1996 Part 2 - Angel Food Cake With 7-Minute Frosting and a Side of Attempted Murder

Harold takes us on a deep dive into the back issues of Editor and Publisher to tell a dark tale of real life drama that touched the Schulz universe. But it’s not all gloom and doom. Harriet is back and she brought baked goods! Plus: The One Note Samba

Transcript available at UnpackingPeanuts.com

Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz, and Liz Sumner. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark. 

For more from the show follow @unpackpeanuts on Instagram and Threads, and @unpackingpeanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky, and YouTube. For more about Jimmy, Michael, and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.  

Thanks for listening.

Episode Transcript

VO (00:02):
Welcome to Unpacking Peanuts, the podcast where three cartoonists take an in-depth look at the greatest comic strip of all time, Peanuts by Charles M.
Schulz.

Jimmy (00:18):
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
This is Unpacking Peanuts, the show where three cartoonists look at every comic strip created by Charles M.
Schulz between 1950 and 2000 and we discuss the ones that we find the most interesting, the best, the weirdest, all that kind of stuff.
I'll be your host for the proceedings.

(00:39):
My name is Jimmy Gownley.
You know what?
I'm also a cartoonist.
I did things like Amelia rules, seven good reasons not to grow up, the dumbest idea ever.
And you can subscribe to all my new comics right now for free over at gvillecomics.substack.com.
And joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer, both for the band Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast.

(01:04):
He's the co-creator of the original comic book price guide, the original editor for Amelia rules and the creator such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.

Michael (01:14):
Say hey.

Jimmy (01:15):
And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation, Sweetest Beasts, it's Harold Buchholz.

Harold (01:27):
Hello.

Jimmy (01:28):
And making sure everything runs smoothly is our producer and editor, Liz Sumner.

Liz (01:33):
Howdy.

Michael (01:37):
Howdy, y'all.

Jimmy (01:38):
So we are right here in 1996, in the middle of our last regular season of Peanuts.
And I know every time I look at the strips and I just feel the inevitable and just creeping around the corner.
I'm talking about death, of course, but also our regular season of the podcast.

(02:04):
But I'm happy to be here to talk with you folks about it.
Harold, what's going on with Mr.
Schulz's life here in a good old 1996?
You know what I'm suspecting it's going to be a boring, quiet year with nothing going on.
That's what I think.

Harold (02:22):
Well, there is something very momentous that happened in Schulz's life in 1996.
By its nature, it is lurid, but it speaks volumes about who Charles Schulz is a man.
I think he made some choices in what his response to this was.

(02:43):
That says a lot about who he was.
That's why I'm bringing this up.
It's not a very well-known story, maybe for good reason.
But in 1995, Schulz had a financial advisor working for him.
He also had a secretary and he had multiple people helping him get the strip out and manage all of the massive amount of fares.

(03:09):
It was a multimillion-dollar business for Schulz.
Two of those people are his financial advisor and his secretary.
Well, it comes out that the two are having an affair.
Schulz tells that he tried to warn the business advisor in particular.

(03:30):
He said, cut this off.
You're married to another person.
You need to end this, because he was concerned.
If only from an HR perspective, he could be liable for sexual harassment based on the nature of the relationship between the two of these people.
That's going on.
He's got to deal with the stress of that.

(03:50):
He's friends with the business manager and his wife.
Well, the business manager decides to break up with the wife.
The wife knows about this affair.
It turns out that she is so upset and distraught that she goes out, gets a permit for a gun, and comes to Schulz's office in 1995 with the gun, with the intention to kill her husband.

(04:18):
She finds him, shoots him twice in the back, and then shoots herself in the chest.
She was intending to end her own life.
Pretty miraculously, both of them survive.
Of course, as you can imagine, there was a major trial, and Schulz was a witness at that trial.
And what we learned from this was that Schulz actually put up a $2 million cash bail for the wife of this man who had shot him in the back twice.

(04:47):
And he testified on her behalf, basically saying this was extremely out of character for her.
He'd known her for years.
And she was up for life in prison.
The result of that trial where he was a witness was a hung jury.
I think it was nine to three to actually acquit, given some pretty extreme circumstances.

(05:07):
And she then, before the next trial came up, this time around, she pled guilty.
She got a year sentence.
She served six months to 3,000 hours of community service.
As a result of that, then she went on to live a long life.
And the business manager actually wound up marrying the secretary.

Liz (05:28):
What's your source for this?

Michael (05:31):
National Enquiry.

Harold (05:33):
The Editor and Publisher magazine had the article on Schulz being the witness, which is what tipped me off to it.
And then I went online and there's a long article in Oxygen, True Crime.
There's an article called, I hope he's dead, Woman Attempts to Murder Suicide at Peanuts Headquarters, that tells the fuller part of the story.

(05:56):
But Schulz's response to this, how many people in that, it's his offices, it's people that are working for him, it's people that he knows, an extreme thing like this happens.
How would you respond?
You know, would you try to distance yourself from this?
There's potentially a scandal connected to this.

(06:18):
There's certainly liability connected to this.
Schulz's response is to put up $2 million bail for the woman who perpetrates the crime.

Liz (06:27):
Did he fire the financial consultant?

Harold (06:30):
I believe yes.

Jimmy (06:31):
She did.

Michael (06:35):
No, I heard about this in Santa Rosa Battle Long, this movie about the lurid doings in the cartoonist business.

Harold (06:43):
But number one, how many people are in a position to put up $2 million cash bail?
Then if you have the ability to do it, how many people would actually have done what Schulz did and then goes in to testify on behalf of the woman who committed the crime, really in an effort to create some sort of forgiveness and reconciliation for something that's super heinous?

Jimmy (07:06):
Can you imagine the testimony?
She almost never shoots people in the back.

Michael (07:13):
Well, in the front.

Jimmy (07:14):
That's a different story.
We're not talking about that.

Michael (07:19):
Yeah, that's pure Western.

SPEAKER_2 (07:20):
Exactly.

Michael (07:21):
You don't shoot them in the back.

Jimmy (07:22):
Exactly.
Wow.
That is an unbelievably dark story.
It is something to contemplate.
Wow.
It's thrown me for a loop.
I did not know about any of this until, you know what, two minutes before we started recording.
So it's a wild, wild scene.

Harold (07:43):
He's involved in a lot of things because when there's that much money is floating around you as a person, lawsuits seem to kind of come out of the woodwork, right?

Jimmy (07:50):
Yeah.

Harold (07:51):
But I had no idea that he'd ever been a part of something like this and how traumatic that must be for everybody involved.

Liz (07:58):
This gives me new insight into why Harold kept his subscription to editing.

Jimmy (08:07):
Finally, though, we have a true crime element to this podcast.
Yes, we could go trend, baby, trend.
And we will be doing a 40-part series on this.

Liz (08:19):
Yes, and updating the category.

Michael (08:21):
Well, any other cartoonist involved in murders?

Jimmy (08:26):
Oh, let's see.
I bet there's got to be a bunch.
There was the, not a cartoonist, but the guy who formed the, he was either a murderer or murdered, so maybe we shouldn't slander him since I don't know if he was the victim or the perpetrator.

