1999 Part 3 - A Very Public Farewell

Schulz announces his retirement from cartooning which gives the remaining strips an elegiac quality that’s hard to miss. Meanwhile, we say goodbye to Andy and Olaf, but Rerun continues with aplomb as he marches towards his destiny as an underground cartoonist. Plus: We should buy banjos.

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. 

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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 (00:19):
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the show.
This is Unpacking Peanuts, and today we're looking at, oh boy, we're getting near the end.
We're in the latter half of 1999.
I'll be your host for the proceedings.
My name is Jimmy Gownley.
I'm also a cartoonist who did things like Amelia Rules, Seven Good Reasons Not To Grow Up, the dumbest idea ever.
You can read all my new work for free over at gvillcomics.substack.com.

(00:43):
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.
He's the co-creator of the original comic book price guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules, and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.

Michael (01:02):
Say hey.

Jimmy (01:03):
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 (01:14):
Hello.

Jimmy (01:14):
And making sure we stay out of trouble and that everything runs smooth as silk, it's our producer Liz Sumner.

Liz (01:20):
Howdy.

Jimmy (01:22):
Well, guys, here we are.
We are inching ever closer to the finish line.
I feel a huge sense of accomplishment that we've done this, you know, closing in on 170 episodes, but also a real sense of melancholy and sadness that we're getting to the end of covering these strips.
Harold, how do you feel?

Harold (01:43):
Yeah, same way I should have known what was going to happen, but I didn't.
And reading these was getting me...
You read it with this layer of understanding of the future.
Imagine if we lived our lives always knowing the future.
It's crazy, but here we know the end is coming of something that we love and something that has been now a part of our lives even more by doing this podcast.

(02:16):
And you can't help but put a layer of meaning on top of this, even above the meaning that we're putting on to his strip, which we love.
So it's been emotional.
I've now read through the end.
I've done the 17,897 strips, particularly the next two episodes are going to be, I think, kind of rough to talk about and share, you know, the true feelings about this.

Jimmy (02:50):
I'm, I feel like the least likely to cry and I cried all the way through reading them.
So like I'm deeply concerned about this podcast for the next couple of episodes.

Harold (03:01):
Yeah.
Well, I'm, yeah, this is good that we have an editor.
If things just go off the rails, we won't have to expose our audience to long bouts of weeping.

SPEAKER_1 (03:15):
Well, I suspect the audience will be crying as well.

Jimmy (03:18):
There are some moments.
So Michael, I have a question for you.

Liz (03:21):
Yes.

Jimmy (03:22):
Having never read these strips before.

Liz (03:25):
Yeah.

Jimmy (03:25):
And, but as Harold says, knowing where we are in the story, knowing where we are with Schulz's life, are you seeing, are you feeling the sense that he is wrapping things up?
I'm curious about that as someone who's never read them or never even looked at this.
Or are you putting significance on these strips from Schulz's perspective, I guess is what I'm saying.

(03:50):
I'm not asking this well, but the question came to me because you were saying, how, when did he first know that he was sick?
And you started asking that like an episode ago.
And theoretically he did not know at all, but you start seeing these creeping endings in.
And I was wondering what your reaction to that is.
As we get closer to the actual end.

Liz (04:11):
Well, I'm not seeing those creeping endings.
Like here, we're going to start off with a pig pen strip.
We haven't seen in years, I don't think.
Did he consciously say, well, I have to do one more pig pen?
Because he didn't do that for a lot of the other minor characters who disappeared.

(04:32):
So I don't know.
It's, I don't think it's obvious at this point.
You know, given that, you know, these were done three months in advance of publication.
And one of the footnotes on this, one of the strips that's coming up is he's, it was the day he announced his retirement.

(04:57):
So I don't know if it has anything to do with any of these strips.
Yeah.
Yeah, it'd be interesting to find out.
But yeah, what I was pondering is this is a very public farewell over the next couple of months.

(05:19):
And I don't, I can't find any precedent.
I can't think of any precedent of somebody who, certainly not, maybe not the 1999 strips, but the 2000 strips, which I haven't read yet.
I mean, the public knew what was happening.
Right.
And generally, you don't see people say goodbyes like this.

(05:43):
I mean, artists or musicians.
I mean, often the deaths are surprising.
Like, you know, it's not like John Lennon who, that was the last song he was going to write.
Right.
Can you think of any examples of somebody who was kind of doing their vows in a public space like this?

Jimmy (06:07):
The one person I can think of is David Bowie, who knew he was sick and intentionally recorded his last album in 2016.
I think it's called Black Star as a farewell.
But it wasn't the same because it wasn't being lived out on a daily basis.
You know, like, oh, here's the new David Bowie song.
I wonder how he's doing well, doing it and stuff like that.

(06:29):
But there was, he was aware that he was creating it.
And even the videos, they'll go with it as like a last.

Michael (06:36):
Yeah.

Jimmy (06:37):
But not many.
And then there's like, you know, you could say like when I mean, it's not the same, but when a TV show goes off the air and you can you know that the show is ending, but it's so different when it's one person and it's their health.

Liz (06:51):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (06:52):
Or like Johnny Carson and David Letterman.

Jimmy (06:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

Liz (06:56):
Yeah, they're retiring, but they're not disappearing.
The only example I can think of right now is Beethoven who was immensely popular.
And I think most people knew that his last works, which I think were the string quartets, was him saying goodbye.
And one of them has a movement that's a beautiful movement, but very eerie.

(07:21):
Unlike anything he ever did, it's almost like he was seeing into the next world.

Michael (07:26):
Wow.

Jimmy (07:28):
Wow.

Liz (07:28):
But Schroeder won't be around to comment on that.

Jimmy (07:34):
Well, here, I'll change the tone just a little bit so you don't get too heavy.
If you take yourself back, Michael, to that grade school playground where you would meet with your friends to discuss peanuts.

Liz (07:47):
That was in high school, my friend.
We were so nerdy.
All right.

Jimmy (07:57):
Well, let's take you back to whenever it was when you were meeting your friends to discuss peanuts.
Did you ever think that you would be doing that on something called the World Wide Web talking via satellite?

Liz (08:09):
Oh, yeah.
We knew.
We knew.

Harold (08:12):
We were very nerdy.

Liz (08:14):
Someday this will make a great podcast.

Jimmy (08:20):
Well, you were right, my friend.
You were right.
All right.
Well, with that preamble out of the way, we can put it off no longer.
Let's get to these strips.
Are you ready?

Michael (08:32):
Sure.

