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 are wrapping up 1990 and I couldn't be more excited about it. My name is Jimmy Gownley. I'll be your host for these proceedings, and I'm also a cartoonist. I've done things like Amelia Rules, Seven Good Reasons Not To Grow Up, and The Dumbest Idea Ever. And guess what? You can read my new comic, Tanner Rocks, for free at gvillcomics.substack.com.
And joining me, as always, are my pals, co-hosts, and fellow cartoonists. First, he's a playwright and a composer, both for the band, Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast. He's the co-creator of the original comic book Price Guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules, and the creator of such great strips, A 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, Sweets Beasts, it's Harold Buchholz.
Hello.
Well, guys, I am very happy to be wrapping up another year with you guys. We have all kinds of strips to get to that are going to be worth talking about. So how about together as a group, we all get to the strips?
Yes.
Sound good? Okay. So if you characters want to follow along out there, there's a couple of things I'd love for you to do. The first thing I'd love for you to do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com and sign up for the great Peanuts reread, and that will get you one email a month where we tell you what we're going to be covering on the show. So you'll be able to read ahead and follow along with us. How can you do that?
Well, one great thing is that you can go over to gocomics.com where all of the Peanuts strips are archived and you can read this for free. Or you could buy one of the Phantographics books or one of Andrews McMill's Decades Collection. All great ways for you to follow along with us. So why not just get started? Here we go. September 9th, Peppermint Patty in one of those symbolic panels is staring at an exceedingly nicely drawn and realistic-ish llama.
In the next panel, we cut to her in the classroom, and she's writing something on a piece of paper and it says, Llamas. She continues in the next panel. Once there was a man who owned two llamas, she writes. Then he got another one. Now he had three llamas, except this llama spelling has three Ls in it. Soon he had four llamas with four Ls in the word llamas, and she hands in her paper up at the teacher's desk, and then comes back with it already graded.
And Marcie says, what did she give you on your report, sir? And yep, you guessed it, a DDDD minus. DDDD minus if I got all the Ds. Four Ds, poor Peppermint Patty. I think I might have chosen this one, but the reason I chose it was because of the llama in panel one. That is wild. It seems like, you know, he just wakes up, you know, in August of 1990, 40 years into the strip and is like, I'm going to draw a super realistic llama. Isn't that weird? The whole thing seems weird.
It looks like those ones where he's working heavily from reference.
Oh, yes. And maybe the reference is an illustration, not a photo of a llama. You know what I mean?
Could be a stuffed llama.
Could be a stuffed llama. It's a nice llama either way. What do you think? It's like a pepper and panning and a llama kind of on a bath mat is what it looks like.
It's a little fuzzy llama fur rug.
It's kind of a baby llama.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's very cute. We have big eyes kind of looking at jangly black and the blackboards. One of the things I, you know, when you go into schools for visits, which I haven't now in a few years, because basically I haven't gone back on the road since COVID. But one of the things I notice is cartoons look so outdated in classrooms now because boy, there is nothing like a blackboard in the classroom in these United States of America these days. Not in many places anyway.
Right.
All whiteboards and, you know, project video projectors and all kinds of funky stuff. It's crazy when you see all of the differences, even those peanuts is about as universal and as timeless as you can get. I mean, there's still telephones and chalkboards and all kinds of stuff that date it. The one thing that I've sort of been thinking about recently, and I'm not weirded out by the things in my own lifetime getting older.
Like I'm not really weirded out by REM having formed 40 some years ago, or Disco being ancient at this point. But I am kind of weirded out by things that were pre-me that now seem really ancient, like black and white movies or TV shows from the 50s and stuff like that. I think they look almost completely ancient to modernize. And that's not a fun feeling, I don't think, as one gets older.
I don't know. I mean, one of the more popular streamed shows last year was Ripley in glorious black and white. Really? It looked so much better than old black and white. I mean, it was almost three-dimensional. Yeah.
Yeah.
I like old black and white, though. I mean, some of them, it's rough. But if it's a really nicely preserved black and white, I like it.
Yeah. It's interesting. I wonder if they've ever done any, like a poll asking kids, which of these things are acceptable to you that aren't like what the new stuff is. I'm wondering how black and white works. I hear varying stories. Some people say, you know, kids, some of them love the black and white because it has a different feel to it in the storytelling. And if they like it, then seeing black and white is like, oh, this might be something I really enjoy.
And I've heard other kids will not even look at something that's in black and white.
Well, we were up against that prejudice because we all started publishing in black and white in a period where there were a lot of people who would never consider even looking at it. It was like a weird little ghetto.
Yeah, right. Yeah, because they would not sell as well. How many you could sell peak was a fraction of the, maybe like a quarter or a fifth of what the biggest color comic was. Of course, if you had the money and you could do color, most people would choose to do it. So maybe that skews it a little bit.
Well, we pretended it was an aesthetic choice. She said we couldn't afford to do it in color.
Michael and I did a whole lecture on what an aesthetic choice us being poor was. Do you remember that, Michael?
Sure, spectrum in black and white.
That's right, me and Carla McNeil.
Yeah, I think there was two people in the audience.
One of them was my boss and her daughter.
Well, that covers it, you now know.
It was still a good time. Yeah, no, I know my friends, he has twin daughters as well, and they will not touch black and white. And I even know my daughters, obviously in my house, they're forced to watch things like the Marx Brothers and stuff when it is, so it's different.
But they have friends that wouldn't even watch like Marvel at the height of all them being into Marvel, did a thing like a Werewolf by Night special, and most of their friends wouldn't watch it because it was in black and white.
Wow, that's so interesting.
You know, I mean, newspaper strips of dailies have always been black and white.
And I wonder how that affects readership. Is that a barrier to see a beautifully drawn Peanuts daily?
Well, it's free and most people grew up with it. So nowadays, I don't think kids grow up with newspapers around.
No, and the newspapers around are in full color and have been for 30 years at this point.
No kidding. The dailies?
Yeah.
I had no idea. Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Not everywhere, obviously.
