an actor who hasn't ever touched the canvas.
Like the great, the famous thing in Titanic, you know, where he ends up drawing this delicate, you know, nude figure, but he starts with a giant piece of charcoal. He goes, one big, it's like that drawing does not start with a big scrape of charcoal.
Well, I was very impressed that the charcoal held up underwater for 80 years.
There was some movie where there was a cartoonist in it and they got Barry Smith to draw the comic.
Oh wow.
Oh wow.
Do you remember what that was?
No, I mean, it sounds familiar. I know they got Sophie Crum to draw the drawings in Ghost World, which is Robert Crum's daughter. Yeah, I can't think of the Barry Smith one. It does sound very familiar though.
Interesting. Yeah. I love any town that has the sense of humor to call itself Needles.
Where Schulz lived for a year. Yes, in Needles, California. That's why Spike is out there. One really bizarre episode in his life. His family packed up, moved from Minnesota to Needles for a year, I think it was, and then moved back. Like just those inexplicable things that happened in your childhood. And you're like, wow.
Yeah, that's got to be memorable. There are more Needles in this strip than I think in any peanut strip before. They're everywhere. These little cactus plants.
Yeah, for sure. I like the little detail he's putting into the desert. I also, I didn't mention it at the time, but going back a couple strips, I love the details in Sally's room, like the little shoe on the desk and the little teddy bear. It does feel like he's putting some effort into the backgrounds, or like we were talking about even the escalator and such.
And he seems to know when you need it. Yeah.
Well, that's true.
That little strip with Charlie Brown and Sally is pretty cool with him reading to her, which is sweet in the first place, but then you have to create that atmosphere of the bedtime story. And then here, of course, if Spike is painting a painting of the landscape and you don't have the landscape in the strip, it doesn't really work. Right.
Although I would be a little annoyed if I was the cactus because it doesn't seem like the cactus was included. And he was like, wow, I'm like, you're one friend, you can throw me in there.
He's, well, maybe he didn't get permission.
He didn't sign the waiver.
Yeah, the cactus isn't fallen for that one. June 24th, it's a Sunday and it's a baseball game. Charlie Brown's atop the mound and he's yelling out into the field, stop saying it's clouding up. It's not clouding up. To which Lucy replies, it's clouding up out here. Then the next tier where the strip starts up again, we see one tiny drop of rain has fallen on Lucy's nose. And she yells, game called on account of rain, game called, game called.
Charlie Brown, who has sensed that one drop of rain has landed on Lucy's nose, yells out to her, you can't call a game because of one drop of rain. Stop acting so stupid. To which Lucy replies, game called because of sensitivity. Wright Field are offended by manager, game called because of sensitivity. And Schroeder comes out with the rule book and says, no, nothing like that in the rule book. It mentions rain or darkness, but that's about all.
So Charlie Brown, after this consultation, yells out to Wright Field. So what do you think of that, Miss Wright Field there? To which Lucy yells, sex history mark, game called because of sex history mark. And in the last panel, we see Charlie Brown and Schroeder. And Schroeder says to Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown, I can't believe it. You bit a chunk right out of that ball. To which Charlie Brown says, the laces taste terrible. And we do see it. He has bitten the junk out of his baseball.
Yeah, surprisingly contemporary theme here.
And very yet very Lucy. It feels very classic Lucy and yet very contemporary for the time.
Yeah, this made me wonder why she's actually on the team. Why didn't she just quit? She doesn't have to quit.
Why don't they fire her?
She's getting something out of it, right?
Yeah, well, if you realize the amount of things you do that are stupid that you really don't have to do.
Oh, it's because Schroeder's there. That's the only reason she hates this game.
That makes sense. It's quite a long distance to be, but obviously that shows long distance relationship there.
Oh, I knew a kid who once took stats for every single game of the Gerardville Girls Softball League just to be around the girls. I heard of him anyway. I can't remember his name, whatever. But anyway, you should definitely subscribe to his sub stack.
Whoever he is.
