Peanuts (Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Charles M. Schulz)

Peppermint Patty was always a sad figure.

http://kotaku.com/how-peanuts-used-peppermint-patty-to-talk-about-politic-1789460213

edited 15th Aug '17 6:10:32 PM by AnotherGuy

I think it's cool that The Complete Peanuts is finally finished, but there's no room in my apartment to shell out the big bucks for them.

There are less expensive paperback versions, too, but I know what you mean. There's no way a 26 volume book series isn't going to run into money.

Save some money. Five cents, please!

Just split it out, buy one a month, maybe two. That is how you collect them without busting the bank.

I saw "Shes A Good Skate, Charlie Brown", and I think its hands down the best Peppermint Patty story in the series. It was great, and showed a very different side to the character.

Reposting:

That arc where Rerun is born is SO weird. First, no one apparently noticed that the mother was pregnant in the first place. She goes to the hospital for "unclear reasons", and then suddenly comes back with a baby.

And even if the pregnancy somehow DID slip people's attention, you'd think their parents would talk about their baby sibling some time BEFORE the actual birth.

And then Linus decides what to name the baby, based on Lucy's derisive comment. Clearly, the parents have NO say in any of this.

Just for fun, a classic example of Charlie Brown being an asshole.

Yeah, sometimes Charlie can be uncharacteristically mean.

Though, then again, this is the comic of unrequited crushes and girls chasing after boys continuously.

That strip is one of my favorites for pointing out that Schulz tended to write all the characters as rather self-absorbed, even - sometimes especially - Charlie Brown.

This came out the most with Peppermint Patty. Sometimes it went beyond just being Oblivious to Love and on to not paying attention to the vulnerability in what she's trying to say at all, leading to him coming off as callous and an asshole (another good example is the "life is like a bracelet"◊ strip, where Patty bares off this surprisingly deep introspection about life and punchline is that Chuck wasn't listening). He doesn't mean it (few of the characters in the strip do, except maybe Lucy), but he never gets out of his own head.

This strip is just different in that Patty takes what he says to heart and levies a hit to her self esteem rather than getting mad at him for it like she usually does.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 23rd 2019 at 12:01:32 PM

Most characters are Innocently Insensitive, while Lucy is the one that tends to be actively cruel, especially to Charlie.

https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1972/08/06

Love this one, and I hope I pasted it properly

"Innocently insensitive" is a good way to put it. I remember reading where Schulz said that he'd transitioned Charlie Brown's primary dilemma from perceiving himself to be unliked (which was never true) to having to deal with two girls who like him a whole lot. Many of his failures in interacting with Marcie and Peppermint Patty stem from his simply not knowing how, or not being ready, to deal with what they're telling him.

So are any of you collecting the Peanuts hardcover books (the Canongate series)? I've been at it for a decade, and I'm finally entering the 70s.

Calvin and Hobbes was easy in comparison. Just one big set of three books.

Edited by Redmess on Nov 7th 2019 at 5:46:50 PM

Well, Calvin and Hobbes only lasted 10 years. Peanuts lasted 50.

I'm collecting the books myself, as I can afford 'em, not in any particular order.

I'm collecting in chronological order, as it seems interesting to see the development of the comic over the decades.

I love this comic so much, I even create a shop to sell snoopy merchandise.

Edited by SnoopyLover on Feb 18th 2020 at 12:45:38 PM

That's cool.

I'm reading the mid seventies now. I'm still a decade off from Spike, which is apparently where the comic starts going downhill. It is telling that I have never seen a comic with that character on online reruns of the comic. Those seem to stick to the early decades (Go Comics is on 1974, for instance).

I also saw the introduction of Rerun, but for whatever reason, he hasn't been mentioned since. Also, how do you miss your mom being pregnant? Why didn't the parents tell their children? The whole thing sounds like it was a Surprise Pregnancy or something.

Edited by Redmess on Feb 18th 2020 at 2:33:04 PM

That link does not seem to work.

I was reading a comic from September 1973, and I noticed something interesting: Sally calls Snoopy specifically her brothers dog, not her own. And now I think about it, Sally barely ever interacts with Snoopy, let alone feed him or anything. Is this ever touched upon? Does Sally actually dislike Snoopy, or refuse ownership of him?

You don't hear much about this kind of pet arrangement anymore, where a pet is the specific responsibility of one member of a family, rather than being a "family pet." It was, I expect, part of the old "get the kid a pet to teach him/her responsibility." It's been strongly implied that Charlie Brown's parent got Snoopy so that Charlie Brown would have an unconditional friend, having gotten him after an incident where Charlie Brown was pushed down in a sandbox and came home crying. I don't think it's that Sally has any antipathy for Snoopy, just that, in the Brown family, Snoopy is primarily Charlie Brown's responsibility (though one year he "loaned" Snoopy to his dad on father's day, so his dad could play with Snoopy in the park).

I'm in the Joe Cool era now, and... wasn't Joe Cool supposed to be actually cool? He comes off as a little pathetic, sometimes outright coming off as a loser. It probably doesn't help that he has no one to play off of in the comics, but it makes me wonder whether it was meant to be played straight, or to mock that kind of person.

One thing I don’t get. If Charlie Brown and Lucy are the same age, how is Lucy’s younger brother Linus in class with Charlie Brown?

I know back in the ‘50s all three and Schoder came about differently with different ages, but ever since the ‘60s they’ve all been peers of each other.

Both. Snoopy could be the pinnacle of a free person or a twit who didn't know how foolish he was being depending on the strip, or even at the same time.

oops. I got my answers (or theories) from the posts on page 1.

Thanks