Yeah. Yeah, right. But almost everywhere. If they're doing it in good old Potsville, PA, they're doing it almost everywhere, I would think. September 14th. It's a baseball game. Charlie Brown's on the bench. He looks very upset. Lucy's behind him and she looks angry and she's yelling, you blockhead, you struck out and we lost the last game of the season. Lucy continues, you were standing there thinking about your new girlfriend, weren't you? And Charlie Brown and Linus walk away from the game.
Charlie Brown looking for Lauren, dragging his bat behind him and he says to Linus, I thought being in love was supposed to make you happy. To which Linus says, where'd you get that idea?
We're finding, I don't know, other than happiness and anger, a lot of his punch lines are like cynical comments. Like kind of world weary cynical comments. Where'd you get that idea?
Yeah, well Linus, I think, is probably a little weary from his go-arounds with Lydia.
I would say it's not necessarily world weary and cynical because in that Lydia interchange, there's something heightened and interesting in the thing. It's like it's tough, it's a challenge, it's intriguing, isn't necessarily something you don't like, but it's not necessarily going to make you happy.
Well, right. I want to go back to something we talked about, I think 500 years ago when we started this podcast and I said, happiness can be overrated. I think that whatever Charlie Brown is getting out of his relationship with this little girl, happiness is a part of it, but all the other parts are worth it too, because it's all growth.
Also, the inconsistency with the success of the team.
That's classic.
I mean, why would it matter if you lost the last game of the season when you lost every game of the season?
Well, I remember in the 60s, it was like, we could have won the championship. It's like, I don't think you could have, because I've never seen you win a game here. Drawing wise though, one of the big highlights of the last episode for me was Harold pointing out, oh yeah, when they're going up the escalator, Charlie Brown puts his forearm on the railing, and that's why it looks like it's an escalator and not stairs. I thought, gosh, it's brilliant. This, it's just the dragging of the bat.
Essentially, Charlie Brown and Linus are basically in the same pose, but Charlie Brown dragging the bat gives it the feeling of a despair or, you know, being deflated. If he had it on his shoulder or something, it would be more, you know, confident, I think. Yeah, jaunty. Yes, exactly. And, of course, Lucy rocking the corduroys.
Whoa, next trip, I just noticed who was in it.
It's pretty exciting. September 28th. Good old Pigpen is running for class president. He's standing behind a jangly black podium, and he says, and if I'm elected class president, I promise to and then hard cut to, oh my gosh, it's Patty and Violet.
The diabolical duo.
They are not going to let Pigpen get away with this. And they both with glaring faces and good old Violet yells, you can't be class president, Pigpen. You're a mess and you have no dignity. But Pigpen is prepared for this. He simply puts on a top hat, which he has brought with him for just this occasion.
It's not just a top hat, it's Abe Lincoln's top hat.
It is, yes, it is a stovepipe, Abe Lincoln top hat, for sure.
There's an approachable hat.
It is, you know what, I think, much like Dylan's choice of hat works for Dylan, I think the stovepipe works for Pigpen.
And for Woodstock in a few years.
That's right.
Can't go wrong.
So can we just briefly talk about something about Charlie Brown's new girlfriend? So he's Charlie Brown, which he definitely did not name after himself, because who would, I mean, right? And then the love of his life here, the trumping, even the little red-haired girl has the middle name Jean.
I noticed that right away. The first name is based on his famous favorite skater.
Maggie Fleming? Yeah, it could be. I was thinking, I wonder what Jean's middle name is. I wonder if it's Margaret. Anyway, I don't know. But even if it's not, I think there's significance in the fact that her name has Jean in it. I don't even know if he thought of it, because he seriously didn't think that he was naming Charlie Brown after himself. He probably was on some level just operating intuitively. September 30th, Sally is sitting in her chair and she's reading something.
I guess she has a little newspaper or comic book and she says to herself, good grief, I almost forgot. Then she runs outside and we then see her at Snoopy's doghouse with a big bowl of, well, just a supper dish because she doesn't have any food in it. But she says, my brother isn't home. He asked me to feed you. Now they're inside and she's reading the ingredients on the dog food can. Dog food, I guess this is what he usually gives you. She pours it into the bowl saying, how revolting.
It looks terrible. Snoopy is watching all of this. Sally continues, I can't imagine eating this every day. Just looking at it almost makes me sick. Now they're outside again. She puts the dog food down in the bowl and says, anyway, here you are. And then walks away saying, Bon Appetit. Snoopy rolls his eyes sideways.
All right. So what is that jangly shape in panel four?
Cabinet. Open. Cabinet door open.
Open. Boy, that's weird because I thought it was maybe the dog food. Close up of the dog food.
Little inset. That would be new.
Yeah, that doesn't work. Last week we were talking about how he just draws those basic geometric shapes and it makes the whole downtown courtroom with the escalators and stuff. This one doesn't read quite as well, but again, it might work better in color. You know, they have a wall behind her and stuff like that.
What about that face on the left hand panel on the bottom tier?
That is someone who does not like the smell or look of that dog food. October 6th, it's a panoramic panel, one of those done in ones. And it's three different sized leaf piles. In the largest one, we have Charlie Brown jumping into it. In the medium sized one, it's Snoopy. And of course in the tiny little pile of leaves, it's Woodstock and they all look just delighted. But I think Charlie Brown is mostly going to miss the pile of leaves.
And yes, and break his little back.
Yes.
I'm used to that.
So it makes you think maybe it's not even Lucy. Maybe this is just, he has some sort of problem.
Yeah, we need an odd wump in this.
Yeah, you know, maybe it is. Maybe he has a depth perception problem.
His parents aren't sending him to check for amblyopia. No. But I love this strip and this is just a classic little visual joke with that is kind of a joyous little moment that he captures. And it's nice to see those pop up every once in a while. This is, I guess, more of the merchandise line of Peanuts that we're used to seeing that keep popping up as memes.
Yeah, well, you could certainly see this repeated on a pattern for like a kid's shirt or something, you know. It definitely has that vibe.