Whoever he is. July 3rd, Linus is trying to put on some shoes and he says, I can't believe I've forgotten how to tie my own shoes. I know you start by and then he just gives up, sucks his thumb and puts up the blanket in his classic thumb and blanket position and says, you start by sitting around in your socks.
I have a confession to make.
Yes.
I thought this was rerun.
It makes a lot more sense if it were rerun.
Not necessarily.
Well, Linus could quote everything by heart, proverbs about lawyers and stuff. I couldn't accept. I mean, it didn't even occur to me that this was Linus. I went, here's a rerun strip. Who's probably learning to tie his shoes around this time.
This is about forgetting how to tie his shoes. And I believe, I have memories of this. You think about it too much and then you forget. The more you think about it, the more you can't remember how to tie your shoes. I remember that. That actually was the thing.
You know, it is true. I mean, months and months ago, we were talking before, you know, we chat a little bit before we chat for an hour and a half. That's just how we like to do things here at Unpacking Peanuts. But somehow Michael and I were talking about guitar playing and he said, well, when you're practicing like solos, do you think of a melody or do you think of the scale? For weeks after he asked me that question, I would think of the question in the middle of practicing.
It was just the second you think about it, it's over.
No, this is totally true. After driving stick shift for 50 years, to get our Italian driver's license, we actually had to take driving lessons. And I tell you, I was so nervous that I'd go like, what do you do? Do you step on the brakes? Do you step on the clutch? I mean, I had no memory of how to do it.
Yeah, it's not like riding a bike.
Oh, I remember when I was, I mean, I was ready for my driver's test. I practiced and my dad was a great instructor and we were ready and we had to do a three point turn. And he had to, I don't know if everyone knows what that is, but it's like you pull up, you back up, you pull forward so you could go, turn around 180 degrees, go the way you were coming.
The test would go right around my friend's front yard and they would do the three point turn on the street I lived on on A Street, right in front of my friend's house. And I was doing the driver's test and I looked in the window and I could just see his mom watching TV and it freaked me out and I didn't turn the wheel. So it's just, I'm just backing up and going forward and he's like, you're not turning the wheel. I'm like, I know. And obviously I had to come back at another date to get that.
I think you have material for another memoir.
The other one, the winds are not tie. I don't know, in my case, there were some times where you haven't tied your tie for like a year, right? Since the last time you learned how to do it.
Well this is not for Catholic school people. We know how to tie our ties.
So clip-ons were not legal.
They were up until, I forget what grade, and then you weren't allowed to wear a clip-on anymore. Like fourth grade maybe was the last year you could wear a clip-on.
Yeah, for me it was, you go to church or there's a wedding. But sometimes there would just be a gap when you haven't tied a tie. And then, well the other thing is maybe you know how to do it, but then you don't know how much length to have on the front end. Massively long thing below your knees, and then you do it the other way and it's up to your chest at the end of it. Yeah.
That was very funny.
All right.
So how about we're going to take a break right there. I'm going to go get a little iced tea action, and then we'll come back, check the mail bag, and then hit some more strips. So we're going to do that and we will catch you on the other side.
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And we're back. So Harold, you are out and about in the world this weekend, having an adventure. Why don't you tell us about that?
Yeah, I was at the Mahoning Drive-In Theatre in Lehigh in Pennsylvania for the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 fan event with Joel Hodgson. And that was a long process to get that thing to actually happen. I first went to this beautiful drive-in. They're a retro 35 millimeter space. People come from all over. It's just great. And it was a fun event. It's good to see Joel and the fans were great. And I had a really fun time meeting people.
And I stuck around because normally I do Saturdays and Sundays where I set up my tent or I go to a comic book convention. But this is a Friday night and a Saturday night. So we got done super late on Saturday. And I thought, well, I can stick around Sunday and I could watch the movie there. And they were doing the kind of campy Vincent Price film. So it kind of matched the vibe. So it was with Dr. Fibes Rises again and Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, which I never seen before.
Beautiful Prince, Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman. So yeah, it actually was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was super goofy, but it was just right for that drive-in and it was a lot of fun to watch it with friends. But yeah, we showed classic episodes of Mystery Science Theater and Joel did VIP and meet and greet and the whole deal and then really had a good time.