Michael (08:38):
That's probably a good idea.
Now, we're just making stuff up.
Yeah, like Jack Kirby shot at Steven Leeson.

SPEAKER_2 (08:46):
Oh, no.

Jimmy (08:47):
Now, Jack wouldn't have missed.

Michael (08:50):
Well, the gun was like bigger than that.

Harold (08:51):
Oh, that's what it was.

Michael (08:52):
Right.

SPEAKER_2 (08:56):
Oh, boy.

Jimmy (08:57):
Oh, boy.
Wow.

Harold (08:58):
That is wild.

Jimmy (09:01):
Well, with that said, how about we just hit the strips?

Michael (09:05):
Okay.

Jimmy (09:06):
So if you want to follow along with us, there's a couple of things you need to do.
The first thing you need to do is go over to goodoldunpackingpeanuts.com and sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread.
And that will get you one email a month that'll let you know what we're going to be covering.
And then you can follow along with us.
And the way you follow along with us is you just go over to goodoldgocomics.com.

(09:27):
And then, oh, holding on, one second, oh, from the hotline, Super Listener Sawyer Honeycutt and Super Listener Mary from Colorado have both alerted us, Go Comics is no longer free.

Harold (09:42):
Oh.

Jimmy (09:44):
So, yeah, oh no.
So, all right, guys, so everyone's going to have to rethink.
We got so far, so far doing it for free.
But you know what?
In this world, nothing's guaranteed.
And, you know, it's good to pay for art, right?

Harold (10:00):
Yeah.

Jimmy (10:00):
So, it looks like the situation here is that Andrews and MacMillan, who owns gocomics.com, have decided to go to a subscription model.
Oh, how much is it?
$4.95?

Harold (10:11):
$4.99 a month.

Jimmy (10:12):
$4.99 a month.
And for that, you not only get all of Peanuts, but you get everything else that the site had to offer, right?

Liz (10:22):
And it's upgraded, it's easier to use.

Jimmy (10:25):
Yeah, so it is a bummer that you're not going to be able to just go over to Go Comics and read this for free.
If you're clever, you might be able to find strips.
If not, you got still your options of the Fanta Graphics books are out there that collect every single year.
Costco has collections of Peanuts books by decade.

(10:46):
They don't have the Sundays, but they're very inexpensive and you can get a decade's worth of daily strips in each volume.
We're going to muddle through to the end of the regular seasons here and we appreciate that you guys have stuck with us so far and are going to continue to stick with us because you're nuts like us.
But it is a bummer.

(11:07):
If you think about it, it's still going to be the cheapest way to have ever read the entirety of Peanuts.
The only other thing would be going to a library every day for 50 years and looking at the paper.
Even if you just bought a newspaper every day, it would cost more than what it would be for the few years we have left.

Liz (11:29):
Go Comics is giving a seven-day free trial, so you can read all 17,897 strips in seven days.

Jimmy (11:38):
Or just read those if you've been diligent and been sticking with us.
Just read those last few years, which you actually could easily do in a week.
All right.
Well, thank you, Sawyer and Mary.
They both let me know within seconds of each other that we were going to have to make this announcement.
So I appreciate that.
We're going to just move forward though and get started with the strips.

(12:03):
Let's hit them.
April 22nd.
So we're picking up in the middle of that sequence of what Charlie Brown has been invited to the Sweetheart Dance with the little girl from his dance class who we believed, everybody believed she may have been imaginary because she didn't show up at the last dance.

(12:24):
But here she is and she likes Charlie Brown and they're out dancing.
But unfortunately, as the dance starts, we hear the PA system make this announcement.
Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.
Does anyone here own a small white dog?
Charlie Brown already looks a little worried about this.
Panel 2, with long black ears.

(12:46):
In the last panel, Snoopy comes in with a lovely young lass in hand and they're dancing.
He's wearing his French Foreign Legion hat.
The announcement says, who seems to be a sergeant in the Foreign Legion?

Harold (13:00):
That's an expert announcer there.

Michael (13:04):
What I want to know is, who's that tramp he's dancing with?
Come on!
This is not like grammar school get up there.

Harold (13:16):
So, do you think she's French?

Jimmy (13:17):
Wait, what do you think is?

Michael (13:19):
Might be Algerian.

Harold (13:24):
Oh, weird.
So, we know now that, yeah, she's not a figment of Charlie Brown's imagination, which I'm actually quite happy about.

Jimmy (13:34):
Is her name Emily?
Was that it?

Liz (13:35):
Yeah, I think so.

Harold (13:37):
Yeah.
Apparently, neither is the girl dancing with Snoopy.
It's a strange world of peanuts, right?

Jimmy (13:45):
I don't know.
I don't see what's so weird about that girl with the girly hair.

Harold (13:50):
I don't know.

Jimmy (13:50):
What's she wearing that's different?
The weird person here dressed weird is Charlie Brown.
Snoopy looks better than Charlie Brown.

Harold (13:57):
Because you could make an argument that she's a figment of Charlie Brown's imagination, Snoopy is just dancing by himself.

Jimmy (14:02):
Yeah, right.
Yeah, exactly.

Harold (14:04):
We can go on down all sorts of rabbit holes.

Jimmy (14:07):
April 23rd, Charlie Brown and Snoopy are kicked out of the dance, they literally kicked out and shown the curb.
They're out there lying on the curb and Charlie Brown says, now look what you did, you got me kicked out of this sweetheart ball.
Then they're walking along the sidewalk, Charlie Brown's ranting after Snoopy, I was having the best time of my life, I was having fun.

(14:29):
Snoopy says, how can you have fun in a place where dogs aren't allowed?

Harold (14:33):
Yeah.
Exactly.

Jimmy (14:35):
Good question.

Harold (14:36):
I love that drawing of Snoopy in the Foreign Legion hat in this second panel where he's just looking blank like Charlie Brown.

Jimmy (14:43):
I love all three drawings in this strip.
I think it's really nicely composed.

Harold (14:49):
It's fun to see a strip where Schulz seems to really put a lot of additional care into the backgrounds.

Jimmy (14:55):
Yes.

Harold (14:56):
This was a sequence that meant something to him, obviously.

Jimmy (14:59):
Usually the arc of, you guys can disagree with me if I'm wrong because I could be wrong, but it seems to me that usually the arc of a visual artist, well, let's say a comic book artist, is they start with whatever their rough style is, their earliest Mason style.
Then it gets more refined and more sophisticated and often more elaborate.

(15:25):
Then it reaches a point where they start pairing it all away, and they simplify everything.
But it seems like Schulz did that and then started on the upswinging end to put more detail in.
I think the reason is because of the tremor.
More information actually hides the tremor in a way that a stark pen line won't.

Harold (15:49):
Yeah.
As a hard worker and as a guy who is very competitive, he's not phoning this in.
You do get the impression that certain cartoonists fell out of love with their work, or they moved on as a person beyond whatever it was they were creating when they sold this idea in the first place.

(16:13):
That's always sad to see where you just feel like the joy is not in the strip.
That's a battle that a lot of syndicated cartoonists have to make who are working today because your income is shrinking as you lose newspapers and they're less competitive and what's being paid is getting smaller and smaller.
How hard is that to stay focused and intensely interested in what you're doing and not let that pull away from you?