Yeah, but having said that, it's not... It doesn't feel forced. It just feels genuine. No, it doesn't. It's part of the strip. And that's, you know, this is a part of the strip. We just did the Patreon kind of live watch along or pre-recorded watch along of the American Masters thing.
And that's one thing we brought up was what's missing from this documentary that aired on PBS about Charles Schulz not too long after he passed away was everything was so melancholy that in their theme about who Schulz was and kind of the mystery of who Schulz was is they really missed the joy that does pop up in this strip. It runs quite the gamut, you know, of a lot of different types of emotions.
And that was one that I guess maybe just didn't fit into where they were going with trying to describe who Schulz was. And they're missing a piece of him in that documentary.
Yeah, and it's a big piece because the melancholy is an ingredient, but so is the joy. And, you know, it will be like the time I made my oatmeal cookies without the flour. They're okay, actually. It was a brittle, but it was okay. But it wasn't an oatmeal cookie, you know? And I felt watching that documentary. Well, you know what, guys? I'm not gonna tell you what I felt about watching that documentary, but if you wanted to sign up for our Patreon, you would have access to that.
We try to do, every couple of months, we try to do an event of some sort for our Patreon subscribers. And as Harold was saying, this month, we looked at American Masters, Charles Schulz. And if you want to hear our complete thoughts on it, hop on over to Patreon, kick in a couple bucks, even just for a month, if you want to, and give it a listen. We had a great time recording it. Also, going back to this strip, it's a flex just drawing these three characters in one panel.
It's because any one of those characters would be on the Mount Rushmore of comics and the pinnacle of any other cartoonist career and he can jam them into one panel.
Yeah.
October 13th, it's the old Tiny Tots concert again, and Peppermint Patty and Marcie are there. And Marcie is reading the program and she says, this next piece is a concerto for flute and orchestra. And then she says to Peppermint Patty, it was composed by Ellen Zwilich, who incidentally just happens to be a woman. To which Peppermint Patty stands up on the chair and yells, good going, Ellen.
Imagine being in that theater.
Well, look at Marcie, I love how she just sinks.
Her head is barely above the armrest. She's so down in her chair. She does not want to be in any way attached to this.
Notice in panel one, there's a little bunny sitting next to Marcie.
That shadow does look like a little bunny.
Oh, yeah, I guess. What do you know? That's a message, some bloomin little message to Schulz. The bunny composer, I don't know what's going on. I do love this about peanuts. We've talked about it so often. This is a peanut of obscurity, I guess, for most of us. Peanuts, ascibities, it's spring. Do you guys know Ellen's Will Itch at all? I know, never heard of her.
No, I actually don't.
I looked her up because I do love that Schulz, in his fictional world, brings all of these real people into it, and he likes to honor them with that. This is no exception. It turns out she was the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Music who happened to be a woman. She's a good person to mention and she's apparently super prolific, has done a bunch of stuff. She's still teaching at Florida State University.
In just about five years after this one came out, she became the first composer's chair in the history of Carnegie Hall. Oh, wow. There was a little clip of someone being quoted in some encyclopedia of music that they described that she had the rare capability of creating music with substance, but with a broad appeal to mixed audiences. First thing I thought of was, well, that's like Charles Schulz.
Right. Yeah. Very interesting. One thing I wonder, obviously, this is an extremely successful woman who's at the peak of her field, but she probably doesn't expect to be mentioned in a comic strip, right? In newspapers all over the world. What happened? Obviously, no one reaches out to the people mentioned in these things. But she must have found out about it instantly. Someone in her life would have told her.
Yeah. I think that's really interesting. We've heard many stories that he actually did just call people up out of the blue. If you like. What was the name of that singer who had like 23 hits or something?
Oh, right. Yeah. I can't remember.
Joni James? Yeah.
Or even Lynn Johnson. They talk about in the documentary.
But the interesting thing is they always seem to be women. Was he calling guys up as well? Did he have the guts to call Sam Snead or?
He could have called Willie Mays.
Willie Mays, right?
No, he would never call Willie Mays. He's also calling people if you notice that he is more famous than. He's not going to call Willie Mays because he would.
Yeah, yeah, there's maybe some dynamic there.
Oh, I 100% think there is. Now, here's something I'm going to go out. I'm going to just be wildly negative. You ready?
Ready.
I don't know that I care for the Zip-a-Tone in that last panel. I think it could have been black. I think it would. It looks like they turned the light on to me.
Yeah, it doesn't read as a dark.
Oh, just for consistency's sake?
Yeah, yeah. Take that, Sparky.
I don't know.
Great comic, though.
I'm wondering whether it's Zwillich or Zwillick.
It's probably Zwillick.
Zwillick.
But this is American, if she's American. Anything goes.
Right, right. October 17th. Marcie and Charlie Brown are hanging out inside, looks like probably Charlie Brown's living room. They're in a big club chair, and Marcie says to Charlie Brown, see how my hands shake, Charles? It's because of all the pressure. And she shows him her shaking hands. And then, uh, upset Marcie continues, my parents think I should get perfect grades in everything every day. And then Marcie says, I'm so tired.
And then Charlie Brown looks at this, and Marcie just leans her head on a pillow in the chair. Charlie Brown is, you know, contemplating what to say. And Snoopy comes in and says, when she wakes up, give her a cookie.
So I mean, I could have read this last week and not think about hand shaking, shaking hands.
Oh, yeah.
Which is pretty much how he's feeling.
Right.
And is it because of the pressure? I don't know.
You know, one of the things that he says in that documentary, he says, sometimes my hands are shaking, I'm so excited by the strip, I can't wait to get it down. And it's like, that's projection and con. That's not true, Charles. Obviously, you're having a larger issue and, you know, everybody kind of knows it. But he is under a tremendous pressure. I mean, just the absolute, forget the success, right? Just the amount of work. Not the daily strip would break most people.
I don't think I could do it. And then not only that, he has the TV shows, he has the licensing to approve, he has the books that are coming out. It's crazy. It is an insane amount of pressure.
