Welcome to Unpacking Peanuts, the podcast where three cartoonists take an in-depth look at the greatest comic strip of all time, Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. This is Unpacking Peanuts, the show where three cartoonists and the producer that they somehow hoodwinked into going along with it. Follow the works of Charles M. Schulz from 1950 all the way through to 2000. I'll be your host for the proceedings. My name is Jimmy Gownley. And guess what? 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 on my sub stack, gvillcomics.substack.com. And joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts and fellow cartoonists. He's a playwright and a composer, both for the band, Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast. He's the co-creator of the original comic book, Price Guide, the original editor of Amelia Rules, and the current creator of such great strips as Tangled River, A Gathering of the Spells, and the soon to be completed, Strange Attractors.
It's Michael Cohen.
Say hey.
And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics and the creator of the Instagram sensation, Sweetest Beasts. It's Harold Buchholz.
Hello.
Well, guys, we have made it to the end of the penultimate decade of Peanuts. And I just have to say this has been an unbelievably fun journey for me. It's been just a sheer pleasure to just be ensconced in all this great cartooning by my favorite cartoonist. What are you guys thinking at this point in our little journey? Harold, why don't you go first? Where are you at, Schulz-wise?
Well, first off, thank you guys for being a part of this and making this happen. There's so much that goes into making this podcast. And to do it with you guys has been incredibly special. We talked about this doing this years ago, had a little bit of a false start. And then thanks to Liz, we came back. And Jimmy, you made it happen. It really has been special to focus on one thing with three other people on this regular basis, something that I love so much.
It's been just a steady part of my life for these past few years. And I treasure it. And being able to experience with other people something that has affected you, you know it's affected your life. And I'm a cartoonist in large part because of Charles Schulz.
Yeah.
That's deeply meaningful. And to be able to understand the thing that affected you is a little bit better every week. I think helps me as I go forward since that influence is there. And to understand that influence, I think is actually very empowering.
Well, absolutely. I agree with all of that. Michael, I have to say, I am so grateful that you chose to be a part of this. Because when I had the idea to do this podcast, it was, I want to talk about peanuts with Michael and Harold. It wasn't that I wanted to talk about peanuts. But I knew that you had stopped around 1970, and I had to do some convincing to get you to go all the way through to the end. But I am just so thrilled that you're doing it.
And I'm glad that if nothing else in my life I accomplish, I got you to like Woodstock, and that is all that matters. So what do you have to say for yourself, as we've gone through four decades now?
Well, I'm finding the strip less interesting, but I'm always amazed when we actually get down to recording these 1980 strips that we're still finding a lot to talk about. A lot that's worth talking about. It's still, the creative process is worth analyzing. And between the three of us, we certainly come up with a lot of crazy theories on what's going on in Schulz's head. So I keep thinking, well, this won't be very good, because I didn't think the strips were particularly funny.
But even the fact that the Peanuts is not at its peak, and is going in certain directions that I don't particularly like, even the fact that that is interesting.
Yes.
And worth analyzing, because certainly, I don't know how many people have stuck with one thing for 40 years, but I think anyone who has done it, you expect there to be at least a simplification. And that seems to be the case with Schulz. So, you know, pondering why, because I spend time thinking about why did the, you know, the songwriters and artists I love, their later work is just not the same. And wondering why that happens, I think, is a topic worth exploring.
I think it's fascinating that we've gone through 40 years of Schulz, and now two of us, you know, Michael, you and Jimmy, are revisiting work that you want to go. And I don't think that's a coincidence.
Oh, I don't either.
Schulz didn't have the option, I mean, he could have. He could have gone back and redone the Peanuts comic, the longer form work he did. Yeah, he didn't seem to, he just was determined to keep pumping them out one a day. For as long as he could.
It's an insane amount of work. It really is. You know, and what Harold said, I do think there's some truth to that, and I find that my stuff that I'm doing in the Tanner Rocks comic now really is impacted by the things we talk about on the show. All the time. You know, even sometimes I'll find myself saying, oh, you told people not to do this like four episodes ago. And then I'm like, shut up, we have a dead line. But it really is fascinating.
I think there is something to be said about what both of you said, that it's one person over a long period of time. Because that's actually what every individual artist's career is, whether you're working on one project or you're working on several different projects. But you know, it's you over a period of time, you're changing, you're growing, you're getting better, you're getting worse, you feel good, you feel bad.
So it's really, rather than just read a bunch of comics and see what, you know, this is Jack Kirby at his peak and this is, you know, Steve Ditko at his peak or whatever. I think it is interesting to see the ebbs and flows and what Michael calls streakiness. You know, I'm really interested in seeing how that happens, how like, oh, here's three weeks where everyone works, but the week before didn't.
Yeah.
You know, why is that?
No, that's fascinating. Yeah. And also the artists' opinion of their own work.
Yeah.
Now, this may be the stuff we're not satisfied with. Schulz was thinking that's his best stuff. Now, I don't know, because I haven't delved into reading about what, you know, what he thought was his best work. It's possible he's, this is clicking with him, like this is what he was striving for.
Yeah. I mean, it's, and there's no way to, okay, let me ask you guys this. What do you think about the thought, you know, in like literary classes and literature theory for the last, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 years, this idea of the death of the author, the author's intention doesn't matter. I understand that because 400 years from now, you won't have the author to ask questions and stuff like that.
But it is interesting when you're, especially when you're studying something this deeply to like check out some back sources. Harold has his little history reports and stuff like that. And I can't help but think, even if we maybe disagree with the intention or we don't see the intention the artist had fulfilled and maybe the way the artist did, I still think it's super interesting to see, to know what the artist was trying to do, why they're trying to do it. And see if that worked on me.
Yeah, I think the death of the author is greatly exaggerating.
Yeah, don't you think?
Yeah.
Well, he's, I mean, Schulz is an interesting case because clearly money was no longer a factor in his work. And most artists, especially, you know, trends come and trends go. At some point, they're out of fashion. And, you know, great gramic artists, you know, had trouble finding work later on in their career. People didn't like that style anymore.
Schulz wasn't dealing with it.
I mean, in the 70s, they called Jack Kirby Jack the Hat.
Yeah, I mean, mind boggling stuff. And, you know, one of the all time greats, Steve Rude, never found anything that was really popular. I mean, he could have been the greatest, one of the greatest comic book artists, but either his style was not what people were looking for, especially in the 90s.