(16:43):
Some of them is just financial, right?
I mean, you may have to be doing another job or two on top of putting out a daily strip.
But in Schulz case, obviously, he's worked his way up to incredible income, which is its own burden because he's got to manage it all.
But he is not skimping on the strip in these later years, and I love that.

Jimmy (17:04):
You know what?
I'm the kind of guy, I would sacrifice it.
I would bear that burden.

Michael (17:09):
Yeah, I'm not going to feel sorry for him.

Harold (17:12):
That's good of you guys.

Michael (17:13):
Actually, I disagree with Jimmy's arc of the cartoonist.

Jimmy (17:17):
All right, lay it on me.

Michael (17:19):
The first part of the arc is you copy someone.

Jimmy (17:22):
Oh, yeah, that's a great, yeah.

Michael (17:24):
Who inspires you, which Schulz never did.

Harold (17:27):
Yes, that's true.

Jimmy (17:28):
Yeah, that is 100% true.
Yeah, the first part is definitely trying to draw like your heroes.

Harold (17:39):
We know those heroes are, but you don't really see it in the work, do you?
I mean, you can't peg Schulz to one artist, can you?

Jimmy (17:45):
No, even in those very early days.
In some way, his early stuff was really radical because it was so minimal.
I mean, that looks nothing like Popeye or Little Orphan Annie or Crazy Cat or any of the stuff that he would have liked growing up.

Michael (18:02):
Yeah, you couldn't tell whose influences were at all artistically.
Or even someone like R.
Crumb was actually copying the cartoonists who nobody knew about.
It was like 1930s guys.

Harold (18:16):
Right, right.

Jimmy (18:19):
Yeah, that oftentimes something new, in quotes, in a culture or in an art form, is really something old put in a new context, in a new frame or whatever.
April 30th.
Peppermint Patty and Marcy are in class.
And Peppermint Patty fully turns around to Marcy in the middle of a test and says, quick, Marcy, I need the answers to five, seven, nine, ten and twelve.

(18:42):
And Marcy says, I don't have those yet, sir.
And Peppermint Patty, annoyed, says, what kind of student are you, Marcy?
It's out of control.

Harold (18:53):
And I'm telling you.

Jimmy (18:54):
In the Peppermint Patty school.
But like, wow.

Harold (18:59):
And what an unobservant teacher.
She's just turning around talking in the middle of the test.

SPEAKER_2 (19:05):
Yeah.

Jimmy (19:08):
Maybe the teacher stepped out for a minute.
Yeah.
Or she takes long blinks behind her desk during these tests.

Harold (19:16):
She's busy building some horrible lessons planned for next week.
For Peppermint Patty.

Jimmy (19:24):
I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that they're still cheating up a storm in the Peppermint Patty universe.

Harold (19:30):
It's crazy.

Jimmy (19:33):
May 3rd.
Sally is pushing rerun on the swings.
I love seeing everyone's little interactions with rerun.
She pushes him and says, that's a nice shirt you're wearing rerun.
Rerun responds with, thank you.
Actually, it used to belong to Linus.
He's still being pushed by Sally and he says, I'm the youngest, so all I get are throw-ups.

(19:54):
Then Sally says, hand me downs.
Rerun says, whatever.

Michael (19:59):
You learned that from Sally, the whatever line.

Liz (20:02):
Yeah.

Jimmy (20:05):
I got hand me downs.
I was an only child who got hand me downs because I had cousins that lived in the next town over and four older boy cousins and I always got their hand me downs.

Harold (20:17):
It would have been better if it were unannounced where it came from and you just hear your new clothes versus, okay, this was your cousins.

Jimmy (20:25):
Yeah, absolutely.

Harold (20:28):
You know what the worst thing ever was?

Jimmy (20:30):
I got from them the one I actually like, the one item of clothing as a child.
Actually, it was a brown leather jacket, just like freaking Fonzies, man.

Harold (20:40):
It was so cool.
How old were you?

Jimmy (20:43):
Five or six.

Harold (20:44):
I loved it.

Jimmy (20:45):
So I could go to like first grade in a leather Fonzie jacket.

Harold (20:49):
And you wore all the way through high school, right?
Because it was so cool.

Jimmy (20:51):
I'm still, I'm wearing it right now.
Then I went to my cousin's house wearing the jacket and I was so happy like, hey, look, I'm wearing the old jacket.
And you know how your cousins have a cousin, but they're on the other side of the family?
Well, it was his and I hated that kid.
I hated him.
I despised him.

(21:11):
So I was just, I never, I could never get the same joy out of it.

SPEAKER_2 (21:15):
Oh.

Jimmy (21:17):
May 5th, it's a Sunday and the Sunday starts off with the one of those symbolic panels.
It's two musical notes and the bottom of the notes are made from the heads of Lucy and Schroeder.
And then it starts up with Lucy and Schroeder in their class position, Lucy leaning on the piano and Schroeder pounding away at the keys.

(21:40):
And Lucy says, think about this.
Let's say you and I were married and let's say you are a famous concert pianist, but suddenly your career begins to go bad.
No one wants you anymore.
Instead of playing in beautiful concert halls, you're forced to play in sleazy joints.
This has gotten Schroeder's attention.
He has stopped playing.

Harold (22:01):
Little miffed looking there, I think.

Jimmy (22:03):
Yeah, and Lucy continues, and she says, and I have to give up my lucrative teaching career at the university and take in laundry to support us, which is really a bad idea if you have a lucrative teaching career.
First off, a lucrative teaching career.
At this point, Schroeder is just shocked, and Lucy still continues.
How do you think that would affect our marriage?

(22:25):
Let's talk about this, to which Schroeder just pulls the piano out from under Lucy, bonk, sending her falling to the ground.
And then a day is Lucy lying on the floor says, musicians never want to discuss anything.

Harold (22:38):
So true.
This is one of the best Lucy.

Michael (22:42):
This trip could have appeared just about any place in the run.
Yeah.
Almost exactly the same.
Yep.

Harold (22:49):
And this is one of, I think, the best Lucy Schroeder's, and certainly in a long, long time.
And I think at one point, didn't somebody posit here in the podcast that the Van Pelt parents were professors?

Jimmy (23:06):
Oh, yeah.
I don't remember who did, but yeah, that is true.
And it doesn't make sense, right?
That's what Lucy is seeing in her mom or something, right?

Harold (23:15):
So now we see that Lucy might be following in the footsteps.
But you can see Lucy as a university professor, and certainly she went the whole way, got the PhD, got the most lucrative gig she can get in teaching.
But why she gives it up for taking in laundry to support, I guess it's not so lucrative if laundry is more lucrative than the teaching career.

Jimmy (23:41):
Yeah, that would definitely could have been her field.

Michael (23:44):
Or she foresaw the collapse of the university system.

Harold (23:51):
It's like getting out while the getting is good.

Jimmy (23:53):
Yeah, I mean, like every business, her little psychiatric help booth just became a website at some point.
And then eventually it was just on an app, you know.

Harold (24:03):
I kind of shudder to think of having Lucy as my professor.