And it's interesting that Marcie, as a character, has been like layers of an onion as we've gotten to know her more and more. And this is, I think, the first time where I could look at this based on what you guys are saying and say, okay, maybe this is an aspect of Marcie that's a part of Schulz that he didn't have in the strip before.
Yeah.
You know, that sense of perfectionism. You know, because Linus can be brilliant, but he's kind of comfortable in it. And now we're seeing that Marcie kind of has this, this face and not being able to see her eyes. You know, she's, she's a little bit of an enigma. She kind of blocks things from the world, a bit of a mask.
And then we get to see this, this really wonderful segment where she's kind of hit her limit and she walks away from her own home and family and is looking for help because she feels so much pressure. So that's what this is referring to as the pressure from her parents that she feels of having to get good grades and be so good at everything.
And it's just really touching when she's, you know, she's got her little head up against a pillow on the, on this large chair that she's sitting on with Charlie Brown. So I'm so tired.
It was the advantage of being mediocre. They expected nothing and got it.
I, I, I completely relate to Marcie in this. This and not parents and I don't, I love my parents. Everything's fine. Well, everything's not fine. They're dead. Maybe that is why everything's fine. Anyway, the point I'm making is this. I was under a lot of pressure to get good grades too. And that lasted until eighth grade. Well, you know, you could read all about this and the dumbest idea ever for just 1995. So I'll let you, but I, but I-
There's always an upcharge on these big insights.
Absolutely.
But one more observation that sitting in a chair together is kind of intimate.
It is.
Marcie is up against Peggy Jean now. So it could be a, I'm pouring out my heart to you to get closer to you.
Oh, that's true too.
And she's, I think there's something to that. I think that he's the one that she chose to go to. Obviously she likes him, but not just because she likes him, likes him.
Right, yes.
But because there's something about him that she likes that makes her think that he's the guy to go to when you have to confide. And that's a part of Charlie Brown that really has been relatively new. And you see Charlie Brown's response to her. He's listening, he's considering, he's not just making some snap judgment like Lucy would make.
Or Peppermint Patty even would, you know.
It's possibly, and Schroeder might ignore her. The one who would consider what she has to say and not jump in and try to give the answer or whatever is Charlie Brown. He'll just listen. And I think that's the cool part of Charlie Brown. The loser who's not always a loser, you know?
Yes. Yeah. It's such a...
But he's a nice guy.
Snoopy has a quick answer. Snoopy says give her a cookie, you know?
And I don't disagree with that.
It's a good team for Marcie to go to.
Yeah, it really is. I love Marcie. And I think what you're saying about that this could be something of Schulz's feelings, I think is 100% true, because it's so easy to change that word parents to critics, syndicate, newspaper editors, the public, you know what I mean? Myself. Oh yeah, boy. Well, because, you know, amen. I mean, that's what it really all comes down to. You can dismiss other people's expectations, thoughts, whatever, but once it becomes baked in to you.
Yeah, I mean, Marcie's response to this is because she does care, you know? You could blow off even your parents, you know? If they were expecting something even good, you can just say, well, I'm not dealing with that. I'm checking out.
Right.
But Marcie cares and she's not willing to give that up. She's just trying to process it here and figure it out.
Absolutely. Well, let's do one more here before we take a break. October 20th, Marcie wakes up after falling asleep on the club chair and she says, where am I? And Charlie Brown says, you're at my house, Marcie. And they both take their places on the chair again. Marcie says, I don't want to go home. Can I stay here? If I go home, I have to be perfect. And then from the other room, we're watching TV in our bean bag. Sally yells, if she doesn't want to be perfect, she's come to the right place.
This is what I like. This is a good place for Sally.
Yeah.
Someone who watches TV and makes cynical snappy remarks. Yeah.
And what's great about this is that it is a zinger, it is a one-liner, it is a welcoming one-liner and zinger. That's wild.
Yeah. She's kind of like, yeah, settle in.
Exactly.
And that Charlie Brown is standing at the chair, as we were talking about before after Marcie has woken up. He's left her on her own, but he wasn't too far away. And then once she sits back up, he's back on the chair with her, just sitting there and listening again. I really do like this sequence.
Me too.
And it does show, yeah, there's this kind of low key, caring, I don't know, it's a little haven space for Marcie in the Brown household. And I just don't see this being in a strip in the first, say 30 years of Peanuts.
And that's what I'm saying about why it's worth reading all of it. I mean, it takes no insight to point to the Sistine Chapel and go, hey, that came out pretty good. You know what I mean? But it's worth it to go into the obscure corners and the stuff that people maybe weren't paying attention to as closely the first time, because you find stuff like this, which is great.
Yeah, totally. I mean, you see an artist who never stops changing, never stops growing. We may miss pieces of who he was in the 60s or the late 50s, but he's not, he hasn't thrown in the towel. He's not phoning it in. There's no question he's giving it his all.
Yeah.
And that you got to, we super appreciate that.
Yeah. And the other magic of it, I think is that the 50s and the 60s are there still. And because it's not like a war and peace or a whatever that you have to read this or Lord of the Rings even, right? That's impossible to dip into. You could have the 50s and the 60s anytime you want. And you can have it for five minutes if you need it, 10 minutes if you need it.
It's actually, I think the place of a comic strip in American culture today, there's a real place for it just because of the brevity of it, just because of that aspect of it. It doesn't have the newspaper mechanism to get it to people. But the form makes sense to me.
Yeah, and the fact that you can create a snapshot of where you are as an artist every single day and reach people in that Ellen Zwilich kind of way where it's accessible but you can really pour your heart and soul into it in this kind of haiku, drawn haiku kind of method where one person can do it and create art that people can experience together. And it has the continuity of character. There's nothing like it.
There's nothing like it. It's also, it's considered one of the three American, original American art forms. The comic strip and Scrimshaw.
Okay.
And it's not universal. Newspapers in Italy, which is the only country I would know about, don't have comics. They never did.
Really? Do they have editorial cartoons and that sort of thing?
Not in the papers I've seen. They had little magazines, like weekly magazines, you could find strips in.