Jimmy (08:34):
September 8th, it's good old Pigpen sitting in class and he says, yes, ma'am, Pigpen.
Then he continues, well, when I left home this morning, I was pretty clean, sort of, relatively borderline and then he concludes, absolutely filthy.

Liz (08:53):
Now, has he ever appeared in a classroom?

Jimmy (08:56):
Oh, I'm sure.
I mean, I'm sure he's appeared with Charlie Brown at some point or another.

Liz (09:04):
In the class?
I don't know.

Jimmy (09:05):
I will say this, he's got a good round head, just like that Charlie Brown head.
You're not seeing a whole lot of shake.
I mean, you see those micro little, especially on the underside of panel three, but Pigpen, I'm surprised he didn't lean way into Pigpen in the 90s, because he works real well.

Liz (09:25):
Yeah, he's grinch for some reason.

Harold (09:29):
Is this the first, obviously, is this the first when we're at the last?
But I don't remember Pigpen ever volunteering.
He was absolutely filthy in any way.
He was always finding some nuance to get himself off the hook and not this time.

Liz (09:45):
I have a topic which a bit of a diversion from what we're doing, so I hope it doesn't go way off the rails.

Jimmy (09:54):
I love it when it goes way off the rails.
Those are my favorite parts.

Liz (09:56):
All right.
Well, it might be way off the rails, but it's something that I don't think we've ever talked about.
We've often said, well, you know, he was obviously scribbling in his sketchbooks and he liked this drawing, so he turned it into a strip.
Are there sketchbooks?
Yeah, there are Schultz sketchbooks in existence.

Harold (10:19):
You can go to the library, the museum and see them, that kind of question?

Liz (10:24):
Yeah.

Jimmy (10:26):
I don't think he ever drew in a sketchbook from what I understand.
From what I understand, his process was, he would draw them on yellow legal pad and then crumple them up when he was done, throw them out.
Then eventually his secretary started saving them.
I imagine by the end, they're all getting archived.

(10:48):
There's no sketchbook per se, like with pictures of fruit in a bowl or anything like that.
But I believe in the archives, there are collected somewhere those legal pads.

Liz (11:01):
Is there any way to date them?
Because I think that would give us a lot of information about what he was thinking about.

Jimmy (11:07):
Well, it would be interesting to ask our good pal Benjamin Clark over at the museum what kind of stuff they have.
Because I mean, that is a real key component to any artist's creativity, before you get to the actual artboard, what you're going to put down on paper to just get the real thing.

Liz (11:26):
Also, maybe in this period of his life, he was doing some strips and then decided, no, I don't want to do that.
We just never saw them.

Harold (11:35):
Yeah.
I never heard it was systematically saved and archived, but he did share his process in at least one book.
There are some sketches that show him working in the super rough, and he talks about it.
He shares that this is how he primes the pump some days.

(11:57):
He will go in and start to work on just doing sketches, random sketches, and then that leads to a strip.
He did share that, and so we're not completely conjecturing about that.

Jimmy (12:10):
No, no, and I would love to see a whole collection of those, just the preliminary drawings, because they are really rough.
But there's such magic in that really quick cartooning, that it would be worth seeing, I think.

SPEAKER_1 (12:25):
I wonder if they haven't been published because someone has decided that it shouldn't go out imperfectly.

Jimmy (12:37):
Possibly.
It is funny when you think about it, especially in the day and age when everything is put out digitally, and you'll get all these 25th anniversary, 30th anniversary, 50th anniversary albums, and then the bonus thing is all the takes that didn't make it and stuff like that.

(12:58):
That's the stuff now, like the Sergeant Pepper one or the Revolver one.
Oh my gosh, that Revolver one.

Liz (13:03):
And Springsteen just like...

Jimmy (13:04):
Eight albums, right?

Liz (13:06):
Yeah, stuff he thought wasn't good enough.

Jimmy (13:08):
Wasn't good enough, but it's crazy because at a certain point, the fans, I think, get to say, no, we'll decide if it's good enough.
Yeah.
I just want it at this point because your legacy is sealed, right?
I don't think any of these eight Springsteen albums, for example, are people going to be, oh, man, that's the great master.
Maybe it will.
I don't know.
I'm not a huge Springsteen fan, but maybe they will.
But I think it's more like, oh, wow, we get to see all this extra stuff.

Liz (13:32):
Yeah.
Well, certainly with the Beatles, we'll devour anything.

Michael (13:36):
Right.
Right.

Harold (13:38):
Yeah.
Chip Kid could put out an edition, and all the paper has been pre-crumpled in the printed book.
So it's just this big wad of yellow paper behind.

Michael (13:48):
I love it.

Jimmy (13:51):
September 10th.
Rerun is in the principal's office, standing in front of the desk, and he's holding up a piece of paper.
He says, yes, sir.
My teacher said to show you my drawing.
She thinks it's too violent.
It's Tarzan C beating up Mickey Mouse, but he's got an ape and an elephant helping him.
It wasn't a fair fight.
Yes, I had trouble drawing it.
The fat kid who sits next to me kept throwing my crayons across the room.

(14:15):
So why'd you used to see me?
Because I pushed him out of the chair?

Liz (14:22):
I really like the rerun as an artist, as a comic artist, I can identify with that.

Harold (14:30):
That's awesome.

Jimmy (14:30):
I'm so happy.

Liz (14:32):
So yeah, he gets some really solid stuff in the last couple of months.

Jimmy (14:36):
Yeah, I love rerun the cartoonist as well.

Harold (14:40):
Also rerun the brutally honest child who doesn't have the filters in front of people that maybe it's not in his best interests.

Michael (14:48):
Yeah, it's amazing.

Jimmy (14:50):
But that feels really real to me.

Michael (14:53):
Yes.

Jimmy (14:56):
What do we think of the bird nest hair?
That's full on bird's nest at this point.

Harold (15:01):
Yeah.
I can't say I'm the greatest fan of that, but it's rerun, so what are you going to do?

Liz (15:08):
But that profile is way closer to Charlie Brown than it is to Linus.

Jimmy (15:13):
I will tell you that, especially, I didn't notice that until you started the sentence, and now, yeah, especially on the first one.
He's got the van Pelt dent, of course.
Well, his more of a flat head across the top, but yeah, if you really look at just the front of that face, that is very Charlie Brown.

Harold (15:31):
Yeah.
It's funny, you know, Schulz was so upset about the naming of the comic strip as Peanuts, largely because I guess he didn't get to name it.
Somebody else did.
But I think the greatest injustice Schulz ever did to a character was to name this guy Rerun.
I have a feeling if he hadn't been named Rerun and he was Theodore or something, he would be strangely much more popular.

