1997 Part 3 - Just Out of Curiosity, What Did You Have For Breakfast?

Rerun hides under the bed again. Lucy and Charlie Brown go on a date. Michael causes the gang to have an existential crisis and the very concept of the podcast is shaken to the core! Woodstock leads Olaf and Andy to the edge of the earth. And Zipatone ties the room together. Plus: Al Pacino!

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 for three cartoonists, take an in-depth look at the greatest comic strip of all time, Peanuts by Charles M.
Schulz.

Jimmy (00:19):
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the show.
This is Unpacking Peanuts.
Today, we are wrapping up good old 1997, and I'll be your host for the proceedings.
My name is Jimmy Gownley.
I'm also a cartoonist.
I did things like Amelia Rules, Seven Good Reasons Not To Grow Up, and The Dumbest Idea Ever.
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.

(00:42):
He's the co-creator of the original Comic Book Prize Guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules, and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, The Gathering Spells, and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.

Michael (00:53):
Say hey.

Jimmy (00:54):
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 (01:04):
Hello.

Jimmy (01:05):
And making sure everything runs smoothly, it's our producer and editor, Liz Sumner.

Liz (01:10):
Hey now.

Jimmy (01:13):
Now, I have a question.
Are you just trying to settle on one, or are you gonna right now commit to coming up with a different one?

Michael (01:21):
These are the classics.

Liz (01:24):
I'm torn.
I haven't found one that really fits.

Michael (01:28):
I think Hey Now is what one of the greats.

Jimmy (01:34):
Well, you know, I'm excited to get back to talking about Peanuts.
How about we're gonna shake things up a little bit here.
We're gonna go off book and we're gonna do the anger and happiness index right off the top of the show.

Liz (01:50):
That makes me angry and happy.

Jimmy (01:52):
Well, we are committed to innovation here.
So here we go.
Harold, what do we got?

Harold (01:57):
Well, we know some things about this year that are a little unusual, right?
We know that Schulz did what we might have thought was unthinkable.
He asked for a holiday, for a vacation.
So with that opening, this is the first year since 1950, we haven't had a full year of strips.

(02:19):
Wow.
That's kind of a big deal.
Yeah.
But with all this stress and leading up to a vacation, I just wanted to throw it out as I do every year.
How many strips?
Let's do it.
Here's what I'll do.
I'll give you the raw numbers.
We have 330 strips instead of 365 or 66 strips this year.

(02:42):
But I'm going to adjust them up since those are the numbers we've been using, then I'll give the raw numbers as well.
But I'll just assume we did 365 and I'll just move the percentages.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It sounds like the equivalent of what we had.
In 1995, we had 83 strips with anger, and in 96, we had 79 strips.

(03:04):
But given what we know, when you were reading them or based on what you know, what he's going through, did it feel like it was any more angry, any less angry?

Jimmy (03:14):
I think it's up a little bit in anger.

Harold (03:16):
How about you, Michael?
Any thoughts of how this particular round of strips felt to you?

Michael (03:22):
Well, I kind of object to the whole concept here.

Jimmy (03:26):
A little late for that.

Michael (03:27):
I'm a little late for that.
But I don't know if an artist's mood, it really affects their work.

Harold (03:36):
Interesting.
Well, that's why I'm doing it.
I'm trying to get a sense of that.

Michael (03:40):
If somebody's really depressed, they might try to do something funny.
I don't know of this analyzing what's going on in Schulz's life is going to affect whether this strip is showing anger or happiness.
He's probably, I mean, I don't know, but he's going to die in three years.

(04:02):
Does he know that?
Is he starting to worry about that?
I mean, that's pretty serious stuff.

Harold (04:09):
Yeah.

Michael (04:09):
I'd expect that to affect the amount of energy he has.

Harold (04:15):
That's interesting.

Michael (04:16):
But it's very well.
If he's feeling bad, he might want his characters to be happy.
I don't know.
So I really can't guess.
Basically, I'd say, well, it's probably the same, probably very close to the same.

Harold (04:34):
Well, this is why I've been doing this all through the years, was just to try to get a sense of, was there a trajectory?
Was it random?
Would the dots just look random on the chart in terms of how this?
Because the strip changes in tone.
I think we'd all agree that with that.
Over the years, I mean, Michael, you've got some favorite years, late 50s.

(04:59):
I think mid 60s is where my favorite stuff has been.
I don't know, where would you peg yourself?
Jimmy, would you say there's a certain sweet spot?
I think we've talked about this before.

Jimmy (05:12):
Yeah, I've decided I'm never going to pick a favorite of anything in my life ever again.
I really have decided this.
My new, Lennon McCartney, both, which is your favorite Beatles album, all of them.
That's just where I'm going to be now.

Harold (05:26):
This is like Sally, your new.

Jimmy (05:27):
Yes, that's my new philosophy.

Harold (05:30):
Because I mean, it's interesting to me, Michael, if we were to hit around 1958 or so, we're used as the sweet spot of Peanuts, that's as angriest, 170 strips almost, over half of the strips were angry.
We're now been hanging around the 70s and 80s in a period.
Now, that's obviously, that's not the reason you don't particularly like these strips compared to 1958.

(05:53):
But there's something in the tone that's changed.

Michael (05:55):
But this is all very subjective from your point of view.
So we don't know if we did our own anger and happiness, if we get anything near ear care.

Harold (06:08):
Yeah, I don't think it would be that far off just because you're looking at a little line going down somebody's eye, the context.
But you're right.
I mean, we would have different numbers.
Well, okay, given all of that, this is the second angriest year since 1968.
The equivalent, we went from what was 79 in 1996 to the equivalent if you had done a full year's worth of strips of 102.

Jimmy (06:35):
I suspect it's going to continue in that way till the end.

Harold (06:39):
Interesting.
Okay.
After his vacation, it's going to be interesting to see if anything.

Jimmy (06:43):
It'll be like six weeks of everything being great.

Harold (06:48):
Or he's like, I'm behind.

Jimmy (06:50):
Yeah, either that or it could be maybe it's a bad vacation and Snoopy loses his luggage for over a half and-

Michael (06:57):
I don't know.
I mean, it seems to me that, I mean, is your theory that he is angry at something?

Jimmy (07:05):
Mine?

Michael (07:06):
No, I'm talking to Harold.
Or you guys, if you're thinking this is relevant to Schulz's day-by-day life, do you think indicating more anger in the strip indicates that he's angry?

Harold (07:19):
I think so, just because, you know, Schulz has said these characters are notes on a keyboard, he's playing the keys.
This strip feels deeply personal.
I think it's one of the reasons I love this strip so much is it seems to be in some strange, marvelous way, a reflection of a man in his life.

(07:40):
The strip was Charles Schulz's life in a lot of ways.
He obviously had a lot more of a life, but somehow he was able to put himself into this strip in ways that I haven't seen other artists do.
That's why I've enjoyed going through this all of these years, over the years that he did it, because I'm constantly marveling at Schulz being in the strips.

(08:07):
He makes the strips live in ways that I don't see in other strips.
If Beetle Bailey is a different kind of strip, we say it a lot.
The gagaday thing, it's clever, incredibly well drawn, slickly done, but Schulz somehow seems to be in this strip.
I can see strips that seem to be in spite of themselves, while someone's going to continue to do a certain thing.

(08:30):
Schulz just seems to somehow put the essence of himself into the strip.

Jimmy (08:34):
Well, not just somehow.
I mean, it's his goal.
He has no co-writers.
He doesn't pick gags from anybody.
It's not somehow.
It's his life's goal.
It's what he does every single day.
I think it's, we go back to when he was a little kid, and he thought he had a face that was so plain known would remember him.

(08:59):
This isn't just about his characters being seen.
I don't think it's ever been just about his characters being seen.
I think it's about him being seen, too, in a way that it's not for Mort Walker.
Mort Walker was a commercial artist who was great at what he did, but he worked with a team player.

Harold (09:14):
He would bring people together, and they would do it together, which was, this is usually a solitary job.
He was kind of the opposite.
He's like, I'm going to create an atmosphere of fun.
Yeah, and we're going to do this together.
That in itself is an amazing feat.

Jimmy (09:30):
Absolutely.

Harold (09:32):
Second angriest since 1968, and on the happiness side, it's the least happy year ever.
It was the least happy last year at 71.
This would be the equivalent of 64.
It's circumstantial.
It's just dots on a graph for one year.

