Unpacking Peanuts With Mark Evanier

On this episode, we're joined by legendary comics historian, animation writer, and pop culture expert Mark Evanier to discuss his latest project from Abrams Books: The Essential Peanuts Collection. This beautifully curated volume brings together decades of Charles Schulz’s iconic Peanuts comic strips, paired with insightful commentary and historical essays that spotlight the creative genius behind Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the gang. Mark reflects on Schulz’s artistic evolution, the cultural impact of Peanuts from the 1950s through the 2000s, and how the strip mirrored American life over five decades.

With his encyclopedic knowledge of 20th-century media, Mark also shares behind-the-scenes stories from his own career in comics and animation, including his time with Jack Kirby, his TV work, and his long-standing role as a chronicler of comic book history. For more of Mark’s daily reflections on comics, entertainment, and pop culture past and present, visit his indispensable blog: NewsFromMe.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome Back, It's time to get for word Balloon. The
Comumput Conversation show John cuntrists with you. Great talk with
Mark Evaner. Now, I don't know if you're too young
to know who Mark Evaneer is, but he was an
assistant to Jack Kirby when he was a kid. He
went on to have this huge television career, doing everything
from sitcoms to game shows to animation. He is also

(00:23):
a big twentieth century pop culture historian and can talk
very comfortably about not only Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin,
but a lot of their silent film contemporaries and Laurel
and Hardy and the like. But also is a great
resource for DVD commentaries and behind the scenes kind of

(00:45):
things of the origins of everything from the black and
white Popeye cartoons from the Fleishirt Studios to Garfield, a
show that he actually worked on. Really interesting career well. Also,
of course, beyond his work with Jack Kirby, did the
Welcome Back comic book as well as the television show
How About That. But he is here today to talk

(01:05):
about this wonderful essential Peanuts collection from Abram Books. It's
a brand new coffee table book. It has decades of
the strips in there, but it also has some fantastic
essays about Peanuts and really it covers the entire Peanuts
and Charlie Brown and Snoopy phenomena, from being part of

(01:26):
NASA with Apollo ten to its influence on fashion and
also the play You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, the
paperbacks of the comic strips, and of course the homilies
like Happiness is a Warm Puppy. All that was because
of Charles M. Schultz and his output of work. Really

(01:46):
interesting conversation about Peanuts and Schultz and the whole Charlie
Brown and Snoopy phenomenon. That's what we're talking about today
with Mark evanear on today's word Balloon. Word Balloon is
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(02:51):
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(03:12):
the conversation. Join me today, the League of Word Balloon
Listeners Patreon dot com slash word Balloon. Thanks for listening,
and thanks as always for your support. Mark Evanyere long
time coming man, So welcome to word Balloon. I didn't
mean to scare you with my loud, booming voice, but
it's really great to finally have you on my podcast.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Thank you for coming on.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Well, thank you for asking me. I've been waiting and waiting.
I don't know what took you so long.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
I don't believe you, but it's cool.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
I'm very excited to talk about this book, The Essential
Peanuts Gallery from Abrams Man. It is just everything you've
ever wanted to know and really covers the deck decades
of this incredible comics trip.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well, and of.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Course you're the right guy to do and Mark, congratulations
on this book.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Thank you. It was exciting, It's very it's a lot
of fun. If you paid to read Peanuts.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Strips, I totally respect that.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Mark.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
What was your first experience, you know, exposure to penis
because you're not as far back that you were there.
I think maybe in the early fifties when it started,
but you know, yeah, tell me about your your first
exposure to the strip.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Well, I can't tell you when I first discovered the
strip anymore that I can tell you when I discovered
chocolate or Unshine or TV or thing like that. It
just was a part of my life for a long time.
My father loved newspapers, and at that time in LA
we're talking mid fifties here, we had two morning papers,
two major morning papers and two major afternoon papers. And

(04:44):
eventually the company that published to the morning a newspapers,
they merged and they went down to two. But for
a while that we had we were getting four newspapers
a day in our house, so I had four funny
pages to read each day, plus the other comics to
have sprinkled throughout than the newspaper. And I, you know,
it would be nicer for the selling of this book

(05:05):
for me to say that Peanuts was the only strip
I read, and I read them all. I loved all
of them, and I didn't necessarily have a favorite thing,
because I didn't need to. My favorite thing was just
reading all the comic strips, and then I was reading
comic books also as well, and just absorbing an enormous

(05:25):
amount of this material. And Peanuts was just a constant.
It was just a strip that I read every day
daily end Sunday. And then when I discovered the Peanuts
paperback collections, I of course had to have all of those.
I still have the actual physical books I owned back then,
which are in terrible condition from that I've been read

(05:48):
over and over and over again. And there were even
a couple of them where I tried drawing in the books.
I was trying to learn to draw Charlie Brown and Snooping,
all those characters, and in the margins or I would
try to trace some of Schultz's drawings. And I got
to the point where, at around age seven or eight,

(06:08):
I could draw a darn good Charlie Brown and Snoopy
for a seven or eight year old. And I still can.
I can still draw a good Charlie brought up stoopid
for a seven or eight year old. But if you
pressed the hell out of all the kids at school,
and you know, I would draw on somebody's book cover,
and then everybody else wanted on their book cover too.

(06:29):
And I also drew Popeye for the kids and the
nice And then as I was researching this book, I
read about Schultz talking about how he was a kid
he drew Popeye on kids notebooks for status. It was
a very impressive thing that you could do that somebody
else maybe couldn't, so I identified a lot with it,

(06:52):
and as I got older, I just kept reading Peanuts
and reading Peanuts and watching the TV skills when they
came on, and loving the strip. And I got to
start meeting mister Schultz and be around him a bit,
and you know, he kept telling me, asking me to
call him Sparky, and for some reason I couldn't. I
had no trouble addressing other cartoonists I knew on a

(07:16):
first or nickname basis, but there was something about Charles Schultz,
the author of the most popular comic strip in the
history of mankind, that I would if I called him Sparky.
I'd say that name in about five syllables, stammering it out.
So when they came to me and asked me to
write this book, it took me a long time to

(07:37):
agree to do it. I think it took a fourth
of a second, and I had I didn't even know
when it was due, or how much they'd pay me,
or if they'd pay me. I just said, yes, How
could I not be a part of this book celebrating
seventy five years of peace. I'm seventy three years old,
so so you know, Peanuts was around for two years

(08:00):
before I was, and I don't know exactly what I discovered.
Is to finally answer your question.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
That was fantastic, and also I will point to the
audience and let them know that you're a fantastic twentieth
century pop culture historian.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
So many great.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Special features on DVD sense. You're you're an expert in animation.
You you you knew Jack Kirby as a kid in
an assistant Jack Kirby at times.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
I'm really good at things that don't pay any money.
Convention panels. Oh yeah, being an expert on stuff podcast,
I you know, if there's no money and it, I
can do it very well.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Mark Wade and I follow your panels very deliberately, because
when we get to moderate panels, you're you're our model,
You're our templates.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
There.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
Oh that's frightening. Well, were you a comic on this
past year?

