Happy Centennial, Sparky Schulz!

If you picked up a newspaper today, first of all, thanks for keeping journalism alive for another day; second, you may have noticed a lot of Peanuts references in the comics page.

Today would be the 100th birthday of Charles Schulz, Peanuts' creator.

Schulz was probably the very first inspiration sparking (wink, wink) my urge to cartoon — as he was to so many of my contemporaries. As a child, I had all the Peanuts books, including The Gospel According to Peanuts and The Parables of Peanuts — the former, autographed by its author, Robert Short. Peanuts didn't run in my local paper, but my grandparents would clip and save Peanuts from the Sheboygan Press for me every day even into my college years.

The Gospel According to Peanuts, Bantam edition, 1968, must have been my sixth Peanuts book.

So how to join in the centennial celebration of such a towering figure in our field?

Just last June, I highlighted Schulz's reference in Peanuts to a cartoon drawn by a mentor of his, Frank Wing, in the wee decades of the 20th Century. Five years ago, I celebrated April Fools' Day by featuring some of the more obscure characters he drew in Peanuts.

But for today, I decided to rummage through my own archives in search of cartoons I've drawn with a nod to Mr. Schulz.

I was a bit surprised to come up with only three.

Well, reaching back to some of my juvenalia, four. But that old, old cartoon essentially stole an idea drawn by Tony Auth and stuck Charlie Brown and a few other additions into it. It was utterly unoriginal, and I don't feel like giving that cartoon new life on the internets.

But here are the three that I don't mind bringing back today.

March, 2017

There was this caricature of Scott Pruitt, an anti-environmental activist and the Corrupt Trump Administration's first head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as Pigpen, the hopelessly filthy member of the Peanuts gang who could raise a cloud of dust ice skating.

I had hoped to find an occasion to work this caricature into a fully realized cartoon, but that never came about in the less than 17 months Pruitt was in the cabinet. When he resigned in July of 2018, he was the target of at least 14 federal investigations.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, July 5, 2005

This one from 2005 takes a Peanuts trope that long ago became a cliché in editorial cartooning. Perhaps the only other Peanuts trope we have rehashed more often is the Great Pumpkin.

Q Syndicate, January, 2014

So when I went to that particular inkwell again in 2014, I attempted to find something fresh and new to do with it.

Chris Kluwe was a punter for the Minnesota Vikings, and a vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ causes, which he claimed led to his being cut from the team. A subsequent investigation found testimony to support some of Kluwe's charges, but after getting bogged down by uncooperative witnesses, ended quietly. The Vikings settled the case by promising to donate some undisclosed monetary amount to LGBTQ+ causes.

I suppose that since I draw primarily for LGBTQ+ publications, a cartoon about young angst-ridden children isn't, well, sexy. But then, you could say that about a lot of the topics I draw about.

Oh, sure, I could easily draw cartoons in which Marcie and Peppermint Patty take their relationship to the next level. And yet that seems like cartoon blasphemy somehow, akin to drawing Snoopy with rabies, Schroeder playing bagpipes, or Charlie Brown winning the World Series.

So I didn't add to the reams of cartoons of weeping Charlie Browns and Snoopys when Schulz died very shortly after retiring the strip; the topic didn't fit either Q Syndicate's or the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee's needs that week.

Well, let's not end today's post there. 

I started this post talking about how Charles Schulz inspired me, and generations of other cartoonists, when we were youngsters. I'll leave you today with his very first published cartoon, in the nationally syndicated feature "Ripley's Believe It Or Not," when he was just fifteen years old.

"Ripley's Believe It or Not" by Robert Ripley, for King Features Syndicate, Feb. 22, 1937

"Peanuts" by Charles Schulz for United Features Syndicate, July 1, 1972

Wing Man

 A commenter at Daily Cartoonist this week pointed out an editorial cartoon about editorial cartooning from 1901 in the St. Paul Globe, so I had to go look it up.

"Two of a Kind" by Frank Wing in St. Paul (MN) Globe, Sept. 18, 1901

The cartoon was drawn shortly after the death of President William McKinley, assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. It seems that one Rev. Earl Cranston, Bishop of the American Methodist Episcopal Church, sermonized that editorial cartoonists were as much to blame for McKinley's assassination as were the anarchists.