(09:55):
But given what we do know about Schulz in this year, it suggests that, yeah, there's something of him reflected in this through me just picking anger and happiness.
There's so many other things you could pick out of the strip to say, hey, how has this shifted over the years?
This is just the ones I chose.
But it does seem like something is going on.

Michael (10:13):
Well, I mean, obviously, the mood has changed.
But that's the difference between being fairly young and fairly old.

Harold (10:21):
Yeah.

Michael (10:22):
So I'm going to go on forever.
I don't understand about the index.
Might as well bring it up now.

Harold (10:31):
In 1997.

Michael (10:32):
Two more to go.
I don't see those as dichotomies in any way.
What do you mean by that?
They're certainly not opposites.

Harold (10:40):
What, anger and happiness?
Yeah.
I think in some ways it is.
You could say it is.

Michael (10:44):
I mean, anger.
I mean, it's just like happiness and sadness, yes.
But you chose to do an anger index rather than a sadness index.

Jimmy (10:53):
While we're at it, why is this a podcast at all?

Michael (10:56):
Yeah, I don't know if I'm in the spotlight.

Jimmy (11:02):
As long as we're thinking about things we should have thought of 40 months ago.

Liz (11:08):
Why don't we do the strips in alphabetical order rather than-

Jimmy (11:11):
Even better.
Why not the phantom?

Michael (11:15):
Why should we care about a funny strip?
I mean, really, this is like 30 second read for-

Jimmy (11:23):
We're going to go back and we're going to chart peakishness and ennui in the phantom.
That's what we're going to do.
But before we do that, what we're going to do is we're going to actually get to these comic strips that you came to hear us talk about.
Now, if you want to follow along with this, a couple of things you can do is you can go over to unpackingpeanuts.com and sign up for the great Peanuts reread.

(11:47):
It'll be a little late to the party, but do it anyway.
Then it'll let you know once a month what strips we're going to be covering till the end of the run here.
What else?
Is that all they have to do?
Yeah, that's all you have to do because you used to be able to go to gocomics.com for free and get these strips.
But now that is a paid service, it's $4.99 a month and you get not just Peanuts, but everything else.

(12:09):
But if you look around cleverly, you might be able to find them on the Internet.

Harold (12:13):
So with that said, let's start with the strips.

Jimmy (12:17):
September 4th, Lucy and Charlie Brown are seated in a baseball stadium and no one else is there because it is raining.
And Lucy is looking at her ticket and it says, Holder of this ticket assumes all risk incidental to the game of baseball.
Charlie Brown is reading his ticket and it says, If regulation game is not played on this date, this ticket may be.

(12:40):
And then we also see a ball coming out of the sky and bonk hitting Lucy on the head.

Michael (12:45):
So where does this bonk fall in the conversation?
Is the bonk in between?

Jimmy (12:52):
Yes.

Michael (12:53):
So he hasn't noticed it.

Jimmy (12:55):
No, he has not noticed it.
You know, the other thing I wanted to bring up about this, other than that's pretty nice drawing of a bunch of seats in the stadium.
I wouldn't have tried that.
But are they on a date?

Michael (13:09):
That was my question.
What are the circumstances here?
They don't like each other.

Jimmy (13:15):
I think they're on a date.
I think they're giving this crazy thing a try.

Liz (13:19):
Maybe he's showing her what somebody in right field is supposed to do.

Michael (13:24):
I mean, what's the nearest ballpark to these guys?
Major League ballpark.
I don't think they'd print that on a minor league ticket.
I might be wrong.

Jimmy (13:34):
Sure, they would.

Michael (13:35):
They would?

Harold (13:36):
Yeah, why wouldn't they?

Michael (13:37):
Because they're earning money.
It costs money to print these.

Jimmy (13:41):
Oh, yeah.

Harold (13:41):
Yeah.

Jimmy (13:42):
Yeah, they do.

Harold (13:43):
There's a famous Peanuts stripper, just Charlie Brown, and he's in the bleachers.
It was like a Sunday.
I don't even remember what the gag was, but was he also looking at his ticket or something?

Jimmy (13:54):
I don't remember.

Harold (13:54):
It was like a Sunday.
Yeah, it's from, I think it was just him going to the baseball.
He's getting his hot dog.
He's doing all this stuff.
And then he gets in his seat and then the rain's falling.
And then I think he might be reading his ticket.
So the scenario here is everyone's left because it's raining, but the game is still going on, I guess, because Lucy just got hit on the head by a baseball.

(14:20):
Charlie Brown is reading the ticket to see if it's deep enough into the game that he's going to get his money back.
So, okay, so that you get a lot of information just from this one panel of what's actually going on.

Michael (14:32):
Well, you actually know that they're not sitting in center field on the cheap seats because the ball's coming from one side.

Jimmy (14:41):
Well, yeah, I guess it could be.
So they're out and they're actually probably on the right field line.

Michael (14:47):
I thought they were on the left field line.

Jimmy (14:49):
Sure.
Hey, they're both just out of curiosity.
What do you have for breakfast today?
You know what?
I don't like comic strips at all.
I'll tell you another thing.
I was never on my ticket.
I swear to God, you kids, you millennials and younger.
I'll show you anger and happiness.

(15:11):
You will see my anger.
And then when I kick your butt, I'll be happy.

Harold (15:17):
We didn't need legal people to figure out our relationship with the baseball game.
We fought for our money back.

Jimmy (15:23):
Right.
We could tell if it was rain and it didn't matter.
We sat there and we liked it.
September 5th.
So Rerun is hiding under his bed again.
And Lucy comes into his room and says, why are you hiding under your bed?
And we see from under the bed, school starts next week.
And Lucy says, you hid under your bed last year and it didn't work.

(15:45):
And then Rerun says, I'm better at it now.

Michael (15:49):
This doesn't look like the same cartoonist as the last one.
This is just very spare.

Jimmy (15:54):
Yeah.

Michael (15:55):
Very few lines.

Jimmy (15:57):
I thought this one felt, the staging felt like a 50 strip for some reason.
I'm not sure why.
I'll tell you one thing.
I wouldn't have drawn that weird bed four times, especially if I was struggling with something, with drawing.
I wouldn't want to keep drawing the same thing four times, but he manages to do it.

Harold (16:18):
It's weird looking at this strip.
Normally, you know, the panels look clean.
Even the panels here have jaggies on them.
It's like he's struggling.
How do you not do a straight line with a ruler?

Jimmy (16:36):
A straight line with the best in there.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, no.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, you know how you do not do a straight line with a ruler.
You're using a dip pen.

Harold (16:45):
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.

Jimmy (16:47):
I mean, that's the thing.
That's crazy that he's even trying that.

Michael (16:51):
There's a couple of strange things here.
Panel three, where part of the furniture is cut off around her nose.

Jimmy (16:59):
Yeah.

Michael (17:01):
It almost looks like it was an overlay, you know.

Harold (17:04):
Yeah.
So he would have whited out around it.

Jimmy (17:07):
Yeah.
Yeah, it does kind of look like that.
Or a color form that was stuck on and it has the little.
Yeah.
Now, if you were doing that, would you prefer it to go?
It's you know what?
I think what happened there is he put on the Zipatone at the end.
And if because if he if you extended the line up, you know, and then the line over to make that a complete rectangle, it would like hit her right on the nose.

(17:29):
Yeah.
And I think it would look like a weird tangent, which is why he's doing that.
September 7th.
It's a Sunday.
And we are in Rerun's kindergarten classroom and he gets bonked in the head with a chalkboard eraser.
Now he's back home telling his big sister about it.
And Lucy says, an eraser?

(17:50):
And Rerun says, and on the first day of school, I decided we all need to show more respect, to be more considerate, more polite.
So when the teacher came in, I stood up and greeted her.
Good morning, ma'am.
I looked around and I was the only one standing, so I sat down.
The teacher didn't say, and we're seeing this.
This is actually a flashback we're seeing in Rerun's mind, as he explains it to Lucy.

(18:13):
And then he continues, the teacher didn't say anything.
She just stared at me, like maybe she was in shock.
And then we flash back to Lucy and Rerun on the couch, and Rerun concludes with, that's when I got hit on the back of my head with an eraser.

Michael (18:27):
That's weird, isn't it?
It's kind of a surprise ending.

