I think many people have seen only the commercially exploited peanuts imagery.
In fact the comics - especially the older ones are incredibly clever and funny and insightful and there’s long running threads and connections and strong characters.
Peanuts the tshirt/hat/poster/cup is crass.
Peanuts the comic is genius.
It exactly the same with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. The commercially exploited imagery is crass and dumb. The comics written by Karl Barks were genius and often really entertaining adventure stories.
Peanuts is also a product of Jazz-era America (50's & early 60's). Joe Cool is a beatnik, not a hippie or a rocker. So a lot of that context & content gets lost as the decades go by.
Case in point being the name Peanuts itself, which even to me as an elder Millenial was obscure. No one actually said Peanuts, always Charlie Brown.
> 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.
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.
"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.
“I'm talking only about the minor everyday problems in life. Leo Tolstoy dealt with the major problems of the world. I'm only dealing with why we all have the feeling that people don't like us."
In France we recognize Snoopy and people would call the whole "world" of the comics "Snoopy". "Peanuts" is unknown. I am 55 for the context.
We would somehow recognize Charlie Brown, but not by name. The other characters are basically unknown.
The reason is that Peanuts was not part of the mainstream comics books we were reading as children. Threre were two kind of them: proper books such as Astérix, and thick "anthologies" such as Pif which were a set of what Americans call "strips".
Does anyone simply not get how this comic got so popular? I've never read a strip from this comic and once felt anything interesting. It's not a Calvin and Hobbes, it's not a Howard the Duck, it's just... I dunno, cute? I guess people like it because it's kinda cute?
I know, I'm being something of a Bah Humbug, but I legitimately cannot see the draw of this comic. It reminds me of Family Circus - no story, just vaguely cute things grannies would seemingly like to see?
As a child of the 70s and 80s, Snoopy was a very big deal, but Peanuts was kind of secondary.
I remember around 2nd grade or so Snoopy Joe Cool was a big deal and I had the t shirts and thermos and lunchbox.
There are of course the Peanuts TV specials, they didn’t have much impact on me personally other than to solidify a like of both Snoopy and his side kick, Woodstock.
For me as a kid, Snoopy and Stocky were the only interesting ones.
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In fact the comics - especially the older ones are incredibly clever and funny and insightful and there’s long running threads and connections and strong characters.
Peanuts the tshirt/hat/poster/cup is crass.
Peanuts the comic is genius.
It exactly the same with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. The commercially exploited imagery is crass and dumb. The comics written by Karl Barks were genius and often really entertaining adventure stories.
Case in point being the name Peanuts itself, which even to me as an elder Millenial was obscure. No one actually said Peanuts, always Charlie Brown.
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.
It's fascinating to see Lucy, Linus, Schroeder and Sally grow from tots or babies to the developed characters we know today.
And that’s before you even touch the whole anti-segregation angle running through the story.
I felt that in my bones.
We would somehow recognize Charlie Brown, but not by name. The other characters are basically unknown.
The reason is that Peanuts was not part of the mainstream comics books we were reading as children. Threre were two kind of them: proper books such as Astérix, and thick "anthologies" such as Pif which were a set of what Americans call "strips".
I know, I'm being something of a Bah Humbug, but I legitimately cannot see the draw of this comic. It reminds me of Family Circus - no story, just vaguely cute things grannies would seemingly like to see?
I remember around 2nd grade or so Snoopy Joe Cool was a big deal and I had the t shirts and thermos and lunchbox.
There are of course the Peanuts TV specials, they didn’t have much impact on me personally other than to solidify a like of both Snoopy and his side kick, Woodstock.
For me as a kid, Snoopy and Stocky were the only interesting ones.