Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon People

Nothing Personal
Boobs of the century?
Ginger Spice: "I'll have bigger breasts than all of you"; Elizabeth Hurley disses Marilyn Monroe; is Kevin Spacey on the daddy track? Plus: Drudge claims the White House New Year's Eve party featured the horizontal hula!
By Amy Reiter
[01/04/00]

People Feature
They coulda been a contender
Because they can't all be winners ...

[01/03/00]

People Feature
We're with stupid
What could be worse than a humiliating death? Try getting famous for it.
By Carina Chocano
[01/03/00]

Brilliant Careers
Hugh Hefner
The 20th century's indefatigable swinger is still mixing martinis, cavorting with naked women, encouraging men to play indoors and reinventing himself.
By Chris Colin
[12/28/99]

People Feature
A conversation with Hugh Hefner
"A whole generation has grown up that was waiting for me to come out and play."
By Chris Colin
[12/28/99]

Complete archives for People

- - - - - - - - - - - -

It's a problem never faced by the likes of Garry Trudeau and Bill Watterson. The creators of "Doonesbury" and "Calvin & Hobbes" would not allow their charges to earn spare cash with endorsements. "I like to keep my characters on the reservation," Trudeau once said. But if the MetLife episode embarrassed Schulz, he gave no indication -- "Peanuts" characters are shilling for MetLife to this day. Schulz may not even have noticed. The man behind the most influential comic strip in history has always displayed an unsentimental attitude toward his creations. Cultural icons they may be, but they're also his living. "I just draw them," Schulz said recently. "That's all."

And now that's all over. Fifty years after "Peanuts" made its first appearance in seven newspapers, colon cancer, Parkinson's disease and a series of strokes have forced the 77-year-old Schulz to retire. "Peanuts" will bow out with a final color strip on Sunday, Feb. 13. The daily strip ended Monday with a farewell letter from Schulz.

The Midwestern cartoonist's simple yet evocative drawings do not enjoy quite the same cultural prominence they held back in 1965 when his first TV special, "A Charlie Brown Christmas," won an Emmy, becoming as integral to the season as mandarin oranges (and almost incidentally establishing Vince Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy" theme as one of the most recognizable piano compositions of the 20th century). But never mind -- "Peanuts" changed the cartooning landscape in a way that even the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Doonesbury" can only envy. Trudeau said as much recently in a tribute to Schulz written for the Washington Post. "'Peanuts' was the first (and still the best) post-modern comic strip," Trudeau wrote. "Everything about it was different. The drawing was graphically austere but beautifully nuanced ... Although Schulz would say the very notion is preposterous and grandiose, he completely revolutionized the art form, deepening it, filling it with possibility, giving permission to all who followed to write from the heart and intellect."

Actually, "Doonesbury" may well be an exception among today's cartoons, in that the true spiritual ancestor of Trudeau's strip is not "Peanuts" but Walt Kelly's brilliantly absurd and sharply political "Pogo." But most contemporary cartoonists owe a significant debt to Charlie Brown and his back-stabbing pals. Watterson is now retired. "Calvin & Hobbes," a pioneering and much-imitated strip in its own right, could arguably be said to resemble little else but "Peanuts." While nervy, obnoxious young Calvin was certainly no Charlie Brown, his unsentimental and sophisticated observations often echoed those of Schulz's ur-loser. "People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children," Calvin remarks after a schoolyard beating. In a strip published over two decades ago, Charlie Brown walks his familiar, barren suburban sidewalk, jeered at by a succession of passersby. ("Hey Charlie Brown, is that your head or are you hiding behind a balloon? HA HA HA HA HA!") Arriving home, he boots a radio across the room after hearing the announcer say, "And what, in all this world, is more delightful than the gay wonderful laughter of little children?"

Turn to the comics page of today's paper and a couple of things quickly become apparent. One is the obnoxious calculation behind the many strips clearly inspired by marketing surveys. The other is how few strips are actually aimed at children. Today's syndicated features are usually venues for the same sort of observational adult humor found in sitcoms, stand-up routines and even novels. And, ironically for a strip in which adults never appear, it was "Peanuts" that paved the way for the current emphasis on grown-up themes.

Next page | Switching from J.D. Salinger to Charlie Brown