Jimmy (18:31):
Yeah, it's very strange.
He doesn't really do this.
I can think of one or two episodes with Spike, where he switches to a different location for the visuals, and the narration stays, but that's super rare.

Harold (18:49):
Yeah, we did it also with Rerun with the bully.
He was telling the story of the bully this year.

Jimmy (18:54):
Yes, right.

Michael (18:56):
So is this implying that, well, one of the students threw it at him, so he should have?

Jimmy (19:03):
Yeah, I think so.

Harold (19:04):
Maybe it's the same kid.
I can't remember how it falls in time.
There's a story this year.
I don't know if we picked any of the strips where it was a bullying kid and Rerun stands up to the kid and actually feels good about himself for having done it.
But then he finds out that he's being complained to by the kid's mom.

(19:25):
How often does this happen in the world?
He goes to the principal's office and ultimately finds out the mom has transferred the kid to another school just because.

Jimmy (19:34):
Did we not pick any of those?
That was a good sequence.

Harold (19:38):
Was that, is it to come or did we already hit that?
I can't remember.

Jimmy (19:41):
I can't remember either.
That was a pretty good sequence.
Well, if we missed it, that's, you know, there's 17,000, almost 18,000 of these things.
So what is the yellow thing?

Michael (19:50):
Bloodstained.

Liz (19:51):
Well, I thought they were pain, pain stars.

Harold (19:55):
Yeah, I thought it was the...
No, no, no.
Oh, where?

Liz (19:57):
It's a cabinet.

Harold (19:59):
Oh, yeah.

Jimmy (20:01):
With pain stars.
Oh, it is a cabinet with the two doors.
I see.
Now, you can really only see that in that one panel, though.

Harold (20:08):
Yeah, that's that dating game cabinet.

Jimmy (20:10):
Yeah, it's the dating game cabinet with the pain stars.

Liz (20:13):
And you didn't mention the little pig-haired girl.

Jimmy (20:16):
Oh, the little pig-haired girl is back.

Michael (20:21):
The longer I look at this one, the weirder it gets.
This is actually like time travel.
This is one of those quantum paradoxes.

Jimmy (20:31):
Oh, look.

Michael (20:32):
No, this is weird.
This is like a mobius strip.
He gets hit on the head with the eraser, right?
We established that.
And then he's explained to Lucy that after he got hit on the head with an eraser, he decided to stand up.
So then he stands up and he talks, and then he gets hit on the head with the eraser.

Harold (20:54):
Wow, we just keep going and going.
Yeah, it's like a peat and repeat.
We're sitting on a fence.

Michael (20:59):
Yeah.

Jimmy (21:00):
Did you ever hear Alan Moore's five sentence or five word science fiction story?

Michael (21:07):
Yes, but I can't.

Jimmy (21:08):
A machine I invented at time.

Harold (21:16):
I have to say there are a couple of panels here where Rerun looks like he's got a comb over.
He really does.

Jimmy (21:28):
Oh, just shave it off, Rerun.

Harold (21:29):
It's okay.

Jimmy (21:30):
We've all been there.
Well, we all haven't, but I've been there.
Yeah.
No, this is we're getting into full on Bird's Nest.
And I think we could have stopped with his 96 design.

Michael (21:42):
Well, it's the color on the Sunday that makes it more apparent.

Jimmy (21:46):
Yeah, that's true too.

Harold (21:47):
Yeah.
I think every time somebody went, oh, I thought that was Linus.
He just goes a little crazier.
Yeah.

Jimmy (21:54):
But I wonder like, because I could see it like sticking up more like, let's say, pigpens is, you know what I mean?

Harold (22:00):
Yeah.

Jimmy (22:01):
But it really does have a comb over look.

Harold (22:06):
Yeah.
I mean, he could have given him, was it Connor?
Was the name of that character?
That 90s kid who looked so 90s?
He could have given him the Connor look, but then he probably would have come across a little too confident, a little too with it.

Jimmy (22:22):
September 15th, it's raining and Peppermint Patty and Charlie Brown arrive at Marcy's house and Peppermint Patty has a football.
And she says to Marcy, come on, Marcy, we need the practice.
And Marcy says, it's raining and I hate football.
Peppermint Patty says, what if you marry somebody who likes to go to football games?
And Marcy answers, my husband will be very wealthy and own a luxury box.

(22:44):
Then Peppermint Patty turns and looks at Charlie Brown.
They're all just standing in the rain.
And then she turns back to Marcy and says, don't count on it, Marcy.

Harold (22:54):
Interesting year for Charlie Brown and Marcy.

Liz (22:57):
And Peppermint Patty is facing reality.

Jimmy (23:00):
Yeah.

Harold (23:02):
Yeah, these two, maybe they are the ones.
There's also that strip with Marcy.
She keeps coming back to Charlie Brown's house and asking him point blank, you know, what his feelings are for her.
And at one point, he just kind of says, yeah, I like you, but I got a TV show I got to get back to.

(23:27):
And then she's like, just left sitting on the porch and saying, and here I am, you know, left sitting with a dog, essentially.
And Snoopy says, no problem, sweetie.
But I was just thinking when I saw that the second time, I was like, the fact that Schulz gave Snoopy sweetie.

(23:50):
Seemed like a little editorial where Schulz was like, yeah, Marcy's the best.
And yeah, and he wishes Marcy on his Charlie Brown.
And I think that's kind of cool.
And, you know, whenever I see Marcy, I'm thinking Billie Jean King.

Liz (24:06):
Yeah.

Harold (24:07):
And I know they were good friends and it's really interesting.
Although Marcy's not good at sports, which is fascinating.

Jimmy (24:15):
Maybe that's, he knew he could never actually beat Billie Jean King.
So he compensated for it.
September 16th, we're back in kindergarten with Rerun and the little pig tailed girl.
And Rerun says, I'm sorry I was late, man.
We had a little trouble at home.
Our kitchen was full of squabbles.

(24:37):
I just think that's funny.
I just like our kitchen was full of squabbles.
That sounds like a fifties thing.
That would be the title of a book.
Your kitchen is full of squabbles, Charlie Brown or whatever.

Harold (24:50):
I'm really liking Rerun's view of the world.
And he's hard to put into words because he is a rich character, but I really do like him.
He is unlike the other Van Peltz and any of the other characters in this strip.
He really adds something special and unique.

(25:10):
And I'm enjoying it a lot.

Jimmy (25:13):
And I think it's the kind of character you couldn't create earlier in your career because it would come off as possibly ill-defined.

Harold (25:22):
Yeah.

Jimmy (25:23):
It's not because every other character in Peanuts is so defined, you know that he could have done it that way.
And this is just such more, it's richer and more realistic in a way.

Harold (25:33):
Isn't that fascinating that, yeah, I think you're right.
I think because the other characters were so starkly set out for people so that when he comes along, it's like he gets the benefit of the doubt or something.
I don't know.

Jimmy (25:47):
Yeah.

Harold (25:48):
Yeah.
I have a question.
Why do you think the little girl is blonde in the Sunday strips and yet she has this dark Zipatone in the dailies?

Liz (26:01):
That bothers me.

Jimmy (26:03):
Well, maybe she just is trying something.

Harold (26:08):
It is 1997.

Jimmy (26:10):
Right.
She feels awkward about it.
I don't know.

Michael (26:14):
I think Zipatone wigs are quite popular in the 90s.

Harold (26:18):
That's true.
That was the era.

Jimmy (26:21):
Courtney Love had it.

Harold (26:22):
Would these be called wig tails then?
So I have a question.
This is an artist's question.
We were talking about Lucy having that cut out of white around her when she was up against some art that would, the lines would have gone into her face if you had to draw just the way it is.

(26:45):
And so he creates this halo of white around her face.
Here the choice on this cabinet we've been talking about with the flowers in the first panel, he has the flowers.
Second panel, the flowers would be hitting the edge of the panel and he opts not to draw them even though they would be there.
Is that simply because it would somehow be distracting to have them because they're touching?

(27:13):
He has to do it.
There's their books on top of the cabinet.
So the books have to go to the edge.
But for some reason, the flowers don't.
What is that?

Michael (27:23):
I mean, it's ambiguous whether you'd even see them in panel two because it's a real close up.

Harold (27:29):
But how about panel three?
That's the one I'm looking at, Michael.

