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

Yes, definitely, she is very much a main character from then on.

Same goes for Marcie, since the two are very often together in the comics.

Edited by Redmess on Feb 22nd 2024 at 10:50:30 AM

There's an arc in December 1988 where Charlie goes to get Snoopy's dog licence renewed (whatever that means), but he gets a driver's licence and a fishing license instead. The punch line is that Charlie tells Snoopy he doesn't need a licence for "that", that being... an assault rifle.

I'm not making this up. This feels like a parody. Schultz got very political in this arc all of a sudden.

A dog license is just that—a license you buy if you own a dog. Not every American community requires that you get one, but many do. The dog would usually wear the license tag on it's collar, and so if the dog got out or lost, anyone finding it could return it to it's owner, and also they'd know who was responsible for it if it got up to any trouble (think rural communities where dogs might go after chickens or livestock). A dog caught outside without a license could be impounded (this is what Dog Catchers did)—taken to the Dog Pound (that is, Dog Impound) and, if not claimed, euthanized; the license allowed them to tell the owned dogs from the strays. Micro-chipping pets has kind of made the identification functions irrelevant, and simple ID tags do much the same thing too, but, again, some communities do require that you get a license (revenue, you know). Heck, in England you have to get a TV license, believe it or not.

I know the strip you mean, and that was definitely Schulz being political. That single strip was probably the most political he ever got.

Edited by Robbery on Feb 25th 2024 at 9:25:28 AM

I meant having to renew it. I know what a dog license is.

There's an arc in 1989 about an ugly dog contest, which sounds rather mean all on its own. Snoopy first invites Spike, who refuses, and then invites Olaf after remembering that he exists, agonizing over having to invite him to an ugly dog contest when he had no such qualms over inviting Spike.

Olaf shows up wearing a full body bag, and he wins the ugly dog contest, where it is revealed that he is... fat. Just fat. He's just Snoopy drawn really fat. That's what an ugly dog looks like, apparently. The other dogs just look sort of unkempt and scruffy and oddly proportioned, but the winner is Olaf because he is fat.

Olaf is understandably despondent over this, and declares he is going to "hurt himself", promptly jumping off Snoopy's dog house head first. He then tells Snoopy "not to worry, I've done this before", as if that makes it any better.

It's all rather mean-spirited, between the fat shaming and the self-harm joke. Not sure what Schultz was thinking here. Doesn't really seem like him.