Jimmy (24:09):
Yeah, I don't think you'd learn.
You certainly wouldn't learn the right things, I don't think.
You know, seeing this and Michael saying, you know, this could have appeared at any point in the run.
And it is true, this is one of the real staples going back to the 50s of setups.
And I happen to be listening to a bunch of Gene Shepard shows, old Gene Shepard radio shows.

(24:33):
And for those of you who don't know who Gene Shepard is, he was a radio broadcaster in New York from the Midwest, became a big celebrity in broadcasting.
He did stuff for PBS.
And if you say, I never heard of him, you probably have at least have heard of A Christmas Story.
You'll shoot your eye out.

(24:54):
That is adapted from a book of his called In God We Trust All Others Must Pay Cash.
And he's the actual voice of the narrator in The Christmas Story.
Well, so I just have these things playing in the background and listening to one after the other.
And lo and behold, one comes up and he's talking about the influence of the comic strips.

(25:14):
And he is from 1972 and he talks a lot about the relationship between Schroeder and Lucy, who he unfortunately calls Lois.
Which sucks because he actually knows his stuff.
Like, you know, this is 1972.
So these strips had never been reprinted because one of his trivia questions was before Schroeder played the piano, which character in Peanuts played the piano?

(25:41):
I mean, that is a hard core deep question.
He would have had to have been...

Michael (25:45):
Linus?

Jimmy (25:46):
No, it's Charlie Brown.
See, you don't even know.

Michael (25:48):
Yeah, it's Charlie Brown.
Linus went blink blink, I think, didn't he?

Jimmy (25:51):
No, that's Charlie Brown.

Michael (25:52):
Oh, really?

Harold (25:53):
Yeah.

Liz (25:54):
Yeah.

Harold (25:56):
Yeah, Gene Shepard, independently of Jimmy, I was listening to a bunch of old time radio stuff and Gene Shepard...

Michael (26:04):
Aren't we cool?

Jimmy (26:05):
Don't you wish you had our lives sitting back, listening to old time radio?
That's how we roll.

Harold (26:15):
There's a whole channel, because he did a nightly show in New York City, and he is an amazing extemporaneous speaker.
He's so fun to listen to.
He will weave these stories and take you in all these different crazy places, and then he's ready to end it right at the cutoff point while he's playing some crazy Lone Ranger-ish kind of music.

(26:40):
It's just magical.

Jimmy (26:42):
Yeah, it is magic.
When the ending theme song kicks in, and you realize he's wrapping up at just that moment, it's like a magic trick every episode.

Harold (26:53):
It is.
Yeah.
It's definitely worth checking out.
There's lots of them on YouTube.
There's ones you can listen to, MP3s and all that.
It's worth checking out if you like that sort of thing.

Jimmy (27:03):
And I sent a link to Liz, and she's going to share it in our social media for this particular episode.
Really fun, worth listening to.
It gets, you know, these are all just saved by fans, you know, these old radio shows for the most part.
So, you know, it gets cut out in part, but still worth listening to.

(27:23):
May 8th.
Charlie Brown's trying to sleep, and Sally's not letting him.
She's in his room.
He's covered up to the neck in his comforter, and she says, I did what you said, Big Brother.
Oh, that's because we have been having...
This is a sequence where Sally has not been able to sleep.
She's up at night worrying, and Charlie Brown said, Well, then go and worry.

(27:45):
And here we are now.
Sally says, I did what you said, Big Brother.
I've been worrying about everything.
I even worried about you.
I worried that you'll never amount to anything and you'll marry the wrong girl and all your kids will be stupid.
And then Sally, as she leaves the room, says, Well, I think I'm starting to get a little sleepy.
And Charlie Brown, totally consternated in the last panel, says, I guess I'll just lie here and worry.

Michael (28:12):
Yeah, she got it.
She got it pegged.
That's what's going to happen.

Jimmy (28:17):
I love that the only expression change in those first four panels is in panel three, Charlie Brown gets the parentheses around his eyes, indicating that this does not sound too good, that all his kids will be stupid and he'll marry the wrong girl.

Harold (28:32):
What's interesting, in two strips in a row, we've got three characters futures mapped out.

Jimmy (28:40):
Yeah.
Really funny.
Sally and Charlie Brown's relationship is great.
The other thing I thought was great with Sally this year was when he goes to the, we didn't pick it, but when he goes to the dance and gets kicked out, and then he arrives home early, I think that's one of these, she's already moved some stuff into his room.

Harold (28:59):
She's always doing, always, boy, I don't know what it is about Charlie Brown's room.
It must be pretty nice.

Jimmy (29:07):
It must be nice.
Although it's haunted because he keeps hearing these voices, so I don't know.
May 17th, we're in another sequence.
In this one, Rerun is so frustrated that it seems like everyone that he knows has a dog, but he is not allowed to get a dog.

(29:30):
So he has come up with the idea here that he is going to adopt Snoopy's brother Spike because Spike's out in needles and doesn't have an owner, so this will be a perfect fit.
So this is now Rerun pitching this idea to Snoopy.
And Snoopy is atop the dog house with his little typewriter, and Rerun comes up to him and says, here's what you do.

(29:53):
Write to your brother on the desert.
Tell him he can be my dog.
Tell him we'll be pals.
He can chase sticks and pull me in my wagon and learn tricks.
And in the last panel, we see Snoopy starting to type the letter, Dear Spike, this was not my idea.

Harold (30:12):
I laughed out loud when I read that.

Jimmy (30:14):
It's really a good punch line.

Harold (30:19):
It's perfect, but it's not the first thing I would have come up with writing this.
But of course, that's what Snoopy would start.
If he's actually going to send the letter.
Now, why is he sending the letter?
That's an interesting question.
If he's going to do it, he's going to have to put a disclaimer in right up front.

Michael (30:38):
I got a little nervous because I thought, oh God, if Spike moves back here, then he's going to be in like every strip.
I didn't want that.

Harold (30:49):
I would have loved to have seen a long sequence with Rerun and Spike.
This is one of those deals where Schulz sets up an amazing premise that some people wouldn't milk forever.
This was Mary Worth.
This would be six months.
But no, he comes in, he dabbles in a fascinating idea, and he's out.

Jimmy (31:13):
Yeah.
What it is here on May 24th, we see Spike has arrived and Lucy and Rerun are both there.
Rerun is actually hiding behind his big sister and just peeking out, and he looks at Spike and says, you know what, I don't think that's a Golden Retriever.
Yeah, I actually would have liked to see this be a little long.

(31:36):
I don't mean for years, but I'd like two or three days more.
I love the picture of Rerun peeking out.
That's really cute.
And I love seeing him really treat Lucy as a big sister.
That seems like a very little brother thing, to hide behind her like that.

Harold (31:56):
Lucy's looking at Spike like she's never seen him before.

SPEAKER_2 (31:59):
Yeah.

Liz (32:00):
Why would he think that Snoopy's brother was a Golden Retriever?

Michael (32:04):
Good thought there.

Harold (32:07):
Rerun is an innocent.

Jimmy (32:09):
Yeah, he really is.
June 16th, the Beagle Scouts are out for a hike, and Snoopy calls back to them, come on, keep coming.
And they've now climbed to the top of a summit.
And he says, from here, you can see everything.
Directly in front of you is beautiful Turtle Lake.

