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. We're here in 1992, and I'll be your host for the proceedings. My name is Jimmy Gownley. I'm also a cartoonist. I did things like Amelia Rules, Seven Good Reasons Not To Grow Up, The Dumbest Idea Ever. And you can read my new comic, Tanner Rocks, over on gvillcomics.substack.com for free. Joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer, both for the Van complicated people, as well as for this very podcast. He's the co-creator of the original comic book price guide, the original editor of Amelia Rules, and the creator of such great strips as Strange Tractors, A Gathering of Spells, and Tangled River. It's Michael Cohen.
Say hey.
And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation, Sweetest Beasts, Harold Buchholz.
Hello.
All right, guys, it is 1992. We are in the meat of the strips. Do we have anything for preamble or do we just want to get into it?
I think we could go right into it.
All right, then let's hit the strips. April 28th, Sally and Linus are waiting for the bus to come to take them to school. And Sally says, How can we ride a bus to school? Why don't they haul us there in a truck and then dump us in the back with the rest of the trash? To which Linus replies, Still having trouble with fractions, huh?
Linus knows how to deal with these fuss budgets.
He certainly has enough experience. Oh, yes. And I think that's a really true observation. Be mad at everything because really there's just something else bothering you. And it's something to do with your own failing, right? You know? Oh, man.
Very, very good example of the world of grumpiness that we seem to be in in Peanuts now. Yeah, that last little picture of Sally is the classic grumpy face we've had for the past few years.
Yeah, he's really, really going to that a lot these years. I like I like the Zipatone on Linus's hat. I will say I understand Purist not wanting the Zipatone. And I probably overall would just prefer the clean art. But I do like Zipatone in general. And I think when he uses it sparingly like this, I think it looks really sharp. And it does look very 90s.
Oh, you think so? That feels 90s.
Yeah, there was a lot of Zipatone and a lot of half tone stuff in the 90s. I felt like even especially in the more like artsy and alternative side of comics.
Well, it's interesting. It's not too many years before people are going to start to drop in the inferior laser screens that you could do. Instead of buying the Zipatone, you could make the pattern yourself and drop it. The problem was the dots weren't as crisp.
I mean, these are really, really crisp photographic dots on this translucent clear paper that- actually, it's not paper, it's some form of really thin plastic that you're cutting out that has gum substance on the bottom so you can lay it down on the paper and rub it down and make it stay. But yeah, I remember there was a period where at least some people would try to make their own, save some money.
Yeah. It just doesn't look good because every generation when you reproduce it, whatever imperfection is there just seems to magnify. And these really look crisp. I do like that. I do like the Zipatone crispness that really holds up well. Usually, like we talked about last time, that he did do one thing that was just a little bit too much for the reproductive process of the newspaper, a newsprint. But just seeing these, say in the Fanta graphics collection, they look really nice.
Yeah. And if you guys want to get your very own Fanta graphics collection, that'll help you follow along. Which we would love for you to do. And if you want to do that, I probably should have said it at the beginning, but I'll say it now. All you got to do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the great Peanuts reread. That'll get you one email a month telling you exactly what strips we'll cover.
And then if you're a bougie type, you go out and buy the Fanta graphics book, dedicated to the year we're covering and away you go. But the best part is if you don't have that kind of coin, if you're not a big shot mystery science theater producer, who's just rolling in it, baby, you can then just go over to Go Comics.
I'm not sure what I'm rolling in.
You're rolling in something, pal. That's all I know. And I like it. Keep it up. But if you're not that, you can go over to good old gocomics.com and you can just read all these strips for free.
What I also like in this strip is Linus in a, looks like a kind of a light jacket with his hands tucked into the pockets and he's got these lines to kind of show the circumference of the jacket. And it just looks really nice. It has a nice feel to it. It has some volume to it.
Well, it's very funny that you would mention jackets at this point because an anonymous listener sent us a video. There is a TikToker named Birdie Wood. She has like over a million followers. And a huge portion of her content has been devoted entirely to Snoopy in a puffer jacket. Are you guys familiar with this at all? So apparently this is a Gen Z thing. Snoopy in a big giant puffy jacket. And there's been merch that's been released lately and people are going nuts for it.
And this woman in particular has made tons of actually very entertaining and cute content. Her big finale is she made a giant, or at least it's the most recent thing, a giant wooden Snoopy in a puffer jacket. And the highest compliment I could give her is that I would have thought it was completely just a digitized Schulz drawing that was blown up. But she made it herself and it looks dead on. It's really cool. I'll send the thing to Liz so she can do something with it.
I think he could put that somewhere on social media, I guess.
Yeah.
Anyway, so it's very cool. Puffy jacket Snoopy.
I knew that they had Pope Francis in a puffer coat, but I didn't know that Snoopy would.
Well, I don't know who started that trend first. May 10th. Oh, my gosh. Linus is a Sunday strip, and Linus is patting birds on the head. There's two little beagle scouts, and Linus pats them on the head, and in the second panel, they just sit there sighing contentedly, and Linus has a big smile on his face. Then, in the next panel, hanging out under a tree, wearing her roller blades is Violet, who says to Lucy, I hear your brother is patting birds on the head again.
Lucy, who is skipping her rope, says, he's what? Next panel, Lucy confronts Linus, who is indeed cutting birds on the head again. And Lucy says, I thought I told you never to do that again. You're making me the laughing stock of the whole neighborhood. She continues ranting, people come up to me and say, oh yes, you're the one whose brother pats birds on the head. Well, no more. Do you hear me? No more. And then we see the two little birds coming up and doing something to Lucy's shoes.