Speaker 2 (08:56):
I was not? Tell me about it.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
Well, I did nineteenanels, two of which were about peanuts,
and people kept saying to me, why the hell would
you do nineteen What prompts you to do that? And
the answer is number one, I enjoy it. Number two,
I have nothing else to do. I don't want to
shoot the handed table and sign my name. I don't

(09:18):
want to walk around. I'm having trouble walking because of
a broken ankle. I don't want to sit in my room.
But if I hosted nineteen panels, I get to be
part of nineteen events that I like the subject matter of.
And I have a place to sit down, and I
have people who get me things. I can say I
need a I need a cheese sandwich, and someone will

(09:40):
get me a cheese sandwich.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
You know.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
It's just it's a lot of fun. And all the
panels were enjoyable because I got to talk about comics
and animation and other subjects near and dear to me
for four solid days.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
That's beautiful, man. And again, I well, I knew I
couldn't hold a candle to you. I did ten panels
at a Connecticut convention back in August.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Again. Yes, I know, man, chasing you and I'm a
relief picture. No, man, I get it.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
No, I just it's just I got to the point
where I just said I enjoyed you know. You know it.
As a freelancer, my days are all very I do
different things every day. I don't have the typical day,
and I just do things and I feel like it
for the most part, except when I have a podcast,
I've got to be, you know, in front of my
computer at a certain hour something like that. And it

(10:36):
was kind of fun to live by a schedule for
four days and have a schedule that said, Okay, at
eight o'clock, you're reading breakfast here with this person. At
nine o'clock, you're interviewing this person. At ten o'clock, this
person's interviewing you, and so on. Have the whole day
mapped out like that. And I had, as I said,
two Peanuts panels in the on the list, and I

(10:58):
sat at the Peanuts booth for one hour signing things,
and I had a lot of people come up to
me and tell me what their favorite Peanuts strip was.
They were excited about the book and they said, oh,
I've got to tell you, I hope this strip is
in there. And even if it wasn't, I lied and
told him it was. But I got to be the recipient.

(11:19):
I'm an awful lot of love that was directed towards
mister Schultz and his creations. You know, years ago, I
wrote a book on the history of Mad Magazine, and
I was in I remember I was in Vegas one
day and I said, I got a flurry of text
messages and emails saying, congratulations, You've got a rave review
in the New York Times review of books. You know,

(11:41):
like that was the most incredible thing you could do
as an author. And I read around, and of course
in Vegas it's hard to find a copy of the
New York Times because no one reads in that city.
But I finally did. I read the review and it
was all about how much the guy who wrote it
loved Mad Magazine went on about Port Drucker and Sergio
and Dave Berg and the lighter side of the spy versu,

(12:03):
the spy of the fold in of whatever was. And
he said, and by the way, Mark Evaneer, somebody named
Mark vendors write a book about And that was a
rave review because I got my name. A fixed is
something that people already love. And I've done that with
Jack Herby, and now I've been with Peanuts. I get
all this credit for, you know, this book is people
who are seeing the book now it's just now coming out,

(12:26):
and they're just us seeing it. They're come here going, well,
it's so full wonderful penus strips. And I go, yes,
like I had, Like I get credit for the quality
of those strips and such. All I did was just
write the text in between them.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
But you curating and explaining to people who might not
have grown up with Peanuts, because my god, it's been
twenty five years since mister Schultz, you know, finished the strip, and.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
And it's also met about four minutes since the last
book on Peanuts, which.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Well, that's fair that and certainly no and you're right
about that, And they've certainly collected strips over the years
in other publishers and things, and I'm aware of all that.
Hey again, I'm only a decade and change younger than you.
I had those paperbacks in the seventies and everything. But yeah,
let's get into the minutia of Schultz. Did you ever

(13:17):
ask him why Snoopy's look kind of changed from the
way it was in the fifties to the standard Snoopy
that we love today.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
I've never ask him that, but we did talk. I didn't.
I know, I'm making out like I spent every minute
of my life with Schultz. I didn't know him as
well as I knew some of the other great cartoonists
I've worked with, But when we were together. The times
we were together, he didn't seem to be that interested
in talking about himself. He liked talking about other comic strips.

(13:46):
He liked the fact that I could tell him facts
about strips. He didn't know much about our cartoons. He
didn't know about our people. He didn't he knew of
but I had detailed I knew a lot about well Kelly,
for example, and I told him all about wal Kelly.
And one of the things we talked about, not specific

(14:07):
to Peanuts, but was how over the years these characters evolved,
and so the cartoonists. Sometimes the changes are so subtle,
it's like watching a pot of water boil. You never
see it quite boy, because the change is so gradual.
And he was unaware he told me that how his

(14:28):
characters were changing until they did that first Peanuts collection,
the whole Reinhardt book, when he they said, okay, pick
out the strips that you want to put in, and
he looked at the first two years, and she was like,
oh my god, I didn't realize how much I've changed
from you know, October of whatever year it was. I
can't do the math as fast too now. As a result,

(14:52):
the first Peanuts book has very few stuff from the
first six months of it. We had to put some
of the strips in, but he got to the later
ones faster because he was just kind of a little
a little horrified the wrong word, kind of nonplussed and
amazed at the fact that the characters changed so much

(15:13):
without him being conscious. There were changes he was conscious of,
but they changed a lot. And if you look at
you know, the classic first Charity Ground strip, and you
look at the strip one year later, that's a very
different little Boy, and then later earlier, and then they
came a point where he finally kind of figured everything out.
And in the same sense, the characters developed personalities that

(15:37):
they didn't have necessarily at first. It was not Lucy
who first pulled the football away from him front in
front of Charlie Brown. It was violent. It became Lucy's job.
Later he just the strip evolved and got better and better.
It was a pretty good strip the first couple of years,