Well, maybe that's also part and parcel of how large your language is and how many people you have to potentially reach in order to hit the chance of actually making a living doing it, because it really is a commitment to do it, Bill, like Jimmy was saying.
I actually don't know. I mean, Japan has a huge culture of manga.
And yet even that is done like in teams, right? You have to have a group of people turning it out.
Massive weekly books, phone books of comics, but do they have a daily newspapership? I don't know. Maybe if somebody knows, they can tell us.
I don't know that they do, but I will tell you one thing that I think, if you're interested in the art of cartooning at all, which I assume you are if you're listening to this podcast, at this point, you can hunt around on YouTube. There's a show in Japan called Manben, or Manben, M-A-N-B-E-N. And what it is is they set up four or five cameras in a mangaka, which is like a Japanese cartoonist studio. And they let it roll for a whole day or two while they're creating their comics.
And it's not just one person. It's a team of people. It's like the master and the apprentices, and you're the background guy, you're the face guy, whatever, yeah, it's crazy. So then they videotape the whole day. And then the show is the host who's also a cartoonist. I can't remember any of his names, I'm sorry. But he's a brilliant host because he'll just then go over the footage with them and they talk all about technique, all about what they're doing. It's amazing.
And that's only subtitled, obviously. But it's worth checking out.
Where did you discover this?
YouTube.
YouTube? The man ban, you said?
Yeah, M-A-N-B-E-N, absolutely worth checking out. They must have had, I don't know how many episodes they've had in Japan, but I've seen about eight or nine on YouTube. It's really worth it.
That's really special because to your point, this is a uniquely Japanese way. It's almost like their manga was our animation studio. Yeah. Now, there were comic book companies or people who were making comics, and they had what they called the bullpen back in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s.
I don't know when it stopped, but the idea that everybody comes into the office around the same time, they all have these tables, they're being assigned pages as you go, back when the comics were like 64 pages, you'd have like the Eiger studio, and they would be making comics for multiple publishers who didn't want to pay to have their own artists and try to, you know, you went to a company that knew how to get a bunch of good artists who could give you stuff on demand so you could publish it every month in a comic book.
But in Japan, like Michael was saying, you know, have you guys seen, our listeners, have you seen what the, you've probably seen the little manga books that get published out of it. But they're usually anthology books like Shonen Jump is a famous one. And how many pages is a single weekly Shonen Jump?
Oh, hundreds.
Hundreds of pages. And you might be assigned 15 of those every week to follow a story. And so you have to have the master artist or the person who's behind it, kind of the show runner of a TV series and what we see in the US. And they created the concept. And then if it's taking off, they're in a position to bring more and more people on to just turn out a massive amount of comics. Hopefully still with a singular kind of a voice.
Yeah, but it's still much different than a newspaper strip. Because somebody just mentioned haikus. You know, one of the great Japanese art forms. It seems likely that someone would have attempted the equivalent of a haiku as a comic strip. Because your daily, you know, maybe it wasn't funny. But anyway, I don't know about that. Because I've read books about, you know, the manga industry, but I've never looked at a Japanese newspaper. Yeah.
Yeah. Maybe our listeners know.
Yeah. We have somebody in Japan.
We have many people in Japan.
Yeah. And we are very grateful for that.
Yeah. I'd love to know if there's a newspaper strip history in Japan.
And you know what else I'm grateful for? Five-minute breaks. So we're going to take a quick break. I'm going to get a freshen up my iced tea. And then we'll come back. We'll do the anger and happiness index. We'll finish up the strips and get our MVPs and strips of the year. Catch you on the flip side.
Hi, everyone. I just want to take a moment to remind you that all three hosts are cartoonists themselves, and their work is available for sale. You can find links to purchase books by Jimmy, Harold and Michael on our website. You can also support the show on Patreon or buy us a mud pie. Check out the store link on unpackingpeanuts.com.
We're back.
I missed you. I'm glad we're here together again. Okay. We're going to finish up the strips, but before we do, Harold, do you have any info on the old anger happiness index for us?
Yeah. For those of you new or who have forgotten, basically every year, I'm looking at the characters and seeing how many strips feature at least one character showing anger or one character showing happiness throughout the strips, counting them up, and just kind of watching it year by year. And for those of you who are at all interested in this concept, there is a beautiful graph that Liz has set up in the Obscurities Index, and she updates it every year.
And you can see starting 1953 for anger, and I think starting around 1957 for happiness. You can see the trajectory. And if you were to look at this, it looks like generally a line going down over the course of the strips. The amped up nature of the strip has just gotten more and more mellow, a little less anger, a little less happiness.
Shown in the average strip, he's gotten a little more subtle, I think is a good way to put it, with his characterizations, and he's not reliant on some of the more intense character representations here. Last year, we had seen a bump up on the happiness scale from an all-time low of 75 in 1988 to about 97, which was still quite low in 1989. Then we've seen anger just floating around between, looks like, 60, 69, 75 for the last five years.
So happiness has generally been greater, has actually consistently been greater since 1971. There's not been a more angry than happy year. So that's kind of the picture of where we are last year at 75, even keel and anger. Where do you guys think we are this year? Does it feel any different to you?
Well, I just flipped through the strips we're doing today. And it seems like neither would be my pick for the high. It's that I'm seeing a couple of angry panels and maybe it's one or two strips where they look happy. But I think it's like everybody's kind of resigned to life. You know, I'm not going to get too excited about anything.
Yeah.
So anger seems kind of low for you this year.
I think they both are low.
I agree. Yeah, I agree with all of that. And I think where and I think that even just has a part of aging. You know, at a certain point, you're like, all right, whatever.
You don't feel things as intensely anymore.
Exactly.
I don't know. That's one of the things you learn in life or you become resigned to in life. But everyone's different.
Well, that's the energy to dance or do the happy dance.
Or the anger dance. I'm going to agree. I think they're going to both. I'm going to say they're both down, but like down by like two. I think we're going to hover around this point for the next five years.
Because you're the guy who's read the strips in this era. So it's interesting to hear you saying it's going to be pretty consistent from your memory.
And of course, tons of gardening. Those are the things my flawless memory.