And she watches with a little bit of consternation and shock. And then as they walk away, the two birds totally satisfied with themselves. Lucy stands there and says, I hate it when they untie my shoelaces.
Panel 4 should read Lucy saying, 40 years ago, I told you never to do this. This is a call back to a little sequence back by mid-50s. It wasn't these birds. It wasn't a Woodstock bird. It was other kinds of birds.
Yeah, I actually did see the last time it was used, and I think it was the 70s, but I don't know. You guys talk amongst yourselves and I'll check this.
I'll be surprised because I missed it.
No, it could be wrong.
There's a lot I like in this. I remember Schulz saying something about how people were sometimes criticizing the strip in its later years that it didn't look as good, and certainly the tremor was one thing. I remember him saying, I actually prefer what I'm doing now. I think it's the best I've ever done. Looking at this strip that makes me think of that and say, well, I agree. The characters are certainly 90s versions of the characters, but there's some really nice character drawing here.
The second panel with Linus looking at the contented birds, he's just patted on the head, is great. I love Lucy yelling at Linus, confronting him about patting the birds on the head. It's, and then, of course, the little birds in the last panel walking off with a little happy smile on their face or they're so tiny. We've talked about this so often, but they're so tiny in the strip and yet they read so incredibly well, and they're so well cartooned.
Absolutely.
There's a lot of good stuff in this.
Now, few had never seen this strip though, and it didn't have the word birds in it. Would you think they're birds?
Sure.
All right. You think they're birds. March 11th, 1973 was the last time he had birds on the head, and now here he is patting them again. I agree with everything you said about the drawing. The panel with Violet leaning up against the tree, she's got a little bag with her, like a little satchel of some sort. She's drinking a drink. She's got her roller blades on, there's a little stripe on her sweatpants. It's adorable.
And I think it would have really been awkward if the girls were still wearing the 50s dresses by the 90s.
Yeah, yeah. Now take a look at that bird bath in the middle panel there. That's really nicely drawn too.
Absolutely.
Kind of the modeled shade of like, looks like a concrete poured piece. Yeah, there's just, there's a lot of really nice drawing in here and I think it's funny that at this point Lucy's triggered not by somebody actually saying anything insulting about Linus, just saying I see your brother is patting birds on the head again, totally innocently, it seems. And she's like, what?
I think maybe Violet came back just so she saw this and said, I got to go visit those kids again so I could stir up some trouble.
Yeah. So Michael, what do you think about the idea that Violet is a new Shermie here?
Yeah. Well, someone's got to be this straight man.
Got to have one.
Yeah. It just adds, it's almost like if you want no additional meaning on the character who's going to say something, you assign it to Violet. If that were Schroeder sitting there, that would have some baggage. If it were Sally, that would have some baggage because of her relationship to Linus Charlie Brown. I mean, I can see why he chose Violet, but it was because he didn't want you to think anything about.
Well, who made the original comment? Somebody squealed on Linus to Lucy. It was probably Violet.
It was probably Patty and Violet.
Yeah. Even though Violet looks like she's mellowed out a little bit about it, or at least you can't tell in this one drawing.
Yeah.
That definitely is calling back.
I love it when you have a bunch of a character list that long and that varied, that you can bring people back from years ago, even in a little bit part. It just lends continuity to the world, it lends richness to it. I love it. I just love seeing her again because she was such a huge part of the strip. May 13th, Charlie Brown and Lucy are at the old thinking wall and Charlie Brown innocently asked Lucy, Do you ever have any regrets? To which Lucy responds, Me?
And Charlie Brown continues, I mean, I suppose we all think about how we, Lucy interrupts, Me? Looking around and Charlie Brown then, I mean, we sort of look back and Lucy, Me? It just seems that, Me?
Well acted. Yeah, what makes this really work is the Me's get bigger every panel and darker.
Yeah. And I like that she's like, in panel two, she looks off the other direction as if she's looking for somebody else to weigh in on this.
Me?
What's he talking about?
What do you think about the shading on the bricks in the first panel versus the last two? He's got them filled in more or less on the last two, but he doesn't do it on the first one. You don't see the bricks the way he's zoomed in on the second panel.
Yeah.
Why do you think he did that?
Maybe a cloud passed by.
That's what it is.
Oh, okay. Maybe it's because of his date. He had to put the date in somewhere and he was trying to put it somewhere that was kind of inconspicuous, but then it would have been more conspicuous if there were black bricks next to it.
That's true. That could definitely be it. It could be that he tried to do some scratching, textural lines on one of the other two panels at the end and he screwed up.
When in doubt, black it out.
Oh, when in doubt, black it out is one of the best advice any cartoons could ever give you.
Who was it that said that? It was Wally Wood. Okay. It is a good piece of advice. You can save yourself a lot of heartache, right? Can I just... Oh, this doesn't look... Wow, wait a second. I'll shade this all in. Nice shadow panel.
May 18th, Snoopy is atop the dog house. He's got his old typewriter out and Lucy is reading one he's produced and says, I think this is the best story you've ever written. And then she hands it back to Snoopy, though, with this comment, which really doesn't mean anything because your other stories were so dumb. Which too, Snoopy rolls his eyes and says, I love a good compliment. It's so funny.
I just did an entire podcast about accepting criticism, not accepting criticism, dealing with criticism and yeah, the old, the old haymaker. God, we know, you know, we love fan of graphics here. You know, we love Gary Groth in the comics journal and all this. However, I will say this is a classic comics journal review.