90s.
You know, I consider it, you know, one of the high points of comic art, but it was just the complete opposite of what was selling at Marvel. But it's okay though, Schulz was completely divorced from those kinds of concerns. And really, he could have done whatever he wanted.
Right.
And not have to worry about feeding his family.
Right.
So we have to assume that either this was what he wanted, or he was feeling it was a lot of work and he wanted to cut down on the work.
Yeah. I'm just thinking about what you guys are saying and thinking about the nature of comic books, which would generally come out monthly, bimonthly. And you would move artists around, often from title to title. And you, like you said, could go in and out of fashion. What other medium for a singular artist, let alone a group artist, are you given access to millions upon millions of people every day? And you get to do it for 50 years unbroken.
Right. I can think of Johnny Carson. That's about it.
Yeah. And how many years was that? Which was remarkable. But, and maybe people who are followed on, you know, other, like Today or Good Morning America.
Or David Letterman was that long, yeah.
Or the Sunday show on CBS and the news side of things. But for an artist, where else?
Yeah.
In like the history of art, has somebody had a consistent piece of art that they have to renew every day, that reaches an audience? And we're saying, you know, maybe this is beyond Schulz's cultural impact, or maybe the cultural impact is there and he's just living inside of it, and so we don't see it because it's not breaking anything new. He's still there. Millions and millions of people seeing it every single day at this point. Yeah.
Yeah. And I often wonder, I'm certain that he felt some sort of responsibility towards those readers, that he felt he had to have that new thing there and it had to be his work. At this period in his life, in interviews, one of the things he would say that really bothered him when he would meet people is if they'd say, oh, are you still doing the strip? And he'd be like, well, who the hell else is doing it? I'm sure he didn't say hell. Who else do you think is doing the strip?
And of course, a sane person would think, well, some assistance because you're really rich and should be not sitting over an art desk every day. But that wasn't the guy he was. You know, it just wasn't. And that alone makes it super interesting and worth doing. Yeah.
We haven't really talked much about the actual, in 1980s, what makes them different than the 70s. I don't have a great memory for these kinds of things. And actually, I don't believe in decades. So it all kind of blurs together. But I'd be curious to hear what, if you just randomly, one of these strips popped up, would you know if it was a 70 strip or an 80 strip?
I think I would, yeah. At this point.
Just from the art style.
Yeah. Well, first off, first off, I'd be able to tell if it was not four panels. That's a huge...
That only happened in the last two years.
Yeah. When did the Zip-a-Tone come in? I mean, I don't think I'd be able to tell like 1980 versus 1977, but once the decade gets rolling, I'd be able to tell. Because first off, it's 90% Lucy Gardening, right? Yeah, right. I swore if I had to take it, someone had a gun to my head and said, the world will end if you don't tell me how many Lucy Gardening strips are in the 80s. I'd say, oh, about 100.
I'd say like five.
Five, yeah.
Yeah. All in one week.
Well, let's say the Schultz Museum found a lost strip. It somehow got lost in the mail or at some point in his career, never reached the syndicate. They found it.
The bureau drawer. Yeah.
Could we look at that strip and tell what the date was roughly?
I bet we'd get pretty darn close. I do. I think when my friend Rich sent me the picture and said, hey, when was Snoopy friends with bunnies? In 10 minutes or less, I found the exact panel. I was like, oh, it's possible you went in this little.
One other thing I wanted to mention around this time, we're at the end of the 80s, is we've been mentioning very often Rita Grimsley Johnson's Good Grief biography of Schultz. That came out at the very end of 1989. You've gone into my editor and publisher archives and was looking and saw that it was published on October 12th, 1989 and that Schultz did a 20 city satellite media tour with her to promote it.
He was obviously super supportive of what she did with that biography, which speaks a lot as to what that biography is and how much he respected Johnson and what came out of it. Yeah.
That book is special, I think, in a lot of ways. I think some people maybe were disappointed because they wanted something more like the David Michaelis Schultz and Peanuts book, an unauthorized warts and all telling or whatever.
But I think what Johnson manages to do because she spent so much time with the guy and interviewed him so much and had the full support, she was able to really show what his daily life was like, going around giving cookies, dog treats to the dogs that would bark at him on his way to the studio, the lunch at the warm puppy, him reflecting on his childhood stories. She was able to have this real intimate look at his life.
It was different than if just a writer or an academic who studied old interviews and tried to piece something together. It was very much reporting in the moment. And it gives a really idyllic picture of life in Santa Rosa at this period of time that would make you just wanna be a cartoonist like Charles Schulz. I think it's a really good book. I recommend it to everybody.
And she didn't sugarcoat it either. We learned things about him that generally weren't known that he was a bit of a, I guess he was a little agoraphobic.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's definitely worth reading. I would pick that as my, if you wanna do a little side reading for this podcast, especially at this period, it's a great thing. So Liz, my question to you is, first off, this show would not happen if you hadn't said, would you guys consider trying it again if I produce and edit it?
Actually, what I said was, I have this idea, would you? And you said, yes!
That's right, yes, I didn't. That's true, I didn't finish yet. So my question to you is, now after 120 episodes, how much do you regret that?
Not a bit, not one bit. I wanted to be, I think I've said this before, I loved the concept. I was heartbroken when you had your false start and the early episodes never took place.
Yeah, we're not sure what happened to those episodes.
Anyhow, I wanted to be part of a team. I love being part of this team. I particularly like the fact that I have been welcomed to be more on the air and even gave myself a microphone. Oh, fancy. And I have noticed as I'm editing that I have some very strange sounding laughter. I mean, I cackle, I sort of wheeze. There's a lot of different versions of my laughter in the background.
That's, you know what, having to listen to yourself is painful. Laughter is hard too for me. My problem with my laugh is when I really think something's funny. A lot of times I'm not laughing and I'm just laughing, but you can't hear it. But then I think, oh, it's a podcast. So I go like, oh, don't do that. Oh, man. Well, yeah, I'm so glad that you feel that way because the show wouldn't exist without you. This has been just absolute, absolute pleasure for me from beginning to end.