(15:56):
I just think instantly the second you see Rerun, you think second-rate already been done, and I really feel bad for this little kid being named that.
I think he would have had a strangely, and I never thought of this before, like the name of something or someone could so kill something.

(16:17):
I think there's names in movies, that are movies or plays or whatever, where the name somehow doesn't work.

Liz (16:24):
Yeah, like Snakes on a Plane.
Terrible name for a movie.

Harold (16:30):
Well, it's just so vague.
But yeah, I wish Schulz had not done that to this little guy.

Jimmy (16:39):
The thing about it is too, it implies that he's just like Linus, which he's not.

Harold (16:44):
Well, yeah, and certainly when I was introduced to him because he looks so much like Linus, which is, I guess, where maybe Schulz was coming from with this.
The other thing is, Schulz could have changed that at any moment in the strip.
He could have said, well, okay, let's stop calling him this nickname.
Yeah.
Let's actually call him Theodore or whoever he would be.

(17:07):
I want to ask our listeners if you could rename Rerun, what name is he?

Liz (17:11):
I'd call him Pigpen.

Jimmy (17:12):
I'd call him Streaming.
Because instead of Rerun.

Michael (17:19):
Streaming.

Jimmy (17:21):
I can't all be Rerun.

Liz (17:22):
Theodore was actually pretty good.

SPEAKER_1 (17:24):
One of our listeners wrote in and suggested that it would begin with L.

Jimmy (17:27):
Yeah, Leonard Van Pelt, I could say.

Harold (17:30):
Leonard, yeah.

Michael (17:32):
Louis.
Louis.
Lurk.

Harold (17:35):
Robert, if he's going to be an underground cartoonist.

Michael (17:37):
Yes.

Jimmy (17:39):
All right.
Well, I want to hear whatever you think out there listeners, give us your alternate naming for Rerun.
September 12th.
It's a Sunday, and we have an interesting beginning of it here because that first panel with the Peanuts logo is actually divided into three sections.
The first one is Charlie Brown, rare and back to pitch with his blue glove on again.

(18:06):
Then we have a blank one that just serves as white space for the title Peanuts.
Then the third panel is Charlie Brown letting loose with a fast ball.
Then of course, the panel after that is him turning around and watching it fly out to the outfield.
Then the strip really begins on the next tier, and Lucy's out there and she says, I got it.
She's running in towards the pitcher's mound from right field saying, it's all mine.

(18:29):
I got it.
She runs right over Charlie Brown saying, I got it.
Then she runs up to Schroeder and saying, who are you?
Schroeder says, I'm the catcher.
Lucy says, oh, that's right.
Then Schroeder looks up and says, what about the fly ball?
Lucy says, the what?
Then bonk, the ball hits Lucy on the head.

(18:49):
Then Charlie Brown is disheveled, clothed at least, and lying on top of the pitcher's mound.
He says, what I think I'll do is go home right now, feed my dog, eat a light supper, and go to bed early.

Liz (19:04):
This is really strange because this is the last Schroeder.
But it's almost like the first Schroeder.
This could be how they met.

Michael (19:14):
Yeah.

Jimmy (19:16):
That's really weird.
Yeah, I don't fully get this except that she's never been in the infield maybe and didn't realize Schroeder goes with the mask on.
It's a Clark Kent situation.
I don't know.

Harold (19:29):
The goofiness of Lucy, she does have a goofy streak in her where she's willing to play these little odd fantasies with Charlie Brown on the, just to keep herself interested.

Jimmy (19:43):
Yeah, but with that blue glove, he's really sticking with it.

Harold (19:47):
Yeah, and I always love the tongue sticking out when you get hit on the head.

Michael (19:55):
Yeah.

Harold (19:56):
And those dating game stars.

Jimmy (19:59):
Yep, they're still well into the, well, almost into the 21st century.
He's sticking with those.
September 13th, Rerun and the little pig-tailed girl are sitting, working on some project at school and the little girl says, the teacher says, we're supposed to paint these flowers.

(20:19):
And Rerun says, I don't paint flowers.
I do underground comic books.
Yeah, Rerun.
See, here's a spaceman on Mars fighting a purple monster.
And then the little pig-tailed girl looks over and says, where are the women?
I don't see any women.
And Rerun says, they have long hair, right?

Harold (20:40):
He's learning.

Jimmy (20:43):
He is learning.
Now, do you think these are the, does she want women spacemen or women purple monsters?
Yes.

Liz (20:49):
Well, there's always-

Jimmy (20:51):
Representation.
That's what she just wants, representation.

Liz (20:54):
There's always the space girl in distress.

Jimmy (20:57):
That's a classic.

Liz (20:58):
Yeah.
But that wouldn't be an underground comic.
That would be a straight science fiction.

Jimmy (21:05):
Yeah, he's got a subverted-

Harold (21:07):
I'm assuming Rerun has not seen an underground comic yet.
Who knows?
Maybe.

Jimmy (21:12):
Well, where do you think he heard this phrase?

Harold (21:15):
That's a good question.
What is going on at the Van Peltz?

Jimmy (21:18):
The Internet.
The actual answer actually could be the Internet.
Oh, wow.

Harold (21:24):
It could be.
Isn't that crazy?
It is crazy.
When I saw a reference to Harry Potter, I was like, what?
I didn't realize that overlaps.

Jimmy (21:35):
Yes.
It's so strange when those things happen.
It's the same as Mark Maguire.
It's like, that can't be right.

Harold (21:43):
But yeah, maybe he's got a cousin.
Cousin who's visiting the Van Peltz.

SPEAKER_1 (21:48):
You don't think that Lucy collects them?

Liz (21:52):
I don't think so.
Well, Zippy the Painter was in the newspapers, wasn't he?

Harold (21:57):
If it's comic books, I think Schulz was the one who was tracking that stuff down.

Jimmy (22:01):
Yeah, because he knew Crump, I know that.

Harold (22:04):
Or knew about him, right?
He didn't.

Jimmy (22:05):
He met him once and said, Hello, Robert, I'm Charles Schulz.
And Crump almost passed out because he didn't know how to handle it.

Harold (22:12):
Was that like a San Diego comic?

Jimmy (22:14):
Was it San Diego?
Yes.

Harold (22:15):
Wow.
I mean, even thinking that Schulz went to San Diego Comic Con, I was thinking of him being kind of reclusive, but obviously he did get out and that would be a thing to go to.