(15:57):
but I think the longevity of it has to do
what it became around nineteen sixties and there on end.
In the sixties were an amazing time for the seventies
were even better.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
You read my mind Mark, because truly I wanted to
focus on the sixties and seventies and my god, and
again you were the right age to experience all that stuff.
You know, the Royal Guardsman doing Snoopy and the Red Baron,
and I mean I know as a little kid that
was like a great song and everything in the seventies.
So yeah, you know what was you know, But that's

(16:29):
just one wrinkle, and there's other wrinkles I want to
talk about regarding the sixties. But yeah, Snoopy and the
Red Baron became such a big deal, as you know,
even Get Smart did a parody episode with Zigfried as
the Red Baron. Clearly it had to be inspired by
what was happening with Snoopy and the Red Baron.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah. Well, you know, it's amazing how this wasn't just
a common stript. It became part of Americana. I probably
once a week before I even started on this book,
would use a Peanuts reference in my day speech, like saying, oh,
that's like you know, Charlie Brown expecting to kick the
football this time, or that's like line us waiting on

(17:07):
the pumpkin patch or the Great Pumpkin or whatever. There's
so much of it. That's part of our vernacular. There's
so much of this part of our references, and you know,
we all identify it to some extent with someone in
the store. We've all had Charlie Brown moments in our lives.
Everybody practically has had that moment when gee, I wish

(17:28):
I was friends with that little girl over there or whatever,
and we know that feeling of rejection that it seems
to be unattainable, or the frustration that you can't seem
to figure out how to make that work. And we
all kind of wish that our pets and the animals
in our lives thought like Snoopy. It's interesting how we

(17:49):
project personality and motive onto them. For a long time,
I was feeding feral cats in my backyard and I
go to the the pet food aisle of the grocery store,
and I pick out cans of food for them, like, okay,
I think they like chicken, and oh, I know this
one lovely loves the fish, and this one loves the
chopped kidney, and I these are feral cats. They'll lead

(18:11):
anything you put down the front of it. And they
they had never ex exhibited the slightest preference for the
chicken over the turkey, over the you know, cranberry sauce,
whatever the food flavors were, and yet we present project
that and what goes on with Snoopy. Snippy became a
superstar when shul started living on thought balloons. The first

(18:33):
few years he get peared, he was just a dog.
Acutely nicely drawn dog, but he was just a dog.
And he never aspired anything but being a dog. He
never you know, flew into battle or went to the
moon or you know, turned into a helicopter on us.
And he became this larger than life dog that I
think is what people would like to believe their pets

(18:54):
are like the way they function. To think.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Fantastic Apollo. And of course he's the mascot. He and
Charlie Brown, but obviously that's the big thing. And you
know they had the patch and everything and so much
iconography of that period. You're a good man, Charlie Brown,
Broadway nineteen sixties. But rock off pardon me, oh, because.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
It came back a few years ago on Broadway also,
but it was a it was fascinating. One of the
one of the fascinating things about that show was it
became one of the most performed musicals in the world,
partly because Penis was so universal. Everybody knew it, everybody
wanted to see it live. It was a very good

(19:39):
show for parents to take their kids to to introduce
them to the premise of live musical theater, which kids
need to learn at an early age. So I grew
up to become adults who go to live musical theater.
But also it was a show that you could put
together for about twelve dollars. If you were saying when
I said said, Okay, we're gonna do a pretty this,

(20:01):
you can put it in any house of any size.
You can do it with one piano. I think when
I first saw it at the Ivar Theater in Hollywood,
it was one piano and a drummer. You can do
it more than thatthe you want, but that's all you need.
There's no real sets. You just need some big block
of something that you can you can believe as a doghouse,

(20:24):
and a few things for the kids to sit on.
They did it with like just blocks, no real sets.
And the costumes are real easy. You just have to
find a yellow shirt and put a zigzag wine on it.
For Charlie Brown and everybody else can pretty much wear
their own clothes, and it's very cheap to do. It's
very simple. You also can rearrange the orders of the acts.

(20:49):
You can put your own and there are people who actually,
when they would stage You're a good man, Charlie Brown
would get Peanuts books themselves and say, oh, let's add this,
let's act this strip. Which is how this show was written.
The the it's the there's a writer credit on it
to a person who never existed, the guy who's credit
for the book. You know, the book of a Broadway

(21:09):
show is like here's Neil Simon wrote the book. Where
here's here's uh, Peter Stone wrote the book. Well, nobody
wrote the book. They got together a bunch of actors
and rector and they had a bunch of Piants strips,
and they trust up started reading them out and staging them.
And they just took Schultz's scripts and it usually verbatim,
and maybe padded two or three together. They found three

(21:31):
or four strips in a sequence and made that into it,
and they all of a sudden had had a script
for a broad off Broadway show. And you can still
play with it. People still do tomorrow again. If you
and I put that show on, we might think, hey,
let's put in a red baron, let's put in a
whatever we wanted. Uh. And it's very easy. Again. You
don't need sets, you don't need costumes, you don't need

(21:52):
a fancy arrangements. It's a very easy show. It's a
very accessible show, and everybody gets.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Tell me also about the Vince Garaldi relationship with the
cartoons with Schultz, because jazz was again for younger people,
they don't realize that jazz was still.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
A very big.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Format like rock and roll was back in the sixties.
And he my god, I can't think of anyone else
that should have scored Peanuts. So that laid back jazz
sound that Garaldi brought to the cartoons was just amazing.

Speaker 3 (22:30):
Yeah. Well, you know, the Peanuts strip was the work
of one man. A cartoon show is a work of
multiple people, and one of the people who had major,
major success was a man name who I got to
work with and know very well, named Lee Mendelssohn. Lee
was was a producer I worked with for ten years.
I guess the smartest producer I worked for, which at

(22:54):
one point I would have said that's not hard to be,
but he was. I got worked for a lot of
good producers, to Lee was the best. He was the
most honest producer I ever worked for. At one point
he paid you would check for eight thousand dollars. I
said why, and he said, oh, I just did some
math and I showed you eight thousand dollars last year.
How many other people, wow, will catch their own and

(23:16):
make up for it. And Lee was the one who's
thought about Vin Scaraldi. Of course, Schultz said, yes, you're
right because there was a simplicity. The great thing about
Giraldi stuff was it didn't compete with the cards, the
comic strips. It was as simple as what Charles Schultz
was drawing was. And those songs are haunting. I recommend

