Peanuts Roasted

April 14, 2009 10:57 AM

Peanuts RoastedA blog devoted to going through all of Peanuts' 49-year-plus comic archives, from beginning to end, and linking to the more interesting strips. [via mefi projects]

JHarris: I use comics.com's Embed code. I reason they wouldn't have provided it if they didn't want people embedding strips in their pages. The code even links to the comics.com page, meaning I don't have to provide separate links, a useful bonus.

posted by KokuRyu (23 comments total)

Awesome.
posted by COBRA! at 11:08 AM on April 14, 2009

Wow, I really love the old artwork, and hate the modern stuff. Poor ol' Charlie Brown got old n' ugly.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:09 AM on April 14, 2009

Wow, I really love the old artwork, and hate the modern stuff

By "modern," do you mean you hate it when the characters got flatter, or the really late-period stuff where Schulz's hand tremors made everybody's lines all wavy?
posted by COBRA! at 11:11 AM on April 14, 2009

I wasn't finding much humor in the strips he picked and then I realized my browser window wasn't wide enough and I was only seeing three out of four panels in every strip. The one from Dec 29, 1950 took on a whole new meaning.
posted by bondcliff at 11:13 AM on April 14, 2009 [1 favorite]

My browser is wide enough and I still feel like most of them are missing a funny last panel. Always have.
posted by ElmerFishpaw at 11:17 AM on April 14, 2009 [2 favorites]

Subscribed. I've read all of these since they went online, but I'm up for some thoughtful discussion.
posted by evilcolonel at 11:23 AM on April 14, 2009

ElmerFishpaw: "My browser is wide enough and I still feel like most of them are missing a funny last panel. Always have."

Another somewhat pointless strip...

Noted without comment.
posted by Joe Beese at 11:24 AM on April 14, 2009

St. Paul has completely claimed Sparky Schulz -- there are Peanuts statues everywhere, and you'll often find a street with more Snoopys than people. This used to bother me. After all, Schulz moved away from Minnesota when he was relatively young. But then I started reading his bio, and found how much of his life in the Twin Cities influenced or directly inspired the comic strip, from his learning to draw (and eventually becoming an instructor) at the Minneapolis-based Art Instruction, Inc., to the fact that the Little Red Headed Girl was based on a young woman that he met there, to the fact that he first published in the Pioneer Press something called L'il Folks, which was a sort of an early version of Peanuts. In fact, he named Charlie Brown after a school chum and made Charlie's father a barber, just Sparky's his own father.

I've been enhoying going through his strips looks for hints that it is set in, or at least inspired by, his childhood in St. Paul. Dunno why. At least it makes the invading army of Peanuts characters in his home city more palatable.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:24 AM on April 14, 2009

Bleak.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:34 AM on April 14, 2009 [6 favorites]

After all, Schulz moved away from Minnesota when he was relatively young

He wasn't that young when he moved away; the strip was an established success while he was still in town, and Peanuts money bought him a couple of houses in south Minneapolis.* I agree that looking for sub rosa Twin Cities inspirations in the strip is fun.

My favorite example is that I'm convinced that the stone walls that appear in the strip (like the one Charlie Brown and Linus lean on when they talk) are modeled after the stonework in a lot of Minneapolis parks.

*including two which seem to be really close to where I live, which blew my mind when I read that.
posted by COBRA! at 11:36 AM on April 14, 2009

the 'pointless' strips were always my favorite...so zen and strange...
posted by sexyrobot at 11:43 AM on April 14, 2009

Peanuts originated in Li'l Folks, a strip Schultz did for the St. Paul Pioneer Press from 1947 to 1950. More samples.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:58 AM on April 14, 2009

Heh. My comment in the earlier thread is referenced, albeit with anonymous attribution. Perhaps it's my lack-of-Peanuts-love? I'm slowly coming to appreciate what Watterson and others saw in this, but the best I can say about it is there's an appeal there for some, but not for me. I do prefer the earlier artwork, though.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 12:12 PM on April 14, 2009

Peanuts takes a few years to really become great, and then later has a long senescence (there's precious little decent work in the last two decades)--but if all you know of Peanuts is the late stuff and this stuff then you really are missing out on it's true greatness. The middle period stuff (like the one robocop is bleeding links to above) is amazing. When Schulz starts getting into multi-strip storytelling (following Walt Kelly's Pogo and paving the way for Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes) it really starts to soar (anyone remember the wonderful--and quite late--"Thompson is in trouble" sequence?).
posted by yoink at 12:56 PM on April 14, 2009

the 'pointless' strips were always my favorite...so zen and strange...

I remember years and years ago (must have been in the 60s) that Mad Magazine asked a bunch of newspaper cartoonists what kind of cartoon they would do if they could do anything at all--without worrying about marketability or newspaper proprieties or anything. The cartoon that Schulz drew was of a flower. IIRC, the flower has two leaves in the first panel, a leaf falls off in the second panel, and in the third panel the flower has a thought balloon reading: "Stupid leaf."

Now that's zen and strange.
posted by yoink at 1:01 PM on April 14, 2009 [1 favorite]

I wasn't finding much humor in the strips he picked and then I realized my browser window wasn't wide enough and I was only seeing three out of four panels in every strip. The one from Dec 29, 1950 took on a whole new meaning.

Sounds like a new Garfield minus Garfield style opportunity.
posted by starman at 1:12 PM on April 14, 2009

Marknuts? Peanutov?
posted by not_on_display at 1:16 PM on April 14, 2009

Of course, this would make the Blue while I'm in self-imposed Metafilter exile to work on a Paranoia adventure.
posted by JHarris at 2:33 PM on April 14, 2009

This is excellent.
posted by Kwine at 2:53 PM on April 14, 2009

This is great, just what needed to be done. There's so much gold in Peanuts, and it's a style that I don't think could be marketed anymore. Of course, with the total fucking crap that gets syndicated nowadays, maybe it's no wonder.
posted by seagull.apollo at 4:54 PM on April 14, 2009

GhostintheMachine: Perhaps you just don't like peanuts.
posted by wobh at 9:25 PM on April 14, 2009

Boom. Roasted.
posted by EricCunningham84 at 8:21 AM on April 15, 2009

Thanks for the comments everyone. Glad you guys are finding them interesting.

I've got the blog backlogged to July 9 actually. I get the feeling that it's going slowly now because the weird art style gives me a lot to comment on. It might speed up a bit once we get a couple of years in, but by then LUCY will be around and there'll be a lot to comment on again.
posted by JHarris at 11:38 AM on April 18, 2009