Looking up the Globe cartoonist, Frank Wing, I quickly found that Charles Schulz had referenced him in an episode of "Peanuts." The kid with the bag over his head is Charlie Brown:

"Peanuts" by Charles Schulz, June 28, 1973

Having studied cartooning with the man, Schulz was obviously very familiar with the cartoons of Frank Wing (1873-1956), moreso than a child Charlie Brown's age could reasonably be expected to be. 

This is the cartoon Charlie is talking about:

"Yesterdays" by Frank Wing, reprinted in Minneapolis Star-Journal, June 18, 1946

Wing drew a single-panel cartoon titled "Yesterdays" in the Minneapolis Journal starting around 1910. He moved to the Minneapolis Tribune in 1920.

Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, February 22, 1920

After disappearing from the Twin Cities newspaper stands in 1937, old "Yesterdays" were rerun in the Minneapolis Journal (by then bought out by the Star) in 1946.

in Minneapolis Star-Journal, March 8, 1946

It would have been around this time that Wing encouraged Schulz, then in his 20's, to cartoon professionally. Aside from some juvenalia, Schulz's first published cartoon was the single-panel "Li'l Folks" in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press from 1947 to January, 1950. "Peanuts" launched in October of that year.

In the "Peanuts" series excerpted above (and later adapted for a 1983 TV special), Charlie Brown, having gone to summer camp, has taken to wearing a sack on his head because of an embarrassing rash resembling the seams on a baseball. This makes him suddenly popular and, as "Mr. Sack," he is elected camp president by the other kids.

There is a saying in cartooning circles: Three Things Make A Blog Post. So here's the third:

Little did Sparky Schulz realize that he would be referencing not one, but two Twin Cities cartoonists on June 28, 1973.

by Steve Sack in Minneapolis Star-Tribune, February 1, 1984

Clean-up in Aisle 17

I couldn't quite hit on a theme for Scattershot Saturday this week.

I considered several topics; today is the 45th anniversary of the discovery of the Committee to Reelect the President's break-in of Democratic party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, so I could have rustled up some cartoons of that event... but that stuff is a little recent for the scope of this blog.

Instead, here's a photo I took of the Watergate Hotel when I was on a school visit to Washington D.C. in 1974.

And another one with my finger in front of the lens.

Seeing as it's Fathers' Eve, I looked for some century-old cartoons about Fathers' Day, but came up dry. Overlooking Fathers' Day is apparently nothing new, and you'll probably find one or two tried and true jokes about how Dad gets short shrift compared to Mom in tomorrow's funny papers. Just don't expect to find any fancy restaurants open for Fathers' Day brunch.

So what I've decided to do is go back and expand on a couple of cartoons from last week. For example, the panel excerpted from Ray N. Handy's 1917 travelogue of his hometown, Duluth, came from this two-page spread.

from "Cities Beautiful 8: Duluth" by Ray N. Handy in Cartoons Magazine, July, 1917

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

ibid.

Since I only presented the top half of Frank O. King's The Rectangle last week, here's the bottom half.

From The Rectangle by Frank O. King, in Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1917

And, for good measure, his Rectangle from 100 years ago today:

from The Rectangle by Frank O. King, in Chicago Tribune, June 17, 1917

ibid, again

Coming back to that school trip to D.C., here's, a photo I took of a display about cartoons that was at the Smithsonian Institution during that trip. I have never been back to that part of the Smithsonian since then, so I don't know whether this is a permanent exhibit, and if so, whether they've updated it to include, say, Tom Toles or Ann Telnaes.

You'd think they'd want to include some animated gifs by now.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Just to clarify one item from my April 1 post: while some of the post is stuff I made up, the name of "Crybaby" Boobie (and of all the other Peanuts characters, for that matter) were not.

I had to look Boobie and her doubles partner, "Bad Call" Bennie, up on GoComics.com; I only knew of them from a Peanuts book I bought in Italy last year for brushing up on my very limited Italian during bus rides. In the book, their names are "Piangina" Boobie and "Bugia" Benny, and Google Translate doesn't quite take one all the way to the names Charles Schulz gave them.

