January 6–13, 2000

on media

Good Riddance, Charlie Brown?

Readers checking the comics page Monday for the last daily Peanuts found, in place of a strip, a short memo from Charles Schulz saying goodbye and thanks. Although the panel included Snoopy sitting on his doghouse, it was little more than a plaque onthe spot where the strip had stood.

And some would call that appropriate, arguing that Peanuts itself had become a placeholder, a shadow of its former self, blurring the memory of what was once the most courageous, important comic strip in the world.

This was the strip that had Shermy, Violet, Patty (no, not Peppermint Patty) and Frieda in addition to Lucy, Linus and a big-headed Charlie Brown. The strip which opens with Shermy remarking, after "good ol’ Charlie Brown" walks out of earshot, "How I hate him!" The stripwhere Snoopy walks on four legs, and pretends to be various wild animals instead of Joe Cool.

Christopher Cardwell of The New York Press says in last week’s "Against Snoopy" that "as [Snoopy-based] cartoons took up more and more of Schulz’s energy, a strip that had been beloved for its brilliance rapidly became a showcase for the same kind of intellectualsludge you could find in Garfield or The Family Circus."

Local cartoonist John Jonik agrees Peanuts hit bottom a while back, but is more concerned that Schulz "sold out by making beloved Snoopy the official spokesman for Metropolitan Life, a major investor in the cigarette industry."

Whatever one thinks of Met Life’s portfolio, there were certainly moments of tie-in excess. Even the most ardent fans had to wonder about the 1995 series of strips where Snoopy was near death in the operating room and his three brothers worried and mused about the big picture, stopping justshort of uttering the words "life insurance."

But sponsorship aside, by the late ’70s, the clean, simple line of the early strips wobbled precariously (Schulz continued to draw the strip himself, even with Parkinson’s disease), and the writing’s focus dissipated as well. Jokes from the first decade recurred again,accidentally, in the ’80s. And in at least two later strips, Snoopy "talked" to Charlie Brown — with a voice instead of thought balloon. These violations of the strip’s reality are momentary lapses, but show how canonization allows you to coast.

Other cartoonists were willing to give him more slack. "The strips in the ’60s were definitely the best period, much more imaginative," says Dan Perkins (a.k.a. Tom Tomorrow), creator of This Modern World. "But my gosh, he certainly earned his place on the page, and hecould do it as long as he wanted, as far as I’m concerned. Even in its decline, Peanuts outshone just about everything else on the page. I mean, Garfield could shut down tomorrow and I wouldn’t give a shit about that."

As for those occasional clunkers, Perkins insists that "you have to look at the whole body of work, not one or two strips. And come on, if you’ve been doing a cartoon for three weeks, there’ll always be someone who says it was better the first week."

"Sure, it was a little fresher in its heyday," admits Bud Grace, creator of Ernie (now Piranha Club). "Early on, there were so many fresh ideas, and always new stuff like Pigpen and Peppermint Patty.…But I love it. I’ve continued to read it everyday."

Only one current strip stands as a major cultural phenomenon as Peanuts once did: Scott Adams’ Dilbert. And for his part, Adams isn’t worried about Peanuts’ present-day tie-ins or glitches.

"I have to say this: Most cartoons don’t make me laugh," he observes. "Peanuts is one of the few that ever did."

And no strip, Adams says, delivers laughs every time. "With a typical Dilbert strip, somebody will laugh at one out of 10 — but they’ll remember laughing at all 10 of them. I actually checked this with a Far Side book — I remembered laughing at every one, but itturned out to be one in five — still awfully good, of course."

With Dilbert also still awfully good, could it ever make the mark on society that Peanuts did? Adams is blunt: "No, I don’t think that’s possible. Whatever else you say, Charles Schulz is definitely closing out an era."

—Vance Lehmkuhl