Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
‘Peanuts’ ends
Corky on Charlie Brown's retirement
but rest assured, a
retrospective beginsStaff and wire reports
TODAY'S "Peanuts" strip will be the last penned by its creator Charles M. Schultz. The cartoonist announced Dec. 14 that he would be retiring at the end of 1999 due to a diagnosis of colon cancer. Beginning tomorrow in the comics section, the Star-Bulletin will begin running a retrospective of classic "Peanuts" strips that highlight the cartoon's 50th anniversary year.
"Peanuts" first appeared in daily newspapers on Oct. 2, 1950. Like Charlie Chaplin in film, Louis Armstrong in jazz, the Beatles in pop music and Michael Jordan in professional sports, Schulz, 77, revolutionized his art form and became incredibly popular.
"He was the most successful (comic strip) artist in the history of mankind, period, by every available measure," Daryl Cagle, president of the National Cartoonists Society, told the Boston Globe. "Artistic success, influence on the business, number of fans, monetary rewards pick any great artist, and 'Sparky' wins every time."
In the '50s and '60s, Peanuts set a new standard for intelligence in comic strips a sophistication that, unlike the weirdness of Krazy Kat, didn't exclude or alienate anyone. The strip offered a postwar and later New Frontier sort of humor particularly suited for suburbanites (these kids obviously didn't live in the city), with gags that were much more relevant than those found in such once innovative but then-tame predecessors as Nancy and Blondie.
With Charlie Brown serving as the artist's alter ego, the central joke was that the comic's small children -- the Li'l Folks, as Schulz wanted to call the strip -- were as intelligent as adults. Schroeder, for example, was dedicated to Beethoven; Linus was an amateur theologian; and Lucy quoted Rachel Carson and -- in one of Schulz's most brilliant strokes -- replaced the neighborhood lemonade stand with a booth that offered "Psychiatric Help 5 cents."
Write to Schultz Those who wish to send greetings and good wishes to Charles M. Schultz may do so by writing: Charles Schultz/c/o United Media/200 Madison Ave./New York, NY 10016. United Media will be forwarding mail to him for two weeks.
Charlie Brown, meanwhile, evolved quickly from a smartalecky cad to the eternal underdog. The strip almost never offered reassurance. Charlie Brown's baseball team never won, often due to the incompetence of its "blockheaded" manager and pitcher, Charlie Brown himself.
Most famously, Lucy always pulled the football away at the last second, so Charlie Brown always landed on his back.
Maybe it's because Lucy Van Pelt is hanging up her Peanuts psychiatrist shingle this week, but so is Dr. Katz. The strip based on the "Squigglevision" Comedy Central character has retired from the L.A. Times Syndicate.
Patients are now being referred to "Agnes," starting in the Star-Bulletin today. The strip is by Tony Cochran, an Ohio-based fine artist and auto-body shop worker, who began drawing a sardonic little girl in his sketchbooks to amuse himself some years ago.
Agnes lives with her grandmother in a trailer park. (On the mainland, many people live in homes that can be towed away!) Agnes is cash-poor and attitude-rich, a bit of a dreamer. Her best friend, Trout, is more realistic and down-to-earth.
Cochran's drawing-style is doodly and he has purposefully limned Agnes with the blank, evasive expression of a glasses-wearer, the better for readers to project personality into. Cochran has a vibrant sense of weight and composition and detail in the drawings, the hallmark of an real artist who's cartooning.
Click for online
calendars and events.