Buona dolore!

Peanuts: The Lost Characters

Shlabotnikback Saturday takes a break from politics and World War I today to pay tribute to the kids who appeared in Charles M. Schulz's epic comic strip, "Peanuts," but who failed to make the cut to join the regular cast of characters.

I'm not talking about characters like Shermy, who was in the strip in the early days before becoming African American. Changing his name to Franklin, he was with "Peanuts" for several more years, but never again as Shermy — because, as you know, once you go Black, you never go back.

No, I'm talking about characters like Roy.

Roy and Charlie Brown met in 1965 at summer camp, where socially awkward Charlie and homesick, lonely Roy quickly became fast friends. The episode mirrored the experience of many who find that when you go to summer camp, you can leave your at-home persona at home and start over with a clean slate among kids who have no idea what a wishy-washy blockhead you really are.

Roy, in turn, mentored Linus Van Pelt when they met at summer camp the following year. Roy introduced Peppermint Patty to the gang shortly after that. When Marcie entered the strip in 1971, however, she and Roy simply could not get along backstage. Forced to choose between the two of them, Peppermint Patty picked Marcie, and that was the end of Roy's career in comic strips.

With Roy thus edged out by Marcie's All About Eve power play, Charlie Brown was left with only fading memories of his Bestest Friend Ever. If Charlie Brown had only asked Roy what his last name was, he could have looked Roy up on Facebook nowadays. He would have learned that Roy grew up to be a medical research scientist specializing in human disease. Roy was well on his way to finding a cure for Adult Onset Wah-Wah Mute Syndrome before the Trump administration cut off funding this year.

😷

Peppermint Patty was the one who introduced José Peterson to the Peanuts gang in 1967. A top-notch second baseman with a batting average well above .600, he was about as likely to stick with Charlie Brown's baseball team as Alex Rodriguez would have been with the San Diego Padres. He and Patty soon left to start their own team across town.

Sidelined by torn ligaments playing college baseball, Peterson unfortunately never made it to the major leagues. Instead, he coached women's softball at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, and the University of New Mexico before discovering a passion for fusion cuisine.

Currently the chef and co-owner, with his brother Mordecai, of Los Fiordos in Beachwood, Ohio, the fame of his kosher Swedish meatball chimichangas and cajeta with lingonberries over rugelach has spread far and wide.

😋

Sometime in the spring of 1963, Schulz decided to make some sort of comment on how we are losing our identity and becoming mere numbers by introducing a character named 5.

5, actually, was short for 555 (of course). Readers never met his older sisters, 3 and 4, except as dancers in A Charlie Brown Christmas Special. After his first week and a half in the strip, 5 made only occasional appearances in "Peanuts," playing third base on Charlie Brown's baseball team.

After leaving "Peanuts," 5 moved to Chicago and pursued a career in acting. He joined the Second City comedy troupe and appeared in a number of commercials for Fifth Third Bank. He was cast in the title role for a 1986 remake of "The Third Man" which, unfortunately, was never filmed due to a dispute with the Orson Welles estate. You may recall the movie's title track by U2; it spent seven weeks on Casey Kasem's Top 40.

5's grandson, 555 95472 III, is one of the leading bioengineers working to network us all into Elon Musk's Borg Collective.

😐

Schulz introduced tennis player Molly Volley into the strip in April, 1982; she was Snoopy's doubles partner at the Italian Open in Perugia that year.

The two were eliminated as the result of a disputed call in the quarterfinals match against Bad Call Benny and Crybaby Boobie.

Snoopy withdrew from the doubles tennis circuit shortly afterward; Molly subsequently partnered with Farley from "For Better or Worse," then Odie from "Garfield," with whom she won the Labrador Invitational in 1988.

In her 2003 autobiography, Puppy Love 40, Molly Volley admitted to steroid use, which she blamed for her sideburns and handlebar mustache, and her arrest when she tried to use the ladies' rest room during a visit to Raleigh last October. (Molly Volley's court date in Raleigh is still pending.) She currently lives in Bark River, Michigan with her wife, Sybil from "Wee Pals," and their German shepherd, Marmaduchess.

They nearly bought a collie named Dolly.

But that would be silly.

😉