So listen, how about this? We're going to take a break a little bit on the earlier side this time. Then we're going to come back, I'm going to answer the mail, and then we're going to do a little thing Michael cooked up where we're going to compare characters from 70s, characters from the 80s, see where they've changed, how they've changed, and what we think of those changes. So meet us on the other side.
Hi, everyone. Have you seen the latest Anger and Happiness Index? Have you admired the photo of Jimmy as luke Skywalker? Or read the details of how Michael co-created the first comic book price guide? Just about every little known subject we mention is referenced on the Unpacking Peanuts website. Peanuts' obscurities are explained further and other stories are expanded more than you ever wanted to know.
From Albert Peysen Terhune to Zipatone, Annette Funicello to Zorba the Greek, check it all out at unpackingpeanuts.com/obscurities.
And we're back. So I'm hanging out in the mailbox, Liz. Have we got anything?
We do. We got a letter from John Marullo, who writes, the July 10th, 1989 strip with Linus stating that vanilla should be on the bottom of an ice cream cone that also has chocolate. Sally apparently has the same opinion. In the July 20th, 1962 strip, she asks Charlie Brown to bring her an ice cream cone with chocolate on the top and vanilla on the bottom. She says, it makes all the difference in the world. If the vanilla is on the bottom, it leaves a better aftertaste.
Soulmates.
Charlie Brown then states, little did I know that right within our family, we'd have a connoisseur of ice cream cones.
Wow. Well, that's insane that you noticed that. And I have to say, bravo.
Kudos.
That's amazing. See, they're soulmates.
And they're both right.
Vanilla is the better lingering flavor.
He adds that the 1962 strip is also notable for ice cream and aftertaste being hyphenated. It's also one of the very few times that Sally addresses her brother as Charlie Brown. Having a family member use his surname feels awkward, so Sally soon came to address him as Big Brother.
Big Brother. She'll say Charlie Brown. I think she says it in the Christmas special even. Yeah, it always does kind of crack. Actually, it kind of cracks me up that she calls him Charlie Brown. But I like Big Brother.
Yeah, she started using Big Brother around 1984. I'm just kidding.
Well, checking out the hyphenation puts you in Harold Buchholz category. I am sorry to say there's no treatment for that.
No, I'm sorry. I just like to live with it.
Sarah Wilson writes, Hi again, just a quick note. If the whole Unpacking Peanuts team does, as promised, visit Japan. I don't remember promising that.
We promised that a few hours ago.
Did someone promise to pay our way?
Then you must also visit the pizzeria in the attached photo, which I'll put on social media, which is decoratively devoted to exactly two things, peanuts and the beetles. I mean, it's like they've been waiting for you all this time. I think we should do an ad for that pizzeria.
We got to do an ad for that pizza place. That's amazing. Well, now we are promising to go to Japan.
Yeah. Tim Young writes and says, I want to see a TV special about Snoopy going by the name Charlie Brown at camp. We could call it, it's identity theft, Charlie Brown.
That could happen.
That would be a really, you could do a really good episode. Somebody came and repossessed my mitt. Snoopy's eyes are like rolling up. Oh man.
They're coming up to Charlie Brown because he's pretending he's a lawyer.
Oh, that's funny.
So that's it for the mail.
Well, that is great. I mean, first off, thank you all for writing. I really appreciate it. If you guys want to keep this conversation going, there's of course a couple of different ways you can do it. The first thing we would love for you to do is just go over to unpackingpeanuts.com and then you can sign up for the great peanuts reread. And that will give you one email a month where we let you know what we're discussing. So you can read it ahead of time.
And you could just read for free at gocomics.com or buy one of the fan of graphics books, all kinds of options for you. You could also reach out to us on social media. We're at unpackpeanuts on Instagram and threads and at unpackingpeanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube. So we would love to hear from you because remember when I don't hear, I worry.
But what about the hotline?
Nothing on the hotline.
What about the number for the hotline?
Well, that might be why there's nothing on the hotline. You can also call us on the hotline or text us at the hotline 717-219-4162. And also we have some kind of fun news, some excitement we just found out about ourselves. Harold, why don't you let the listeners in?
Yeah, it's always a delight to see the particular bump in the listenership and the Guardian coming out of the UK, listed us this past week in their Picks of the Week. There's a section called, there's a podcast for that where Graham Virtue chooses five of the best podcasts on comic book culture. And we are the sole number one listed here of these that is not Marvel or DC. So, to see our listing, yeah, he has really nice things. He calls it a delightful series.
And yeah, he calls us a veteran trio and they're his Sumner.
So- Let's talk about war stories. So where were you and John Jimmy?
I was watching Sesame Street.
So thank you to Graham and the Guardian for singling us out. That's really special and a lot of people have found us through you. So we're very happy about that. And welcome to any new listeners who may have come to us through that.
Yeah, it's just it's been so fun for us. And the fact that more people are coming on all the time is just great. And I secretly like the egotistical maniac, monomaniacal part of my brain, just the thought that people might be binging. Oh, I love that. Oh, man. Yeah, so that's great. Thank you, Harold. And thank you to the Guardian. That's so cool. Michael, you want to take us out here? What's your plan here for the finale? Well, how are we going to end this thing?
This isn't a plan, but it's kind of a concept of a plan.
It's the inkling of a concept.
We have a notion of an idea of a concept.
Well, no, I was just thinking a little hazy on what we were going to be talking about because we don't have actual strips in front of us. But I thought, okay, how about we delve into the characters who are currently featured in the strip? So I think what we're going to do is talk about these characters and our impression of how they're evolving, how they've changed since the 70s. We're only talking about the 80s. We're not going to go further than that.
If we think Schulz is doing justice to them or he's ignoring them, or they're becoming more and more popular. Anyway, so basically, it just turned out I've got three columns. One would be the old guard, and these are the main characters from the 50s who are still around, and that'd be Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy, and Schroeder. Then the second column would be characters who are introduced in the 60s, and maybe a little earlier, Sally, Peppermint Patty, Marcy, and Woodstock.
And then third column, characters introduced in the 70s and 80s, Franklin, Rerund, Lydia, Spike, and Olaf. And characters who hardly ever show up at all. I have Pigpen here, but also we've seen Violet and Whistripper too. Patty. Yeah, but they're not really players anymore. So anyway, we basically have these 14 characters. So let's just go around the horn and discuss them. Let's start with Charlie Brown. Jimmy?