Classic comics journal reviews would always start with, Joe Bob's comic number one is a really entertaining read, which is a good thing to know because it's 400 pages of mostly crap. But at least I was entertained by counting the spelling errors. Like that's the classic fan of graphics.
That's called praising with faint dams.
Yeah.
Snoopy seems to know how to handle it. Just roll his eyes and roll on with life. You know, Snoopy actually, if you think about it, that's a pretty good model for an artist. His batting average as a writer here is pretty darn low, but that doesn't stop him, does it?
No, he's got it inside him.
Exactly.
It's got to come out. He's got a typewriter. What's the LOLs he's going to do?
June 7th. It's another Sunday, and Linus is at a table composing some verse that starts, how do I love thee? And then he crosses out how and writes why, which then cuts to class. And it's a Lydia strip. See, they are writing something at their little desks, and Lydia leans over to Linus and says, Linus, have you ever written a love note? And Linus answers with, I wouldn't know how. And Lydia says, it's easy. You just tell the girl how pretty you think she is, or sweet, that sort of thing.
Girls appreciate nice love notes, to which Linus says, okay, I'll try it. And then he continues writing whatever he's doing, and Lydia waits expectantly. And then she says, well, to which Linus says, well, what? And Lydia says, where's the love note? To which Linus says, I gave it to the girl in front of me. And then we see a little off panel from in front of Linus. Wow.
He's learning how to fight back finally.
It's like, thanks, Lydia.
We are obviously huge Lydia fans on this podcast. Like, her batting average of strips that she's in versus the ones we pick to single out is got it. I think Michael pointed out, it's got to be the highest of any character.
It's going to be close to 100. I think I at least may have picked everyone.
I love it. The more I see her, this character design is great.
Is this the first time we've seen her not in profile?
No, but it's like only the second or third. It's so rare. He actually, I think doesn't quite get the nose right.
Yeah, that drawing is not the best Lydia drawing, but still it's a great drawing.
Yeah, still a great drawing, but every other one. I mean, the side view he has of her with the little headband and the bob and the bangs is just adorable.
Yeah.
I could have fit in with the strip right from the beginning.
I'm really wondering who's in front of Linus.
I know.
The wow really helps because apparently Linus is like a hot item.
He really is, right?
He's a real bachelor and this girl was really thrilled.
Now, it makes you wonder, is Linus so into Lydia that he's willing to risk something with the girl in front of her by handing that off to her? It's just so he can get to Lydia. Or is he clueless?
Or did he just write, Hey, I'm going to play a prank on the girl behind me. Just say wow when you read this.
Right? That's all possible.
And I do love that. There are elements of the strip that Schulz just leaves. He doesn't over explain things.
But he does give you that little hint in that opening panel where he's writing the note and he is, how do I love thee in quotes and then he's crossed it out with why. So you do get the sense if you hadn't been reading the strip for a while and not a lot of people would have seen all these Lydia's together that maybe, yeah, maybe there's something really, he really, really does like Lydia, but he's got to be careful.
The first panels, you can never assume they actually happened.
Right.
So he did not write that note because she's the one who brought up the love letter.
So you're saying that's one of them old symbolic panel.
It's totally symbolic.
Well, actually, to that point, yeah, it's a different chair and he's not at a desk.
So it's like an imaginary story.
Right. It was a wonderful imaginary story.
What if for some reason.
But I do like that thought. Why do I love me? What is it about you? I can't figure this out. But that's love for you.
I guess that is true. I'd like to see the rest of that poem too. June 21st, it's another Sunday. Wow, we are picking Sunday strips left, right and center. It's Snoopy and the co-star of the strip A Cookie that Snoopy likes.
Chocolate chip looks like.
Yeah.
Could be the moon.
It could be one of Nana's oatmeal cookies.
It could be, yes. It's Snoopy and one of Nana's oatmeal cookies. That's definitely a symbolic panel. And then panel two, Charlie Brown is there and Snoopy is atop the dog house. And Charlie Brown says, let's go see what she has to say. And where they're going is Lucy at the psychiatric stand. And we can see it's only five cents still in the 90s. So that's pretty good.
That's a deal.
But at least Snoopy is the patient sitting on the little stool. And Lucy says, OK, who is the problem? You or your stupid dog? And Charlie Brown answers, well, remember how you recommended the transdermal patch? You said it would cure his craving for cookies. It hasn't worked. Lucy asks Snoopy and Charlie Brown, I guess, where did you put the patch? And Charlie Brown says, right here on his arm. And we can see, yeah, he did have the transdermal patch on the whole time.
Lucy says, maybe should have put it over his mouth, which shocked Snoopy. His ears go straight up. And then Lucy just laughs her head off with Snoopy with classic grumpy face reacting to it. And then the last panel, we see Snoopy kicking away at the side of the psychiatry booth and Lucy calmly telling Charlie Brown, tell him to stop kicking my office. I love this strip. This one made me laugh. I think maybe should have put it over his mouth as a classic Lucy singer.
That would have been great in the 50s. It's great in the 90s. And I think it's really funny to see Snoopy kicking the side of the psychiatric stand.
Yeah. Well, maybe his problem is the patch doesn't get through the fur on the arm. Oh, that could be it.
Yeah, it's transdermal, not trans fur. I think there's a flaw in this. All right, everybody, I know Michael is off the sugar bandwagon, but the rest of you, what's the best cookie? Other than my Nana's oatmeal cookies, of course.
That's a tough one. There's so many good ones.