Well, on the anger side of 75 in 1989, like we said, it's been quite consistent for the past five years or so. It's down to 59 in 1990, which is the second lowest it's ever been. So yeah, it's in that same range. Now, the lowest was 83. I think we had 48, which was just ridiculously low. Yeah. And then for happiness, we had a nosedive. It was like 126 and 87, and then it was down to 76 and 88. And then it bounced up to 97 and 89. It's back down to 90.
So yeah, maybe everything's just kind of even out, slightly more happy than angry for the next years. We'll see.
Yeah. That's my prediction. All right. So shall we get back to the strips?
Sure.
Or we could do the mail.
Oh my gosh, why don't we do the mail? You know, that's how self-centered I am. I didn't get anything on the hotline. So I was like, oh, hey Liz, I'm hanging out in the mailbox.
Do we got anything?
We do. We got a long email from super listener Sarah Wilson who says, over the summer, I came across a treasury of Nancy strips.
We can't get away from her.
After the great Nancy controversy of 2024, I just had to have a look. You know, in a weird way, I get it now. I've been so used to the Spartan clarity of Peanuts, that it never even occurred to me that Schulz might have had a predecessor. But Nancy does exemplify the same picture as text, simplicity about it. Also, I got to admit, the gags are funny.
That's so sad that this is the last time we're going to be hearing from her.
I'm only kidding.
I'm only teasing.
She says, it's not as inane as I remembered from the newspaper page when I was a kid in the 80s, more or less.
I'd love to know what years were in that treasury. That would be really, I don't know if you can go in. Sometimes they have the copyright range in the copyright page. But if you wouldn't mind messaging us back and letting us know what era of Nancy you were experiencing, I'd be interested to know.
Okay. I will ask her. She continues, also this summer, I was browsing in a bookstore and stumbled across a copy of Bill Mauldin's upfront.
Yes.
She says, along with his cartoons from the military newspaper Stars and Stripes in 44, it also includes running commentary of his view of the war, mainly as an infantry man in Italy, and how abjectly miserable it is.
That book.
Schulz really did relate to that.
I was reading upfront around the same time I was discovering Peanuts. Yeah, it was pretty influential to me. I mean, there's no relationship because he's doing it all in one panel, and he's really making pretty intense commentary on how screwed up the whole military was.
Yeah. She goes on to say, I trained as I am to regard World War II as self-evidently heroic and right. It was rather uncomfortable to read a front man's honest thoughts about it.
Well, the thing that strikes me about Mauldin, and to be able to say it like it is in the official house organs of the military.
Right.
That says volumes about this guy as an artist and as a student of human nature.
Right.
Because if you did it in a certain way, I'd say 98 percent of the people that would try to do that would get censored. They would be shut down. People would be angry at them. But the humanity that he puts into it in the matter of factness that he does, and ultimately, it's up to you to decide if he's critiquing war. Is he critiquing the United States Armed Forces?
He's critiquing the commissioned officers. They're the enemy.
Isn't that amazing?
They're trying to get him killed.
Yeah. Those commissioned officers were the ones that were letting him say that.
Do it.
Maybe that says something about the military as well.
To old America. Yeah.
Yeah. No, I never thought about it that way, but that's a great insight.
Is there ever an equivalent in Stalin's version?
Probably not. The great lost Nazi cartoonists. I can't imagine. That's a really cool thing. I never thought about it that way, but you're 100 percent right. Can I just say one last thing about the Nancy thing? That's honestly what I mean by reading outside your comfort zone. I was not a Nancy fan. But Todd Webb insists it's good, and not only that, he insists it's so good that he's going to get these other people to call.
Well, okay, then if you're going to, you don't read that with a frown on your face and your arms crossed. You go, okay, what's this about? 50 million Elvin fans can't be wrong. Let's figure it out. I found it super rewarding. I'm never going to be a super Nancy fan. But it was definitely worth reading and trying to figure it out. Absolutely.
Yeah.
So Sarah sends us links to the Nancy stuff that she found and the Mauldin stuff that she found. So I will make those available.
All right.
Let's get back to the trip. But if you want to reach out to us, you can email us at unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com. You can follow us on the social media. I'll give you that rundown at the end. We love to hear from you. We love your questions. We love your comments. It's just fun to have this community. So give us a shout. And you can also call our hotline or text it. That number is 717-219-4162. All right. Let's get back to the strips. October 30th.
Woodstock flies into Snoopy's house upside down and lands upside down on his head as if he were just standing upright, but it's been reversed. And he asks Snoopy a question and Snoopy answers, I guess so. But then in the last panel, Snoopy says, but there's more to life than being cute.
So Woodstock has a big smile on the first two panels.
Well, it looks like a frown from here.
I turned that frown upside down.
So what's Woodstock saying? Aren't I cute?
Aren't I cute? Yeah, I guess so.
Isn't this cute?
Now, that last panel talk about subtleties of expression, anger, happiness, whatever, that is not a stoic, snoopy expression. That is an expression. What would you describe it as?
Frustration.
Slight frustration, slight annoyance, but not full annoyance. Because it is cute.
Disappointment in realization.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty good to do with two tiny lines for eyebrows and a half a line for a mouth. I mean, that's amazing.
Yeah. And going back to Michael's mentioned often, you go onto the Peanuts Facebook groups and you see all these memes of happy, happy Peanuts characters. And here's Schulz, who's living in a world of looking at how many licensed properties going by his desk every day. And he's like, there is more to this strip.
That's true.
We were walking through a market set up for the Truffle Festival here in Pergola. And we saw a jacket with a giant peppermint patty emblazoned on the front and also a pair of fuzzy slippers with Peanuts characters all over them. And I just wondered to myself, do you suppose those are licensed? Right.
Well, I was thinking you were going to say that there was a bunch of knockoff Truffles merchandise. A whole booth full of them.
I went, I was at, I can't remember where it was. Lowe's or Target, anyway, it was in a place like that. And out front, there was a huge box full of pumpkins and like a cardboard crate, maybe three feet high, filled with dozens of pumpkins. And it was branded as Great Pumpkin. Pumpkins for Halloween.