All right, who should go first?
You go first.
Oh no. Well, I would say in some ways, obviously, in some ways, all of the original cast's role is diminished because just by math, you add more characters, they're gonna take panel time away from some of the other characters. But I don't think that hampers Schulz too much because the personalities of those main characters are so ingrained in just humanity's mind at this point that he's able to kind of use shorthand sometime.
And I think, but I think the major thing I would say from Charlie Brown is even though he's still a loser and he's still fretting and he's wishy washy and that sort of stuff, he's also calmer. He's also, I think, more of a mature presence. He's, you know, I think the big brother aspect of Charlie Brown and Sally is one of the highlights of the strip that really grows over the course of the time, especially, you know, especially in the late 70s or the 70s and 80s.
But I think in general, I would say, because we're not taking the long stories as much as we used to anymore and because of the diversity of the other cast, just the fact that there are so many of them. I think Charlie Brown is, he's still the center, but he's a slightly less white hot center, you know, if that makes sense.
That's it. Okay, Harold.
Yeah, Charlie Brown has come to a day-to-day piece with himself, it seems like, in the 1980s. He is more just living his life quietly. He's a voice of reason that actually gets to be a voice of reason without being torn down because of Sally in particular. I think I'm happy for Charlie Brown. You know, this is a part of Peanuts that Michael and I haven't really fully experienced by any stretch.
So I kind of knew this is where Schulz was because I would keep up with the strip, but not on a regular daily basis. But to see that Charlie Brown who has struggled as the character has been just consistently depressed and frustrated and constantly is being shown up by the people around him and his self delusions. And that's not gone. And a lot of it's on the baseball field still. But I'm really happy that he has grown.
It's so funny, you know, he's lived for 40 years with us, but he's only how old, you know. But we've seen him over 40 years develop as a character. And I guess in some ways you could say that's a less interesting character except, like you said, Jimmy, we have this history with him. We have these shortcuts that we use because the whole strip is a shortcut. You know, it's this little haiku every day of comics. Charlie Brown is everything we've experienced up until now.
And it's like, I feel like I'm happy that he is given this kind of level of dignity in a certain part of who he is, that he fits in. He does fit in. He is a good big brother. And to see that in him after lots of years of just ongoing frustration is really special.
Excellent. Michael, what do you think?
Well, I mean, he's definitely consistent. He has shifted over from basically like the archetypical loser to more of a rounded character. I mean, the fact that the two of the girls are like in love with him, he doesn't seem to like to respond to that. He must have run away from that. But that wouldn't have happened in the 50s or 60s, I don't think. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the everyman character.
Yeah.
You know, in the center of the strip, but really not the funniest, not the smartest. Yeah, and he still has the loser aspects. But yeah, like Harold said, there's more to do with baseball and kite flying.
Right.
And his complaint about having no friends doesn't even make sense anymore.
Right.
Because clearly it is a group and he has lots of friends.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's absolutely true.
Yeah.
Okay. That's all I can think of for Charlie, Chuck. Let's go to Lucy.
Well, Lucy, I think she's obviously mellowed quite a bit. But I think the number one thing that has changed about Lucy is, of course, the corduroy pain. I think the problem was she was in that dress with the big puffy skirt and the bow and she just felt constrained, and she was angry all the time. Now she's got some casual corduroys and a sweatshirt. She's a lot mellower.
It makes sense.
I think Lucy's journey is mostly fashion based. What do you think, Harold?
Yeah, I agree. She too is mellowed. Pretty much every character is mellowed. Well, with maybe a few exceptions which we'll get to. I like that Lucy is settled into herself in the strip as well. I like that she is still who she is, but she's not swinging as hard. Since I love all the characters, I'm a little happy for the other characters. That's true.
That's right.
After 40 years, a little break is not bad. Also, Lucy is intimidating. I read the strip as a little kid when I was dealing with being in a family with a big sister, and I had my issues with her, and I was struggling with my role as the youngest in that family like Linus did. I remember it really being helpful to me to read those strips and seeing that there was a Linus out there, and that he had a big sister, much tougher to deal with than my sister. My sister was generally just great with me.
But to see that and to see how he would navigate that relationship with Lucy was really helpful. They seem like they're more in a deadlock now. It's like the old couple that's been married for a long time, and they snipe at each other, which it's got a little bit more of that feel than two young kids who are constantly finding fresh ways to torture each other. It's a little bit more mellow. It's still there, but it doesn't have the edge that it used to have.
I'm actually okay with that, because we do have the other strips where that was front and center.
Don't you think, maybe this is a little off, but don't you think it is strange that they never really explore the relationship between Linus Lucy and Rerun at this point? Strange. I mean, I think back to Linus being taught all that stuff from Lucy, all that nonsensical stuff, and it seems like doing something like Rerun, I mean, even with the name in it, it would give him the opportunity to do more of those things.
Yeah.
But he just does it.
It sounds like you've mentioned that the 90s Rerun comes to the fore.
Well, yeah, I did a little research on that, and Rerun is in 145 strips about, and 90 of them take place after 1995.
Wow.
Really?
Wow.
So he's basically, he's one of the main characters of the last five years. And when I, you know, name drop, when I got to talk to Jeannie years ago, Jeannie Schulz, she said she thinks-
Life of Charles Schulz.
Life of Charles Schulz, whatever. We talk to people like this all the time here. We were reviewed in The Guardian, for God's sake. She felt it was that Schulz had something to do, it had something to do with Charles Schulz connecting with his grandchildren. Spending time with the grandchildren and that inspired rerun.
Okay. Well, we'll get to rerun in the next column. We're back to Lucy. Yeah, she's mellowed. She's at her best though when she's throwing some nasty sarcastic remarks at people.
And still has that. Yeah, she's can still be that.
She still comes up with some moods and doozies. So I appreciate that. And the booth is psychiatric booth is is maintained its presence. One thing I noticed coming into 1990 is the I'm not seeing any Lucy and Schroder piano strips. And I think there was just one in 1989. So that was that was a regular for her. I mean, she had a few regular slots. And that was one Lucy Schroder show. And he's in the 80s. He started using her a lot as the worst baseball player in the world. The right fielder.