(32:30):
And off to your left are the famous Running Rocks.
And on your right is the magnificent Silver Cloud Waterfall.
And then he says, and if you look behind you, you'll see the most wonderful sight of all.
And who should it be?
But Harriet is back.
And she has brought a cake.
And Snoopy says, the angel food cake that Harriet brought along.

(32:54):
Love seeing Ms.
Harriet back with her angel food cake with the seven minute frosting.

Harold (33:02):
I was just wondering, is this a place?
Can we add those up?
Or do they have any geographical meaning?

Michael (33:10):
They're not in Minnesota, I'll tell you that.

Harold (33:12):
There is a turtle lake in Irvine.

Michael (33:16):
Okay.

Harold (33:17):
So maybe that's it.

Michael (33:18):
Nowhere near Santa Rosa.
I don't believe these are real places.

Harold (33:24):
He's just making it up.
But the cake is real.

Jimmy (33:28):
That's all that really matters.
Silver Cloud Waterfall.
The Thac Waterfall, Silver Falls in Vietnam.
Wow.
AI crushing it yet again.
All right.
So you know what?
How about we take a break here and we split some of that angel food cake that Harriet brought along and then come back and finish up the strips for this episode.

(33:59):
And of course, check the good old mailbag.

Liz (34:01):
All righty.

Jimmy (34:02):
All right.
We'll be right back.

Liz (34:04):
Hi, everyone.
We love it when you write or call to tell us how much you enjoy the show.
But don't just tell us.
Tell your friends.
Tell complete strangers.
Share your appreciation in a review.
It doesn't have to be on Apple podcasts.
Sixty percent of you listen on other apps.
Some of those apps have review sections.

(34:24):
Think of all the poor Peanuts fans out there who haven't found us yet.
There are review instructions on our website at unpackingpeanuts.com/spread the word.
Thank you for your support.
And now let's hear what some of you have to say.

Jimmy (34:41):
All right.
And we're back.
Hey, Liz, I'm hanging out in the mailbox.
Do we got anything?

Liz (34:45):
We do.
We got an email from AA.
Foringer.
I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
And AA says, have you guys seen this article?
There was talk about John Hughes doing a live-action Peanuts movie back in the 90s.
And he links to an article from March 30th on MSN.

(35:07):
And I'll put that in social media as well.
And it talks about how it was going to happen, but fell apart, which I'm very grateful for, because while I love John Hughes, I really don't think I would have wanted to see a live-action Peanuts movie.

Michael (35:24):
I cannot visualize it being good.

Jimmy (35:26):
No, I don't think it would be good.
But, I mean...

Harold (35:30):
I wonder if it was...
You know, Hughes kind of had a machine going at that point, because he could write a script sometimes in like two days.
He was just kind of a writer.
Yeah, and so here he is.
And for those of you who don't necessarily...
Most of you, many of you may know John Hughes, but he did...
We can rattle off some of the films that he's known for.

Liz (35:52):
Sixteen Candles.

Jimmy (35:53):
Breakfast Club.

Harold (35:53):
Breakfast Club.
Early on, he was a writer for National Lampoon.

Jimmy (35:58):
Yes.
Oh, Vacation.
One of the...
The Vacation movie is based on a National Lampoon article he wrote.

Harold (36:04):
So yeah, he was...
And he certainly did lots of kid stuff, Home Alone.
So it's interesting that I'm assuming this was something...
He could do anything he wanted at this point in his career that he was looking at peanuts.
That's kind of cool.
That was something of interest to him.
Now, he was having a lot of stuff produced at this point, I think, right?

(36:25):
So he was overseeing his empire, and other people were actually often directing the films, but he'd still direct.
But it's just kind of cool.
He was interested in peanuts.
It's nice to hear that.

Liz (36:36):
Live action peanuts?

Harold (36:38):
Yeah.
I mean, in 1992, what would Snoopy have been?
That's kind of scary.
Pre-Toy Story.
Hell yeah.
What would that have looked like?
What would they have done?
A little puppet?

Michael (36:50):
I don't know.

Harold (36:51):
They could have animated.

Jimmy (36:53):
Because 1994, I think, is when they tried to bring back The Little Rascals, and they made that Little Rascals movie.
And they're like live-action cartoon characters.
Oh, wasn't it?

Harold (37:02):
No, not really.
I don't remember much about it, but I knew it existed.

Jimmy (37:08):
Yeah, I think it's really cool to know about, because it's fun to think about.

Harold (37:14):
Yeah.
First of all, he met Schulz apparently at his house.
Yeah.
It's his here.
So that's, I would love to have been a fly on the wall to see what he was pitching.
You think Schulz probably put the kibosh on it?
I don't know.

Jimmy (37:27):
Maybe.
I tell you what, though.
I don't know.
I think John Hughes is a really good writer, and I like a lot of his movies.
I don't think he has the Schulz sensibility, like, at all.

Liz (37:35):
Yeah.

Jimmy (37:36):
Very interesting.

Liz (37:38):
So that's it for the mail.

Jimmy (37:39):
All right.
Well, I got some stuff from the good old hotline.
We got, in addition to letting us know that the Go Comics was now a subscription, Sawyer Hunnicutt wrote and said, I was wondering when y'all started cartooning, did you have a full-time job or do you just decide I'm going to start cartooning and make it work?
Do you want me to take this?

Michael (38:00):
Good question.
Yeah.

Jimmy (38:01):
Sawyer, Sawyer, my friend.
Yeah.
So I started cartooning.
Well, first off, you can find out how I started cartooning by buying The Dumbest Idea Ever, available now from Scholastic Books.
But yeah, I was 15 years old when I started.
So I was just selling them out of my locker.
And I was 36 when I quit.

(38:24):
Thirty-six, something like that.
Yeah.
Thirty-six to become a cartoonist full-time.
And for years, I would work a job and I'd work, you know, nine, ten hours a day and then come home and do a complete page of comics.
Comics are really fun.
They are the best art form in the world.
They are, it is very, very hard to make it as you're living.

(38:46):
And it's, yeah, it's a slog.

Harold (38:51):
Talking with Jimmy, I was working in the business as the frustrated cartoonist who went off and helped other people get their stuff out there, including Jimmy.
The thing Jimmy said when he hired me is, just find me a way so that I can work in comics full-time.
That was your goal.
Word won, moment won.
That was what my goal was for Jimmy, in any way I could help to get him there.

(39:14):
And so-

Jimmy (39:15):
And two years later, it happened, which is amazing.

Harold (39:19):
Yeah, right?
It was just an incredible thing to be, just peripherally a part of.
I started drawing when I was three.
And like I said, I was working at a publishing company when I sold a comic book that was selling so few copies.
I was just doing it on the side.
Then I realized that I could actually work full time in comics, like I said, supporting other people, helping them get their voices out there.

(39:46):
And so I started a printing, brokering business specifically for all ages comics.
And then that led into where I got the job with Jimmy, helping run his company, which Michael was instrumental in starting Renaissance Press.

Jimmy (40:02):
It was started with me, Michael and Karen Gownley and a bunch of investors.
And then a few years in, we hired Harold to be our Director of Publishing and Operations.

