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How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)

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21–30 of 96 posts

Re: How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)

#21
"Snoopy Come Home" wrecked me as a kid, just absolutely flattened me. Looking back on it now, it’s wild to consider this level of depression was aimed at children. I’m not knocking it; honestly, I kind of treasure how hard I cried over it.

And that’s before you even touch the whole anti-segregation angle running through the story.

Re: How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)

#22
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, even originally, Garfield strips had some substance, but Jim Davis really liked money, I think...

Garfield was conceived from the get go as a cash grab devoid of artistic merit. (And that's fine by me, nobody is forcing anyone to consume Garfield.)

Interesting, you know more about it than I do, I suppose. Do you know of any source for Jim discussing how/why he started Garfield?

Re: How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)

#23

> Charlie Brown may have been as popular as any character in all of literature Was he? Maybe this is true inside the US but from outside the US, I've always viewed the character as a peculiarly American artefact – something I was aware of but never really read or watched. This seemed to be reinforced by most major Charlie Brown titles seemingly tied to other American customs like Halloween and baseball.

I'm Brazilian, in my middle 40s. When I was a little kid my best friend used to carry a blanket around. Neighbors called him "Linus" for years. But I'm confident it was because of the TV show, not the comic strips.

Re: How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)

#24
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watterson refused to allow Calvin & Hobbes to be commercialized, other than the books. Those crass stickers are unauthorized knock-offs.

Amazing - these were Circle K chain stores selling these stickers. How was this not enforced?!

It's not like stickers are particularly difficult to make, or Watterson had an army of auditors combing every gas station or car meet looking for sticker makers.

They have (as I understand it) challenged and stopped some folks from doing things, but something like the Calvin sticker was pretty ubiquitous. Even then, some later ones were particularly bad Calvins.

I had a vinyl sticker of Spaceman Spiff on the back of my motorcycle helmet. I bought it at a motorcycle race back in the 90s.

Re: How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)

#25
post #20

I'm a musician, and something I've noticed is that children no longer recognize the "peanuts" theme song.

Newspaper comics haven’t been relevant to anyone 30. By the time you were old enough to read them or care about reading them, smartphones were in the scene.

My kids watch and love the Peanuts TV specials. They also love the Peanuts movie that came out a few years ago.

Re: How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)

#26

Interestingly, Peanuts started with a focus on Shermy and Violet as the 'straight men' and young(er) Charlie Brown as the comic upstart. Snoopy shows up fairly soon, but he doesn't even seem to be CB's pet for the first while. It's fascinating to see Lucy, Linus, Schroeder and Sally grow from tots or babies to the developed characters we know today.

There was a long read article that came out a few years ago called "How Snoopy Killed Peanuts:"

https://kotaku.com/how-snoopy-killed-peanuts-1724269473

about how Peanuts lost it's edge once the "cute" popular dog was introduced, whereas prior it used to be more subversive, philosophical/theoretical with darker material.

Re: How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)

#27
post #20

I'm a musician, and something I've noticed is that children no longer recognize the "peanuts" theme song.

Newspaper comics haven’t been relevant to anyone 30. By the time you were old enough to read them or care about reading them, smartphones were in the scene.

I'm college age and grew up reading newspaper comics. Then we stopped getting the newspaper since it became too expensive and then our local paper stopped doing print copies...

Re: How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)

#28
post #20

I'm a musician, and something I've noticed is that children no longer recognize the "peanuts" theme song.

Newspaper comics haven’t been relevant to anyone 30. By the time you were old enough to read them or care about reading them, smartphones were in the scene.

Sad, but true. I was born in the 80s and had a dad who read the paper religiously, so getting that section with the comics every morning was super important to me!

Re: How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)

#29

I'm a musician, and something I've noticed is that children no longer recognize the "peanuts" theme song.

Snoopy or Peanuts in general is (was) very famous in my country (at least for my age) but I only read it in comic.

So no idea what the song is about, unfortunately. I don't even know it has animation version.

Re: How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)

#30

I'm a musician, and something I've noticed is that children no longer recognize the "peanuts" theme song.

Snoopy or Peanuts in general is (was) very famous in my country (at least for my age) but I only read it in comic. So no idea what the song is about, unfortunately. I don't even know it has animation version.

It starts about twelve seconds into https://youtu.be/tcHNHRGPkkw .
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