(23:40):
to anyone who loves peanuts get to the Charles M.
Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. Sometimes it is an
amazing place. You will be stunned by how much you'll
learn there and how much you'll enjoy it. The people
who work there love peanuts. They love to be asked questions.
They they love it. If you can stump them, make

(24:02):
them go look it up. So the answer, but one
of the things that I enjoyed most going there. And
I'm going to be there in the middle of November
to sign books. But across the street is an ice rink,
the Schultz's Ice Rink, and he used to work in
the studio upstairs, and there's an ice rink there, and

(24:22):
there's a snap box. And I remember the first time
I was there, my partner, Siriho adn'tgotus and I were
sitting in the snap park with Jeannie Schultz, Charles Schultz's widow,
who has done an amazing job of protecting the heritage
and staying true to Peanuts, and you know, answering that question,
what would spark you want? We're sitting there and I

(24:44):
look over. It's an ice rink. It's about, you know,
forty degrees in that room, maybe less, and there's all
these little ten year old kids skating. They're all bundled up,
they're all got hats and bundles around. You can't see
much of them, and they're skating out there and they're
playing Vin Sceraldi music. Oh wow. And I look over.

(25:06):
It's a scene from Charlie Brown Christmas Life. And I'm
sitting there thinking, well, that's probably Schroeder, and that's probably violent.
And that's and that kid over there with a little
dust cluddle around him, we know who he is. And
uh and I just had like a chill, not just

(25:28):
because it was cold in there, but because it just
it just came out of nowhere. Nobody set it up.
Nobody said, hey, let's let's create a tableau of the cartoon. No,
it was just naturally occurring there and I just sat there.
People were saying, Mark, pay are you paying attention?

Speaker 4 (25:45):
No, I'm looking at the kids and means so if
you get to the show's see him rock across the
street and go to the snack bar and have yoursel phone,
you know, sandwich or something like that, and just watch
the kids skate.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. I can barely walk.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Oh please. You know my uncles give out on me
as well. Mark. I respect that.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
But you're going to be at the museum November fifteenth, specifically,
we'll let the audience know for assigning it for the
book and everything. I'm so glad you brought up Geenie
because that is such a great story how they met
at the ice rank and fell in love and especially
after the frustrating first marriage that Sparky had. And I've
certainly read the books, and I've seen the documentaries, and

(26:32):
people watching and listening right now may not realize that
Lucy was based on Schultz's first wife to.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
A certain extent. Yeah, I mean, you know, he managed
to put a perfect amount of his own life into
the strip, not too much, not too little. He just
put the truths for what he believed to be the
truth in there and the strip. One of the many
things that the book emphasized is how much he was

(27:01):
the sole creator of the strip. You know, some of
the greatest cartoonists in the world, and they've got a
newspaper strip and had enough money to do so they
hire someone to draw their backgrounds, and hire somebody to
do their lettering, and hire something to give them gag ideas.
Walt Kelly had assistance, how Cap had assistance, Milton Kenniff
had assistance, mart Walker had a factory of assistants. I mean,

(27:24):
there was just things like that. I've ghosted on a
few newspaper strips, writing gags, wow, and things too. Charles
Schultz never let a drop of ink get on those
pages unless he put it there and they were his
ideas constantly, and you know, near the end his line
was getting kind of shaky again. Part of the book
is a sad part of the book about his last

(27:45):
years when he didn't know they were his last years.
He couldn't plan to do a last couple of months
of the strip. He couldn't he couldn't plan to resolve
some of the dangling storylines maybe or whatever. He just
all of a sudden gone, it was stopped, stopped on him.
But nobody would have faulted him. If he'd said, let's
bring someone else in to do the inking, because my
hand's getting shaky. Let's bring someone else into the lettering.

(28:07):
No one would have canceled the strip. Nobody would have complained.
But he was just determined, this is how I did
it all this time, this is how I'm gonna go
out doing it. And you have to admire that I
certainly do. It was not mandatory that he do that.
I think I think he could have afforded an assystem
or too. He had a couple, he had a couple

(28:29):
of bucks, I heard.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
To say the least.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
And really, you think about merchandising today, and Schultz was
doing it at a very quieter uh, you know, not
not as in touch media world. I mean again, you're
a longtime fan of comics. My god, you know he
didn't need popcorn boxes reflecting his products. Well, he had
other things, like the toys, like the paperbacks, like the

(28:55):
greeting cards. I mean, yeah, So he did a mess
this amazing thing, and that's great, and I'm glad that
he's the guy that benefited most from it, and everything
good for him.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Yeah, there was a quote of his I read someplace,
and I couldn't find it, the source of it to
include in the book. With the Schultz Museum, people were
wonderful about fact checking everything and making suggestions and say, hey,
here's a piece of information. Here's an interview with his
Maybe you should read this because it'll inform what you're
writing about. This excellent excellent input from all those people there.

(29:27):
But nobody could find this one quote I remembered where
he talked about how it was walking or driving down
the street when Danny saw kid wearing a Linus T
shirt or Charlie Brown T shirt and he just thought,
he didn't think like some people would. Oh, I just
made a dollar or eleven, you know, he thought, Wow,

(29:48):
I just love it that what I've done means so
much to that kid. He wanted to wear the character.
He wanted him on his notebook. It was a side
of the reach. And that's one of the things you
learn if you go to the shows, is the reach
of this man's work. We are unaware, most of us,
how universal, how around the world they know Peanuts. In fact,

(30:13):
one years ago I was had to entertain a group
of cartoonists from Japan, and we had very bad language.
The translator needed a translator, and at some point I
just drew this, you know how. I drew Snoopy when
I was seven years old on a piece of paper,
and they all lit up and began drawing their favorite

(30:36):
Peanuts thing. We all just kind of we We couldn't
speak really in any sort of level like you and
I are speaking here, but we could draw pictures for
each other. And I have. I'll tell you one of
the things I used to do, I have done up
for a while. I'm eager to do it again. I
would go to elementary schools. They get invited elementary schools,

(30:56):
and I teach the kids about cartooning. And part of
the routine was if you look at a picture of
Charlie Brown full face, he has that unusual squiggle for
a hairline. It's a certain little swiggle and it's not
hard to learn to draw. So I would draw just
that squiggle on the blackboard, and I without telling the
kids what it was, they say, I want you to

(31:17):
all to learn this. Draw this. Everybody do this ten times.
Do you get good at it? Okay, So they'd all
get really good at this squiggle I called the squiggle.
So now we move on to something else. Four or
five minutes later, I say, now I want you to
draw a circle. I said, I want you to put
two dots right here, and i'd show her put them,
and they put the two dots there of the circle,
and I say, now I want you to do the