Yeah, I saw that.
You've seen that? That had to be licensed, right?
Oh, you know it.
Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's a smart one, too, by the way.
Slightly, slightly, slightly more expensive pumpkins. Yes. Thanks to the peanuts on the cardboard.
That you do not take home with you.
No, you just get a pumpkin. Just a pumpkin.
November 4th, it's a Sunday. Charlie Brown is putting on his jaunty hat and jacket and says, no, just for a walk to somebody. Then he walks outside and then he walks out to see his old pal Snoopy on the doghouse. And he says, I'm ready if you are. And they go for a walk. But of course, it's just two friends walking on hind legs. It's not like walking your dog. But then Snoopy falls behind and Charlie Brown says, oh, no, not again.
In the next panel, we see Charlie Brown patiently waiting, leaning up against a telephone pole saying, I spent half my life standing around waiting for him. This happens every time we go for a walk. Now, if you're a dog owner, you might think this is going one way, but it's not, because in the last panel, it's Snoopy at a newsstand reading a newspaper and Charlie Brown says, he always has to stop and look through all the out of town papers.
Yeah, so Schulz is getting a little bit naughty here.
Right. There's just the hint that he may be peeing, like a fire hydrant or something, right? It's the closest he will ever get. Thankfully, he does not get any closer. This is as comfortable as we need to be or as close as we need to be, but it works out funny.
When Michael said Schulz is getting naughty, I looked at the newsstand and I was thinking, oh, is he reading Dirty Magazine?
I see that Snoopy favors the tabloid. Can you imagine him trying to read a broadsheet and laying out on the ground?
I don't envision where they live within walking distance of a newsstand with out of town papers though. This kind of shatters my image of where they live in.
Any little town can have out of town papers. I actually did this very thing just a few days ago. I was looking at all the out of town papers.
You live in the capital.
Oh, I guess that's true, actually.
Where did you go to see out of town papers anymore? That's becoming more and more rare.
The bagel shop, they have the New York Times, they have the Washington Post, they have the Boston Globe.
That's impressive.
Harrisburg Patriot, which is announced.
Is it just their own single copy for people to sit and eat?
No, you can buy them.
Wow, I'm impressed. Cool, that's still around. As a guy who worked at Archie Comics, it's so sad to see the death of the newsstand. That was such an amazing thing to be able to push out publications every day or week or month, and they would get into the same spots every single time and could support these magazines just from people buying copies wherever they happen to be, and that is almost gone. It's sad. Every once in a while, I do find an Archie Digest in the wild.
I was at Wegmans and there was one. There was one Archie Digest forlornly sitting on this shelf just outside the checkouts. I was like, we're hanging in there. Keep going, guys.
I know it has a newsstand, I mean a shop with shelves of magazines.
I wonder who on earth is reading these? How can they stay in business?
How can they stay in business?
Yeah, there's a one in Greenwich, Connecticut, not too far from me, that has a huge selection. I can only imagine the percentage that's going back.
Yeah, well, they're all returnable.
Less than one in five Archie Digest was selling at the time I left, and I was working to fix that. Apparently, it did go up at least a bit after I left because we got rid of some of the copies that should not have been out there that were not selling. But still, I mean, can you imagine printing five of this publication? Four of them are going to get either pulped or sent into the gray market and sold wherever those things are sold with no money going to the publisher.
Right. Well, hey, shout out to the Tiger Eye Cafe for being a bastion for American journalism. They opened like a month before everything closed for COVID. Well, that's the end of that. They made it. I don't know how they made it, but they did it.
Yep.
December 1st, Charlie Brown's back in his house, but he's dressed to go out and Sally's sitting in her beanbag chair, watching TV. Charlie Brown says, I wanted to buy Peggy Jean some gloves for Christmas, but they cost twenty five dollars. This is a sequence by the way. And Sally says to him, she's going to be disappointed when she finds out her boyfriend is a cheapskate, which Charlie Brown says, I'm not a cheapskate.
I just don't have twenty five dollars, which Sally says, put it on your credit card. Which Charlie Brown says, I don't have a credit card. And Sally answers, so long, Peggy Jeans.
This is the Sally I like, sitting there watching TV, just putting everything down. She's like so world weary at like four.
So funny. Everything she says is funny. Yeah.
And those elongated beanbag chair characters are crazy. She's got her little folded hands popping up from the beanbag chair, and then the two little feet. But man, she's like, she's like a teenager tall. If you stood her up, how far those are apart from her. It's just again, Schulz choosing the thing that looks the coolest when it doesn't really add up. It's like she's been on the rack or something. It's terrible that she's so tall.
Well, but look at she's growing because three, her hands are close to her chin.
And four, they're way down there.
Yeah, but 25 bucks, come on, that's not bad for Charlie Brown. It'd be like over $50 today, right?
Gotta sell some comics.
Look, every time I go to an ATM, I think of a conversation I had in college. A friend of mine came up and said, hey, we're going bowling. Do you want to come? I'm like, I can't, I don't have any money. They go, we'll go to an ATM. I don't have any money. I was like, I see where I didn't pass. Let's just say I'm not up for bowling tonight.
Let's go down to the ATM and I'll print an insufficient funds slip. It would be a blast.
December 11th, Michael mentioned selling some comics. Well, that's what Charlie Brown's going to try to do. He has his own little psychiatry booth style set up, but only he is selling comic books, which are scattered everywhere, all over the ground. And one little kid is reading one and says, are these all you have?
Clarify, he's trying to buy the gloves.
Yes, he is using this to buy the gloves.
Right.
Yeah.
Which any one of those comics, if they're from the 50s, would easily cover.
Not if he throws them all over the ground like that.
Well, that's it. They were in beautiful stacks before that kid showed up.
Yeah, that kid has no respect.
But I can make out one comic book and actually what it is. Can you guys see anything there?
This one starts with a name.
Is that Superman?
It looks like Superman to me, a little cape.