I got to go chocolate chip. I think chocolate chip, maybe with, yeah, homemade.
Yeah, with walnuts, that helps. Pecans are even, yeah, pecans are great.
Why don't I even bring this up? The podcast is over.
And shortbread.
Oh, I love a good shortbread. June 22nd, Charlie Brown and Sally are sitting on the floor. It's a great little drawing of them propped up on like couch cushions watching the TV in three-quarter view, side view. And Sally says to Charlie Brown, what do you do when you feel that life is treating you unfairly? Here comes the new co-star of the strip. Snoopy walks in with the chef's hat on and a fresh plate, a fresh baked tray of cookies. And Snoopy says, learn to bake your own cookies.
It's good advice.
No one can take them away from me when you're making them yourself.
I'm wondering what that 1992 comic book is on the floor.
What do you think is?
They weren't making kids' comics then except for Amelia.
No, they weren't in 92.
So it's probably in Amelia.
No, are you talking about that? That's 10 years before Amelia. Oh, you're right. It would have been a-
Shades of Grey.
Well, not 10 years.
Nine years.
Nine.
Well, there.
Welcome to Let's Get Pedantic with Harold Buchholz.
It looks like Snoopy mugged Mickey Mouse for that oven mitt.
Oh my gosh. I didn't notice. Yes. An oven mitt with fingers. That's very strange. I wonder why he decided to do this angle. I love that drawing. That again looks like it's something observed. Like he was watching people, you know, previously, for decades in the strip, there would have been the watching TV post. Well, there was. It was sitting in the beanbag chair, right?
And when you're doing the TV strips, you're sitting in the beanbag chair, and then you would see the Charlie Brown maybe in a chair, reading a book or whatever. But this is a totally observed way of treating it. It's not an iconic pose that he's going to go to again and again. You know, it has specificity to it. The comic book that's open, or maybe it's a TV guide or whatever. The snacks and the drinks and stuff like that. I love that.
It seems like the sketchbook thing might have been more part of his life at this point, given some of those Sundays that he's been doing, where he's showing a giant wave or some place in Africa that has waterfalls. And, you know, he seems to be enjoying drawing something from life. And he's sharing some of it more directly with us. And maybe that's coming into the strip.
I don't know. Yeah, absolutely.
I wonder if any of that survives. You know, does he have? So I know he would draw and throw away the really rough sketches to get ideas for the comic strip. But I wonder if he had like a sketchbook at some point in his 50 years.
I don't think so, because Gary Groth does ask him about that. And he says he just does that mental drawing. He doesn't really keep his sketchbook. But that's not to say he didn't doodle him on paper or his legal pads. And it wasn't until his secretary started realizing you're throwing out all these drawings and she ends up starting to save them, he saw no value to them. And I think anyone who's an artist who's doing their preliminary stuff, for the most part, it's just a ditch, right?
Sure.
Some of us, we should ditch the finished stuff, too. June 24th, this is a panoramic single panel strip and I picked it, so I have no one to blame but myself for trying to have to explain this one to you. But on the left hand side of the panel is a picket fence with a pretty wide gap between the upright posts, but you know, it's a picket fence. And on the right hand side, we see Snoopy and Linus. Snoopy has the blanket in his teeth and he's pulling Linus behind him.
And he has pulled Linus not just past the picket fence, but between every slat on the picket fence, as if he weaved in and out through the whole thing. But it's done in one just straight line, indicating as if it had happened in a split second. And as they come out the other side, Linus just says, wow.
Got me wondering if this is possible.
Well, if you're out there and want to try it at home.
Well, it looks like Snoopy could have done this. But I think Linus would have ended up getting stuck on one of these things.
Are you saying he has a big head?
He seems pretty impressed. Yeah. And so this is the second punchline with a wow that we picked.
Funny word.
Yeah.
He'll look backwards. He says wow.
And upside down, it's mom. I really like that drawing of Linus getting pulled behind Snoopy. I love that the struggle for security is still ongoing here in 1992.
Yeah. And I love the fence nicely, Zipatone there.
And you know what's crazy? Just in the last few years, I've noticed and I've even said on the podcast, the one place he can't hide the tremor is on a straight line. And you'll see it get super jagged, unlike the psychiatry booth and whatnot. You don't really see that here.
I think he used a straight edge here.
On the line going across?
Yeah, it's too straight.
What I think is, Schulz often would not rotate the strip if he was doing a vertical line to be able to make it horizontal when he drew it. I think here he did. Because the horizontal lines he seems to be able to manage, because the tremor seems to be baked in to right to left. So even if you overlapped yourself, it wouldn't look like an angle. But yeah, and that would be why he wouldn't have that here, because he would literally move this thing 90 degrees. And that way the tremor doesn't show.
Yeah, I think you're both right. I think that's 100% right for the fence. And looking really close. Yeah, I believe that's a straight edge on the lines.
It seems like he almost had a pencil. I know he didn't pencil. But either that or he used to white out. Because I don't think he would have drawn the fence with these gaps in it first. I think he had to white out to make this thing work.
Or he started with the, oh yeah, I see what you're saying. That'd be interesting to see an original too.
Yeah, this would be a really interesting one to see.
Yeah, but it looks good. No matter how he pulled it off, it looks good. And I do love, I like that he'd embraced, he's embraced the one panel strip. I like it more now than I ever have previous reading. And I really is thinking like it is, it feels 90s. The comic strips were no longer four panels. And it hadn't been for a very long time. Most of them were like two or three panels. And you would-
Yeah, with some exceptions, right? Like Covenant Hobbs kind of continued the four panel thing a lot.