(31:38):
like the letters C right about here, which was the nose.
And they do it and they have no idea what
they're drawing, and I say, now put the swiggle up here.
Every ready, quickly draw the squiggle up here, and they'd
all draw the swiggle up here. Then you could hear
oh my god, or the you know, nine year old
equivalent of oh my god, I just drew Charlie Brown
without realizing all you needed was those two dots, the nose,

(31:59):
a rough circle and that squiggle, and every the kid
was going around, Look what I did. They were like
ring up to the teacher, literally, look what I did.
Look what I did. The teacher was so pleased because
we got these kids interested in drawing. Yeah, a couple
of times at these schools I would go with my
friend Sara Giardini, who is maybe you know, one of
the five greatest cartoonists ever lived, and then one of

(32:22):
the fastest. And Sergio was about, you know, nine hundred
times the cartoonist I was. But in this context, in
this setting, when I drew for the kids, it looked
humanly possible. Okay, yeh, kids said, draw Sergio draw a
fire truck in charge of certainly fire truck. There it is.

(32:45):
And you couldn't figure out how to draw a fire
truck from what he did because he started with the wheel,
and he drew the hose, and he drew you know,
the ladder and whatever it was. It just all matter
for appeared when I did it. They could say, oh,
I'd say, you know, I'm gonna draw Garfield for you,
and I was so proud this They go okay, uh

(33:05):
just let it go ignor sorry for the phone, so
you know, and it's excited. And the Schultz Museum has
classrooms they bust kids in from around, have cartoonists who
come in and give the kids basics. And if you
aren't inspired to want to draw something after you spend

(33:28):
that afternoon at the Schultz Museum. And it's even if
you don't see one of those those lessons and I
watched a little bit of one of them one time,
you'll never You'll never do it, and you and it's
not like, oh geez, I do that. Maybe I can
make the kind of money Charyls Schultz made. No, it's
it's I want to be able to do that. I

(33:49):
just want to be able to do that. And uh,
I love that. It's one of the things Little puppis
how accessible it is and how you can appreciate it
when you're five years old or seven years old.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Yeah, his art is, I mean, as you say, it
is simple to emulate. But you know, obviously the soul
of the of the strip is the writing along with
that simplicity, and yeah, the combination is just incredible. It's
so it's so profound and yet the art is not
that much elevated behind beyond a stick figure.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
When you think.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
About it, it's more sophisticated than you think. Fair enough,
he was so good at when getting exactly the right expression.
This is one of the reasons he didn't want to
have anybody in the strip, even even if he pence
the strip and somebody followed his line exactly. A pen
or a brush used. A pen puts out a little

(34:41):
different line than a pencil, and you just met final
little tick up or tick down or thinness or whatever
would make a difference in the expressions. And Schultz had
until the last you know, a couple of years when
he began changing the data the format of the daily
strip away from the rigid four panel format he did.

(35:05):
He was doing six jokes a week in the daily
Monday through Saturday strips in this rhythm of one, two, three,
four panels, same size, same shape, and he worked at
a timing of again perfectly so that the last panel
had the punch line at it, which frequently was an expression.

(35:27):
Frequently was Charlie Brown staring at the readers like Oliver
Hardy Yes, noting the indignity to suffer or baffled by
what just went by, or you know why Linus is
patting birds on the head. That's one of my favorite
storylines of the kid patting birds in the head, or

(35:49):
Woodstock is doing this or whatever whatever it is. It's
just it's just so perfect all the time.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Agreed.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
You know, my favorite strips were when he had the
bag over his head and was giving advice and everybody
was listening. For the first time Charlie Brown was actually
gathering a crowd and they were listening to him.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Mister Seck. That whole secretence is That whole sequence is
in the book. You can read it again there. Yes,
there there's a couple of other sequences there that I
love that I insisted they occluded when they came. You know,
the book premise of the book is it's the seventy
five essential strips. But there's more than seventy five strips

(36:29):
in the book, because for every time we print Essential,
we printed three or four or a dozen or more
strips that show how that idea had expanded upon, how
that character blossomed, and how that character changed, how Schultz
would find new ways to do that joke that made
it fresh again. And so I don't know how many
strips are in the book all but there's quite a

(36:50):
few of them in there. And there were a few
that I said, no, no, we're taking that one out
and putting in the one I like. They had already
picked the priliminary seven and most of the supplementary ones
before I was involved. And there were a couple. And
of course I know that when this thing comes out,
I'm going to hear from everybody. I know, great book,

(37:11):
but what happened. Why isn't the strip in here where
Snoopy did that or Linus did that or whatever, or
there isn't enough you know, pig pen or whatever it is.
It's I know it says a piece of a personal
thing that people are to take it personally when I
don't have their favorite Shermi script from there.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Sure, and you know it was so great in the book.
Seeing some of the characters will assure me. Obviously one
of the originals along with Violet, but some of the
characters that have come along, you know, the years, like
five and of course Franklin making a big statement in
the sixties, and and I didn't remember jose the Hispanic.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
There's a page in the book that just shows all
these characters, and you'll be stunned how many people are
popular is most people think the strip is just Charlie
brown Snoopy Linus, Lucy Peppermint. Yeah, would Stock you know
about and and And the thing is that Schultz kind
of proved he could do the strip, but I could

(38:13):
cast of eight, but he didn't. He kept coming with ideas.
I remember a period after pepper Man Patty was in
for a little while and suddenly blossomed. It was almost
like the Peppermin Patty strip guest starring Snoopy occasionally or something. Yes,
he brought occasionally. And in the book, I coached Schultz
talking about how people discuss the idea sping it off,

(38:34):
and I think it be a separate be a separate
Peppermin Patty strip. And he decided not to do that
because he was working hard enough to do one strip
oh yeah every day. Uh, And he didn't want to
farm it out to somebody else. That wasn't his style,
you know.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
And it's truly and I'm so glad he broke down
the four panel gag that he always did because I
don't think people appreciate, especially a strip like Peanuts that
ran seven days a week and you got to do
six days plus the Sunday strip and come up with gags.
And the man did it for fifty years and just