Michael (40:13):
The investors didn't really have much to do with it.

Jimmy (40:15):
No, the investors and what?

Harold (40:18):
Well, without their money, that wouldn't have happened.
So it's something.
It's not nothing.
Thank you to those guys that they put up the funds and then you're able to navigate it.

Michael (40:29):
It's our genius that made it happen.

Harold (40:34):
And then, you know, helping Jimmy led me to be Director of Publishing and Operations at Archie, which in some ways helped me get to Mystery Science Theater.
Then I'm done with Mystery Science Theater.
And all of a sudden, I realized I've got a window of time.
I can get my own voice out there.
And that's why I'm going around the country with my tent, selling my wares.

Liz (40:58):
And where are you going to be after April 29th?

Harold (41:02):
After April 29th?
If you are in the New York City area, Queens has an amazing food night market.
And it's from 4 to midnight on Saturdays.
And I will be there on not every Saturday, but Saturday the 3rd of May from 4 to midnight.
Then I think I will be in Westfield, New Jersey at the Spring Fling on Sunday the 4th.

(41:23):
And that's what's coming up in the month of May.
So, and Michael, what's your story with the world of cartooning and gigs and jobs and?

Michael (41:34):
Well, I was actually I made a living as an artist in a very, very niche field, which kept me going.
So I, in my spare time, was able to do comics.
But my goal when I started comics was to break even.
That was all I wanted was like, boy, I could work really hard for free, but it would be worth it if I could get some comics out.

Liz (42:01):
What was your niche field?

Michael (42:03):
My niche field was engraving on ivory.

Jimmy (42:07):
Scrimshaw.

Michael (42:08):
Scrimshaw.

Jimmy (42:08):
For all you booby dick fans out there.

Michael (42:10):
Yeah, which paid the bill.

Harold (42:12):
Well, it did pay.

Michael (42:14):
It did pay.
Yeah.
So the cartooning, I had hopes that maybe something will happen here, but I really didn't care about it.

Jimmy (42:24):
Yeah.
I think when we were in the 90s, it was unlikely, it was starting out that you could do anything.
It just seemed impossible to get to the point that you would be able to be a professional full-time cartoonist just because.

Harold (42:36):
Yeah.
You could number them in the hundreds.

Jimmy (42:39):
Less probably.
Yeah.
So yeah, the bottom line is, if you want to ever be a cartoonist, it's a long slog and you have to do it purely for the love, because then you'll be happy one way or the other.
If you do it for a whole lot, what's the joke?
You want to know how you make a small fortune in comics?

Harold (42:59):
Start with a large fortune.

Jimmy (43:05):
We also heard from super listener Joshua Stauffer from good old Lancaster PA who writes, hey guys, about that marble sequence, that story was in fact adapted in the 2006 special, He's a Bully Charlie Brown.
It was the final special produced by Bill Melendez and the last one designed for analog TVs in the old four by three aspect ratio.

Harold (43:30):
And that marble episode is the one where Charlie Brown gets the marbles back for rerun after losing to a marble shark from out of town.

Jimmy (43:40):
And then he ends with PS.
We do have an FYE store at Park City Center in Lancaster PA.
So not only that is the same one from the 90s that I got the line of security blanket.
So FYE is still hanging in there.
Way to go.

Harold (43:56):
Good for them.

Liz (43:56):
We also heard from William Pepper telling us about the He's a Bully Charlie Brown, the animated special where the marble story is told.

Jimmy (44:06):
Excellent.

Harold (44:07):
Oh, thanks William.
And thank you, Josh.
Yeah.

Jimmy (44:11):
All right, and that is all we got.
So if you want to reach out and keep this conversation going, there's a couple of ways you can do it.
You can of course call us on the old hotline or leave a text message as Joshua did.
717-219-4162.
You can shoot us an email over at unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com.
We would love to hear from you, because remember when I don't hear, I worry.

(44:32):
So how about we get back to those comic strips?

Harold (44:35):
Yeah.

Jimmy (44:37):
June 23rd.
It's another Sunday, and Woodstock is out and he's picking up some twigs and leaves from the ground, some sticks from the ground.
And Snoopy is watching him go back and forth.
He's doing something with these leaves.
And then in the last panel, we see Woodstock has assembled them into a-

Harold (45:00):
The Twiggy Wood Bowl.

Jimmy (45:01):
Yeah.
A proscenium arch of an amphitheater, and he is putting on a little musical performance.

Michael (45:10):
Playing the One Note Samba.

Harold (45:13):
That is so beautifully drawn.
I love how he's drawn that.
It really gives you the sense of three-dimensionality of these little twigs.
He spent a lot of time on this.

Jimmy (45:25):
Yeah.
It looks great.
It looks great.
And it looks really good with having all that detail in one panel on the one item, and then it's spare throughout the rest of it, and really spare in that last panel.

Harold (45:37):
Yeah.
You just have some shadow and little tufts of grass around Snoopy, and a tiny shadow on Woodstock, and there is no background, there's no cloud, there's nothing.
Except for that, which I think is a great way to go, because it's all about that thing he built.

Jimmy (45:54):
Yeah.

Harold (45:54):
I love it.

Liz (45:55):
Could be E-flat.

Harold (45:57):
It could be.

Jimmy (45:59):
Harrisburg has a great little amphitheater in Reservoir Park, and every year they do Shakespeare in the Park there, and it was a Gownley family tradition.
And I think Woodstock would be a great opening act.

Harold (46:11):
Yeah.

Jimmy (46:13):
June 29th, Woodstock and Snoopy are atop the dog house, and Snoopy is pointing to the sky and he says, look at those two little birds chasing that big bird.
And then Woodstock says something and Snoopy answers, I'm with you.
Let's hear it for the little birds.

Harold (46:31):
Schulz is definitely for the underdog.

Jimmy (46:33):
Yeah.

Harold (46:34):
An under bird.
That's very interesting.
I mean, I keep thinking of Mr.
Rogers and Schulz, kind of having their time in the same era, at least the second half of Schulz's career is kind of around the same time as Mr.
Rogers.
And two people who so far have held up well historically in terms of how people see them, and they both seem to have that same emphasis on respecting and honoring the little things in life.

(47:07):
And that seems to go over well, or the Bob Ross kind of, you know, that kind of gentler.

Jimmy (47:13):
I just watched an episode of Bob Ross the other night.
It's absolutely meditative and relaxing.
There is something about the whole vibe of that show that you don't even, you do, it's, you just.

Liz (47:26):
A happy little tree.

Michael (47:27):
Yeah, yeah, I want to kill the guy, tell you the truth.

Jimmy (47:31):
Why, you don't like his paintings?

Michael (47:33):
Oh, I didn't know, I never thought to look at him.
I was just, I found him annoying.

Harold (47:38):
How did you know anything about him if you hadn't seen his paintings?
It seems like those two go hand in hand.

Jimmy (47:43):
Michael's only a fan of his potato salad.
He didn't know he was a painter at all.

Harold (47:49):
Yeah, Bob Ross's potato salad was seven minute frosted.

Jimmy (47:52):
That's right.