The greats would do whatever they want. But a lot of them had really simplified. And I think it allows him to show off the best of his drawing ability at this stage when he can draw big like that.
Yeah.
June 27th, it's the end of this sequence where Linus has been dragged all around town by Snoopy. And Linus says to him, having finally retrieved the blanket after having ended up in a lake. And Linus says to Snoopy, I hate to admit it, you crazy dog. And they both sit down. And Linus with just a hint of a smile says to Snoopy. But that was kind of fun. And Snoopy smiles back at him.
It's nice to see how the struggle for security actually can be kind of fun.
Absolutely.
After all these years.
Absolutely. And I love that Snoopy smiles back at him. Like, yeah, it was, you know.
And again, this kind of made me feel like this is predating what's to come with Snoopy and Rerun, where they have this friendship, where they kind of enjoy each other's company. You haven't seen a whole lot of, and I like the dynamic. I was also thinking, so these are a bunch of daily strips. There's five in a row of Snoopy, and they have either one or two panels in them.
And again, in terms of Snoopy, Peanuts merch, if you just took each of these panels and created some sort of a blanket or a t-shirt or whatever with just the drawings of Snoopy and Linus flying through the air this way and that way, that would be really fun.
That really would be, that would be a great little blanket with all those images on it or something. Very, very cute.
And the frazzled look, because they wind up in the water in the second to last panel. So when Linus is walking back with Snoopy, they are about as frazzled looking as you could imagine. And yet there they are smiling at each other like, yeah, that was worth it.
Absolutely. July 8th, Charlie Brown and Sally are sitting on a couch. Charlie Brown is reading, I like to think Charlie Brown is just reading this one book for 40 years.
He's never gotten through it. He's always interrupting.
Yeah, everyone interrupts him. Sally says, I've developed another new philosophy. Remember, it used to be who cares. Panel two, she says, now it's what do I care? Charlie Brown goes back to reading his book and says, well, I'm very happy for you. To which Sally replies, what do I care?
I like this. I like her philosophy. And I like the fact that Jimmy put the emphasis on the eye, which is where it goes.
That's agreed. Oh, good. I love Sally's philosophies. I love Sally's 90s outfits too. Her little polka dot shirt is very cute.
Yeah. I would never have thought Sally was one to develop philosophies, but it certainly matches her style in terms of what the philosophy is.
Yeah.
I've adapted it recently.
It's what you got to have in sometimes in dark times. Not for all times, but maybe just to shield yourself for a little while.
Yeah. Now, if she'd made to the 20 teens, she might have switched it to what the what?
What the what?
Yeah, that really became ubiquitous. You know what's interesting? And this is slightly tangential and we all have colds, so we're going to keep it brief. But one of the annoyances I find of 21st century life, especially on the Internet, in that everything is a meme, even people's responses.
Like, for instance, it's a meme responding to a meme response.
Yeah, right. Yeah. And even if it's just something you write, like, I'm trying, I can't think of any examples now. Oh, here's one. I didn't have that on my 2024 bingo card, right?
Oh, 6,000 likes.
Well, you haven't heard that 15,000 times. And it's really weird that so much of just modern conversational tics and stuff like that are just cut and paste.
Yeah. Well, it's interesting to see that we're rewarding cliché. That's what we're going to be doing.
And not only rewarding cliché, likes and views, that's the only currency artists get to seem to deal in these days.
Yeah. You can cash them in at the grocery store.
Oh, like the S&H Green Stamps. Yeah.
Oh, wait.
It's the new S&H Green Stamps.
Now, that's a plan. That I could get behind that. I have 14,000 likes. I would like to get that sewing machine, please.
Let's take the opportunity to welcome our new subscribers on Blue Sky.
Oh, that's so exciting.
Yeah. Thanks for joining us there and following along. We appreciate it.
July 14th. Peppermint Patty and Marcy are out in a camping situation. They're in a tent. They're both tucked in in their sleeping bags, but Marcy has heard something and she says, sir, wake up. There's something outside our tent. And Peppermint Patty wakes up and Marcy says, it's some kind of fuzzy creature with a great big nose. And then we cut to outside and we see Snoopy wearing a Davy Crockett cap. And he says, I resent the part about the great big nose.
Yeah, there's something that also hasn't been around since the 50s, the Coonskin Camp returns.
That's what I picked this for, because I could not believe the Coonskin Cap made a comeback.
I really like the two drawings of Marcy. The first one, she's got her arms over her sleeping bag, looking like she's kind of leaning forward. And then the second one, you see the four little fingers wrapped on either side around the blanket. Like she's kind of nestling in for safety.
So what do you guys think about the third panel? What do you think about, let's start with the hat. Michael, what do you think of the Zipatone on the hat, or the hat in general?
It kind of reflects the actual texture.
Yeah, it does. Yeah, it feels like it, you know. What do you think, Harold?
I like it. I think he's doing things with Zipatone that I'm not seeing other people do. And I think what he's doing is not particularly easy or obvious. And on the tent in particular, I would never ever in a million years think to do what he's done on that tent. And I don't even know exactly what it's doing, but it gives you this really fascinating sense of texture. It's very Rorschach-y what he's doing there. It looks nice.
It does. Now, looking at it with 21st-century Photoshop eyes, the fact that the gradient Zipatone indicating the sky does not go up to the top or the bottom of the word balloon. Oh, do I just want to select that and bump it up? You know what I mean? Which you could fix in two seconds.