(39:12):
kept churning out great poignant things. And that's incredible. And
also you're right about his art, because I really appreciate it,
and it's in the book everybody his tributes to D
Day and you saw Snoopy out on the front lines
of D Day and stuff in that same way that
he would do the Red Bar in World War One.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
Stuff.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
But my gut, all that's really amazing. And also the
fact that he and Bill Maudlin kind of combined to
do a tribute to Bill Maudlin's excellent characters from Stars
and Stripes during the forties, the two infantry men Joe
and Willy or Willy and Joe with Snoopy.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
Oh my god. So yeah, really cool stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
Yeah, it's just it's just a treasury of stuff. And
I got I got a free ride here. People are
loving this book not because of what I did, except
that I you know, I got my name on a
book full of Charles Schultz.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
Ye. Well but you did good.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Did you collect the people that wrote their short essays
within Ben Folds is in there for example.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
Okay, I had very Abrams, and there's there's a wonderful
support team behind Penuts now Lex Fajardo, Yes, Braddick and
all these people at the music I shouldn't start naming
them because there's so many people there, and everybody I've
encountered loves Peanuts. Were just the kind of person that

(40:33):
Schultz would have wanted controlling a piece of his legacy
and controlling a piece of his history. And you know,
I used to say to my agent i'd be offered
certain writing assignments, I'd say tell them, I'll write it
for free, but I want to be paid for every
person who gives me notes and criticisms, because I could

(40:54):
have made a fortune at Hannah Barbera. That would have
been I would have been a gold mine if I
could have. And the scripts are free, and got paid
for everybody who said you got to change the joke
on page nine. But and so you know, I I
said I had read to do this book in a
half a second or a quarter of a second, and
then if I had any brief negative thoughts and they

(41:17):
lasted half a second a quarter of a second, was oh,
I'm going to have to hear from all these people
at the Schultz Museum and all these people at Shil's
Creative Associates and all these people who are peed US experts,
and they're going to be, you know, ripping this stuff apart.
Nobody ripped anything apart. They just said, hey, by the way, Mark,
did you know this? Hey read this section here, Maybe
this will give you an idea. And they caught some

(41:39):
of my more egregious mistakes. They fact checked me. Is
you know, fact checking is a lost art. We don't
do it in this country, you know, for politicians even. Uh,
but they caught all my mistakes, I hope, and uh
made sure that the book was And then you know
when I when I quoted Charles Schultz, somebody had to

(42:02):
go and find the original source of that quote and
make sure it was verbatim absolutely, because you know, Schultz
was was a typical and this is true of Jack
Curbing a few other people. I'm man. They believed the
truth would make them look good. Tell the truth and
I will come off fine. You don't have to you
don't have to inflate me, you don't have to exaggerate me.

(42:24):
You don't have to treat me like a demigod. Just
tell the truth and I'll be perfectly proud of the
way people view me. And Schultz was like that. He
gave lots of interviews. He was very candid in them.
And uh and and he and he read all the

(42:44):
fan mail. This is interesting. He read a fan a
fan letter I wrote him before I had ever met him.
And he answered, and it was it's not like he
had nothing to do all day. Uh. So he was
very concerned about that. And he was just a sharming man.
I wish I'd gotten to spend more time with them,
but I had, I had. I'm just glad for how

(43:07):
much time I did that over the years.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Well again, you've had an extensive career. Mark and then
forgive me.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
And of course you don't have to answer right now,
but afterwards I will be asking you to come back on,
because man, I would love to talk cartoons with you.
Your time with Kirby, people like that I have and listen,
I share your political views. But there is one little
period of peanuts that I only bring up from to
put it in context if it's something you considered even

(43:34):
when it was happening. Uh. The centennial of the Civil
War was covered in peanuts, and there are strips that
you know they were they were wearing, they were wearing
Confederate hats. And again I don't think with any I
don't even know, because again I wasn't there, and I
know part that that mister Schultz was a liberal and
and everything. But but can you just contextually, and again
I don't mean to bring up any so subject per se,

(43:56):
but can you can you give me your observations of
that that moment you're you're.

Speaker 3 (44:00):
The first person to mention that to me, and didn't
even really occur to me. I knew, I knew it
was and I read all the strips over you know, Schuld,
this is this is the byproduct of doing it all yourself.
He maintained an attitude. You know, he was the kind
of guy who if a jokes, he a little questionable.

(44:20):
But wait a minute, this is Charles Schultz. I must
be misunderstanding this. I trust him, and and uh, it's interesting.
There are times when he got a little controversial, and
he did a couple of strips where people on this
side of the issue would go, hey, you're on our side,
can we reprint that? And people on this side would
write to him say hey, you're on our side, can
we reprint that? And he navi gave permission because he

(44:44):
didn't want the script to be seen in any part.
Is in context. Anybody saying this, this is Schultz saying this.
Here say the guy spoke for himself. The message was
in there. And and one of the things I tried
to do in the book is not to words in
his mouth, not to say he was obvious. I'll tell
you a quick story here. I'm a big fantasy. You

(45:06):
probably are of George Harriman's Crazy Cat strip and I
had a I had on my wal downstairs. I have
an original Crazy Cat by Harriman, next to an original
Peanuts by Schultz, next to original Pogo by Walf Kelly.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
In the thirties, think it was or forties, they put
out a hardcover collection of Crazy Cat strips, and E. Cummings,
the famous poet, wrote the introduction to it. He wrote
this long, wordy introduction about here's what Harrimon was thinking
about this, and here from Haremn meant this and Walf
Kelly when he got a copy of this, he loved

(45:45):
the Harriman strips, of course, but he took construction paper,
cut it to the size of a page and glued
it over E. E. Cummings words to obliterate the ball,
and then on the last of those pages he just
wrote out it thank you, mister Cummings, which is I

(46:06):
don't really need you to tell people what I wrote
and drew, you know. And that's when we put together
the Pogo books, which I edit a co edit. Now.
We tried not to read Walt Kelly's mind, and Schultz
didn't want people reading his mind. I don't think I'm
reading his mind when I tell you that he didn't
want people reading his mind. But I think the work
always spoke for itself. It was always self explanatory. If

(46:29):
it wasn't, he certainly had enough days afterwards to go
back and clarify and such. And there aren't cases where
he went back and revisited an idea took a little
different slant on it. I really don't know what to
think of the Civil warships other than I think they
were historically important, and that's all I think they were
there for was historical importance.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Well, and it was just another remembrance of American history.
I think at the time. That's my observation of why
they were there.