Harold (47:54):
Now in this strip, you see in the first two panels, this interesting waver in the bottom of Snoopy's snout that has become more common.
Because he does it twice in a row in those first two panels, I just start to wonder if Schulz's choosing to, that is the way he wants to draw it.

(48:15):
It looks a little odd to me because usually a snout is a pretty straight shot for a dog.
But I would assume it's not intentional, but you do see it twice, so I don't know.

Jimmy (48:29):
Yeah, I'm not sure.
I wanted to see if those hash marks made it to something, but it doesn't seem to.

Liz (48:35):
Yeah, I tried to figure it out and I couldn't get it.

Jimmy (48:39):
July 5th, the gang's at the beach.
We see Linus, Charlie Brown, Lucy and Snoopy all hanging out on sand.
Linus has been vexed throughout this year, as you may recall, by he hears the coyotes howling outside his house at night.
He gets sad.
So here he is on the beach and he looks a little forlorn, lying up against the picnic basket and he says, I heard the coyotes howling again last night.

(49:03):
Charlie Brown says, maybe they were depressed.
Lucy, annoyed, says, why would coyotes be depressed?
Then Snoopy, with his shades on, leaning up against the rocks says, their mom probably never read to them.

Harold (49:17):
One of the stories that I tell a lot when I'm out and about with my books is, I can't remember if I've mentioned it here, but there is a study that was done quite a few years ago that followed children through adulthood and they collected information on them to try to measure the ones that, by whatever their measure was, were successful in life and then go back and see which of the factors in their lives were most common for those who were successful, whether it was their socioeconomic background, where they went to school, what type of school they went to, all of these different things.

(49:56):
They came up with the one common factor that was most likely an indicator of success was how much the child was read to.

Jimmy (50:05):
I believe that and I absolutely believe that.

Harold (50:07):
It's powerful.

Jimmy (50:08):
Parents out there, it is one of the best.
It's so fun.
It's one of the great joys of being a parent.

Harold (50:15):
It's not just as six-year-olds.
There are families.
There's a whole movement right now where families will sit down and they will read to one another.

Jimmy (50:24):
Yeah, and if it's a kid situation, the parent who's reading, they will have such a great memory of it, even though the parent isn't actually, like you say, sharing anything of themselves other than their time.
But the time is the most important thing.
And, you know, my kids have fantastic memories.
They know all the books we read to them growing up.

(50:45):
Yeah, it's definitely great.

Liz (50:47):
I can remember in clear detail the stories that my father used to tell me.

Harold (50:53):
Oh, that's amazing.

Michael (50:54):
It never happened to me.

Liz (50:56):
Really?

Michael (50:56):
Not once.
No.
I can't remember.

Liz (50:58):
I'll read to you tonight.

Jimmy (51:00):
Oh, there you go.

Michael (51:01):
Well, that's why I like podcasts.
Somebody reading to me.

Jimmy (51:06):
July 8th.
I was talking about hanging out with your friends.
Linus and Charlie Brown are hanging out under some really nice little birch trees.
Then Snoopy is lying up against a larger tree.
Linus poses the question, I've always wondered who the best all-around athletes are, basketball, hockey, football, or soccer players.

(51:26):
Then Snoopy answers, border collies.

Harold (51:30):
I'm with you, Snoopy.

Michael (51:31):
I'm a big fan of border collies.
But I did find a pattern in these one-panel strips.

Jimmy (51:37):
Okay.

Michael (51:38):
There's a bunch of people sitting around, hanging around, and they take turns saying something, and Snoopy gets the last comment, and it's often about dogs.
This one is the way the previous one wasn't, but Snoopy will make it refer back to dogs, in reference to what the other people are saying.
So look for that.

Jimmy (51:59):
That's interesting.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So I wonder if he thinks that, like, going in, you know, like, okay, I want to do one of the panoramic Snoopy dog strips.
He probably would, I would think, you know, I mean.

Harold (52:15):
Do you think he's thinking about that, or he just taking an idea through, and then his nace in the hole more often than not is Snoopy?

Jimmy (52:22):
I think he, yeah, I think he realized, I mean, I didn't realize until Michael said it, but I do see it now.
I think he must have realized that's what he was doing and kept doing it.
You know, the other interesting thing I think about this is, this is like, all right, if time is conflated with space in comics, right?
So like, you know, a panel is a moment or a series of moments, then the next panel is a different moment or series of moments.

(52:50):
And, you know, the gap between the panels, you know, a thousand years could have passed or two seconds could have passed.
But he is employing something just by without the break between the panels, giving their that extra space, which was just Charlie Brown and the tree not responding.

(53:11):
It gives it a much different feel than if like Snoopy was right next to Linus.

Harold (53:18):
So does that feel just more relaxed and like in a timeless moment?
You can keep kind of floating inside the panel because you're not hopping to the next.
That's interesting.
What's fascinating to me is, can you imagine having the job of doing a single panel, character-based comic strip for 50 years?

(53:38):
And the talk about limitations.
And yet when I see Schulz doing his version of a single panel, he's doing what you're just describing in ways that I don't see in other strips.
This is very unique to Schulz.
And he does it over and over again.

(53:59):
I think it's just natural to him.
I don't think he was thinking, well, I'm going to do it differently than everyone else.
This is just when he was living inside of a single panel, this is where Schulz went.
And as influential as Schulz was, this is the era when Schulz I think is less influential.
People are looking back to the stuff from the 50s and 60s, but he's doing something very revolutionary here.

(54:20):
And it just kind of lived its life.
And I don't know of anybody who was reading Peanuts and said, oh, you're unconsciously said.

Jimmy (54:31):
I wonder if that has to do with the fact that he had 40 years of characters built up in people's minds before he started doing this sort of stuff.
You know, Linus has this.

Harold (54:45):
Certainly in his mind.

Jimmy (54:46):
Yeah, right.
And I think in the minds of the readers too.
You know, Charlie Brown sitting there is different than Peppermint Patty sitting there.
You know, it's so subtle like that.
You know, Charlie Brown is thinking about it.
You know, Lucy, there would not be a moment's thought, right?
She would just answer whatever sarcastic answer.
By the way, I think the answer is basketball and soccer.

(55:10):
And I really love that he didn't even mention baseball.

Harold (55:16):
Yeah, that's off the table for before we even start.
Lionel says he's already ruled that one out.
Look at Charlie Brown.
We've talked about how Schulz will draw what is most interesting and not necessarily what is anatomically correct.
Look at the feet and the legs and how they're almost like straight out at us.

(55:39):
And then Charlie Brown's, his head is at one angle.
The body is even further away from the angle of the feet.
And that is one wonky drawing, but it looks good.
And that just seems to be what that's all that matters to Schulz, is that it looks best.

Jimmy (55:55):
July 9th, Charlie Brown and Schroeder are sitting on the baseball bench.
Charlie Brown is indicating that his elbow is starting to bother him.
And he says, my arm hurts.
I'm not sure I can pitch today.
And then he closes his eyes and sticks out his tongue because he's suffering.
And he says, I think throwing all those curve balls put too much strain on my elbow, to which Schroeder replies, those were curve balls?

Michael (56:18):
Do you think Schulz remembers every strip he drew?
Because this is actually a replay.