But he did it on purpose, I'm guessing.
I guess he must, because it's so, but I think if he was doing it on purpose, or it was totally within his control, it would have went all the way. It would have been white on the right and the left side. But it seems like it just, like he just-
Well, is it because the moon is right below, it's got some weird logic, like the moon is there and it's below the word balloon, so it's lighting the word balloon.
You're overthinking this. I think, no, look, it's got glue on the back. So he pasted it down and he missed where he wanted it to go.
And that was it.
Far enough and you can't pull it off.
But then it would go down. Oh, so you think he just cut the additional off the tent where it would have snuck down on it?
No, I think he cut it and then pasted it and it wasn't quite in the right spot, but didn't want to bother redoing it. Because no one would ever notice.
Yeah, because no one's going to be looking at this.
So, now, when you guys cut Zipatone, would you cut it on the Bristol board it's lying on, or would you be cutting separately and then let it go?
Because otherwise it would take you forever. But in this situation, I could imagine where it's... I don't think this is what happened, but I could certainly imagine he did the hat, he did the tent and decided to do the sky last, and then he had to do it backwards, meaning he drew an outline on the Zipatone, cut it separately, like Michael's saying, pasted it on and it didn't quite hit. The other thing is he could have just missed with his X-Acto knife while cutting it.
Or it was entirely intentional.
Or it was entirely intentional.
Those are all the options.
We wanted to bother us.
It was either an accident, or entirely intentional. Well, I think we can...
The things you learn on this show.
Yep, 50-50 shot of either. Let's do one more and take a break.
But wait a second.
That's not.
That moon is so weird looking.
Because it's so round?
Yeah, I mean, it just looks like he chose circle from the available tools.
That's a template.
That's definitely a template, yeah. And it's definitely not a, I think it's a circle template, and I think it's probably some other tool than the old Radio 914, because there's no variation. And that looks like it's like a marker line. Like even if you just see the lines right next to like Snoopy's snout, which is also a curve, you can see very subtle, thicks and things and variations that just aren't on the moon.
July 22nd, camp continues, and there's a little kid that's been following Marcy around, and he says, I think you're very beautiful, Miss Marcy. When you grow up, you should be a model. Then they sit down there in the cafeteria, and they sit down at the table, and Marcy says, thank you, Cormac, which is the kid's name. What are you going to be when you grow up? And Cormac says, smooth.
This feels like a really 90s kid that Schulz has introduced. I feel he's around some grandkids.
Yes, absolutely. And it's sort of a 90s hairdo too. I could picture, this is like a home improvement kid haircut. The floppy hair that became popular with kid actors in the 90s. That's what he's got going on. All right, so how about we take a break real quick and come back and answer the mail and do some more strips.
Sounds good.
So we'll be right back.
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.
All right, and we are back. Liz, I'm hanging out in the mailbox. Do we got anything?
We do. We heard from our friend, Paul Ebert, and he writes, just finished listening to the 1991 episode where you discuss among other things the cartoonists' practice of cheating by recycling static panels. And he adds, I was a bit surprised you didn't mention Gary Trudeau's work in that discussion. He infamously repeated panels, usually drawings of the White House or Capitol building over and over again, and was regularly accused of relying on a photocopier to produce Doonesbury.
I mention it because I'm in the middle of writing something about Schulz's influence on Trudeau. And one dynamic I'm trying to think through is how the two strips often share a sense of stillness with little obvious movement from one panel to the next.
That's interesting, yeah.
And then he says, I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on how a minimal amount of movement works in the mind of a reader and how it helps a cartoonist create a particular sense of time in the reader's mind.
That's a really interesting observation. They do share that, those moments.
Yeah, and boy, it's a great point that we could have, we should have called out Trudeau because he's right. Of all the comic strip artists, he would be the guy that made the most use of repetition like that. I think it has to do, as far as how it plays to the reader. I think the reader is then going to focus more on the words and less on the drawing.
You know, in Trudeau's work, especially using the White House, that has a whole separate feel to it, that it's this edifice, it's this eternal thing that is not even though it's occupied by a person, it is not a person, it's this office. I think that works really well. When he does it with the characters, it is very Peanuts-like, and I think it does something to make the characters seem maybe a little bit more real in some ways.
I think you have to work harder or show more variation if you have big reactions all the time, because big reactions just by their nature are in quotes, it's cartoony. I think when you see someone like Zonker talking to BD or whatever over four panels and they're barely moving, that does seem more like a conversation you would see in the real world in an office or classroom or whatever.
Yeah. If you have a payoff at the end of a strip where there is motion or just the slightest movement or a phrase like you were saying, Jimmy, it has a lot more impact if you've been. Because I think what it does, it pulls me in when I'm reading, when there's stillness, usually. I mean, at least the way Schulz does it, I feel like I can get closer and closer and closer to the characters. A lot of classic comics were so rowdy that you almost had to pull back because there's so much going on.
It's so wild and so violent. You can't enter in. At least it doesn't feel like it for me. I can't enter into the strip. I just have to watch it from afar. I feel like that stillness pulls you into the moment, and you get closer and closer to the characters. That really does help you bond with the characters in a way that, say, Lil Abner didn't.
Yes. I think the thing too that Trudeau was dealing with was a really limited drawing ability. I think he was not good. Later on, he became a really great artist. He penciled. I mean, maybe you don't even like it. Some people don't like that stuff as much as the more. Harold, do you like the earlier stuff more?