I don't I can't remember there being a lot of those, but it seems like that's that's one of his standard baseball gags. Yeah, so I think she is maintaining a pretty strong presence, but definitely not as horrible a person as she used to be because of all that gardening.
Yeah, that's what it is. The gardening and the corduroy pants will keep you in check.
Yeah. Okay, let's move on to Linus Linus.
Linus has been used a lot less certainly than he was in those early days. I think mostly, though, he stayed true to himself. I don't see that there's frankly too much difference about the character of Linus, just that he probably appears less. That's my take.
Yeah, I think there's a good through line for Linus. He, yeah, there is something different, though, and it's hard to put my finger on it. Michael, maybe you've got some insights on this, but I think, well, I guess like everybody else, some of the edge is gone. I'm super, super grateful that he found Lydia.
Yes. Toward the end of this decade, because it brought out some of those more neurotic elements of him and just layers of personality in him that had been kind of removed from the strip or just not seen as often or repeats of things we'd seen before. This was fresh. And we're 38 years or whatever into the strip when this starts to happen. And I don't know if we see her in the 90s, is this going to be interesting to see if he still has a lot going on inside there.
And I was really happy to see this late into the strip, a new character unlocking parts of him that we hadn't seen at all before and in some cases we'd seen before, but really hadn't had that intensity before. And you know, everybody, we talk about unrequited love in this strip. You know, there's these strange, everybody's loving somebody else who's not loving them back. I mean, that's the nature of the strip in so many ways.
You know, the closest love, if you've used love broadly, that we have in the strip that is required, it's a friendship while this is woodstock. But to see Linus get in the mix on this with Lydia, I thought was really special this decade.
Yeah, Lydia is a great idea, a great character. It's, I mean, it makes such a good schtick. And it's a variation kind of on the Schroeder-Lucy thing in that they're always going to be in the same position. And the thing is, you know, she's always going to find some way to vex Linus. And he just plays out variation and variation on that. And it's great. It's really good.
Okay. Well, we'll get to Lydia in the next column.
And your thoughts on Linus?
My thoughts on Linus. Yeah, this is, to me, this is really puzzling. He was by far my favorite character in the first couple of decades. The most complex character in modern American literature.
You said Western.
Well, modern America.
Okay.
And the UK because of the Guardian. Then it seemed to me in the 70s, Schulz didn't know what to do with him. He was kind of relegated to the sidelines. Part of his shtick in the 70s was he was able to give up the blanket, which was kind of the whole key to his personality. And so we had a blanket-free Linus roaming around for a while, but he didn't have much to do. And I don't remember too many strips where he was the focus of it. And then we get to the 80s and the blanket comes back.
So I think Schulz realized that was really the key to understanding Linus. Not only was he a wild-eyed fanatic who, you know, believed all kinds of crazy things, but he was totally insecure, even though he acts like he knows more than everybody else. So we're seeing more of him. And yeah, I think the Lydia story lines bring him out the best. I can't think of too much that he's done in the last decade that is really noticeable. So I think he's kind of holding his own.
And maybe dropping down a little bit. He's a little less important.
I wonder, you know, about that, what that is with Schulz is that. I mean, you know, I often think, what's beyond Sergeant Pepper with the Beatles? And maybe because they didn't go that way, right? They they did Magical Mystery Tour and then turned a different way. And maybe the answer is nothing's beyond it. And that's why you have to turn away. So maybe like all the line of stuff is brilliant as it is.
But he does go back to the well constantly in the 80s. A lot of old ships get revived. But then again, I mean, think about this, all peanuts is is characters. Yeah. I mean, there's no plot, there's no through line, there's no... It's not world building, it's characters. Right. And he's jettisoned a bunch of them. And he's brought in some new ones. And he's stuck with his main cast. I mean, they've never gone away. But I think he's kind of gets bored with some of them.
I think he got bored with Linus for a while.
Interesting.
I pretty much agree with you, Michael, on all of that. I feel like we have all dealt with art that over a period of years, ourselves with characters. And as we change and grow, I think how we relate to those characters, even if we wrote it years ago and we're rereading it, people are not 100% the same. And we're all processing things at different stages of our lives.
And it did seem like there was something in Linus that didn't become as relevant to Schulz in the early 80s, but he found a fresh way to engage with Linus. Like I was saying with Lydia, for example, that I really appreciate. So yeah, it seemed like whatever he was using in Linus to process, something was resolved in his life or replaced or whatever. And so Linus is not maybe processing that for him as much.
And the new version of Schulz as he's growing and changing as a person and the people around him that he's dealing with are different, and at different stages of their lives, it looks like Linus is... Some of that stuff was definitely temporal for him, and it's not something he's processing now.
Yeah, that's really interesting. The other thing I think is that Linus was the mouthpiece for his philosophy and his spirituality and a lot of stuff like that. And one thing that I do feel Schulz had a real good sense of is that he didn't want to... Well, I know that this is for a fact in interviews. He said he never wanted to feel old, you know?
And I think when you're talking about weighty, like really weighty philosophical important issues, when you're young, it's one thing because you're exploring it. When you're older, you've sort of figured out, at least for yourself, maybe, what these things are, where they are. And I think Schulz somehow intuited that I could become didactic. Because I think someone like Johnny Hart, I got some controversies and stuff for some of his religious strips towards the end of his career.
Not because Johnny Hart was a bigot or because Johnny Hart was whatever, but because he was old.
Well, you've lived enough life that you come to some conclusions.
Some conclusions.
It's not just, hey, I'm going to explore everything and look at every possibility. And that's my philosophy is to look at everything and never come down on anything. You know, a lot of people do wind up saying, you know, I've been uncertain about this, but I think this is where I'm finding meaning.
Yeah.
It's interesting to see. You're saying that Schulz was super, super careful about trying to come down on any one thing and say, this is the way it is. That was not his personality.
Right.
Moving on to Snoopy.
Well, the biggest change with Snoopy is, of course, the fact that he is not an only puppy. He has all these siblings. Now we had Spike in the 70s, but now we got Olaf and some more coming along. The fantasy is taken over, but this fantasy is taken over for for a long, long, long time.
I think the other thing, though, I would say about Snoopy is that at the beginning of the strip, I think Charlie Brown developed into Schulz avatar, and I think in the latter half of the strip, Snoopy is more and more.
Yeah.
That's, I guess, what I'd have to say about Snoopy.