Jimmy (22:25):
We'll talk about alternate worlds.
Charles Schulz and Robert Crump at the San Diego Comic Con is impossible to imagine.

Harold (22:33):
Sitting at the same table, each with their little piece of paper like the pig-tailed girl in Rerun and their drawing their own things and Schulz is like, I'm going to do an underground comic too.

Jimmy (22:43):
You know what?
It would be one of the places that they could both sit and agree.
They could just sit there and go, these people are all nuts.

Harold (22:52):
It's like a Stephen Wright model.
I've only seen one in here.

Jimmy (23:01):
September 14th, the little pig-tailed girl says to Rerun, they're still doing projects, art projects at school.
And she says, I thought you didn't paint flowers.
And Rerun holding up his artwork in front of him says, these are space flowers from Jupiter.
They're attacking Minneapolis, but Tarzan comes to the rescue.
And the little girl says, I didn't know Tarzan was ever in Minneapolis.

(23:22):
Rerun says he used to ice skate there in the winter.
And then the little girl says, I think you're slowly going mad.
And then Rerun says, I may have to hire someone to do my lettering.

Harold (23:40):
A little pigtail girl, she's the one going Steven Ryan.

Jimmy (23:45):
That actually cracked me up.
Now, do you think that Shultz is actually contemplating it though?

Liz (23:50):
What, doing a comic about space flowers for Jupiter?

Michael (23:53):
No, hiring someone to do a letter.

Liz (23:55):
I'm actually working on a page that has space flowers from Neptune.
Jupiter is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_2 (24:01):
Yeah, they don't have flowers.

Harold (24:03):
Their flowers are ugly.
The atmosphere would not support this.

Jimmy (24:06):
Yeah, come on.
No, hiring someone to do his letter.

Harold (24:10):
Yeah, I couldn't help but think that when I'm reading this, he's, well, yeah, things are on his mind, I'm sure.

Jimmy (24:18):
I picture, that's a fair amount of lettering in this daily strip.

Harold (24:22):
Yeah, right.

Jimmy (24:23):
In my headcanon, which is totally made up, there's a different joke penciled under there, right?
And he struggled for an hour doing all this lettering and then at the end just changed the punchline too.

Harold (24:39):
Wow.
Well, if you ever do an album, Jimmy, it's got to be my headcanon.
Yeah, this is just, yeah, this is delightful.
As cartoonists, I mean, we're absolutely loving Rerun here, and that 90s hair, which comes and goes with rerunning the first panel, I think of sitcom kid 90s.

Jimmy (25:12):
Yeah, we're in the home improvement era.

Harold (25:16):
Yeah.

Jimmy (25:16):
Although there's a little bit of a Gen Z vibe.
Now, Gen Z kids have all the broccoli haircut where it's everything on top and then shaved tight on the side.
So, there's a little bit of that.

Harold (25:24):
Should I just call it the broccoli?
Give me a broccoli?

Jimmy (25:27):
Yeah, I don't know if that's just internet slang.
I don't know if you go and say, give me a broccoli, but yeah.
September 15th, it's the little girl in rerunning class again.
And now they're reviewing all the flowers have been put up on the wall.
And the little girl says to rerun, see the teacher put up all the flower paintings our class has been doing.

(25:48):
And then we see one page of artwork way over off the bulletin board on the other side of the wall.
And she says to rerun, and way over here all by itself, where no one will ever see it is the underground comic you drew.
To which rerun says, it's upside down.

Liz (26:06):
I could see this as a sustainable strip.
These two just dealing with his crazy comics he's drawing.

Jimmy (26:15):
You could, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And it would be fun to go in in that kind of like a dog man way where you can see the comics he's doing.
Maybe see some of those stories.

Harold (26:27):
Yeah, call it Drawing with Theodore.

Jimmy (26:29):
But you're really hard pushing that Theodore.

Michael (26:31):
Yeah.

Harold (26:34):
I'm very impressed with the students' flower paintings.
They look quite nice.

Jimmy (26:39):
They're very nice.

Harold (26:41):
Good teacher.

Jimmy (26:42):
Well, kind of.
But then she shames Rerun by putting his hot on the wall way away from everyone else.

Harold (26:48):
So I'm wondering, you know, we are, we actually do get to see Rerun's art, which I absolutely thank Schulz for.
And it does look like there's some lettering upside down over some flying characters or something going on there.
So yeah, maybe he does need to hire someone to do his lettering.

Jimmy (27:12):
Yeah.
It's looking good.
I think the Zip-A-Tone use throughout this period has been really excellent too.

SPEAKER_2 (27:17):
Yeah.

Harold (27:19):
And, you know, we were talking about the pig pen having that amazing, clean head shape and boy, that second panel of back of Rerun's head.
It just doesn't seem like a natural arc for Schulz.

SPEAKER_1 (27:34):
Maybe it's his hair growing in.
It's been shaved and it's had foams.

Jimmy (27:39):
Yep.

Harold (27:40):
That's what it is.
Phrenologists would have a field day.

Jimmy (27:45):
September 20th.
It's Olaf and Andy.
And they're arriving back from their long journey.
And Andy says to Olaf, do you think he'll remember us?
And Olaf says, we're his brothers, aren't we?
And sure enough, they arrive back at Snoopy's doghouse.
And Andy says to Snoopy, hey, we're back.
And Snoopy says, Andy, Olaf, I thought you went to live with Spike.

(28:06):
And then Andy says to Snoopy, we kept getting lost.
And Olaf says, we made two right turns and 23 wrong ones.

SPEAKER_1 (28:14):
Ba dum dum.

Liz (28:16):
I think Olaf would have lost a little weight walking across the street.

Harold (28:21):
Yeah, he's got three squares.
What do you think of the mirror, Andy, Snoopy and the third panel?
It's like they're doing that Mark's Brothers routine in the mirror.

Jimmy (28:34):
Yes, the mirror scene.
I think fuzzy Andy is really cute.

Liz (28:38):
Well, it's like the crypto, the movie crypto and real crypto.

Jimmy (28:45):
Movie crypto is fuzzy.
We're talking about looking at things in retrospect versus doing it at the time.
I loved Olaf always, but I was lukewarm on the puppies because, like Michael says, sometimes you want Snoopy to be unique.
But at the end of it all, I like them too, especially because what's interesting about it is whether the idea he has at the start is something like lightning in a bottle or not, he often can find a way to make it work.

(29:20):
And I think that's something that's really cool to watch.