Jimmy (56:25):
Is it?

Michael (56:25):
Oh, yeah.
No, he's saying like, Schroeder's saying something about like, he's catching, Charlie Brown's pitching.
And he's saying like, yeah, those slow balls are really good.
How about using your fastball on Charlie Brown?
That was my fastball.

Jimmy (56:40):
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
And there's another one where he comes out and he's like, all right, one finger will mean a straight ball, two fingers will mean a straight ball, three fingers will mean a straight ball.

Harold (56:52):
And Schulz Schulz's pain stars are not pointed.
Yeah, they look like a dating game.

Jimmy (56:58):
Yep, that's exactly what they look like.
They're 70s shower flowers.

Michael (57:02):
Yeah, they're little pain flowers.

Jimmy (57:06):
July 18th, Linus and Riren are sitting there watching television.
Very cute.
Linus in classic thumb and blanket position and Riren says to him, I like these nature programs.
You see things you never thought could.
And then in the next panel comes in Snoopy clomped, stealing Linus's blanket and hauling him away.

(57:27):
And Riren watches that confused and then goes back to the TV saying, Happen.

Michael (57:34):
So when did the rerun hair get fixed?

Harold (57:38):
It's kind of, I was trying to see if there's a starting point for the birds nesty kind of thing, as Jimmy describes it, on top of the head where he doesn't have so much on the side.
It's like the fades we have now except it's faded to nothing.

Jimmy (57:50):
Yeah.

Harold (57:52):
It's not a clear progression.
You see it kind of moving in that direction.
I believe it was this year.
This year, yeah.
It's starting to get there, but he's gradually getting there.

Jimmy (58:05):
I think, you know, it looks, this is fine.
I think that hair in this era would have been, keep it like this, it's fine.
I love that we're actually seeing them next to each other, so we can see the difference.

Harold (58:17):
Yeah.
And yet Linus is still so uninvolved with his little brother.
He's just watching TV, sucking his thumb and holding his blanket.
He's just disconnected from his brother for the most part.
I don't know if that changes at all in the later years, but it's interesting to see that that is Linus.
He's really not engaging.

(58:38):
There's not a lot of interesting stuff going on between them.
And also, whoever is doing the Zepatone with Schulz on the clomp lettering, is having a field day, giving this weird 3D, shady feel because there's lots of white areas around.

Jimmy (58:54):
I first thought that it was stipple.
It's because I never saw anyone do that with the Zepatone.

Harold (59:00):
I like it.

Jimmy (59:01):
Yeah, it's cool.
Yeah.

Harold (59:02):
It's not easy either.
At some point, it's really spending a lot of time on the Zepatone.

Liz (59:07):
How can you tell it's not stipple?

Jimmy (59:10):
It's too regular.
You'd have to zoom in super close to see.
I think it's too...
Actually, here's...
Okay, talking about crazy.
If you look at the dots on the left side of the exclamation point, you can see the regular pattern.
That's a real good place to see it.

Harold (59:26):
But it is really hard to see.

Jimmy (59:30):
July 26th is the sequence.
Spike is not feeling at all well here in the war.
So his infantry man is laid up in the infirmary, and Snoopy is the World War I flying ace has come to see him and says, guess what, Spike, I wrote to mom and she's coming over here on a troop ship to see you.
In the next panel, we see a troop ship, and we literally see what, like 10 or 11.

Michael (59:56):
There's 12.

Jimmy (59:58):
Are there really?
Snoopy's.
And then his mom in the middle wearing a little fur hat.

Harold (01:00:03):
Those little wide saucer bell eyes.

Michael (01:00:06):
She's coming from Ukraine.
Yeah.
Anyway, I don't like these.
You probably guessed that by now.

Harold (01:00:15):
And that's because of the, where's the imagination in all of this?

Michael (01:00:18):
No, it doesn't.
I mean, thinking that every dog looks like Snoopy.
This is his fantasy, obviously, but it's a dime a dozen.
That's the old dime a dozen.
She's, there's a dozen.
And they're all exactly like, except for her.

Harold (01:00:31):
How could he have done the gag if they didn't point toward?

Michael (01:00:37):
There's 11, one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

SPEAKER_2 (01:00:42):
Counting them off.

Jimmy (01:00:43):
Oh, you're counting them off.

Michael (01:00:44):
I don't get the hat, to tell you the truth.

Jimmy (01:00:47):
What do you mean you don't get it?

Michael (01:00:50):
What does it signify?
It signifies Russian to me.

Jimmy (01:00:54):
Yeah, I mean, it looks like, oh, I mean, that looks like the classic picture of an immigrant woman coming over on a boat, if that immigrant woman was a cartoon beagle.

Michael (01:01:05):
But she's got those weird eyes.
I mean, we've never seen her, but this is a fantasy her, but she must have looked something like that with weird eyes.

Jimmy (01:01:15):
Yeah, because the other bell has those eyes too, Snooki's sister.

Harold (01:01:20):
And Lucy started that way too.
Yeah.

Jimmy (01:01:23):
And speaking of strange Zip-a-Tone, we wrap things in this episode up with August 3rd, Charlie Brown and Sally are sitting in the chair.
Charlie Brown is reading a comic book, and Sally says, I now have three philosophies.
Life goes on, who cares, and how should I know?
Sally, very pleased with her, says, pretty profound, huh?

(01:01:44):
And Charlie Brown says, maybe a little too profound, to which Sally says, who cares, how should I know?
Life goes on.

Michael (01:01:51):
Yeah, I picked this just because I like Sally as a philosopher.
But I missed the high point of the strip, which is that Zip-a-Tone.

Jimmy (01:01:59):
Isn't that crazy?

Liz (01:02:00):
Wow.

Jimmy (01:02:01):
Really patterned.

Michael (01:02:02):
That must have just come on the market or something.

Jimmy (01:02:06):
It's really detailed.
I wonder how that looked in newspapers across this great land of ours.
I bet smudgy in a lot of them.
But it's looking pretty good.
It's feeling pretty good.
You know what else feels pretty good?
Getting to spend every Tuesday hanging out with your pals, talking about comic strips.

(01:02:26):
Especially your favorite one, Peanuts.
We're going to stop doing that this week, but just so we can rest up and come back next week, where we are going to wrap up 1996.
Absolutely hard to believe.
Now listen, if you want to keep this conversation going between now and then, then there's a couple of things we'd love for you to do.

(01:02:49):
Go on over to unpackingpeanuts.com.
Sign up for the great Peanuts reread.
That'll get you that one email a month, lets you know what we're going to cover.
And you can also, if you want to just talk to us, you can call us at 717-219-4162, leave a message on the hotline or a text message.
Email us at unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com or follow us on Instagram and threads where we're at Unpack Peanuts and on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube where we are at Unpacking Peanuts.

(01:03:20):
And remember when I don't hear from you, I worry.
So don't make me worry.
And for Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

Harold (01:03:29):
Yes.

Liz (01:03:30):
Be of good cheer.
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz and Liz Sumner.
Produced and edited by Liz Sumner.
Music by Michael Cohen.
Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark.
For more from the show, follow Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and Threads.

(01:03:50):
Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.
For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.
Come on.