Michael (27:32):
Oh, I see.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's just classic cartooning.
You know, things disappear and appear in the background.
Nobody cares.

Harold (27:41):
Do you think that's because visually it's going to take away from the impact somehow?

Michael (27:48):
Well, no one's going to notice it except like a real maniac.

Liz (27:51):
I think he had too much space in the first panel, so he had to draw little pain flowers on it.

Harold (27:57):
Or it would look imbalanced.

Liz (28:00):
But on the third panel, there isn't enough room for those.
So he says, oh, what the heck?

Harold (28:05):
Doesn't need to have it.

Michael (28:07):
Yeah, no one will notice.

Jimmy (28:11):
September 17th, we're in a court room, or we're in my mind when I have about 104 fever, and this is moments before I see the tunnel of life.
Because there is Snoopy is a lawyer, and let's just go with a girl sitting next to him, and we'll discuss it later.

(28:34):
And then Snoopy says, yes, your honor, this is my client Alice, the injured party who fell down the rabbit hole.
We intend to prove negligence on the part of the property owner for failing to post a warning sign by the rabbit hole.
And we cut to just Linus and Snoopy, the lawyer outside on a bench, and Linus says, how did your case come out today?

(28:56):
And Snoopy answers, the judge told me to take my hat off in the courtroom.

Liz (29:00):
That's so creepy.

Michael (29:01):
It is creepy.

Jimmy (29:02):
But she is creepy.

Michael (29:03):
And it defies the Alice stereotype, because she doesn't seem to have blonde hair.

Harold (29:09):
Well, I don't know.
That's the same Zipatone as the blonde in the classroom.

Liz (29:14):
Dark blonde.

Jimmy (29:15):
She's just drawing something too.

Michael (29:16):
You know, of all the fictitious characters in the world, Alice is the most recognizable, just because of the John Tenille drawings.
You know what she's wearing, you know, what color everything is.

Harold (29:27):
So, Jimmy, how do you describe what we're looking at, for those of us who are not looking at the strip as we hear this?

Jimmy (29:34):
There was a 1970s game called Mr.
Mouth, which was a smiley face sphere that would just open on a hinge and you would have to shoot chips into it.
That's her head.
And then there's a sad mop on top of it.
I mean, it looks like I have a lamp here in my studio.

(29:54):
That's just from the 70s.
It's a smiley face bulb lamp.
If you just put a mop on top of it, it would look exactly like this drawing of Alice.

Liz (30:04):
It's very creepy.
It's very frightening.
Horror movie kind of.

Michael (30:09):
Oh, yeah.

Jimmy (30:09):
Yes.
Or like Coraline.
Yeah.

Michael (30:13):
Or at least Raggedy Ann.
It just doesn't have anything else.

Jimmy (30:16):
Yeah, Raggedy Ann.

Harold (30:17):
I mean, the mouth goes from one edge of her hair to the other.
There's no end of the mouth smiling in this kind of...
But the two eyes made out of coal, like Frosty the Snowman is all I can say about her eyes.
Because they are black circles, I mean, big black circles.

Jimmy (30:36):
Well, yeah, really scary, really scary.

Harold (30:39):
But she, I mean, it's an interesting choice.
What do you think he's doing here?
Because she's a fictional storybook character.
He's not drawing it the way you would see Alice normally.
But she does look like a rag doll or he's trying to...
It's almost like he's trying to say, this character isn't real in the Peanuts World.

Jimmy (31:02):
Yeah, yeah, I think you're probably right about that.
Yeah.

Harold (31:07):
I mean, maybe he tried drawing it the other way and it opened up this box of, oh, now, everyone now wants to see Alice living in the Peanuts World.
It's almost like he wanted to make Alice look like a doll of Alice so that you couldn't even go there.

Jimmy (31:22):
Yeah.

Michael (31:22):
I don't know.
I mean, he did Alfred E.
Newman.
This is a straight copy of Alfred E.
Newman.

Harold (31:27):
But he was a son.
Yeah.
A son wouldn't necessarily, I mean, he did have to worry.
It's such an interesting choice.

Jimmy (31:41):
Really strange, but I'm glad that we got it.
But this makes me think of something, going back to our Poetics of Peanuts.
I was reading, and I'm actually not going to look at it today, but I read from it rather today, but I was reading the 50th anniversary book, 50 years of a golden celebration, I think it's called.

(32:04):
And Schulz talks about, in a couple of places, he just kind of alludes to the fact that, yeah, yeah, you just drop the stuff that you don't like.
So I think that's got to be part of it.
It's implicit in the design of a comic strip that you can sculpt your own version of it, because even the artist is doing things that gets left behind, or gets forgotten, or gets thrown away, or gets retconned out of existence.

(32:33):
So I think Michael, when he says, all right, I'm just going to have to decide this never happened.
I think that's allowed by the form and specifically by this particular cartoonist.
So I think that's part of it.

Michael (32:45):
Well, but if something is so long established, that I would take it for a rule.

Jimmy (32:52):
So five seconds.

Michael (32:53):
I could say the no adults in the strip.
Peanuts is a strip which has no adults, but it did have adults early on.
And so you could say, well, that can't be a rule because he already violated it.
But we're talking 50 years of no adults.

Harold (33:10):
That's pretty good.
It never happened.

Jimmy (33:12):
Like I said, just ignore it in your own headcan and free.
Peanuts seems to allow that.
You can have your own version that's specific to you, which is kind of cool.
Other comic strips can do it too, obviously.

Harold (33:26):
It's fascinating.
You say that I never really thought about that with comics.
I was instantly started thinking about animation, where you have this continuity of motion.
The fun of animation is often how you can distort within the living, moving world, things that you couldn't do in real life.

(33:47):
But you're saying in the panel, it's comics world, where you read things in by definition there.
What do you call them?
They're staccato.
They're broken up into their own little vignettes.

Jimmy (34:01):
Episodic.

Harold (34:02):
Somehow what we've discovered is that comics can have something happen, and then the next time you visit, it doesn't happen and the rules seem to be different in a lot of artists' minds and a lot of readers' minds, that that's okay.
Right.
That's cool.

Jimmy (34:21):
Right.

Harold (34:21):
Exactly.

Jimmy (34:23):
The other thing I was thinking about, forgive me if I've told the story before, stop me if I have actually.
But we talk about things like this, this character would act out a character.
This is different.
This one.
Can I ever tell you about the Greg Williams Al Pacino story?

Liz (34:39):
Doesn't sound familiar.

Jimmy (34:41):
All right.
This is my rule of if something's out of character, maybe it's not because I was in second grade and we were sitting there in Mrs.
Ike's class, and there was this kid, Greg Williams, and he was really quiet, never said much, never did anything.
Just sat in the back of the class.
Mrs.
Ike went out in the hall one day and said, be quiet students, I'll be right back.

(35:02):
Greg Williams walked to the front of the class, pulled his shirt up all the way and then did a little dance and said, Al Pacino, Al Pacino, Al Pacino, looking down.
Al Pacino.
And then he put his shirt back down and sat down.

(35:23):
Well, there's no rules in my life that allows for that to happen.

Michael (35:26):
Well, there are medical situations.

Jimmy (35:28):
But it happened.

Harold (35:30):
Medical situation.
That's wild.
So Andy, he was one of those kinds of kids that nobody would dare go up to him and go, what was that all about?

Liz (35:42):
Did he have anybody eat with him at lunchtime?

Jimmy (35:45):
I think everybody just chose to ignore it.
Like it never happened.
I don't think our eight-year-old brains could process it because I don't remember having any impact on anybody just like, OK, Greg did that.
Well, OK, back to math.

Harold (35:58):
Wow.

Jimmy (36:00):
So I think, yeah, it's like when you're writing, I guess you have to also allow for just some random weirdness.
I do think actually Schulz does that sometimes.
Not just like the, not a surreal thing necessarily, like the Greg Williams Al Pacino thing, but just a totally out of character incident or remark that is in character, because everybody's that rich.

(36:20):
It's just strange.

Harold (36:21):
Yeah.

Jimmy (36:21):
It's hard to pin down in a cartoon character, certainly.

Liz (36:25):
Good Lord.

Jimmy (36:26):
I just really wanted to share the Al Pacino.

Liz (36:29):
I'm trying to figure out what I can do with that.