Harold (29:23):
Talking about Zip-A-Tone and use of Zip-A-Tone, given that whoever is doing this with Schulz is not going up to the edge of the ink line often, they used a different Zip-A-Tone on Olaf's hat as well where it just seems like it kind of fades in and out.

(29:44):
It's two patches.
I can't tell if it is or if that literally is a goofy Zip-A-Tone.
No, you see, there's like, see, they're like, they're like circles, like faded circles in a dark pattern.

Jimmy (29:59):
No, it's a moire though.
That's just a moire caused by the two Zip-A-Tones being overlaid.

Harold (30:04):
Look in the second panel in the front of Olaf's hat, it's a perfect circle, like a five dot wide circle.
So that's why I was thinking it might actually be Zip-A-Tone and some weird pattern that somebody had provided.

Jimmy (30:21):
No, I would be willing to bet you 50 cents right now that that's the moire.

Harold (30:27):
This is the first thing we're going to do when we get to the museum in Santa Rosa, is go to the 1999, September 20th.
Is this on exhibit?
We want to see this thing.

Jimmy (30:37):
Absolutely.

Harold (30:38):
Those mysteries need to be solved.

Jimmy (30:40):
Is that jangly Zip-A-Tone that doesn't go to the edge, like jangly black?

SPEAKER_1 (30:46):
I think we need a different adjective.

Jimmy (30:49):
It's like a wash.

Harold (30:51):
Yeah.
Just looking at it from a distance before you zoom in, it feels 90s grungy, dirty hat, cool looking.
Yeah, it works.
It really does work.
In a newspaper, I think that you wouldn't necessarily think about it, but it really gives texture.

Michael (31:12):
Yeah, absolutely.

Jimmy (31:14):
Now, we've been talking about this Zip-A-Tone for decades now, both in real life and in terms of these episodes.
Have either of you guys, neither of you guys have ever really used it in your printed work, did you?

Harold (31:26):
I did.
I mean, not for what you're maybe thinking, but for the Virginia Beach shopping news, I did do covers and I had to actually make my colors out of Zip-A-Tone, and it was on acetate overlays.

Jimmy (31:41):
Just like they really colored them back in the day.

Harold (31:45):
Super involved, and it was not easy, but I loved it.
I loved doing it.

Jimmy (31:50):
Yeah.
Now, Michael, you never used it, right?

Liz (31:52):
I seem to recall on some real early stuff I did, but I don't know if I actually used it in anything printed.

Jimmy (32:04):
I used it obviously all through Shades of Grey, because it was called Shades of Grey.
It had all kinds of grey tones all over it.
Boy, do those pages look awful now.
They're just yellowed beyond.
They've looked awful when I drew them.
But the actual art is just yellow now.

Liz (32:21):
I definitely preferred spending thousands of hours doing cross-hatching.

Jimmy (32:28):
Well, there is something to be said for that.
There is a Zen-like state you get when you're cross-hatching.

SPEAKER_1 (32:33):
Well, he also did cross-hatching on fossil ivory for 40 years too.

Harold (32:38):
So, Scrimshaw got you one way or the other.
You became an expert in that.

Jimmy (32:43):
Well, actually, was that hard for you to adjust?
Because you're digging into the fossilized ivory, and then you were using mostly a brush.
That seems like the hardest transition to go from carving into an old whale tooth to a delicate brush line.
No?

Liz (33:00):
Yes?
Well, we're talking the difference between literally microscopic and fairly huge pieces of paper.
Because I worked on big 10 by 15, and I've been drawing like a quarter of an inch.

Jimmy (33:17):
Is there any place people can see that stuff?
Because it's amazing, your gallery.

Liz (33:22):
They shouldn't waste their valuable time.

Jimmy (33:24):
All right.
Well, anyway, we'll see.
We'll talk to Liz about it.

SPEAKER_1 (33:27):
We'll go.
Liz knows everything.

Michael (33:30):
There you go.

Jimmy (33:33):
September 23rd.
All right.
It's Snoopy and the boys again.
And Olaf and Andy are playing cards, and Snoopy comes in with a letter.
He says, look, a letter from our brother Spike.
And then Snoopy reads it to Andy and Olaf.
He wants to know what happened to you guys.
He says, the weather there has been nice.
Then he says, some people say dogs can't write letters.

(33:55):
Ha, what do they think this is?
Do you feel like this is like a thing, like, he, Schulz, somehow in his mind is either someone's sad or he was thinking of like a pedantic criticism.

(34:16):
Like, that dog can't sit on that dog house.
A dog can't write, you know, that the cartoon character itself was silly.
And doing this, and this was what he thought was a good burn back.

Harold (34:29):
You know what I mean?
I have to address my critics.

Jimmy (34:33):
Yes, right.
And he's like, yeah, slam, mic drop, which is exactly how he talked at this stage.

Harold (34:45):
That first panel Snoopy.
Yeah.
I really like that drawing.
And we've talked about how Schulz keeps white all around the characters sometimes.
This is an example of that where Snoopy is holding a letter, and then there's the edge of the bush above him, that's got white around the letter.

(35:05):
And then you've got white on the grass side around his body, and then he's kind of floating over a patch of grass and a shadow.
And it really looks great to me, because he just pops in that first panel because of that.
And then, I look at panel three, and I go, man, that is one of the roughest Snoopys I've ever seen.

(35:27):
The bottom of his snout is just, I don't know, it's crazy.
Just from in one strip, I don't know if it's because of the size.
He doesn't usually draw Snoopy that size that it caused trouble or what.

Jimmy (35:41):
It's probably that.
Also, just the fatigue of having drawn 17,000 strips, you know, every, like you're gonna get, like my wrist kills me and I have to wear a wrist brace.
And I've never, I haven't drawn this many comic strips.
And I'm only, I'd still have 15 or 16 more years of my career yet to get to 50 years.

(36:04):
And that's going all the way back to high school and not even count, you know.
So like just the sheer fatigue that he's put his body through to do this many comic strips.

SPEAKER_1 (36:14):
Did he always draw in order or did he jump around?

Jimmy (36:19):
I don't know.
That's a wonderful question.
I bet if I were just guessing, well, all right, here's what I want.
Let's all just guess wildly based on what we think we know about Schulz.
Did he start on panel one and go right to the end or did he skip around?
What do you think Harold?

Harold (36:34):
I think he went straight ahead.

Jimmy (36:35):
Michael?

Liz (36:36):
Yeah, I think he's fast enough that he just start on the left and continue.

Jimmy (36:42):
Yeah, I think that too.
I think left to the right.

Liz (36:45):
No, I meant right to the left.