That's great.
Very fun. All right, so Liz, I'm hanging out in the mailbox. Do we got anything?
We do. We got an email from super listener John Marullo, who sent us, he says, I don't know if you saw this parody of the very first peanut strip with a dash of the Twilight Zone. And he sent the unpublished first peanut strip from Francesco Marchuliano, who writes Sally Forth and Judge Parker. Have you guys seen this before?
No.
Okay. So this came out, I believe, in 2015. That's the earliest I could find it. Published on Marchuliano's blog post. It's his version of the very first strip, which goes, well, here comes old Charlie Brown. Good old Charlie Brown. Yes, sir. Good old Charlie Brown. And then in the last panel, Shermie says, if we stop thinking good thoughts about that monster, he'll zap us to the cornfield. And Patty says, you fool, we're as good as dead.
Well, the shock of all of this to me is that someone wrote Sally Forth.
An Italian, of all things.
Isn't that an amazing thing? Like, you know what, we got to get a top ranked scriptwriter here on Sally. That's not why people were reading Sally Forth. God bless them. But Sally Forth is a bit of a cheesecake, as they used to call it in the day, a comic strip drawn by the brilliant Wally Wood.
I thought Wood wrote it. I thought that was his.
I assumed he wrote it. Yeah. Like I said, honestly, I have the complete collection. I have never read a word of it. So I'm shocked that someone wrote it.
Well, maybe...
Well, there's another Sally Forth.
Yeah, it must be, because this guy's young.
Oh, yeah. Sally Forth was the... Oh, boy.
He'd be like, what did I ever do?
Okay, sorry.
I think that it was re-posted for the anniversary of the first Peanuts strip.
Oh, very nice.
Very cool. No, I think Peanuts is ripe for parody, because it's just so classic. Everybody knows what's being parodied. I've seen some good ones. I especially like Evan Dorkin's take. It turns it into a Lovecraftian nightmare. Everybody is like worshiping Cthulhu.
Actually, I completely forgot about Sally Forth from the comic strips. That was a nicely drawn comic strip for sure. All right, cool. Got anything else?
Nope, that's it for the mail.
And I got nothing on the hotline. So guys, if you don't call the hotline, I'm getting worried. So if you want to reach out to us, you can give us a shout out on our hotline. It's 717-219-4162. You can leave a voicemail or send a text and shoot us a question or comment and we'd love to hear from you. And of course, you can write to us at Unpacking Peanuts at gmail.com and follow us on social media and I'll give you that rundown at the end of the show. So how about we get back to the strip? Sure.
Okay.
July 14th, Charlie Brown is atop the mound and he's looking out to right field saying, Oh, no, not again. Then he yells, All right, Lucy, what's your excuse this time? And then we see Lucy out in right field wearing some headphones and she says, Just as the ball got to me, Michael Jackson hit a high note. And we see she is listening to Michael Jackson on what looks like a sideways rotary phone from, I'm not sure what device.
It's gotta be a Walkman, doesn't it?
No, I think it looks like a portable radio.
Yeah, it's supposed to be a jam box, but it's a jam box with one speaker and what looks like push buttons. And it's not represented from anything.
There's no antenna, so yeah. Weird.
The reason I picked this though is because he so rarely picks a musical icon in the time of their popularity. Like I've seen, or I remember Elvis. I remember Bob Dylan, not very, he never mentioned the Beatles out in California. Never mentioned the Beach Boys. There were tons of disco superstars came and went. Never mentioned them. It's amazing though that Michael Jackson gets it in here.
King of Pop.
Yeah.
What was Jackson doing in 1990? What came out?
We know why I'm talking about that.
I think it was, yeah. It's a whole true crime podcast.
I meant musically.
I think in 1990, he was starring in Captain EO, which was like a movie that was made for Epcot Center by- Oh, wow. Was it Scorsese made it or Coppola? Some ridiculous director directed it. Let me see. But that's what he was up to because it was after Bad and before Dangerous.
You know you're Michael Jackson.