Jimmy (36:32):
Wait, that's me too, Liz.
I've been trying to figure out what to do with that for 40 years.
October 4th, Charlie Brown is lying awake at night in his bed, and he thinks to himself, sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask questions.
Is there any one thing a person can do to make his life successful?

(36:56):
And then, in the last panel, we see just his thoughts, but it says back exercises, but they're in quotes.

Michael (37:04):
Yeah, and I don't know why the little thought balloon bubbles are on the bottom.
It doesn't sound like it's a voice, because you would say it was Schulz.

Harold (37:14):
Right.
Well, it looks like he's speaking in panels one and three, right?

Liz (37:20):
I thought I was thinking.

Jimmy (37:21):
I wouldn't really say it.

Harold (37:22):
His mouth is open and it seems, there's a little indentation there.

Jimmy (37:29):
I don't know if that counts as open.

Harold (37:30):
Okay.

Jimmy (37:31):
But it's definitely as a cartoonist, the reason I'd say this is Schulz is because, boy, a cartoonist needs to do back exercises.

Harold (37:40):
Yeah.

Jimmy (37:40):
Whenever you hear about what can I do as a cartoonist, use this pen, use that, no one ever says, do back exercises, walk around a lot, that stretch.

Harold (37:51):
Yeah.
The wisdom of 47 years is now coming out full force.

Jimmy (37:55):
Exactly.
Back exercises.
Okay.
You guys, how would you handle the last panel?
How would you handle it?
This way, a different way?

Michael (38:06):
I mean, he's done this set up several times, and it seems like the voice, the answer is coming from outside of him.

Jimmy (38:16):
Right.
Because he usually does it like this.
He usually says, then the answer comes to me, back exercises, or then the voice says, back exercises.
This time he just doesn't have any kind of-

Liz (38:28):
I think you can assume that it's coming, it's the voice of God.

Jimmy (38:33):
Because of the quotes?

Liz (38:33):
Yeah.
No, just because of the number of times this has happened.

Harold (38:39):
Right.
Or the voice of Schulz.
Yes.
I was thinking about that because it feels like whoever is speaking to him doesn't have a lot of authority but also has a lot of authority.
It's surprising.
I think every time he does that, I'm surprised by what the answer is.

(39:04):
It'll vary enough that it's like, is it a different voice?
Is it coming from a different place?
But I think you said something a year or so strips were the go, Schulz was maybe the voice.
All of a sudden, that's a strange answer that somehow makes sense.

Jimmy (39:20):
Yeah.
I really do think that the idea of Schulz being a part of this strip, literally, is a key to understanding it.
Even a key to understanding why he would keep doing it all those years.
It's just at this point, not only was he a part of it, it was part of him and probably maybe the largest part of him.

(39:47):
Should we take a break?

Liz (39:48):
Yes.
All right.

Jimmy (39:49):
We're going to take a break and we'll be right back.

Liz (39:52):
Hi, everyone.
Have you seen the latest Anger and Happiness Index?
Have you admired the photo of Jimmy as Luke Skywalker or read the details of how Michael co-created the first comic book price guide?
Just about every little known subject we mention is referenced on the Unpacking Peanuts website.
Peanuts' obscurities are explained further and other stories are expanded more than you ever wanted to know.

(40:18):
From Albert Peisenter-Hune to Zipatone, Annette Funicello to Zorba the Greek.
Check it all out at unpackingpeanuts.com/obscurities.

Jimmy (40:30):
All right.

Harold (40:31):
We are back.

Jimmy (40:32):
Empty mailbox today, so I'm going to be worried for a week.
But if you do want to get in touch with us next week, you can give us a call on our hotline [phone], or you could just leave a text message there.
Just make sure you identify yourself if you do.
And you can shoot us an e-mail.
We're unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com.
And of course, we'd love to hear from you.

(40:53):
Oh, you know what?
I always realized something about 1997.
There was another hugely successful comic strip that came out this year.
This was the year Zitz debuted.
And I did not know this, but within one year, that comic racked up 1,700 papers.

Harold (41:14):
What?

Jimmy (41:14):
Isn't that crazy?
By 1998.

Harold (41:16):
Yeah, it didn't seem like things were that fluid by that time.
That's amazing.

Jimmy (41:23):
I think they may have benefited from...
I mean, Calvin and Hobbes ended at the end of 95.

Harold (41:31):
And Farside was before that, right?

Jimmy (41:33):
Yeah.
So there is space in the newspapers that maybe has not been claimed by any one particular strip.
And they certainly made a play for a lot of those papers, which is great.
When I was a guest out at the Schulz Museum, I don't know if I've ever told this on the podcast, but I hate sketching in public.

(41:56):
Like at a comic book show, if you have to like draw, oh my gosh, my hand cramps up.
Like to the point that I stopped sketching at conventions.
But we're leaving and Mrs.
Schulz said, oh, make sure you sign the guestbook.
And I'm like, okay, well, I'll just do like a little tiny like Amelia smiley face.
And I opened it up and the guys who did zits were there like the week before me.

(42:20):
And they had this beautiful ornate figure of the main character lounging in the chairs at the house with word balloons, tell them how much I was like, you guys, come on.
I just wanted to draw a smiley face and get out of here.

Harold (42:35):
So what did you do?
Did you rise to the occasion?

Jimmy (42:37):
No, I have a really, really ugly Amelia drawn in that box if it still exists.
The panic set in.
The panic is real.

Harold (42:49):
All right.

Jimmy (42:49):
How about we get back to these strips though?

Liz (42:52):
All right.

Jimmy (42:53):
October 15th.
And it looks like good old Andy and Olaf have come back around.
They've arrived at the dog house and Snoopy says to them, Andy, Olaf, what are you doing here?
And Andy says, we couldn't find the desert.
And Snoopy says, that's ridiculous.
And then Olaf says, actually, what we found was the wrong desert.

(43:14):
And Andy says, have you ever seen the pyramids by Moonlight?
That's nice.
They went on a little trip around the world and found their way back and they saw the pyramids.
But that continues in this one.
On October 16th, we see Snoopy atop the doghouse typing away and he lets us know what happened.

(43:35):
And so Andy and Olaf set off once again to find their brother Spike.
This time, however, I provided them with an experience guide to show them the way.
And there we see their guide is Woodstock dressed as a beagle scout, and they're heading off in search of Spike again.
I just thought that was really cute.

Michael (43:55):
Prove that's Woodstock.

Liz (43:56):
Yeah, I'm not sure.
I mean, I would have given him Conrad.

Michael (43:59):
It's Conrad, clearly.

Liz (44:02):
Olivier.

Harold (44:03):
I think I see a little angel food cake sticking out of the pork.

Liz (44:06):
Oh, you need provisions.

Harold (44:11):
Looking back on the 15th and looking at some really wonky paw drawings.
Look at Stupi's paw in the second panel, where he's raised it up in surprise.

Liz (44:24):
Did he give you the finger?

Jimmy (44:26):
Yeah, he doesn't have enough.

Harold (44:28):
It's got some strange angles on it.
Yeah.
Then of course, Andy's paws, Schulz has to field day with those because everything's so fuzzy.
But that fourth panel is pretty crazy.

Jimmy (44:40):
Why are hands so hard to draw?
Even cartoon hands are hard to draw.

Harold (44:44):
We know them too well.
Yeah.

Jimmy (44:46):
Yeah, that's what it is.

Liz (44:48):
I wonder if there are any listeners who are comic artists who love to draw hands.

Jimmy (44:53):
I actually love to draw hands.
I'm not particularly good at it, but I do.
I had to force myself to do it for this book because hands are seen quite a bit.
But I don't mind doing it, especially when you achieve it, it feels very good.
I don't achieve it very often.

Harold (45:09):
It's one you almost have to learn.
You can not learn how to draw a good vase or a tree even, but hands are hard to get around.
I mean, the one strip I can think of that just leaned into childlike hands was Kathy.
Kathy, yeah.
But that was the signature was that you had these mittens or whatever.

Jimmy (45:34):
Yeah, right.

Harold (45:35):
Gloves or yeah, it's just a different looking thing.
But yeah, they are hard.
That was one thing as a cartoonist who struggled learning to do the basics.
Hands were tough.

Michael (45:47):
Yeah, I might get to the end of an issue of Strange Attractors.
I've penciled and inked 24 pages.
And on the last day, I had to go and draw all our hands because they were all blank.

Harold (46:00):
Oh, wow.