Yeah. In the mellowing and rounding out of these characters, Snoopy is genuinely rounded out visually. As Michael, you say, he looks like the plush toys that were so popular in millions of households all over the world, and Snoopy has become this icon, unlike any other cartoonist icon. I mean, I can't think of another cartoon character that is just everywhere for so long, surviving to this day, for four years after the last strip, and Snoopy is a major cultural force.
I can't believe someone created Snoopy even after doing all this. It seems like Snoopy has always existed.
Yeah. And in the mellowing part, I was mentioning friendship. This is something that has been developing really over the last 20 years. He had 20 years where he was on his own for the most part, and then this little bird comes into his life, and then all of a sudden you're seeing him as a friend, as a paternal character, as a leader, the Beagle Scout. This is a side of Snoopy that we hadn't seen before.
And again, it does seem like Snoopy has lived his life and had his experiences, and he has now found some things he didn't have before. And again, I'm happy for Snoopy because of that, and he's just an enjoyable character at this stage.
Yeah.
Michael?
Yeah, this is a tricky one. For me, so much of Snoopy is tied in with the way he looks and how much he's changed and constantly changing, way more than any other character.
Yeah.
Occasionally, I'll come across a 60s strip and I'll go like, that dog is not the same dog. You could have that modern Snoopy and 60s Snoopy together in a strip, and they're clearly two different animals.
Yeah, and then go back even further. And it's a third animal.
It's the Snoopy is dead controversy.
He was replaced. He does seem to be aging more than the rest. It seems like he's feeling, of course, in dog years. I don't know how old he actually is.
Methuselah.
So yeah, he's more complacent. He's assuming adult roles and as the leader. But I think the biggest change is he was angry. Yeah, Snoopy, I remember, was extremely angry that he was treated like a dog. And occasionally that comes up. But now it's more like he's not a dog anymore. I mean, he doesn't walk on four legs anymore. He walks on two feet. He has hats. So he's a lawyer.
I just finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. That is the test to see if it's a human, right? If they wear a hat.
See, I've been telling you guys, I've been needing that.
So he's become, and his fantasies, which often were a little wild, especially becoming other animals. And then, you know, a pilot and a foreign legionnaire. Yeah, they sort of morphed into kind of more traditional role playing, like, you know, the lawyer and the surgeon. Yeah. And the whole thing with Snoopy is, is Snoopy and Woodstock are a team. Yeah. I think that's what kept his character fresh, is he had someone to play off of.
Michael, I was just thinking what you said. You know, he was angry about being kind of the little insignificant character in the strip. And then what does Schulz do? He introduces an even little more interesting character in Woodstock. And Snoopy now becomes the advocate for that, that, that little character.
So it's like he's transferred his anger into being, being the thing that he wished had been for himself, although he certainly doesn't pay much attention to what the good things that Charlie Brown does for him, like feed him.
Right. I give him a home.
Okay. All right. So that's, those are the big four from...
Oh, let me just say the other big change, of course, is that the big four used to be in every strip.
Yeah.
And that is not the case anymore.
That was the rule for many, many years, that every single strip had at least one of those four characters in it. And it was a very, very rare solo by Schroeder, who is the fifth in this old guard. Yeah. So say something about Schroeder.
Schroeder continues with an immaculate consistency. Schroeder likes catching, Schroeder dislikes Lucy, and Schroeder enjoys Beethoven. That's what he's sticking with. I appreciate Schroeder. He's got his thing down and he's not looking elsewhere.
Harold?
Yep.
Yeah, there's not much you could say about him. He hasn't evolved at all.
At all. I admire that.
Yeah.
The bedrock of peanuts.
That's right.
Yeah, he is. And he's not like Shermie-like. But you really don't know much outside of his likes and dislikes of a few things. You don't really know what his life is like at all. Never seen him at school.
Do we know his last name?
No, we never find out. We don't even know Schroeder is his first name or his last name.
Okay, so we can move on. So the next column is characters who are introduced in the 60s who are still around. And we'll start with Sally. Might have been introduced in the 50s.
In like 59, I think. But Sally has changed because she started as a baby. One of those characters like Schroeder and Lucy that started as babies and grew up. Sally is, I think she's just gotten stronger over the years. I think she's funny across the board. I think probably from pure laughs, I think I get in this era more laughs from Sally than other characters, except maybe Marcy.
Yeah, Sally's the holdout in the strip that's still railing against the world where she's taking it on. Peppermint Patty feels the brunt of it, but I don't think she's on the underside of it. Sally's often somehow on top of the things that she doesn't understand, and that's a lot of fun. I think it's a much needed part in the strip right now, given where the other characters are. Yeah.
I would think we each pick strips to discuss. I haven't counted, but I would guess that Sally Strips would be my highest percentage. Yeah. I think she's the funniest. The character you can identify with, because being the kid who doesn't know anything and nobody tells her anything too, just makes up her own rules about the universe. Yeah. I think she's getting stronger, even though she was a good character from the beginning.
I think if he had to just go with one character, like, okay, Schulz, you only get one character. What would you pick? He wouldn't pick Sally, but I would. I think it's Sally Stripp could really go.
Yeah, Sally Stripp could stand on its own against all the other syndicated strips at that time. I totally see that.
All right.
I want to throw a curve ball in here because we were playing this. Michael and I used to do this thing where we're like, okay, they're selling off the Beatles catalog. You can buy one song. What would you buy? Mine was always every little thing. But anyway, because I think maybe that would be the one I could afford in this.
I pick Hey Bulldog, but it's got a resurgence.
It does have a resurgence. So my question is, as cartoonists, we're gonna be able to buy one character from Peanuts, not one of the main four. Who would you buy?
I'd buy Sally.
Sally, Harold?
Woodstock.
Woodstock. Peppermint Patty.
Okay, speaking of Peppermint Patty, she's next on the list.
Peppermint Patty arrived fully formed, I felt, in 1965 or whatever, and we find new stuff out about her, like her relationship with her dad, her living situation. She doesn't have a mom and stuff like that, but she remains pretty much the character we first met. But having said that, she is a radical character. She is from the future when she arrives in 1965. One of my favorite pieces of art in the world is the book Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. It came out in 1964.