Jimmy (36:47):
Oh, right.

Harold (36:50):
You Manga guy, you.

Jimmy (36:53):
Which would also make sense that he gets more fatigued by the end of the strip.

Michael (36:58):
I don't know.

Jimmy (36:59):
Well, you know what?
I think this is a good place to stop and take a break, and then we'll come back, we'll answer the mail, and we'll read some more comic strips.
How's that sound?

SPEAKER_1 (37:10):
Sounds good.

SPEAKER_2 (37:11):
All right.

SPEAKER_1 (37:12):
Hi, everyone.
I just want to take a moment to remind you that all three hosts are cartoonists themselves, and their work is available for sale.
You can find links to purchase books by Jimmy, Harold, and Michael on our website.
You can also support the show on Patreon or buy us a mud pie.
Check out the store link on unpackingpeanuts.com.

Michael (37:34):
Hey, everybody.

Jimmy (37:35):
We are back.
Liz, do I got anything in the mailbox because I'm hanging out here?

SPEAKER_1 (37:40):
We do.
We heard from Christopher Hulett, who writes on Facebook, in reference to your aside about characters acting different because of who they're interacting with.
He sends a quote.
He says, A friend of CS.
Lewis and JRR.
Tolkien, a man named Charles Williams, died.

(38:01):
And Lewis said that he had not only lost his friend, but he lost the aspects of Tolkien that the friend brought out in him.
And he sent us the link, the quotation from Lewis, from The Four Loves.
And it's a really beautiful statement about losing a friend.

Harold (38:21):
Wow.
Wow.
What a way to look at that.

Michael (38:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.

Jimmy (38:27):
That's really profound.
And it is true.
I mean, you know, when people come together and as friends or as a podcast or whatever it is, I mean, it makes something that's just different than any one person is individually.
And it's really good to honor that because I think especially these days, if I can just be an old man for a second, everything is atomized, everything is me, everything is your personal brand and your personal listen.

(38:57):
It's nice to have a little bit of a collective, you know, just a collective that you can go to and that brings out the best in you or inspires you to do better, you know?

Harold (39:08):
Yeah, and those guys who went to the Eagle and Child Pub regularly and hung out, they're legendary as the inklings.
You know, you think of the Algonquin Roundtable in New York and they were having this in England and here they lose a guy, Williams was like 58 when he passed away right at the end of World War II.
And, you know, you lose someone when probably they weren't expecting it.

(39:32):
Same thing, like, you know, and then all of a sudden that that aspect of you will not come out again.
That's a really profound insight.

Jimmy (39:43):
Those were some pretty talented guys, though.

Harold (39:45):
Yeah.
Yeah.

Jimmy (39:46):
Yeah.
Got anything else?

SPEAKER_1 (39:50):
Nope, that's it for the mail this week.

Jimmy (39:52):
All right.
We heard on the old hotline, we got a text from Captain Billy, super fan Captain Billy, who says regarding the 1998 part three episode, he says, if you want to hear Brian Wilson sounding like Brian and his 60s Zenith, he recommends Love and Mercy, the album and the song.

(40:13):
I know the song.
I don't know the album, but I remember Imagination.
Is that what he's talking about?

Liz (40:20):
Yeah, that was that.
I think a rough mix of that came out, maybe a couple of years before the album.
Okay.
So I remember hearing that.
Oh, and my friend Barry, I was just talking to him.
He actually, they did a music video of that song, Love and Mercy.
Barry produced it, and he was telling me he did meet Brian and he got to.

(40:44):
Wow.

Jimmy (40:45):
Are you kidding me?

Liz (40:46):
How much he loved him.
Yeah.

Michael (40:48):
Wow.
That's amazing.

Liz (40:49):
That was the extent of the conversation.
It was just total fanboy.

Michael (40:53):
I love your work.
Yeah.

Jimmy (40:55):
Well, what else are you going to say?
Around that time, or maybe it was actually the next album.
Maybe it was, I don't remember which album it was, but Peter Buck interviewed Brian for Musician Magazine, and he had great questions, but you're not getting anything out of Brian.

Liz (41:11):
Yeah.
Barry said that when Brian wasn't actually physically playing music, he was totally lost.

Michael (41:17):
Yeah.

Jimmy (41:18):
But great song, beautiful song.
Oh, the movie.
I love the movie, love it.
I think that's just fantastic.
Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks, John Cusack.
All good stuff.
All right.
Well, that's it.
So if you want to write to us or call us and talk to us about the Beach Boys, The Beatles, CS.
Lewis, Frank Capra, any of the things that our podcast focuses on, Quentin Tarantino, you can call 717-219-4162.

(41:46):
You can leave a voicemail and we would love to hear from you.
Or you could just text.
And if you text, make sure, like Captain Billy here, you identify yourself so I can identify you on air.
And of course, we'd always love to hear from you.
You can just email us.
We're unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com.
And please write because when you don't write, I worry.
Shall we get back to the strips?

SPEAKER_1 (42:06):
Let's do it.

Jimmy (42:08):
September 24th, Rerun spies Andy and Olaf playing cards.
And he excitedly yells, Charlie Brown, you've got extra dogs.
Are they free?
I'll take two.
Suddenly, Rerun gets a wheelbarrow from somewhere.
It appears.
And he has both dogs in it upside down.

(42:29):
And he's running home.
Look, mom, free dogs.
Then he is rejected once again.
And he says, sorry, mom won't let me have a dog.
And he dumps Andy and Olaf out of the wheelbarrow onto their heads.
With Olaf saying, life is full of disappointments.

Harold (42:48):
Oh, man.
I love the upside down feet sticking outside.

Jimmy (42:53):
Oh my God.
The wheelbarrow.

Harold (42:55):
And this also just rings so true.
Little kids are just rough in ways that they shouldn't be with living things.
Sometimes how scary that is.
And Rerun is absolutely a little kid here.
Just throws them into a wheelbarrow and taking them home.

Jimmy (43:12):
I love panel one.
Andy is shocked by Rerun's enthusiasm.
Olaf is not shocked, but Olaf's hat is shocked.

Harold (43:25):
And where's Andy's nose in that first panel?

Jimmy (43:27):
Is that a little tiny dot?
It's weird.

Harold (43:32):
It is weird.
I don't know, because it looks like a fuzz.
Like he didn't draw the nose or something.
I don't know.

Jimmy (43:38):
Yeah, no, I had to zoom in.