Yeah. I think he's got a rudimentary look to the strip. But I have a fondness for the ones from the early 70s. There's a famous one where Mike is on the road and he's being picked up hitchhiking with this truck driver and you're seeing it through the front windshield. And yeah, it's rough lines, but it's unique. It's Trudeau's own look. It's very spare. He won't give you a lot of details around the character, so you focus in on the characters and what they're thinking and saying.
And to me, it really works. It feels in the moment and a little bit raw, which is to me a lot of the times what he was doing. When I see the later stuff, I just, I mean, this is not a fair, fun thing to say to Trudeau, but it feels kind of ossified. I don't know. There's this feeling like it's stuck in its ways. In the early 70s, it feels like anything's possible. There's movement, there's change. I don't know.
That's the feeling I get, and it fits the moment, I think, from the early 70s of where Trudeau was. And I hope it's not true. And now where I'm saying, because everything is so clean and so, and still, in some ways, repetitive, it just, the feeling like anything could happen is not there. It just feels like it's locked in, it's weighted down. That's just my visceral reaction to it. I'm sure people have a different take on it than I do on that.
Well, a part of that comes from having an inker. Because an inker's job is to make things slick and readable and in quotes professional or whatever, right? I mean, that's what inkers do. Either there's some guys, when Al Williamson was an inker exclusively or Klaus Jansson, where they're gonna bring a lot of their own stuff in there, expressionism, and it'll have more of a loose feel. But whoever, I can't, I apologize that I don't know the inker's name. He made it really slick.
And that is at odds with that early stuff, but it is more 80s than 70s.
Maybe it's very true to where Trudeau is now. Maybe that just, I mean, there's a solidity to the characters. They're not going to wild new places. That's just not where he is right now. And so maybe it's just accurately reflecting who he is as somebody who's been doing it for 50 years. And that's the appropriate look it should have because that's where he is as a creator.
Absolutely. You got anything else?
Nope, that's it.
We got some texts to the hotline. Now this is from listener 440. Listener 440, you may have written it in the past. If so, I apologize, but you didn't identify yourself this time. So you're listener 440. And he writes three things. In reference to the 1991 3-8 strip and Sally's knowledge of other languages, maybe she's a genius. Maybe that's why she hates school. She's bored. I like that. I experienced something similar as a child. Yeah, no, I definitely think there's something to that.
She can rise to the occasion.
The very least, she is not interested in whatever they're selling her there. Then he adds in his pick for consistently funny comic, Mad Magazine. What do you guys think about that? All right, moving on. And then in the third one, he says, Jimmy, buy an extension cord so you can do a whole show. That reminds me, we have a Patreon. We would love for you to chip in and you could buy us a mud pie, or you could just be a member and have all kinds of extra things with us.
The last thing we did was fun. We did a watch along with the PBS American Masters, Charles Schulz documentary, and the four of us got together and did a little commentary. And you guys can check that out if you're a Patreon member. So that's it. Yeah, that's all we got from the old hotline. We would love to hear from you because remember when I don't hear, I worry. So you can call the old hotline or leave a text message like good old listener 440. That number is 717-219-4162.
You can also just send us an email, unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com and you can of course go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the Great Peanuts reread and get on our mailing list. Just one email a month and it'll let you know the score for what we're going to be covering that month. Give us a shout. We'd love to hear from you. Shall we get back to it?
Sure.
July 31st. Linus is sitting in classic thumb and blanket position outside and Lucy, in her bare feet and shorts and tank top, approaches with a garden hose and she says, you look like you need cooling off. And in panel two, Linus very confidently says, you wouldn't dare. To which Lucy in panel three fully unleashes the hose on him, sending him flying. And then in the fourth panel, Linus is soaked lying on the ground and Lucy says, up until then, I was undecided.
Bad move by Linus there.
Yeah, it seems like he should have seen this coming. But I love that up until that point, she was undecided, but that put her over the edge. I love that.
And talking about, you know, characters that don't move or change a lot, but I think what really helps this strip is that Lucy's expression doesn't change much at all. When she's about to do something really over the top to Linus, and to her, it's just a small thing. And that's classic Lucy, and it works really well. It makes it funnier for me that she's just kind of, she's doing it, and she's not showing great pleasure or any emotion about it.
That's just what you do to your little brother, you know.
And this would have been a classic Lucy in the 50s, 60s, 70s, or today. And this continues. August 1st, Lucy is hanging out, relaxing in her little inflatable kiddie pool, and Linus comes up in his bathing suit and says, how would you like a nice cold glass of water? And Lucy, very pleased with this, smiles and says, I'd like it very much, thank you. And then in panel three, Linus comes over and dumps a bucket of water on her head. And then he says, did I say glass? I meant bucket.
Now, you guys as younger brothers, would you have ever attempted something so bold in a revenge strike? Not saying you'd start it, but would you ever up the ante if things would start to get nasty?
Ah, well, my sister was taller than me. Probably could meet me up if she wanted to.
Yeah, I'd raise the ante at my peril.
Oh, I get a second. We start off with one of those symbolic panels. It's another Sunday, really heavy on the Sundays this episode. And it's Charlie Brown being surprised and intimidated by a giant dollar sign. An old fashioned dollar sign with the two bars going through rather than the one. Actually, a weird, it looks almost like a sea monster dollar sign. And then in the next panel, oh, they're going up the escalator. We know we love that.
That's great. So Charlie Brown and Linus are going up the escalator at a department store. And now they're looking around and Linus says to Charlie Brown, here, Charlie Brown, why not buy her this pretty little barrette? And Charlie Brown says, I don't think I have enough money. And Linus says, maybe you could charge it. And Charlie Brown says, yes, ma'am, to the cashier, to the salesperson. I'd like to buy this barrette for a girl, I know. I was wondering if I could charge it.