Michael (46:01):
Really?
The first day was the worst because I was like, oh, God, I have to draw like 100 hands.

Harold (46:08):
So you said like, this is hand day.

Michael (46:11):
It had to be.
I put it off to the last minute.

Jimmy (46:14):
So it was just fully drawn, inked figures with just no hands?

Michael (46:18):
No hands.

Liz (46:19):
Look, mom.

Harold (46:21):
That is original, Michael.
I don't know if I've ever met a cartoonist who just did hands.

Michael (46:27):
Well, I just didn't have a clue.
And then I had to get out the way.
Did it work for you?

Harold (46:32):
I mean, did you get the groove?

Michael (46:33):
I just took a little mirror out and then started looking at my hands in the mirror and...

Liz (46:39):
I was a hand model for a brief period of time.

Michael (46:42):
What?

Harold (46:43):
What did you model?

Jimmy (46:43):
What's that story?

Liz (46:45):
I worked for an advertising agency and they liked my hands.

Jimmy (46:50):
Oh, that's fantastic.
My gnarled stubs would not be good for selling anything, I'll tell you that much.

Harold (46:58):
I played the hands of the Antichrist for a commercial.

Jimmy (47:04):
For a commercial?

Harold (47:05):
Well, yeah, as one does.

Jimmy (47:07):
That's a really tough way to sell fried chicken.

Liz (47:11):
Did you have to audition?

Harold (47:13):
No, they were like, no, this is a guy.
Nobody did apply.
This is the hand I need.

Jimmy (47:22):
You have learned so much after doing 47 hours of these things or whatever it is.
No, 47, what, 157 hours?

Liz (47:30):
158, I think.

Jimmy (47:31):
158.
Boy, now you learn that you have two people who are hand models and one of them, it's a whole dubious situation.
But back in the Peanuts World, it continues here on October 17th.
Now, the bird scout, I'm going to continue to say Woodstock, since I have to read the strips.

(47:53):
Woodstock and the two dogs are at the edge of a cliff, and Olaf says, what's he saying?
Andy says, he said, this is as far as we can go because the earth is flat, and if we go any farther, we'll fall over the edge.
Andy just peers gently over and he says, I wonder if he's right.
Then the next panel, Olaf just goes for it with a big cannonball.

(48:13):
There's only one way to find out, Olaf.

Michael (48:17):
Olaf has no fear of falling.

Liz (48:19):
Yeah, but he didn't go head first this time.

Michael (48:24):
He assumed he's just going to bounce.

Liz (48:26):
Oh, and Woodstock's little hat flies off.

Harold (48:28):
Yeah.
I love the flying hat, but boy, I guess Olaf, I don't know what Olaf's thinking.
Is he trusting the science?
But even if he trusted the science, that could be 85 feet down.

Jimmy (48:43):
Yeah.
There's nothing good about Olaf's decision-making in this panel.

Harold (48:49):
No, he's a-

Jimmy (48:53):
It is a great day for a cartoonist using Zipatone though, because you don't have to cut those little shapes out very closely at all because they're over black.
If you saw these originals, I guarantee that those would be very rough cut shapes on the hats because the black dots would disappear over the black ink.

Harold (49:10):
And yet, look at that, it's cut so that there's a little sliver of white on the edges so it can't get away with much of that.
It's at least not on that last panel.
I do like that.
I really do like the Zipatone choices here.
I never saw another artist who would go for shading within Zipatone, like a shade of a shade.

Jimmy (49:37):
I like the scratchy lines on the cliff, too.

Harold (49:41):
I think it's very evocative.

Jimmy (49:44):
October 22nd, we're back in school with Rerun.
And Rerun says, No, ma'am, I don't have a blanket for nap time.
My brother is the only one in our family with a blanket, and I don't want to end up like him.
So then Rerun sits in his little kindergarten chair and pulls out the newspaper and says, I'll just sit here and read the paper.
And then he continues, 64 convertible hard top black and red interior, 19,000.

(50:09):
You should check into it, ma'am.

Harold (50:15):
Yeah, everyone's so small he has to read a tabloid.

Michael (50:19):
So what happened to Olaf?

Jimmy (50:23):
We'll find Olaf will return as they say.

Michael (50:27):
I can't remember.
What was the follow-up to him jumping?

Harold (50:32):
The follow-up was that he proved that the earth was round and not flat.
That's all I remember.

Jimmy (50:39):
Yeah.
But rerun we have here, he says he doesn't want to turn out like Linus.
What do you think of that?

Harold (50:47):
All right.

Jimmy (50:48):
Good.

Harold (50:49):
Not a bad choice.
Yeah.
He doesn't want to play with Snoopy that way.

Jimmy (50:55):
I guess.

Harold (50:55):
Because imagine he always wants to play with Snoopy and yet, if he just grabbed that blanket, Snoopy would be playing Tiger War.

Jimmy (51:01):
That's true.
Well, he wants to do it his way.
October 24th, a little leaf falls from the tree, a last leaf on a birch tree and hits the ground and Snoopy looks at it and says, Now what?

Michael (51:15):
Did I pick this?
No.
No.
As a big leaf fan, and we haven't seen one in a while, this is just a classic leaf strip.
Could have come from anywhere in the last 40 years.

Liz (51:27):
That sounds like a Sally philosophy.

Harold (51:30):
Now what?
Yeah.
Too bad she wasn't there to hear him thinking.
I love, love, love the Zipatone on that tree, that little birch tree.

Liz (51:42):
Yeah.
So nice.
Yeah.

Jimmy (51:44):
Just a little bit down the right side to give it dimension and shading.
Really pretty.

Harold (51:49):
A lot of care.

Jimmy (51:50):
And that is a beautifully composed comic strip.
And boy, I mean, he's drawing those trees every time.
And it's not a photocopy.
It's, it's, that's not hard, not easy to do.
It looks really great.
I love a good birch tree.

Harold (52:10):
Yes, me too.
Yeah.
And for some reason there's, there's, wow, what's going on there?
Oh, wow.
It's very subtle shading in the middle fork of the branch in the first panel, but it's there.
Yeah.

Jimmy (52:21):
Real nice.

Liz (52:21):
Now, if he's in Santa Rosa, would that be an aspen rather than a birch?

Jimmy (52:27):
I don't know.

Michael (52:30):
He's not in Santa Rosa because of the snow.
So who knows?

Jimmy (52:33):
Oh, yeah.
Who knows?

Harold (52:34):
Yeah, it's in the...
But there's a beach, there's an ocean.
There's surfing, I don't know.

Jimmy (52:40):
No, it is a lake, right?
Isn't there at one point a lake?

Michael (52:42):
No, there's surfing.

Harold (52:43):
Well, they do mention a lake, but there is surfing, so I don't know.

Jimmy (52:46):
Yeah.
Well, I just watched Apocalypse now, so maybe they're in Vietnam.
By the way, that's my new thing.
I watch...
To make myself sure I'm cheery, I watch nihilistic 70s movies before I go to bed at night.
Like, the darker, the better.

Michael (53:01):
Oh, and watch The Conversation if you want to.

Jimmy (53:03):
I watched The Conversation!
I didn't know that Shirley was in The Conversation.
I did watch it, and it's great, because they thought everything was so terrible then, and we made it, so it's like...
I mean, so anyway, my pick hit the click.
Apocalypse now, Laugh Riot.

Harold (53:22):
Good time.

Jimmy (53:29):
Why were we talking about that?

Harold (53:30):
Why did I bring that up?

Liz (53:33):
Birch trees?

Jimmy (53:34):
Birch trees.

Harold (53:35):
That's it.
There's birch trees.

Jimmy (53:36):
There must have been some reason.
We'll review the tape at a later date.

Harold (53:39):
Okay.

Jimmy (53:40):
October 28th.
We're back in the classroom with Rerun, and the little pig-haired girl.
I just want to call her the pig-haired girl.
The little pig-tailed girl is not there, but there's some bully sitting next to Rerun, and the bully says, hey kid, give me a red crayon.
Then Rerun just tosses it and says, okay, I threw it into the teacher's wastebasket.

(54:03):
If you want it, go get it.
The bully says, you're looking for a punch in the nose, kid?
Rerun says, try it and I'll trade you one for two.
And the bully says, well, maybe I like this green one.
The look on Rerun's face is just great.
He's so happy and delighted with himself.

