Peanuts Comic Review

 Hi guys, in this blog I'll be going over the classic Peanuts comic series by Charles Schulz. Peanuts has been a world favorite ever since Schulz began writing it in 1950. Throughout my childhood, I have been reading these strips online and in The Complete Peanuts collections of the strips between the years. I have read almost every single Peanuts strip in existence, as when I was younger, I had nothing better to do during my free time. In this blog I’ll overview the strips from the 1950s to 1960s.

Peanuts consists of quite a few characters:

The main 2 characters showing up are Charlie Brown and Snoopy, showing up 8588 and 7744 times in strips respectively. Charlie Brown is often portrayed as a “wishy-washy” person, with a somewhat weak personality, often giving in to other people. He often has a lot of bad luck, shown in his many kite flying accidents and baseball games. A recurring pattern in these strips is when Charlie Brown chickens out of doing something, and everyone gets mad at him. Snoopy is extremely smart for a dog, but often shows selfish qualities, including always wanting food and forgetting his owner, Charlie Browns’ name.

Some of the early characters of Peanuts, showing up mainly in the 1950s to 1960s strips (not including Charlie Brown and Snoopy, obviously) are Patty, Shermy, and Violet. They all have similar, sassy and controlling personalities, and these early strips mainly revolved around Charlie Brown getting bullied, or petty fights between the kids. Schulz later phased out these characters due to their lack of depth. They were mainly only used for side appearances (no actual talking, just showing up at events as filler people), up until 1969, where Shermy never showed up in another strip. Patty and Violet continued making these side appearances until 1995 and 1996 respectively.

Schrodinger was added to the strip on May 30, 1951. Unlike the previous characters, Schrodinger didn’t have much of a personality at all, apart from Beethoven and playing the Piano. Almost every single strip of him is just him playing the piano while somebody else talks to him. He lacked depth, but I personally think Schulz kept him because he served as an emotional outlet for other characters, letting the reader get to know something about them we didn’t know before.

Lucy was added on March 3, 1952, portrayed as an extremely bossy toddler. Many of her appearances in the comics are about how bossy she is, and she often takes pleasure in bullying Charlie Brown. She served as one of the first unique Peanuts characters. Her brother Linus was added six months later, on September 19, 1952. Linus replaced Shermy as Charlie Brown’s best friend, after he matured, and is portrayed as being very educated and helping Charlie Brown through many of his problems.

Pig-Pen was added in 1954, showing a boy who doesn’t believe in baths. He is constantly shown as dirty, and wherever he goes a cloud of dirt follows behind him. He is a major side character, only shows up 131 times total in all of Schulz’s strips, and is mostly phased out by the 1970s although he still makes some side appearances.

These 8 Characters made up the entire strip between 1950 and early 1959. I hope to make another blog post for future eras of Peanuts. Thank you for reading!

-Alex