SPEAKER_1 (43:40):
I want to point out that Andy and Olaf are playing cards.
And I saw something on Blue Sky from Thomas K.
Dye, who says, some Toonist advice.
Never, never have characters play a board game as part of their stage business if you don't want to commit to fiddly details over and over again.

Harold (44:02):
Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (44:03):
Stick to cards much easier.

Jimmy (44:06):
Well, who said that again?

SPEAKER_1 (44:08):
Thomas K.
Dye, he's creator of Projection Edge, News Hounds and Something Happens.

Jimmy (44:15):
Well, Thomas, you nailed that one.
That is true.
The amount of times I've thought of something and thought, I don't want to draw that over and over again.

Harold (44:24):
Yeah, I did a board game sequence in Apathy Cat, the old comic from the 90s that I did.
And I remember it was called I Win.
Basically, the rules, I make them up as I go along.
And I liked the gag, so I was not too mad about making my little Monopoly board game.

Jimmy (44:46):
September 27th, Snoopy is out in the front porch there of Charlie Brown's house, the stoop, I should say.
And he says to himself, they're gone.
My brothers are gone.
What are they going to do?
They can't wander around forever.
And he's back atop the dog house thinking, still, they're pretty smart.
They'll find something useful to do.
And then we see Andy and Olaf standing in front of a music store with a bunch of instruments in the window.

(45:09):
And Olaf says, you know what we should do?
We should buy banjos.

Liz (45:15):
This is the last one.

SPEAKER_2 (45:17):
No!

Liz (45:18):
So, Jimmy, when this goes in the public domain, there's your strip right there.

Jimmy (45:26):
Oh, I would love that.
Are you kidding?
But this also sounds, Olaf reminds me of me and all of my business plans that I do with you guys.
There is a 50-50 chance that we'll end recording and I'll be like, you know what we should do guys?
Buy banjos.

SPEAKER_1 (45:45):
But why weren't they issued them at birth?

Harold (45:48):
That's right.
Here's two dogs in a banjo.

Jimmy (45:51):
I love the way.
That is a great Snoopy on the doghouse in panel three and I love that music store.
I love that I can identify that's a strat.
He's got the fender headstock, the pick guard, the shape.
He must have referenced that.

Harold (46:10):
Well, talk about what does Schulz know and if this is, did he know this?
He would not see these guys again and give them a beautiful sendoff panel.
Talk about Zip-A-Tone.
What is going on?
He's using the fade Zip-A-Tone where it's dark at the top and goes down to nothing in the wind shop window is gorgeous.
It's such a good use of Zip-A-Tone and then you've got Zip-A-Tone on the instruments themselves behind there.

(46:37):
Then you've got a Zip-A-Tone on the bottom, which is a fascinating mix of the effect of bricks, but also with some interesting fade stuff going on.
This is pretty crazy.
What was being done with this?
I think this is the most sophisticated use of Zip-A-Tone in a comic strip panel I've ever seen.

Jimmy (47:02):
Outside of Buzz Sawyer.

Harold (47:05):
But even that, this is more sophisticated than a Buzz Sawyer, given the variety of things that you're using.
He didn't have access to this stuff.

Jimmy (47:14):
It's incredible.

Harold (47:15):
It looks great.

Jimmy (47:16):
Absolutely great.
I love the saxophone.
I love the violin.
Is that a violin or is that like a cello?

SPEAKER_1 (47:22):
It's a cello.
I think it's a cello.
That's got to be like a bass sax or something like that, to have a neck that long.

Jimmy (47:28):
Then what's the other guitar?
Is that like a classical guitar and the banjo?

SPEAKER_1 (47:32):
Banjo is little.

Michael (47:33):
Pretty cool.

Harold (47:35):
I would love to see a whole series with these two guys, and they're just wandering musicians.

Jimmy (47:41):
Oh my God, it'd be the best.
They're like barges that go through town and they get involved in people's lives.
You know what I mean?

Harold (47:49):
Yeah, right.
Yeah, it's like Route 66.

Jimmy (47:51):
Yeah.

Harold (47:52):
Go from space to space with their banjos.

Jimmy (47:54):
With their banjos.

Harold (47:55):
Meet people just for the episode, then move on.

Jimmy (47:57):
Yes, it would be great.
And nobody in the, they're only tangentially in the plot.
They're actually driving the whole plot, but the characters in the story don't know, right?

Harold (48:07):
Right, right.
Yeah, it's really about a widower who is considering getting remarried to be a banker.

Michael (48:13):
Yes!

Jimmy (48:16):
Peanuts worldwide.
I don't think this one's a freebie.

Michael (48:19):
You give us a call.

Jimmy (48:21):
You give us a call if you want to do that one.

Harold (48:23):
Oh, that would be a blast.

Jimmy (48:24):
That would be amazing.
Michael, can you compose music for banjo, classical guitar, electric guitar, saxophone and violin?

Liz (48:33):
Well, I think they're just going to play two banjos.

Jimmy (48:35):
Oh yeah, they'll just play two banjos.
That's right.

SPEAKER_1 (48:38):
But they'll meet up with other musicians when they go from town to town.

Liz (48:43):
They can duel with the other banjo players.

Jimmy (48:47):
Oh yeah, and you could have a gag about dueling banjos but only having three fingers.
That would be really hard to play.

Liz (48:53):
Well, that's the name of the strip.

Jimmy (48:57):
Oh, come on, we gotta do this.
September 29th, Charlie Brown and Sally are at the beach and Sally's holding something and Charlie Brown asks, what's that?
And she says, an underwater camera.
It takes pictures underwater.
And then she throws it into the water where it sinks and they just look at it sinking.

(49:21):
And then Sally says, I don't think it's working.

Liz (49:25):
What does she expect to happen?

Jimmy (49:31):
Something magic, I guess.

SPEAKER_1 (49:33):
She didn't think it through.

Harold (49:34):
Yeah, I think she's expecting she's living in 2025 and not in 1999.

Jimmy (49:42):
I actually, not quite this stupid, but sort of this stupid one.
I was a little kid, you know, those super high bounce balls that the rubber ones, you bounce and they go over the building, right?
Well, I had a Superman Superball, but it was actually hard plastic.
And I don't know how it was designed, but you could throw it and it would bounce like one of those high bounce balls even though it was hard plastic, right?

(50:08):
And so then I never saw one for years.
And there was a vending machine.
I'm like, oh my God, it's those balls.
You're going to wait till you see this.
This is amazing.
I put 50 cents in, turned it, got it out, showed my kids the ball and just threw it at the ground as hard as I could and just shattered it into a million pieces.

SPEAKER_1 (50:33):
Okay, dad.