And then Charlie Brown says, no, I don't have a charge account. No, I don't have a credit card. And then he looks in his wallet and he pulls out a piece of paper and says, how about this? And Linus says, she let you charge it? How did you do that? And Charlie Brown said, I showed her a picture of my dog.
Power of Snoopy.
The power of Snoopy. Oh, I love that.
It's like the American Express ads.
I love that Charlie Brown's not buying her gloves. It seems like, maybe it's only happened once or twice, but it seems like seven, eight, nine times he's been buying a little girl gloves over the years.
Well, Linus helps them out, right?
Yeah. Another nice looking strip.
And again, them going up the escalator, the entire reason we have any idea that they are in a department store is there's one little arrow that's pointing upward.
Yeah. There's no sign that says, you know, Joe's department store or anything like that.
Otherwise, you think they're just going to the second floor of Linus' house.
Or to get a license.
Is it a Peanuts obscurity to describe what a department store is?
And a charge account.
It's like Amazon. No, people are thinking, oh, charge account, right? At a store, right? Yeah, yeah. Now it would be credit cards. Yeah, that's definitely a thing of the past. August 27th, Charlie Brown and Linus are sitting on either side of the tree. They're having a conversation and Linus is to Charlie Brown. Oh, this is in the middle of a sequence where Linus has been hearing coyotes outside at night, and he's been calling Charlie Brown in the middle of the night because it's worrying him.
And Linus says to Charlie Brown, When I hear those coyotes howling at night, it totally depresses me. I start to feel lonely. Then I get scared. And Linus is in classic thumb and blanket position when he says this. Then Charlie Brown says to him, I thought holding on to that blanket made you secure. To which Linus replies, I think the warranty has run out.
It's not working. That's what happens. You have to go to a different blanket. Yeah. You know that it's a stronger blanket. Yeah.
You end up with a quilt. And then before you know it, you know, you're seven layers deep under it's, it's one of those weighted blankets are now the new things, right?
I was just looking at this and noticing how large the lettering has gotten in relationship to the strip. He's added height to the strip in relationship to its width so that what that ultimately did for him was give him more real estate on the comics page because the comics were always defined by their width. So he had this really wide and not very deep or tall strip for years and then he kept adding height to it.
And so now, you know, the strips are being printed smaller and smaller and smaller as a whole on the newspaper page. And if you were to just write text from the top to the bottom of the panel, you would have 10 lines of text. You go back to the 50s and look at how tiny that text was. It's amazing how much a piece the lettering plays now in Peanuts. It's just a huge, huge thing compared to what it was when we started.
Now, this was when Schulz was living up in the hills outside Santa Rosa. Do you think he would hear the Coyotes at night? This is something he's importing directly into his work?
Yeah. In California, they're fairly common.
I remember hearing Coyotes outside your house in New Hampshire years ago.
No.
What were they?
What did I hear howling?
Oh, Fisher cats.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, scary because they sound like babies crying.
Yes, that was terrifying when you hear those, especially if you just step outside at night for a build fresh air. You hear, oh, yeah. The good old days. August 29th, Charlie Brown and Linus are probably at Charlie Brown's house sitting in one of those big chairs, and Charlie Brown's got a book out, looks like a different book, and he's saying to Linus, see, the same thing happened to Leo Tolstoy that's been happening to you. It says he woke up at 2 o'clock in the morning and he was terrified.
Where am I? He asked himself, when am I running away from? To which Linus replies, I've always felt that Tolstoy and I had something in common.
I like that look on his face, this ennobled look.
You know what I think is funny, and this is something that's very subtle, but it is character-based. If Sally said that, I think Charlie Brown would roll his eyes. But Linus said that Charlie Brown just accepts it. Okay, I could see that.
What do they have in common beyond the night terra face?
Oh, I don't know. I have not read much Tolstoy, actually. I'm not crazy about the Zipatone on the chair. I think he's, but I know what he's going for. It looks supposed to be look like a leather chair, right?
Oh, I was thinking or like a floral kind of designy chair.
He was thinking velvet.
Well, maybe he didn't achieve what he was going for. None of us know what it is.
It's a velvet, designy, floral leather chair. Okay. Well, guys, listen, this is going to be a little bit of a shorter episode. We're wrapping it up here. Come back next week. We're going to wrap up 1992. You'll get our MVPs, picks for strip of the year, the old anger happiness index, all of those great things that you've come to expect from Unpacking Peanuts episode. In the meantime, you can go over to unpackingpeanuts.com. You can sign up for the great Peanuts reread.
That'll get you that email newsletter once a month. That'll give you a heads up on what we're going to be discussing on the podcast. You can send us an email. We're unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com.
For those of you in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area, Wednesday, December 4th through Sunday, the 8th, I am going to be at the Pennsylvania Christmas and Gift Show. So if you want to stop by and pick up some holiday items, you can say hello. I'll be there for those five days and looking forward to that.
Fantastic. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I've heard of that place.
Yeah, right. Well, I'm glad that you're going to be there.
You may see someone wandering around. I'm sure I'll get roped in at some point, dude.
Yeah.
Stop by. So anyway, so that's great. If you want to 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 of course, we'd love to hang out with you there. And we'd love to hear from you, because when I don't hear, I worry. So that's it for this week. Come back next week, more of 1992. 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. Smooth.