Well, I was a Gen Xer, man. I mean, in 1986, no, that came out. Yeah, sorry. So this was in between Bad and Dangerous. But yeah, four years after that, he made a science fiction 3D short film starring Michael Jackson and directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
I might have seen that at Disneyland.
Yeah, I mean, was that a ride? Yeah.
Yeah, I saw it at Disney World. I remember it was probably way late.
Yeah, I remember getting really see-thick.
I just remember the line, Michael's line, we're going in.
Oh, that's the sting. That's the end of the podcast.
Didn't expect that from Harold, huh?
It's like dead on!
It sounded really like him!
That was amazing! Wow! I forget it, you don't need an approachable hat. You gotta start making money on this Michael Jackson impersonation.
Can you moonwalk?
That was awesome. That was the whole show. All 130 episodes is now worth it for me. That was amazing. July 22nd, Snoopy and the Beagle Scouts are out camping, and Snoopy's reading them a good night's story, which seems to be the great Gatsby. Snoopy reads, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. Then Snoopy sighs and Woodstock, one of the birds, sniffs at the being moved by Fitzgerald's writing. And Snoopy says, okay, gang, it's bedtime.
And then he tucks himself in his sleeping bag and says, and I don't want to hear any of your stupid bird songs at four o'clock in the morning. And Snoopy falls asleep, but has woken up almost immediately by splish, splash, splish. And he goes looking to see what happened. Says, now what? And then we see Harriet is back and she is washing her hair and Snoopy notices it. Harriet is washing her hair. And there she is with a giant lather of bubbles on her hair.
And it's the cutest thing in the world. She looks like a bird. Harpo marks. It's amazing.
Boy, this is one of the weird peanut strips of all time. He's reading Gatsby to birds while they're out camping. And a bird has hit her.
That she needs to wash.
In the middle of the night.
Yeah.
It all makes sense. It all comes together. Now, is this in any way related to Gatsby? Is there a hair washing scene that I've forgotten?
I don't think, maybe. It's been a while, but I don't think so.
Our listeners, maybe they know why Harriet was inspired to wash her hair at the end of Daisy's death.
Well, you're going to start seeing more of Scott Fitzgerald references popping up now and again. And I think, you know, Schulz obviously probably felt some affinity for him because he's the other famous writer from St. Paul, right? I mean, there's nobody else in that world that's that level. Apologies to any other St. Paul writers who might be out there. July 23rd, there's Charlie Brown and a little girl sitting on a dock, clearly at their camp or wherever they're out in the woods.
And Snoopy is leaning his shoulder on the little girl's shoulder, or leaning his head, rather, on the little girl's shoulder. And we can only see them from behind. And Charlie Brown says, to himself, which makes it a little confusing, but he says, she's the prettiest little girl I've ever seen. I wonder what I could say to get acquainted. And then we hear what Snoopy is thinking. And he says, I don't suppose you happen to have any cookies with you, do you, sweetie?
This really confused me, because it totally comes out of the blue. You know, it's a one panel strip, and you're seeing from the back. So, I mean, that's unusual. And then Charlie Brown is saying out loud, she's the prettiest little girl I've ever seen. So my first thought was, oh, he's talking about the little redhead girl. But why is he doing that? Why is he telling that to this other girl, who might be the girl with the zipperton hair?
The girl with the zipperton hair.
Yeah, and so this just, I went like, what, this is weird, and I figured it was a one-off. Maybe we'd never know who she was. But it turns out this is going to be, I think, the longest sequence of dailies, because it runs from July 23rd through August 13th, every daily.
Yeah, certainly this year.
Yeah, and it's like a little love story. Very weird. And then it doesn't, like some of the other ones we've had, that just kind of disappear, this actually has reverberations throughout the rest of the year.
It does. Yeah, it's an interesting one, and I agree it's an odd choice that Charlie Brown is speaking rather than thinking.
That's got to be a mistake.
That does create some confusion.
That's what causes so much of the confusion, I definitely think. Now, I think first off, though, if this were 1969, this would be a four-panel strip. You can picture them sitting next to each other, right? The girl placidly staring out into the ocean, into the lake. Charlie Brown nervously fidgeting as those lines of dialogue that are in this strip play out over, say, three panels. I think that's how, and he would be thinking what he's, those words instead of speaking them.