Speaker 3 (46:58):
I mean, I mean, you know, you know, he when
he brought Franklin to the strip, they didn't put out
press releases and say, hey, everybody, there's kid at Peanuts.
He just most knock you with setting. Oh, here's Charlie,
run on the beach. There's a beach ball. Oh, Franklin
comes over and they start chatting, and nobody there's no
jokes about, hey, you're a different color than I am,

(47:20):
and there's none of that. It's just he's another kid.
He could have in the exact same jokes, reversing the
races of the people. And eventually Franklin took on his
own function and was different from the other kids, the
way every character in the ship was different than some
other kid. And you know, he just did it because

(47:42):
it was the right thing to do, his time to
do it. I think, if anything, you may regretted he
didn't do it a year or so sooner.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
But that's great.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
But then I'm mind reading again, so who knows.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
Yeah, No, I'm with you. I'm with you.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
I never knew there's there's a character among the seventy
five that you have in the book.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
Charlotte.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
Charlotte Braun. Yes, Charlotte bron that was that was one
of those experiments that didn't work so well. And he
got a lot of angry mail about her. She was
angry and abrasive and and I think he realized that
the reader just didn't like her. He got some mail

(48:20):
and dropped her. She she was uh just loud. She
she spoken louder, lettering, and she commanding attention and cutting
other people off. And uh. And later Lucy skewed a
little more in that direction, but not a lot. He
overdid it with Charlotte Braun. So he did it more

(48:43):
with more finesse and quieter with Lucy. And he would
show you Lucy's soft side too. He didn't show you
the off side of Charlotte Braun. She showed you, uh,
you know, Lucy. People forget that Lucy was the first
one to hug a puppy and say happiness is a
warm puppy. That's a very Lucy thing. Every everybody of
the strip eventually did it. Yep, we all went on

(49:04):
hugg to puppy and ourselves. God yet, but but you know,
could be very Lucie. It was different people. Different sides
of Lucy were in different days.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
I respect that absolutely.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
What did you think of the Peanuts animated movie that
came out in the last fifteen years, I guess ten
years or so? What I was impressed with how it
managed despite Charlie or Sparky being gone, that it actually
did capture his spirit quite well in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
My opinion of it is that I should see it someday.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
Oh, you haven't seen it, Okay, that's fine.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
I haven't been to a lot of movie I haven't
seen any of the superhero movies, even the ones doing
Jack Krby on the screen. I haven't been to many
of them, any events one of them.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Mark, that's truly, that's stunning.

Speaker 1 (49:48):
Is that just you don't want to ruin the memory
or your Yeah, give me a why, Well.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
It's try restricted to pants. But I'll just tell you
first of all, I'm not a huge fan of you know,
Spider Man. I'm a hand of Steve Ditko and genre Meia.
I'm not a big fan of Supermans. I'm a Signal
and Shuster and Wayne Boring. I I you know, I
still haven't seen a James Bond movie made in a
lot the last few years. And I thought had James

(50:16):
bonded it. It had someone called James Bond. My James
Bond isn't in them. So and I I I don't
get to a lot of movies. I when I go out,
I go to plays and comedy clubs and things like that.
You can always see a movie later. It's always there,
it's permanent, it's fixed. No movie will ever be unavailable

(50:38):
again because they're all digital stored and there's every there's
millions of copies of them around, so I can see
any of these movies anytime I want. I can't go
see you know, the last time I went to New York,
I saw these great shows on Broadway that aren't there anymore. So,
but I went to the the first Superhero Way. I
just see. It was the x Men movie, the first

(50:58):
x Men movie, and I would have walked out on it,
except I was sitting with the stan Lee at the screening,
and I didn't like the movie. I thought it was loud.
I thought there was a lack of person that that
the personality and some of the better writers and greeless
Chris Claremont had infused the comics with was not there.
I thought it was gimmicky and loud and and and

(51:21):
explosives in lieu of intelligence, and and I was very
very angry about the tiny microscopic billing. And they gave
Jack Kirby and the closing credits and and and it
made me mad. And I thought, why go to these
things that they're going to make me mad? And I
and I the only other one I've seen was the

(51:42):
Justice League movie. Oh I got this. I was sitting
at the big premier at the Hall Highland Theater where
they do the Academy of Words. They had the screen
there and I was, okay, all the people of DC
Comics and I was having trouble hearing the movie because
all about me was going, why did they do that
to that character? Why don't they He wouldn't say that, No,

(52:05):
wonder when wouldn't do that. Superman wouldn't say that, you know,
And they're all around me, and they thought, well, so
I just I'm not. I don't I don't dislike these movies.
I just haven't gotten around to. There's other stuff in
the world I want to see more.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
I respect that well they have. It's got.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
It isn't great, but it's gotten slightly better as far
as the respect for Kirby. But again, you, being an
intimate of Kirby's would likely, you know, still find a
lot of you know.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
I have. I have an emotional connection to Jack Kirby.
Sure people do not have, even if they love his work.
I Jack Kirby was one of the great geniuses of
the world. I've been fortunate enough to know a couple
of the great genius of the world. Schultz was another one, obviously,
and there's a few others I got to know. I
am very fortunate in my life. I got to interact

(52:57):
with very high percent of the people who made the
movies and TV shows I loved as a kid and
the comic books. I met most of the people who
wrote and drew the comic books that I loved when
I was, you know, a kid or a teenager. I
kind of stopped going to comic conventions, apart from those
in California, because there was no one I wanted to

(53:20):
meet at him anymore.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
You know.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
I used to go to a comic convention in Texas
and hang out with a Williamson, or go to a
Tomic convention in Chicago and hang out with Joe Kubert,
And now everybody in that area has gone either either's
died or they're too old to go to conventions, so
there's no one I want to meet. And when I
go to San Diego. One of the frightening things now
for me is there's one hundred and forty thousand people

(53:43):
in that room, and the people the person with the
oldest friends and professional comics there might be me. This year,
I was in the second place in that little category.
There's one guy who's been in comic for me the
entire convention. Lastly, there were three of the year before
there was one. One of these years, I will be

(54:05):
the person who was in comic books the longest at
the convention. And I still feel like I got in
the business a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Well, I respect that.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
And also I remember you being on one of your
I don't remember if it was a Silver Age or
Bronze Age panel, but you were talking about how sadly
we were losing all the Golden Age artists and you
used to do the Golden Age panel, and then you
were doing the Silver Age panel, and it really was
really a Brownze Age. I mean, len Win thankfully was
still with us. Louis Simonson was on that panel. Yeah,

(54:37):
and so I respect that, and truly, Mark, I love
news for me everybody that's Mark's blog. It's fantastic and
it is such a great deep dive in twentieth century
pop culture in a way that I think you're on
parallel Mark, honestly, and I'm not being nice.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
Why haven't ident your podcast many times by now?