And I mean, this is the world we were living in. Well, people were living in them compared to now. Harriet wore sneakers and jeans, and this was radical stuff, you know? And it's only a few months later, and Peppermint Patty is there in her shorts and flip-flops. And she's a great modern character. I think the modern female protagonist of comics starts there, even more so than Lucy.
It's interesting. It's amazing that she's been with us now for 25 years. It doesn't feel like that. But yeah, I agree, and it seems like she's taken on some of those borderline failure aspects of Charlie Brown. She's now the one who's just skating on the edge of failure. It's a different approach, but failure is, if he's going to do a strip on failure, 80% of the time, he's now going to Peppermint Patty.
Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing I love about the relationship with Peppermint Patty and Charlie Brown are their little philosophical moments under the tree. That's something that came about after she had been in the strip for a few years. But it shows them as a really good friend couple. I can picture them being friends for life. Yeah. How about you, Michael?
I don't know why, but the character has not appealed to me that much. Part of it is the fact that there aren't a lot of female characters, and she's probably the most popular. And a lot of the gags are, it sounds like she's just dumb. I mean, in particular, not realizing she's going to dog training school.
Yeah, I will say, though, that's one of the worst. I mean, that's just not right all around.
She clearly has a learning disability, which makes her a modern character, which she could probably do a lot with. But the school strips where she never gets the answer right, and she guesses and makes weird remarks to the teacher. I don't find those particularly interesting. Sitting under the tree strips are better, but they don't happen all that often. She's basically sitting there in class doing dumb things.
She seems like the character that Schulz dumps on the most for the anxieties and the failure and it doesn't always add up, because in some ways, she's incredibly smart. We know that as, you know, she obviously knows a strategy, baseball, you know, she's a fantastic manager of her own team. She's got so much going in one category, and then it's like, it almost feels artificially, how can you always get a D-? I think more about who the heck is her teacher than who is she.
You know, and then we know that she doesn't get sleep. You know, we know all these things that kind of point in this direction, but yeah, I will say Michael, I don't feel like, given what I know about her character, it doesn't quite jive with me. I have trouble putting Peppermint Patty together when I see how she interacts generally outside of the classroom with other people, and then how she's just this abysmal failure in school.
Yeah, yeah, it's frustrating. Because at some point, somebody would take this kid under their wing and say, look, you've got to learn this stuff, or you're going to end up working as a waitress for the rest of your life.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
No, no. A noble profession.
Exactly.
And she's got Marcy, who is a good student, and yet Marcy's doing some work with her. And I do appreciate that. I think that softens the edge of Peppermint Patty's failure because there is someone there who is alongside her.
Here's what I will say. Here, I will solve this for you guys.
Thank you.
Peppermint Patty does not give a crap about school. That's why she gets D-minuses. She does not think about it. She's not paying attention. She's asleep in class all the time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, she does not care. And I think we have to leave the dog thing aside because that-
That was over the edge.
Ridiculous. Yeah, so I think what you're saying, Jimmy makes a lot of sense. Yeah. It's just not important to her.
No.
And she doesn't prioritize it and she doesn't set her life up so that she will succeed there. Right.
Okay. Let's move on to Marcy.
I love Marcy. I think Marcy is brilliant. I've always liked Marcy, but I love Marcy on this read-through. I love that Marcy is unknowable in some way. And I know I love that she's placid in so much of the time, but then she'll just burst out and become violent. And sometimes she'll be violent just for the lulz, like her and Peppermint Patty. And I love their relationship. You know, I love Peppermint Patty. And I think it's just a great character design.
I thought that was such a great character design that I stole it for Pajama Bell. Oh, and if anyone's interested, the next Tanner Rocks, well, it'll already be out by the time you guys read this. But you'll see my little Eudora tribute.
Oh, nice.
Excellent. Look forward to that.
So, Marcy, we're talking Marcy here.
Yep. So Marcy is to me the character who continues to surprise. And I appreciate that in a strip that's 40 years old. She has these layers to her, sometimes disturbing layers, that Schulz continues to reveal. And I do like that Peppermint Patty has Marcy. And that Marcy plays, usually plays this kind of supportive character to Peppermint Patty, but still is just a very, very strong character in and of herself.
And I'm just thinking in life, when you look at characters in stories, usually it's those A-type personalities or whatever, that they're the ones that get a lot of the focus in literature. And Marcy is this fascinating supporting character who Schulz gives this incredibly rich life to. That even if she chooses to be that in the friendship role, it's not because she's lesser, it's because that's just her personality and she's still this incredibly rich human being.
And there are a lot of people in life who are like Marcy. And I very much appreciate that there's a character in literature and comics that represents that those roles that you play in life, that that's an honorable role to play to be the support to a friend like a Peppermint Patty.
Yep.
I just have to jump in here and say that she is not being a lesser character when she's saying things like, Charles, don't nibble on my ear, I can't hear.
Right.
Yeah.
So brilliant. That sequence is great. I love that.
Yeah, I think she's coming into the 90s. I think she's definitely one of the strongest characters. And I just thought a really good team up, which I don't think we've ever seen, would be Sally and Marcy.
I agree 100%.
Maybe like Marcy is a babysitter or something. If I was doing the Sally strip, Marcy would be her babysitter.
That sounds pretty cool.
Brilliant.
Some no-nonsense stuff going on, I guess.
That's right.
They're both so unpredictable. Anything to their mouths at any time. Okay. Now, let's moving on to the most complicated, complex character in modern American literature, Woodstock.
Woodstock is the greatest comic strip character design of all time. I really think so. There only one person in the world could have ever done that. There's nothing to him. He takes up one one hundredth of a panel, and all of the emotion of a complete being is in him. I don't know how he does it. Woodstock, there's not much to say about him as a character, I don't think, in terms of the deep inner psyche of Woodstock. But boy, is it a funny character.
It works great with Snoopy, and it's next to impossible to think that you could take a character like Snoopy that at this point was already worldwide iconic and add a second banana to him and have it work. Not only have it work, but have it become something that everyone in the world also knows. It's impossible to imagine. I love Woodstock.
Yeah, this is Schulz leaning into his strengths as an artist, like you said, as a cartoonist. I have a little bookmark that I was given. It's two inches wide and it's got four panels going down the bookmark, and there's a ton of margin around that. So it's probably like one inch panels about. It's Snoopy and his dog house.