I think that's how it used to, would have been.
So you got to kind of imagine the scenario. He must have been alone with Snoopy on the dock and she just came up by and sat down without saying anything.
Yeah. Yep. Well, I love the tree on the right-hand side, the Zip-A-Tone tree. I think that looks amazing. I would never do that because there's, it's just the outline, the barest outline of the tree. And then he puts that Zip-A-Tone in it, but I think it looks real good. So it continues. July 27th, the little girl turns to Charlie Brown now and says-
Excuse me for butting in, but this is not a direct follow up to the other one because Snoopy's not there.
Right. So some period of time has passed. And Peggy Jean says, now that we've had lunch together, I can tell you my name is Peggy Jean. I love that. That's a rule, I guess. And panel two, Charlie Brown's getting all flummoxed. And he says, well, my name is Brownie Charles. Peggy Jean says, that's cute. I like it. Which Charlie Brown says, maybe I'll just jump into the lake right here. So, yeah, so here we have Charlie Brown's newest and in some ways possibly greatest love interest here.
Good old Peggy Jean. I like Peggy Jean. I think she has an adorable character design. I think it's his way of drawing the little red haired girl without drawing the little red haired girl.
She also looks just like Karen.
Oh, really? That's funny. She, yeah, she is a great looking character design. And I love this whole sequence. What do you guys, what do you guys?
I was wondering if she ever appears in a Sunday so we can see what color her hair is.
It's like a reddish brown. She does appear. I've seen it and I'm sure we could just Google it even right now and see it in color.
Are they at a different camp? He's got a new hat on.
Maybe he's graduated to an upper level of, you know, I have zero camp experience, so I don't know.
Yeah.
Very, very cute strip. I love the whole Brownie Charles thing. I think that's a great idea. This late in the strip.
In a previous strip, we see that Charlie Brown has already forgotten about the little red haired girl.
Yes.
Once he's met Peggy Jean, Linus asked him about the little red haired girl. He goes, who? So yeah, Charlie Brown's actually talking to a girl that he likes. This is a big, big deal.
Absolutely.
Charlie Brown is growing.
Yeah, and it's crazy. What's nice about it is that, because he's had people express this type of thing before and he hasn't been able to deal with it. Now, maybe he just wisely thought, you know, I need to find someone more stable. I have my own neuroses. I don't need Peppermint, Patty and Marcy. But he hadn't been able to deal with that. So it's nice to see him here, at least able to, you know, have lunch and have a conversation with her.
Yeah, it's like the characters have slowly grown over time. And we're seeing pieces of that. We saw Linus a few years ago dealing with Lydia. And there's this piece of him that we hadn't seen before. And Charlie Brown here is also kind of growing in relationships. And we've seen him mature as a character in recent years. So it's interesting to see that that now comes out in another aspect of him that has been so stunted, you know, the whole time.
And all of a sudden, wow, Charlie Brown is now actually engaging with a girl that he likes. And the next day's strip, Charlie Brown's on the phone talking to Linus, who's back at home. And I love, what I love about that strip is he's kind of telling the story about how he called himself Brownie Charles because he was so flustered and so nervous. And there's this wonderful little panel of Linus sitting in his chair, just laughing out loud. And Charlie Brown, you are really something again.
I've never, I don't think I've ever seen that before in the strip where someone's enjoying somebody else's story about something as a friend versus as somebody who's insensitive. That's also kind of different in the peanuts world where someone's enjoying as a friend, someone else's goofy story about how they did something Charlie Brown. And they're just enjoying the nature of Charlie Brown.
Again, this is something that I don't really remember seeing a lot in the strip before and I'm really enjoying that.
It's different, not just in peanuts, it's different in pop culture. That's a hard thing to kind of pull off. Yeah. You know, because the natural source of humor in something like that is sniping or, you know, the zinger, all that sort of stuff, as opposed to someone telling a story and another person just enjoying it.