Yeah, he's got a little cape, yeah, for sure. Well, if it's from the 90s, it's worth nothing.
Well, hang on.
It is.
That's true. Hey, but hang on. We once said he never referenced superheroes.
Here you are.
There you are, Harold with the eagle eye coming in for the-
All right, so what's the little kid reading? Is it action?
Maybe.
Maybe I can't.
Oh, yes, it is.
But and that almost, this might be, it's probably just a blob, but if I'm going to Rorschach test it, it kind of looks like a motorcycle for me.
The Superman on a motorcycle.
On a motorcycle, yeah, yeah. I think that is action.
What issue?
That's a little harder to tell, yeah.
No, that's issue 43.
No, I don't know.
Yeah, or that's the silver subway rider.
December 30th, Linus is in classic, this is Sunday by the way, Linus is in classic thumb and blanket position and Snoopy is in classic, going to sneak up and steal the blanket position. But what he does instead is just kind of mosey over and then ends up on Linus' lap. And as he does this, he keeps scooting and very subtly steals the blanket away from Linus who just sits there remaining in thumb and blanket position until on the next panel he realizes the blanket is gone.
And then he just calmly walks and finds Snoopy who, having stolen the blanket, is just sitting there like Linus would with it. And so Linus decides to just join him and take a little nap snuggling up to Snoopy and holding his blanket with him, which is as cute a comic strip as has ever been comic stripped.
We could do, one of these days, we can do our favorite wordless strips.
Oh, that's a good one too.
This is definitely one of the masters.
My least favorite thing to do on the podcast, I was trying to describe this comic strip.
Yeah. And this is really interesting. Talk about these used to be the big conflict strips, right? You know, this was the struggle for security knows no season after Snoopy steals the blanket from Linus and takes him out into the cold winter snow. And they're in the middle of piles of it fighting and struggling. And and here we are in 1990 and we've got Snoopy sleeping in the very first panel. We've got the big Z, but he's slowly moving his way.
And you wonder, OK, is Snoopy really sleeping or is he did he wake up? But then after the two throwaway panels, you got the Z again for Snoopy sleeping. And so you could, I don't know, you can almost argue that he's sleep stealing.
Absolutely.
And then there is no conflict here, right? This is this is like Schulz came up with a conflictless stealing of the blanket.
Yes.
And that's so representative of where we are with 1990 Peanuts. It's like two characters who want something and they both get it at the end. Yeah.
This is a great strip.
Absolutely. Well, that brings us to the end of the year, guys. So all I'm going to need from you at the end of this is your strip of the year and your MVP. But before that, I am going to just talk to our good listeners and give them some insights into how they can keep this conversation going for the next week. If you want to shoot us an email, we would love to hear from you. We're unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com. And you can go over to unpackingpeanuts.com.
And when you're there, you can sign up for the old, Great Peanuts reread that will get you one email a month from us that will tell you what we are covering on the podcast. And of course, you can also 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 would love to hear from you because when I don't hear, I worry.
And especially I would love for you to call because I keep checking the old hotline and it's getting cold. It's becoming a cold line. 717-219-4162. Call the hotline. Warm it up for me because again, I'm worried about you. All right, guys. So that's the end of 1990. The only thing I would like to say about 1990 real quick, year I graduated from high school and the summer I first saw Paul McCartney. So it was a great year for me.
With those last two footnotes, what are your MVPs and strip of the year? Harold, why don't you start this time?
Favorite strip of the year would be October 17th, with Marcie talking to Charlie Brown on the chair, talking about the pressure of getting grades and being tired and Snoopy offering the cookie as the solution with thoughtful Charlie Brown. There's so much going on here in this strip, and the characters are richer than I think they ever have been, in some ways, that comes out with new revelations of this character we've known for a long, long time.
It's just a really empathetic strip in a very empathetic comic, and I greatly appreciate it. For the character of the year, I have to give it to Marcie because again, another layer of the onion has been peeled back, and something more to love about Marcie.
Great picks. Michael, how about you?
Well, I picked my favorite character first, which has been Sally for the last bunch of years. Because I think she can deliver a funny line that's also insightful. And so the strip I like best out of this year is the one we just did, where he doesn't have the $25. Because her remark is pretty deep. He says, I don't have a credit card. She's not saying he's a chiefs gate. She's saying so long, Peggy Jean. She's implying that Peggy Jean is actually going after a sugar daddy.
Well, you ain't got dough, she's going to hit the road.
Or at the very least, like you can't go on dates without money. You can't even go bowling.
All right.
Well, those are good picks as well.
All right.
Well, I'm going to go back to July 27th for my strip of the year. This is where Peggy Jean shows up and tells Charlie Brown her name is Peggy Jean, and he christened himself Brownie Charles before deciding he might just jump into the lake. Brownie, I remember reading this strip when it came out. Brownie Charles made me laugh out loud, so I'm going to go with that. As my MVP, I'm going to go with Brownie Charles, not Charlie Brown. Brownie Charles, he's the winner for me this year.
That's a pretty momentous part of this year, no question. Charlie Brown is going to places that he wanted to go years and years ago, and here he is.
It's very fun to watch.
Go Brownie Charles. It's like his, what is the alter ego, the czaros, Charlie Brown.
Or what's in the Nutty Professor.
Oh, gosh.
What does he call himself? I can't remember, it doesn't matter. That's a different podcast, that's Lewis Watch. All right, well, that brings us to the end of another year. Listen, if you could just do me a favor. As much as we love to hear from you, and we do love to hear from you, another thing I would love is if you could just drop us a review wherever you listen to this podcast. Five star reviews would be hugely helpful for people to find us and to inflate my very fragile ego.
So if you could do that, that would be absolutely fantastic. If you wanna join us on Patreon and kick in a couple bucks, you can find that over at unpackingpeanuts.com. We got the great fun watch along for the Schulz American Masters documentary. So we would love to see you there. Next week we're gonna be off, but we will have the re-release of the Great Pumpkin episode, which is a lot of fun. So that's it for this week from Michael, Harold and Liz. Be of good cheer.
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.
So long, Peggy Jean.