Michael (54:23):
Yeah, he figured it out.
Yeah.

Harold (54:25):
Yeah.
Why is he trading one for two?

Michael (54:26):
Until he gets pummeled like the next day.

Jimmy (54:28):
Yeah.
Well, yeah, that guy could.
But I'll trade you one for two is a rock Gownley saying.
Oh, yeah.
It's so funny.
All right, you try it and I'll trade you one for two.
I said to him, that's absolutely.

Harold (54:40):
Well, can you explain one for two?

Jimmy (54:42):
Well, you hit me once, I'll hit you twice.
It's a version of, you know, there'll be, if you do that again, there'll be two hits, me hitting you and you hitting the floor.

Harold (54:52):
It's a version of that.
So was he giving one or two?
Because I would think reruns the one, but maybe you only need one and he'll give two to the other guy.

Jimmy (55:00):
No, no, that guy say, you hit me.
He's saying to the kid, you hit me once, I will hit you twice.
That's what he's saying.

Harold (55:06):
I'll trade you one for two.
Okay.
So I thought, okay.
I thought he would be trading.

Jimmy (55:10):
You were saying I'll trade you two for one.

Harold (55:13):
Yeah.

Jimmy (55:14):
Well, don't be so pedantic.

Harold (55:19):
All right.

Liz (55:21):
I think this is good advice for how to deal with bullies.

Jimmy (55:25):
Bullies, absolutely.

Harold (55:25):
This is escalation.
Well, it seems to work here quite well until the later developments.
But yeah, look at that smile on Rerun.
He figures something out here.

Jimmy (55:41):
Yeah.
It's like I can't believe it worked.
Also, that's a really great look for his hair in the last panel.

Harold (55:47):
It's a little more Connery, right?

Jimmy (55:48):
Yeah.
It looks like he's trying to do something as opposed to the other one.

Liz (55:53):
He's got a part.

Jimmy (55:54):
Yeah, he's got a part.

Harold (55:55):
Yeah.
I like that.
It's nice.
It's like his hair is happy too.
Right.
Exactly.

Jimmy (56:04):
But this continues.
You know, actions have repercussions.
So here on October 29th, Rerun has been sent to the principal's office.
Yes, sir, Mr.
Principal, says Rerun.
Well, this big kid was taking all the crayons.
See, then he was going, then he said he was going to punch me in the nose.
His mother complained about me.
Sir, you know what I think?

(56:25):
And then Rerun concludes with, you and I should go out to dinner sometime and talk about this.

Harold (56:34):
It's an old soul.

Jimmy (56:35):
Yeah, he's brilliant.
I mean, my god, you would have to love this kid.
That is just so funny.

Harold (56:40):
Yeah, he's adorable.

Jimmy (56:42):
The best.

Liz (56:43):
Well, this big kid was taking all the crayons, see?

Jimmy (56:47):
See?
Who would mess him up a bit, see?

Harold (56:52):
What famous actor would play Rerun?

Liz (56:54):
Edward G.
Robinson.

Jimmy (57:00):
And this continues on October 30th.
Rerun's back in bed at home and Lucy's there with him.
And he says, no, I can't go to school.
I've been suspended again for one day.
Another whole day, says Rerun.
Then he sits up and says to Lucy, years from now, you know what people are going to say about me?
And he lays back down, says he's one day dumber than he should be.

Harold (57:24):
Oh, aren't we all, though, at some point?

Liz (57:28):
I'm more than one.

Michael (57:29):
I never understood this.
As someone who's never been suspended, why is that a punishment?

Jimmy (57:34):
No idea.

Liz (57:35):
It wasn't when I was suspended.

Jimmy (57:37):
Oh, wow, is that a good tale or is that one that's in the vault?

Liz (57:41):
Well, and my friend Nancy and I thought we were hiding well when we were smoking cigarettes on campus, but we weren't.

Harold (57:54):
Something wafted.
Oh, man.

Jimmy (57:57):
Oh, that's so funny.
All right.
Well, your suspension is suspended here.
You're fine.

Liz (58:03):
Oh, but while I was suspended, I was called and cast as the lead in the senior play.

Jimmy (58:10):
Oh, wow.

Harold (58:11):
What?
All right.
Where's Liz?
I know where you can find her.

Jimmy (58:18):
Going back to Michael's point, I don't know the answer to that.
Take a day off.
I guess that's on your permanent record if that's such a thing.

Harold (58:27):
Well, I think you've written about that, Jimmy.

Jimmy (58:29):
I have, yes.

Harold (58:32):
I really like this strip.
And again, Rerun, I'm just going to know Rerun better and better.
And I really like him.
And you have to feel for him, given the circumstance of what we just saw him go through.
He's just doing things his own way and it rubs the wrong way.

(58:55):
And for whatever reason, with Rerun, it gets amped up more often, I think, even than like Peppermint Patty.
Like Peppermint Patty and Marcy are getting into scraps in the classroom.
We've seen that.
And they both wind up in the principal's office.
Maybe it's just because we don't see what happens after that rush.
But it just seems like Rerun, he does things, he's marching to his own drum and there you go.

(59:19):
You wind up running right into the system.

Jimmy (59:24):
Maybe Sally will end up with a younger man someday.
I could see that.

Harold (59:31):
Yeah, there won't be much of an age difference there, once it goes a little further into life.

Jimmy (59:37):
What, 20 years?

Michael (59:38):
40.

Jimmy (59:39):
Or whatever, in the strip or in the real world.

Harold (59:42):
Yeah, I have a new philosophy, go for the younger guy.

Jimmy (59:45):
Exactly.
November 7th, Charlie Brown is in class and he's talking to his teacher.
He says, no ma'am, I didn't get my homework done.
Well, I had to feed my dog and take him for a walk and then read to him.
Then he nonchalantly leans his elbow back on his chair of his desk and says, yes ma'am, I read to my dog every night.

(01:00:06):
And I never asked him to write a book report.
And then last panel, surprised at what he said, Charlie Brown says, sorry man, that just sort of slipped out.

Harold (01:00:18):
A little unexpected sass from Charlie Brown even to him.
That's great.

Jimmy (01:00:25):
Oh my gosh.
And that's a pretty good looking comic strip.
It's crazy to me when you see that Charlie Brown had no shake at all.
So I compare the smoothness of that strip in general with the next one we have to select here, which is November 10th.

(01:00:47):
This is one of my all time favorites.
I remember reading this in the newspaper at the break room at work and laughing my head off.
Okay.
And so it's Rerun and the pig-tailed girl.
And they're sitting doing their arts and crafts project in school.
And Rerun's drawing and he says, this is a border collie, see?
And these are the sheep he's guarding.

(01:01:07):
Suddenly a wolf comes.
So the border collie gets on the phone and calls in an air strike.
And then the little girl says, we're supposed to be doing watercolors of flowers.
To which Rerun says, it all takes place in a meadow.

Harold (01:01:28):
I think he'd be doing a pretty good job pitching TV series to exorbitants.

Jimmy (01:01:31):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Oh, man, that just makes me laugh.
Just the fact that the border collie calls in an airstrike, and that he's technically doing the assignment, it all takes place in a meadow.

Harold (01:01:45):
Yeah.
What else do you got?
It takes place in outer space.
All right.

Jimmy (01:01:54):
November 11th, it's Veterans Day, and Snoopy has his little Army hat on, and he's thinking to himself, every Veterans Day, I go over to Bill Maldon's house.
In the next panel, there he is with his root beer mug raised high, and he says, we quaff a few root beers, then I tell him what happened yesterday, and that Snoopy continues, I went to a bookstore to get something by Ernie Pyle.

(01:02:17):
They never heard of them.
And then Snoopy says, I don't know, Bill, I just don't know.
That is Schulz inhabiting Snoopy.

Harold (01:02:27):
Oh, wow.

Jimmy (01:02:28):
Yeah.
Now, who's Ernie Pyle?

VO (01:02:32):
Peanuts Obscurities Explained.

Harold (01:02:35):
So Ernie Pyle was a journalist, and I think he went around the country before World War II, just kind of capturing life in the United States, and he did such a good job.
People loved him, and he was in lots of newspapers, syndicated, and then the war happened, and then he was out traveling during the war, and really late into the war.

(01:03:02):
I mean, this is like late, toward the end of 1945, just before it all ends, he's taken out by a sniper.