And they're enjoying it together because the punchline on that one is saying, now she calls me Brownie Charles all the time, but you know what? I kind of like it and he's got a big, big smile on his face. And that, two friends enjoying a story together on the phone.
And they're both, Schulz is so good at playing one character off another when they got an intense love for somebody and it's unrequited or someone's really happy about something, the other person kind of puts it down or diminishes it, you know, Snoopy and Charlie Brown throughout the last year or two, over and over again, Charlie Brown's talking about how important it is to have the boy and his dog and the special relationship and Snoopy's always talking about cookies, you know.
They're always sideways to each other, but here they're not. And I think that's really cool.
Yeah, it is really cool. August 10th, Peggy Jean and Charlie Brown are out on the dock and Peggy Jean says, I could never be mad at you, Brownie Charles. You're the nicest boy I've ever met and they hold hands. And then it's a hard cut to Charlie Brown on the phone. And he says, and then she kissed me, Linus. And in the last panel we see it's actually Lucy who says, what is this? An obscene phone call? That just makes me laugh.
Lucy thinking she's getting an obscene phone call that somehow has her brother's name in it. It's all weird. So Charlie Brown gets his first kiss, huh? I think that's really sweet.
Yeah, that's a big, big deal.
I think it's his first kiss, we don't know for sure.
Well, maybe from Snoopy, if he gave him a cookie.
It's his first kiss that I know of.
And we've just been past a sequence where, unfortunately for Charlie Brown, we've got a little sequence where she's offering for him to kick the football.
Oh, no.
And Charlie Brown is starting to have flashbacks of all of his defeats with Lucy. And so he doesn't know what to do. And then she's concerned that he doesn't trust her. Really interesting stuff that Schulz is putting in here.
Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting too, because you start to see the value of the football joke thing. Like we go, we say, oh, maybe that's not the funniest, you know, to whatever. But because it has such universal recognition, he can use it, and it's not just a plot point, it's a stand-in for all of this other stuff. The failures, the anxieties, the deception, all this stuff. And it's showing Charlie Brown wanting to go into this new realm of trust and friendship and whatever else.
But he's held back because of basically his past trauma.
Yeah, thanks Lucy.
Yeah, thanks a lot. That's another difficult thing to write about in a tiny little one in Chi Comics.
Yeah. And Linus is like, kick the football, do it, go, do it, do it, you know? So it's really cool. There's a lot going on where Schulz is taking us to places he really hasn't before based on all the things that we do know, like you're saying. And I like it a lot. I think it's special. I mean, she's, Peggy Jean is concerned that Charlie Brown doesn't trust her. And so he thinks he loses her, but then she comes back and that's the strip we just read where she's like, couldn't be mad at you.
But he thought that he's lost her because of this, this failure he had to trust her with the football.
Yeah. It's one of the best wrap ups of a log sequence. Because, you know, it's just like now like Alfred E. Newman just came out of this. It's a good ending.
And Charlie Brown gets a second chance too, which is, again, this is something new. We're not seeing in this strip where he screws up and usually that's the end, right? He just has this terrible defeat and he looks like maybe things are going for him and then it's pulled out, the rug's pulled out from under him.
Yep.
Not here.
Yeah, and Michael, you're right. I mean, it is really satisfying to get a satisfying conclusion. You know, when a really strong sequence sort of peters out, it's not disappointing, but it's always like, it would have been nice if there was a button put on it and this is a great ending. Really, really good. August 19th. It's one of them, their symbolic panels.
And what we're seeing actually is a row of raffle tickets that they used to give every kind of organization in the world used to sell raffle tickets to raise money. I don't know if they still do.
The Mystery Science Theater thing, they had it at the morning this weekend.
Oh, they did you really?
Yeah, they did it.
Nice. We're gonna be doing a digital raffle on the old sub stack for me soon. So keep an eye out for that. We're gonna be giving away something really neat. But anyway, so there we go. It's a raffle ticket with Snoopy and Lucy on them. And then in the second panel, Lucy's sitting in a chair reading and she obviously hears something off panel, which attracts our attention. And we see in panel three, she has answered the door and it's Snoopy in his Beagle Scout outfit.