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Well again, man, I've been waiting to talk to you
about a lot of this stuff. You you can.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
Talk about more important people than me. But anyway, I'll
tell you about that. If you have me on, I'll
tell you about the important people. I kind of like
not being in the spotlight.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
I respect that.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
That much because but I feel like I met all
these people. I have stories about them, I have observations
about them. When one of them dies, I feel compelled
the shell to share that maybe the special viewpoint I
had about them with people, And uh, you know, I
just I feel very, very fortunate. And you know again,

(55:32):
I got paid to spend six months of my life
immersed in peanuts. Yes, that's a great job. I was
immersed in peanuts when I was eight. But nobody's going
to be money for doing it. I you know, it's
my father. At one point my father was very supportive

(55:52):
of all this stuff, but at one point he kind
of said, Mark, you're sitting around watching cartoons all day.
What's second ever whatever to get you? And he got
my career. It got me. You know when when Hannah
Barbera first put their cartoons out on home video and
we're talking beta here, that's how long it was on

(56:13):
me to pick out the selections. On the very first reel,
they wanted a whole bunch of Rahn and Yogi Beara
for cartoons, and I did it from memory. I said,
get me a print of this cartoon in this And
then I sat in a little editing bay at Hannah
Barbera watching the cartoons that I was I had watched
and I was nine, and making sure they were as

(56:33):
good as I remembered, and and I just thought, I'm
getting paid to watch Hannah Barbera cartoons. And just in
the middle of that, I hear a man come in,
and he heard his voice and he drops his head
and it's Don Messick, who was the voice of Ranger
Smith and Boo Boo and so many other characters PIX
all those characters and those cartoons, and Don says to me, Mark,

(56:56):
what are you doing here. I said, I'm watching cartoons
with you, and he sat down with me and we watched.
I watched, you know, a Yogi bearer went with Boo
boo next to me live commentary on it, telling me, now,
does Butler, who was the voice of Yogi, as everyone
knows Dows did this? O de Look how brilliant Dows

(57:17):
was that? Because he was a huge of dos, as
was I, as was anybody who knows good cartoon wasting.
And this has nothing to do with peanuts.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
So well, no, I but I appreciate the tangent and again, uh,
the breadth of your career covering all this stuff and
getting to meet these people. No, thank God. And again
I'll point people again in news for me because thank
God for the tapeworms, the VCR people that were taping
or finding archive stuff. And now again one of your guys,

(57:45):
and he's constantly a part of it, Stan Freeberg. I
understand how you feel because when I met Freeberg at
one of his last comic cons, nobody knew who he
was other than.

Speaker 3 (57:56):
I brought him to I brought stand there because I
wanted to meet his fans and and you know, get
get some live standing ovations as such, lovely, man, brilliant.
I can't believe that I knew stand free. I can't
believe you know, it's just like genius.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
Yeah no, I'm with you, man, absolutely no, no, and
and truly here we'll swing it back to Peanuts, because
I will bug you for a future conversation. But I
I really do as you said about the museum. I
love that there's a Peanuts podcast. At least it was
last year. I hope it's still running.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
Is what a dozen of them? I'm going to be
on all of them? I think, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
You go, of course.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
It's it's lovely that in this era, if you love something,
you can start a podcast about it. I mean that
your podcast covers a lot of different areas, obviously, but
if you suddenly decided you wanted to do a podcast
just about you know, I don't know, pick a little
Lulu cos it would be an audio for that, and

(58:57):
you know, and all these tubbies would would to an
in and listen to you.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
I tested this theory. I was.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
I found on the internet archive a bunch of the
Captain Nice episodes and the original trailer for the premiere
with the Jack Kirby art and so I made it.
I made it a YouTube short. Shame on me. I
don't mean to infringe on copyrights, but I just fell
from an archival standpoint. It's like, hey, I bet there's

(59:24):
a bunch of Kirby fans that don't know that, along
with all the great comics and even the Marvel Superhero's
cartoon that used a lot of his actual art in
the animation, that Kirby did this original thing for NBC
back in sixty seven. Yeah, that's right, and also it's funny. Again,
I was kind of scanning the blog, but you did
a big honk on Run Buddy Run, and I finally

(59:46):
saw the first episode of Run Buddy Run and Leonard
Stern Get Smart, okay, you know, and Buck Henry for
Captain Nice for that matter, and it's a shame that
those things didn't catch on, although, as you said, Run
Buddy Run a little a little limited in the humor department.
But no, honestly, I agree with you. I think the

(01:00:08):
caretakers of Peanuts currently are really incredible. And again they
find all these different things, as you said, and it's
reflected in the book the international appeal still of Peanuts,
and god, I know when I spoke to the woman
that does the podcast, she was talking about how they
did fashions that I think were inspired by when they

(01:00:29):
put Peppermint Patty in pants or whatever, and that was
a big deal and they were they were celebrating that
movement in the seventies.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Schultz drew up, Schultz drew a cartoon and somebody changed
the world the tiny bit. It was amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Absolutely, Man, Well, I'll wrap up with you, Mark, and
and I'll, like I said, i'll bug you once we
stopped recording about Prayer Apps coming back, because truly it'd
be great to talk to you about animation, about comics.
I know you have a million welcome back Carter stories,
and I appreciated the fact that both you worked on
the show, but also you did the comic, which is

(01:01:04):
pretty It's so funny because now we are getting that
a bit in comics where writers of the actual ips
are actually doing the comics as well.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Yeah, but yeah, it'd be great, man.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
And also, I mean your love for the classics like
Keaton and Laurel and Hardy and all that stuff. Truly, Mark,
thank you very much for the body of work you've
given us. Both the stuff you've gotten paid for, but
also the great coverage that you give to twentieth century
pop culture.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
Thank you for a very good time.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
That'll do it for this episode of word Balloon. Thanks
a lot for listening. If you have any questions or comments,
reach me via email John at word balloon dot com,
wr D B A L L o N dot com,
and please consider subscribing via Patreon to the League of
Word Balloon Listeners Patreon dot com slash word balloon until

(01:01:55):
next time. Word Balloon is a copyright feature of Shaky
Productions copyright twenty twenty five of all rights reserved.