Jimmy (01:03:11):
Oh, my God.

Harold (01:03:12):
When they're used to covering the Japanese side of the war, and he was very, he was mourned.
I mean, the nation mourned over him because he was a really special writer.
But again, he was one of those writers who was very, I guess, very temporal.
I'm sure they collected books as we will see here, because people really did want to honor him, and wanted to reread what he had to write.

(01:03:38):
But unfortunately, it's one of those things, the end of his career was over a super temporal issue, a war, and the earlier stuff, he just didn't get remembered.
It's hard for those little essays to somehow survive.
People don't tend to read a lot of essayists for some reason after their era.

Michael (01:04:02):
That's interesting.

Jimmy (01:04:03):
I mean, it's hard for anything to survive.
The most famous writer from where I grew up is John O'Hara, who did Butterfield 8 and Appointments of Mara and stuff like that.
But nobody reads any of his books anymore.

Harold (01:04:14):
He was huge.

Jimmy (01:04:17):
November 15th, it's a panoramic and Spike is out sleeping in the desert, head up against the rock next to his favorite cactus, and in the background walk by his brothers, not noticing him at all.
Andy says, I've been thinking about something.
If I saw that coyote wearing Mickey Mouse shoes, couldn't that mean we're getting close to where Spike lives?

(01:04:37):
And then Olaf says, I doubt it.
If we were close, we'd know it because we're well-bred hunting dogs.

Liz (01:04:44):
Oh, that's sad.

Jimmy (01:04:46):
That is sad.

Harold (01:04:47):
They're so close.

Jimmy (01:04:49):
So, Harold, do you want to explain the Mickey Mouse shoes thing?
We have not covered any of those strips.

Harold (01:04:54):
So, Snoopy keeps setting up Spike as having that Mickey Mouse, and there were Mickey Mouse shoes, including extra pairs.
I mean, three pairs.
Mickey Mouse gives to Spike.
Either that or Spike went to Disneyland and told a tall tale, but he's not with you.
But he's got three pairs of Mickey Mouse shoes, and I think that's how it works, and he's going to share them with Andy and Olaf when they show up.

(01:05:21):
But they're just a few meters off, and miss sleeping Spike against a rock.
It's not to be.

Jimmy (01:05:30):
The Zipatone looks great on the Cactus.

Harold (01:05:32):
I love that.
Yeah.

Jimmy (01:05:35):
The lighting off the moon.

Harold (01:05:36):
Boy, I'm so glad Zipatone was in this final era, because again, he needs something that looks consistent to help give meaning to the rougher lines.

Jimmy (01:05:48):
Yeah, it's just solidifies things.
It really ties the room together, Zipatone.

Harold (01:05:53):
Yeah, and that he didn't have a rough panel.
A lot of strips like BC, this was the era of the rough panel outline, so everything is kind of organic, and I'm glad he's got a solid line.
I'm glad he's got, I mean, he was started out as a professional letter.
He taught lettering, and it's not as clear and clean as it used to be, but it's still darn good.

(01:06:18):
And if that looked wavery, he'd be in trouble too.
So all of these things are working in his favor.
And even the little copyright 1997 United Feature Syndicate adds a little cleanliness to the strip.

Jimmy (01:06:36):
And our last one for this episode, November 16th, it's a Sunday, and Sally's lying in her bed, and she says to no one in particular, that's what you think.
Then we see her walking down the hall saying, tell me about it.
Then she walks up to Charlie Brown, who's lying in the bean bag chair watching TV, and Sally comes up and says, Oh yeah, that's what you think.

(01:06:59):
Charlie Brown says, What?
Sally says, That's my new philosophy.
Oh yeah, that's what you think.
Then Charlie Brown says, Why are you telling me?
Then Sally says, What?
Charlie Brown repeats, Why are you telling me?
Then Sally says, I like it.
That's a good philosophy.
Why are you telling me?
Oh yeah, that's what you think.
Why are you telling me?

(01:07:20):
Then Charlie Brown says, I can't stand it.
Sally says, What?
I can't stand it.
I like that.
Then Charlie Brown's feet go shooting out in the bean bag chair as he slumps down into it.
Now, this is verbatim used in the more recent versions of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown for Sally's philosophy song.

Harold (01:07:41):
Yeah.
So they keep updating, they kept updating the You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Jimmy (01:07:46):
Oh yes, it was always being updated.
When the revival with Kristin Chenoweth playing, Sally, which is I believe the thing that made her a known person and a star.
It riffs on this exact strip and it's so good.
It's so good.
I'm sure we could find a clip of it somewhere.
It's fantastic.
That's it.
So that brings us to the end of another year, another great year.

(01:08:11):
Before we wrap it all up, the first thing I want to tell you guys, since I'm going to be worrying this week, I want you all to get out there and contact us.
You can do it in any number of ways.
You can call the good old hotline where we're 717-219-4162, and you could leave a voicemail, or you can text that number.
Just make sure to identify yourself.

(01:08:31):
You can email us.
We're unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com.
And of course, you can follow us in social media.
We're at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads, and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.
So that means all I need from my friends here is their picks for Strip of the Year and Most Valuable Peanuts.

(01:08:53):
Harold, why don't you go first?

Harold (01:08:54):
OK.
My Strip of the Year, maybe it's because Schulz was building tension for so long about Rerun trying to get Snoopy to come out and play.
But on July 20th, when they are playing their own little card game, throwing down the 10s and the jacks and the queens and the kings and sending each other flying and just having a wonderful time.

(01:09:24):
This is the late Peanuts that I do know and love, and I just love to see Snoopy and Rerun playing together.
They are the best human canine team in Peanuts history, and I'm super happy to see this happening.

(01:09:45):
And for my Peanut of the Year, I have been giving Snoopy short shrift.
Snoopy has been holding this strip together through the years in so many different ways, wearing so many hats, and he's wearing a little card hat at the end of this particular strip.
I'm gonna go ahead and give Snoopy this year as much as I love a lot of the stuff going on with Charlie Brown, going on with Marcy, going along with Rerun.

(01:10:09):
I'm gonna have to pick Snoopy just because I've been ignoring Snoopy.
All right.

Jimmy (01:10:14):
Well, that sounds pretty good.
Pretty good.
How about you, Michael?

Michael (01:10:17):
Well, I'm going way back to the beginning of the year for my strip of the year.
And I'm going to February 2nd.
And here we see Charles Schulz completely summing up the game of hockey.
There's nothing more to say about hockey after you read this strip.

(01:10:40):
Apparently, it's a great sport.
I just never played it.
I guess you had to be on the field to really appreciate it.

Harold (01:10:49):
It's funny we both chose strips where there's some crazy game action going on and everybody's happy at the end.

Michael (01:10:56):
Yeah, right.
I mean, you couldn't do this with baseball.
I couldn't sum up baseball in 10 panels, however many there are.
Normally, let's see, if I'm picking my most valuable peanut, I think Rerun's coming to the four and he's staying at the fours.

(01:11:17):
He's an interesting character, but I'm not going to pick him because I picked him last year.
In deference to Jimmy, in honor of Jimmy, I am going to pick Olaf.

Jimmy (01:11:33):
Awesome.

Michael (01:11:34):
He's only two years left and he hasn't gotten his most valuable peanut yet, so I'm going to give it to him.

Jimmy (01:11:40):
Well, I appreciate that and I'm actually going to agree with both of you because I had planned to give the Snoopy family MVP as a unit, because I enjoyed seeing them all together and I really enjoy Olaf and Andy going off on a quest with Woodstock.
I think that could be a Lord of the Rings style graphic novel.

(01:12:01):
Because my favorite genre, a bunch of people walking somewhere is my favorite genre of literature.

Harold (01:12:09):
You just like to draw pyramids.

Jimmy (01:12:11):
Also, I love to draw some pyramids.
But for my strip of the year, it's going to be, it all took place in a meadow.
I don't know what date that was, whatever day that was.
That's it.
End of another year.
Only two more full years left with the strip before we have to figure out what we're going to do with the rest of our lives.

(01:12:35):
But until then, keep the conversation going with us on social media and whatnot, and we'll see you next week.
For Michael, Harold, and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be a good cheer.

Liz (01:12:45):
Yes.
Be a 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 Unpacked Peanuts on Instagram and Threads.

(01:13:06):
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.

Jimmy (01:13:18):
Why were we talking about that?