And he's selling raffle tickets. She says, raffle tickets? Sure, I'll buy some. Anything to help the Beagle Scouts. Wait till I get some money. And she goes back inside. Then she comes back with some money and she says, here, I'll take 30.
Way to go, Lucy.
And then as Snoopy's walking away, she yells, hey, wait a minute. What do I win if I have the winning ticket? And then Snoopy walks back and holds a piece of paper to her. And she says, what's this? And on the piece of paper it says, you don't win anything, but you'll have the pleasure of owning your very own raffle ticket. Be the first on your block to start a collection. And then he's gone and Lucy yells after him, stupid beagle.
That really helps you collect more of the final value of those raffle tickets. You know, just print off a few of those and you're good. But that's kind of the feeling of raffle tickets, right? Because there's like, you never want the thing.
No, never, most never.
Oh, great.
But yeah, just make really cool raffle looking raffle tickets and it's its own reward.
Sort of like our Patreon.
And we would absolutely love for you to join that Patreon. You can hang out with us. We're going to watch a documentary soon. It's going to be all kinds of fun. I'm going to, I'll make fun of some people on it. It'll be great. And it'll be behind a paywall, so no one will know. August 22nd, Charlie Brown is propped up against the mailbox and he's looking for Lorne and he says, I wonder if there's anything worse than waiting by your mailbox all day for a love letter.
Now, he should have having been in this comic strip for 40 years now, he should have known that in the next panel immediately would start raining on him. And he says, well, yes, I suppose so. Schulz still can't let him have too much of a break.
Well, at least it's not a cruelty done to him by Peggy Jean.
Exactly. However, there is a problem because August 28th, we see this has been a long sequence where Charlie Brown has been wanting and looking for a letter from Peggy Jean. But unfortunately, all of her letters have been returned to her because Sally has done it, right? Because no one named Brownie Charles lives there? That's correct, right? Right. OK. So Charlie Brown has just figured this out and he's writing to Peggy Jean with Sally there watching.
And Charlie Brown writes, Dear Peggy Jean, I'm sorry that all your letters were returned to you. In the next panel, Sally says, someday we'll laugh about all this. To which Charlie Brown says, ha! And Sally says, no, someday. I think that one's really funny and I think it benefits from being read aloud. I think that sometimes when you get to put the little emphasis where you think it should be, I think it's good. And that no, someday, I think is really funny.
September 2nd, Linus is going to be doing some coloring. He's looking through the box of crayons and he says, teal. Now, Lucy is coloring on the floor. This is a Sunday, so we're starting to strip over again on tier two. Lucy's coloring and Linus is just perusing the crayons and he says, teal or cerulean? Which color expresses what I'm trying to say here? And he continues, does wild strawberry say anything at all? And I'm not sure if fuchsia makes an effort to communicate.
Lucy is taking all this in and getting slightly more annoyed as Linus continues, which really speaks louder, tangerine or dandelion? In fact, does royal purple say what we? And then Lucy interrupts, color the sky blue and the grass green! Sending Linus flying and then Linus from the ground says, Get out the black, I'll do a night scene.
Is there any Crayola crayon color that fascinated you guys the most?
Corn silk or corn flour or something? It was like a blue and it didn't seem to want to leave, it didn't leave pigment behind.
Interesting.
It was very odd.
When did they change flesh?
In my lifetime.
Because it never occurred to me that when I was five, that flesh, that's different for every person.
Right. I mean, clearly it didn't occur to Crayola either. Definitely, yeah.
But yeah, the one that always fascinated me was burnt umber.
Burnt umber, yeah.
Tastes good, too.
That with the Play-Doh chaser?
Now Play-Doh, I can get behind, yeah, absolutely. But I loathe crayons. Like, do you guys, I, one of my phobias, one of the paper that they wrap Crayola crayons on around. Oh, God, I can't even hold it. Just the thought of it is giving me.
Oh, I'm like that with chalk on a blackboard. I cannot even think of it.
Yeah, like same feeling.
