Peanuts

When I wrote about graphic novels earlier this month, I should have also mentioned comic strips. Although strips initially appear in newspapers, they are often compiled and released in book form. In my late teens and early 20s, I remember The Far Side and Bloom County being popular. I have to admit that I don't pay much attention to contemporary comic strips, and neither do my children. This is too bad as I imagine there must be some well drawn and imaginative strips being produced these days.

The other day I read that licensing rights for the Peanuts gang was sold to a company that manufactures Joe Boxers (among other things) for $175 million. This reminded me how much I used to love Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Sally, Shroeder, Pig Pen and Snoopy. When I was in early elementary school, my mother bought me a number of Peanuts-related books. I still own them. I pulled then off the shelf and read through some of them for the first time in decades. They still make me chuckle. The strips aren't as lacerating as Doonsbury or as clever as The Far Side, but Charles Shultz perfectly captured the innocense of childhood. These characters relate to each other without any of the worries of the adult world. In fact, there are no adults featured at all. Yet, their observations display a wisdom that is both believable and unexpected.

A friend of mine recently told me that the early Peanuts strips were drawn differently that the later ones. He mentioned that Linus was drawn as a toddler. I went to my bookshelf and found that the earliest of my books, The Wonderful World of Peanuts, was published in 1952. Sure enough, the characters look younger and, yes, Linus is a toddler. One of the central characters is those days was Shermy. Does anyone remember Shermy? I do because I played him in 4th grade in a school play. These strips are a joy to read and they totally hold up.