THE COMPLETE PEANUTS by Charles M. Schulz
Volume One: 1950-1952
Study guide written by Art Baxter
Introduction
America was in the
throes of post-war transition in 1950. Soldiers had returned home, started
families and abandoned the cities for the sprawling green lawns of newly
constructed suburbia. They had
sacrificed during the Great Depression and subsequent war effort and this was
their reward. Television was beginning
to replace the picture-less radio not to mention live theater, supper clubs and
dance halls, as Americans stayed home and raised families. Despite all this
"progress" an empty feeling still resided in the pit of the American soul.
Psychology, that new science that had recently gone mainstream, tried to
explain why. Then, Charles M. Schulz's little filler comic strip, Peanuts,
appeared in the funny pages.
Schulz was born in 1922,
the solitary child of a barber and his wife, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sparky,
his lifelong nickname, was given to him when he was an infant, by an uncle,
after the comic strip character Barney Google's racehorse Spark Plug. Schulz
had an early love and talent for drawing. He enjoyed famous comic strips like
Roy Crane's
Wash Tubbs/Captain Easy
(1924-1943), the prototype of the adventure strip; E. C. Segar's
Thimble Theater (1919-1938), and its
diverse cast of colorful characters going in and out rollicking adventures; and
Percy Crosby's
Skippy (1925-1945)
with its wise-for-his-age perceptive child protagonist.
Schulz was a bright
student and skipped several grades, making him the youngest and smallest in his
class. When in high school, the introverted youth felt depressed, alienated and
lonely. "It took me a long time to become a human being," he once
said of his high school years. "I was regarded by many as kind of sissified,
which I resented because I was not a sissy. I was not a tough guy, but I was
good at sports. I never regarded myself as being much and I never regarded
myself as being good looking and I never had a date in high school, because I
thought, who'd want to date me? So I didn't bother. And that's the way I grew
up." When Schulz was a senior his mother showed him an ad in the newspaper
that asked: "Do you like to draw? Send for a free talent test." He
signed up for and completed the home study/mail order course. He drew gag
cartoons intended for magazines, but was unable to make a sale.
Schulz was drafted in
1943 and shipped out days after his mother died of cancer. "The three
years I spent in the army taught me all I need to know about loneliness,"
he once remarked. He returned to St. Paul at the end of the war, lived with his
father and took up the cartooning trade in earnest. He practiced drawing and
studied comics including the great George Herriman and his strip
Krazy Kat (1910-1944) which he had never
seen as a child. He became a grader with the mail order Famous Cartoonist
School in Minnesota, from which he had graduated years earlier. He began to
make the rounds in Chicago with his panel cartoons with little success. He got
lucky in 1948 when he sold his panel cartoon feature
Li'l Folks to the ladies section of a local St. Paul newspaper. Two
years later he asked for a raise, was refused and promptly quit. During those
two years, he had managed to sell 17 gag cartoons to the
Saturday Evening Post. Determined, he boarded a train to New York
and successfully sold his strip about children to a syndicate.
Peanuts was born. It's
unfortunate that it was a title that Schulz despised. Peanuts was the title
chosen by the syndicate and he felt stuck with it through his entire career. He
thought the word "peanuts" was
insignificant and had no dignity. The syndicate bought the strip as a "filler"
strip, which meant it might not run steadily in any given paper. It was there
to fill empty spaces between editorial content, other comic strips or
advertising.
Peanuts' four equal size
panels meant the strip could run horizontally, stacked vertically, or as a
square: two above, two below. Schulz's simple uncluttered line art meant the
strip could be reduced to the size of a postage stamp and still be readable. It
premiered Monday October 2, 1950. The Sunday strip would not begin until
January 6, 1952.
Other long lived, famous
and influential comics premiered close to the same time as Peanuts. Mort Walker
began
Beetle Bailey (1950-present) in
September, a month before Schulz. It also featured simple modern uncluttered
line work
. Hi and Lois (1954-present)
was a spin off by Walker & Dik Browne which was a domestic strip of a
married couple and their three children in suburbia. Hank Ketcham's
Dennis the Menace (1951-2001) premiered
in March of the following year. Schulz, Walker, and Ketcham with their
uncluttered modern line work were to become the new standard bearers of
newspaper comics. As much due to the fact their the art could be reduced
smaller and smaller to accommodate the shrinking comic's page as to their
graphic excellence.
As
The Comics Journal
Editor-in-Chief, Gary Groth, wrote: "Although
Peanuts has changed or evolved, it remains, as it began an anomaly
in the comics page--a comic strip about the interior crises of the cartoonist
himself." Charles M. Schulz created a modern American classic that is
intensely personal yet so universal it is celebrated around the world.
Peanuts will be read, enjoyed and
studied for years to come.
Study Questions
1) In what ways do the
Peanuts characters act like kids? In what ways do they not?
2) The early Peanuts
strips have more backgrounds and props. Characters are shown in more varied
poses as well. As time went on the
strip became more spare. What other
artists work became more spare as they moved through their career?
3) In what ways do the
formal elements of the Peanuts strip reflect the trends of newspaper publishing
and cartooning of the early fifties?
4) Snoopy, when first
introduced, behaves like a real dog.
What significant changes does Snoopy go through over the first two years?
5) Schulz introduces
four new characters to join the original five in Volume One. How are they
introduced, what character traits do they exhibit to make them individuals. How
have they evolved and changed by the end of the book?
6)
Peanuts was one among several of a new kind of sophisticated humor
comic strip appearing post World War II. In what way are the early strips fresh
and current? How is it dated and old fashioned?
7) Parents are rarely
talked about or heard from and never seen. Why do you think Schulz decided not
to show them? How does it change the reading of the strip?
8) How does the humor in
Peanuts arise out of the personalities of the characters rather than a standard
generic gag-a-day format?
9) Schulz introduced
sarcasm, depression, and alienation to the comics' page. Find several examples
of each. How do they compare to comics of earlier eras and today?
10) Cartoonist Al Capp (
Lil Abner) once said: "The
Peanuts characters are good, mean,
little bastards. [They're] eager to hurt each other. That's why they are so
delicious. They wound each other with the greatest enthusiasm." The Italian Cultural Critic, Umberto Eco
wrote: "[The
Peanuts Characters]
affect us because in a certain sense they are monsters. They are the monstrous
infantile reductions of all the neuroses of a modern citizen of the industrial
civilization." Do you agree or disagree? Discuss.
11) When Schulz begins
drawing a Sunday
Peanuts, he adds
more detail in the background and the characters themselves become less
graphic. Is this a good development? Does it make the strip more interesting or
is it distracting?
12) How is the set-up of
a gag in a four-panel strip different from a Sunday strip?
Studio Exercises
1) Schulz's characters
evolved over the two years covered in volume one. Design a simple character
that can be drawn in less than five minutes with a pen, marker or brush. Draw
the character once a day for a month in a small notebook. Use a clip to bind
the drawn on pages. Remove the clip at the end of the month. How does the
character differ from the first version you drew? Does the drawing take less time? Does the drawing show more
confidence?
2) Make a copy of that
final character drawing. White out the face. Make six copies of the altered
drawing. Draw in new faces to express: anger, distrust, envy, depression,
shock, boredom, pride. Pin up drawings and see if other students can correctly
identify the emotion. If the emotion is unclear, how can the facial expression
be corrected?
3) Schulz drew upon his
childhood experiences as springboards for gags. He gained insight into these
experiences by seeing them both as a child at the time and as an adult
reflecting. List and briefly describe five childhood experiences. Choose one as
a springboard for either two four-panel strips or a six to nine panel one-page
strip using simple characters.
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