Yeah.
Oh, no.
It takes you back to all the smells, all of the smells of elementary school. Remember, remember, paste. That smell of the paste.
Another good taste.
And then there were scented markers of it occasionally pop up.
Oh, they were great.
Mr. Sketch, is that what it was?
Mr. Sketch, yes. Root beer, grape, cherry, green apple. Oh, yeah.
It seems so decadent.
You guys are so young.
When I was drawing comics, when I was in my teens, I was using colored markers, marxolots, and developed a serious lung infection. To this day, if I get one whiff of any kind of marxolot, I start coughing.
But yeah, the Mr. Sketch stuff, what did they do to make that smell? It didn't say like 10 percent real fruit juice or anything.
I didn't think so. And it was packaged in Styrofoam. It was a very 80s product. September 7th, Marcy and Peppermint Patty are out in the school yard enjoying a little lunch. And Marcy says to Peppermint Patty, and she's quoting, Borrowers are nearly always ill spenders. And she continues, who goeth a borrowing, goeth a sorrowing. And the next panel, Peppermint Patty says, where do you get that stuff, Marcy? And Marcy says, a book of quotations.
And she holds it up, and Peppermint Patty says, can I borrow it?
So maybe the theory is correct. Charles Schulz, always go into the book of quotations.
What's weird about this trip?
Five panels.
Yeah, yeah.
He needed five panels. He could have cut one of the quotes.
That's true.
No, I think you need to. I actually could kind of even use three. Well, threes and whatnot.
But it wasn't worth the Sunday.
Yeah, isn't that strange?
Yeah, there's a five panel in the Peggy Jean one as well. So he's mixing it up.
He absolutely is.
But yeah, that's your go-to, right? Get a book of quotations if you don't have any ideas for a strip, just start flying through, and then you can have a lawyer talk in.
Well, one of the things I always, I had this theory I developed that anything is a map. And it's like, if you're stuck, just grab anything and go, oh, the answer is in here, you know? And like book of quotations is great.
Not that this is a triumph of literature, but way back in the day when I was still doing that comic Shades of Grey, and it was the last issue of the self published ones, I just took a bunch of quotes from Walden and just was like, all right, I'm going to take all these quotes from Walden and I'm going to make a story out of it. And ended up being about a girl who ran away from home, has nothing to do with Walden, but it worked as just, okay, this is a guide.
Yeah.
So yeah.
It's working on mystery science theater where you're watching a movie and really what you're trying to do when you're writing for it is you are seeing an unwitting straight man setting up a punchline that doesn't exist. And that's super helpful for cartooning because just over and over and over again, you just are engaging with this movie and you're forced to find something funny that that thing just set up.
And so for writing comics, it just, it's, it's a great muscle to build because you're just experiencing something else that inspires you to think of something funny.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a great exercise.
I've never written a gag cartoon in my life, but something popped into my head, sort of fully formed. Okay, it's a strip called The Time Traveler. And so the first panel is, it's obviously like the Depression era street scene. And the guy is going like, hey buddy, can you spare me a dime? And the guy gives him a dime. And so then he walks over to the newsstand and he goes, I'll have a copy of that Action Comics number one. And the last panel goes like, now all I have to do is wait.
That's great.
That's really good.
So I'll tell you what guys, how about we call it right there. That was a great group of strips. Love meeting Peggy Jean. Love reading Marsu's quotations. And I love hanging out with my pals and all you folks out there listening. It just is like I always say, it's my favorite day of the week. And I'm so grateful that you guys have decided to share part of it with us. So if you want to keep this conversation going, you can of course email us through our website, unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com.
While you're over there on the website, you should sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread, which will get you an email, one a month from my pal Harold, that will let you know what we're going to be covering in each and every episode, as best we can tell at the time anyway. And you can also just follow us on social media. We're at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and Threads, and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube, and we'd love to see you there. So that's it for this week.
Come back next week for more 1990. Until then, for Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.
Yes. Yes. Be of good cheer.
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen and Harold Buchholz. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza shukralla Clark. For more from the show, follow Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads. Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube. For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com. Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.
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