It reads so clearly and cleanly, and I'm like, that is an artist who knows how to boil down to the essence, and Woodstock, like you said, is the ultimate boiling down to the essence of a character with so few strokes and being full of life, full character. Schulz is one of the greatest who's ever done that. Woodstock represents that. I also think that Woodstock represents the little guy, the underdog. Schulz introduces these characters that are much more complex.
They're conflicted, and then you're dealing with characters who are put upon just because of who they are. He's a little bird. He's pretty helpless, but he has a very life himself, and he's a little mysterious in his own way because we have to interpret him through Snoopy. There's a lot going on with this little character, and I love what Woodstock brings out in Snoopy.
Yeah. Jimmy mentioned that he brought me around to appreciate Woodstock. I was just because I hadn't read Peanuts after the 70s. I thought he was just an icon of cuteness, that everybody was putting posters up and talking about. I didn't realize how much could be coming out of that little creature. Yeah. The genius move was the fact that, oh, you do see his slash marks for his thoughts. Imagine if he had just decided, okay, he's going to be like Snoopy and it'll be Thought Balloons.
I mean, you can't even conceive of that.
No, you can't.
Except for the letters that he would write Snoopy, which I thought were absolutely delightful, where he's got a very specific direct voice that we get to hear. I loved that. That was, and I think he could have gone in that direction, and Woodstock would have still been a rich character, a different character.
It would have been very different. I mean, the graphic thought of those check marks as his speech, I just can never think of that ever, and it's so great.
Or to stick with it.
Stick with it, you know?
Yeah, and the fact that his personality comes out in those little slash marks. Sometimes she could tell he's just talking too much, or he's angry just from the look of those marks. Yeah, it's great. I have no problem with Woodstock. I approve.
All right, Woodstock is Cohen approved.
All right, we're in our last column. Let's just do a quick one or two sentences for each of these guys. This is 70s to 90s. These are the newest batch. Almost none of them are getting much play at this point. So they come up a couple of times a year, and that's it. Okay, Franklin.
Solid. Rocksteady. Wish he hung out with Charlie Brown more.
Okay.
I totally agree. Yeah, he brings out the best in Charlie Brown. There's a lot to Franklin. There's a kind of a philosophical side of blindness. Occasionally, we get to see in Franklin, and I appreciate that because I miss that aspect of Schulz in this trip.
I think it's a missed opportunity. I think it was such a big deal to introduce an African-American character. And I think Schulz was afraid that any sharp personality traits could be construed wrongly. Yeah. And so, it's almost like a Shermie character, except not quite as broad. Shermie has many, many facets of personality. Franklin, yeah, I mean, he's a foil for Charlie Brown, in a way, to sit and talk about grandparents and things like that.
So I'm thinking in the 90s, he'll probably grow to be more of a full, a rounded character. But up to this point, he's in a couple of strips and that's it.
And if I could hang out with any one character in real life from the Peanuts cast, it would be Franklin. I've seen enough little hints of who he is and what's behind him. I want to get to know him more.
And plus you'd have a much more relaxing, probably safe bed.
Exactly, right? Everyone else is going to bring all those neuroses and shit.
All right, moving on, rerun.
Best is yet to come.
Perplexing up to this point.
Missed opportunity up to this point. Yeah, I mean, endless possibility, because the Linus is a baby stuff was so great. That there are ample opportunity to rerun all that stuff. And it hasn't happened yet. We'll see what happens. Okay, Lydia.
I love Lydia. Oh, Lydia, she's great.
I did too. I already talked about her.
So yeah, I did too.
She's great.
Okay, I would say this is the only character introduced in the 80s that I wish would become a main cast member. And it doesn't look like it's happening because again, she's only showing up four or five times a year. But I could see her joining the main cast at some point as a lead. Totally.
Yeah.
All right, Spike.
I like Spike. I've grown to like Spike over this reread. I like the existentialism. I like what that listener said about him kind of being like Snoopy if Snoopy didn't have Charlie Brown in the gang. I thought that was pretty interesting. If I was going to rewrite history, I'd go, oh, maybe it'd be better if Snoopy was all by himself. But in the moment, I like Spike and I'm okay with him.
Yeah, I appreciate what people like in Spike. For me personally, I don't get a lot out of the strips. They're, I don't know why, but yeah, he's a bit of a downer to me when I read the strips. Occasionally, he's really delightful, but for the most part, it's just kind of this stoic. The strip is already mellowed out so much that to have that stoic Spike in the mix, it's like a little too much maybe of a good thing.
Alrighty. Spike, yeah, when I see it's a Spike strip, I'm not excited. It's a limited number. I mean, you can't do too much when you're out in the desert.
You're only friends with Cactus.
Yeah. So yeah, it's going to be like another replay of the Cactus jokes. OK, now the most most merchandise of all the characters, Olaf.
Greatest character of all time. He's the GOAT. I was looking really at that character design. That is a wild character design. I think he succeeded in making a pretty ugly dog, but I love him.
Yeah, my word for Olaf is disturbing.
Yes, he is disturbing.
Yeah, I'm appreciating him just because I know Jimmy loves his character so much. Yeah, we'll see. I don't know if he's going to be sticking around.
He's a little bit, not much.
There's other brother's siblings coming along. Not looking forward to those, but yeah, Olaf is good for a chuckle.
I think I'm going to hurt myself, Strip. Maybe the hardest I ever laughed at Peanuts, and I can't even fully say why. I think it does have to do with what Harold said. He throws himself off Snoopy's doghouse with the least possible effort. So anyway, that's Olaf. Is that it? Is that our list?
Wraps it up. I mean, Pig Pen showed up once or twice, but nothing worth talking about.
He remains dirty.
All right, that's it.
That is it. Guys, we came to the end of another season. I am so happy about that. We're going to be starting up the 1990s soon. I hope you guys all stick around for that. And if you want to get in touch with us, if you want to talk or tell us about your favorite characters in the 80s, you can write us at unpackingpeanutsatgmail.com. 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 always love to hear from you, because remember when I don't hear, I worry. That's it though. We wrapped up another season. More to come soon. Guys, thanks for hanging out. Thanks for being a part of this. And for Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, subscribe to The Guardian and be a good cheer.
Yes.
Subscribe to The Guardian. Be a 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.
And just one other thing.