Harold (50:38):
What else?

Jimmy (50:41):
So I sort of relate to Sally.
There are moments where you just do something so stupid, you're like, I can't believe I did that.

Harold (50:52):
Oh, man.
That's like a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Jimmy (50:56):
Watch this, guys.

Harold (50:59):
Wile E.
Coyote is watching the road runner doing it.
And then now it's my turn.

Jimmy (51:04):
There's a parking lot.
There were people everywhere.
Crazy, man.
Oh, well, I'm glad we had a good laugh because I picked a bunch of these that made me real sad.

Liz (51:16):
I actually didn't understand this sequence.

Jimmy (51:18):
Okay.
I don't know if there's anything to understand.
So let's see if there is, though.
Okay.
So I'll just read them.
They're all real quick.
So I'll just read them right around and then we'll discuss.

Michael (51:27):
Okay.

Jimmy (51:28):
October 4th, it's a panoramic single panel and it's pouring rain in the desert and Spike looks over at his friend, the cactus, who's on the other side of the panel and says, is it raining where you are?
And then there's the next one where it's pouring rain again in the desert.
Now Spike is just hiding for shelter under the cactus and he just says, Mom.

(51:53):
And then on October 6th, we see it's raining so hard in the desert that it's formed a little stream and there's all these little paper boats floating down the stream and Spike says to the cactus, we need more paper.
And then it wraps up with, it's actually, he sees wood stock in a previous strip and now he knows that the flood is over.

(52:18):
And Spike says to the cactus, so when Noah sent the dove out again, this time he knew the rain had stopped.
And then Spike looks over at his dove which is just wood stock sitting on a beach chair with shades on.
Why I picked this is just, it made me so sad to feel, I don't know, there's no, again, it's only because we're looking at it in hindsight, and we know that this is the end.

(52:47):
There's just was something that about the lone little dog sitting out in the desert, being rained on, that just, I don't know, it felt like an existential sadness.
It's not raining on the baseball field, it's not raining in the neighborhood, it's just raining on Spike in the desert.

(53:08):
And it just made me sad.
That's why I picked it.
I mean-

Liz (53:11):
Really?
Because you'd think he'd appreciate it.

Jimmy (53:14):
You would think he'd appreciate it.
Well, that's something else to contemplate, right?
He kind of does, I guess he's enjoying doing the boats at least.

SPEAKER_1 (53:23):
Yeah, but the mom one.

Jimmy (53:25):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (53:27):
That's sad.

Michael (53:28):
Yeah.

Jimmy (53:30):
Yeah.
The whole thing just makes me sad.
Including though, we can see if we're looking at the, is it raining where you are strip October 4th, look at how jagged even the panel border is.
One thing I don't understand is why didn't someone give him strips that were printed, at least had the borders like a panorama done and then he just had a white, we could just white out some spots for the panel.

Harold (53:55):
Yeah.
A lot of people do that where you have this gigantic rectangle for the full dimensions of what your strip can be.
Then you do have that pre-outlined.
Then since he's varying his panels now, he could just have to draw the vertical lines and white out the space in between.
I just can't believe that we just said here he is in the 80s saying he's holding his hand when he draws with his other hand, which I'm trying to understand what that must have been like.

(54:25):
So he's got to probably take pushpins or something or tape, and he's got to put his Bristol board down at a certain angle on his board.
Because usually your free hand is going to give you motion to turn your paper around as you go, or hold it down at the very least, and you're using both hands.

(54:47):
It's like a backhand in tennis or something.
It's just strange to think that that's how he's doing the strip.
He's a two-handed India Ink dipped pen artist.

Michael (55:00):
Yeah.

Jimmy (55:04):
We complain a lot in life.
I complain a lot.
The world in general complains a lot.
I see so many artists despairing because of things like AI online, and everybody's looking for this app will make this go faster.
If you want to know how to be great, that's how you're great.

(55:27):
You don't stop and you don't let anything or anyone stop you and you devote your life to it.
I am not saying that you should do that, because that comes with a million other trade-offs, and the odds are definitely in favor of you not becoming Charles Schulz.

Harold (55:44):
I want to present something to you guys.
This happened to me yesterday.
I was at the American Library Association, and I overheard a conversation between this woman and another cartoonist at the National Cartoonist Society booth where I was set up.
What she was saying was, I have basically I have a child or two kids, I can't remember.

(56:05):
But anyway, she had a child who was very interested in comics and wanted to make comics and wanted to do their own thing.
Then they got so upset with what they saw coming in AI.
They're just about to go off to college and they were going to study cartooning and they were moving away from it because they were concerned that AI would take away any opportunity they could to make a living in comics.

(56:32):
Now, obviously, we know that the chances of making a living in comics already are not stacked very well in the favor of this kid, but AI pushed this person over the edge and then my cartoonist friend asked the woman, what do they want to do instead?
And she said, well, they want to study to become a welder.

(56:54):
So I want to pose that to you.
If that woman had come up to you for advice, what do I say to my child?
What would you have said?

Jimmy (57:02):
Wow.
Well, I'd say welding is a rewarding and financially lucrative career.

Liz (57:08):
Do comics for fun if that's your passion.
You just don't expect anything from it.

Jimmy (57:12):
That's a good advice.

SPEAKER_1 (57:13):
And her children's generation are the ones who are going to figure out how to wrangle AI and make it what it's going to become.

Harold (57:27):
Well, I think the collective of what three of you just said is pretty much what my friend said and I said.

SPEAKER_1 (57:32):
Oh, good.

Harold (57:33):
Because, and I kind of focused on what Liz was saying.
I said, I understand what you're saying.
And it's, you know, we don't know where this is all going.
But, you know, your children are coming up alongside AI.
And there are so many jobs that require people now to know how to navigate AI.

(57:54):
They're young, they're in a position to kind of get on the crest of that wave.
And it's going to move really fast.
But the way I might look at this is if they were wanting to create their own worlds, it was what they wanted to do, create their own characters in their own worlds.
It's so slow right now for us to be able to make comics.

(58:15):
And as an individual pursuit, we've mentioned how fast it is, relative to other art forms, to be able to create a world.
At least you can get something out.
Charles was putting out something every day and made this amazing collective work over 50 years.
But I said with AI, someone will still have to come up with characters that have their own heart and their own soul and their own mind, and the humanity of it will be from the origins of what those characters are.

(58:42):
And then they may want to look at AI as the opportunity to extend the universe of what they're able to create single-handedly.
And that is in a way what may make it possible for artists in the future to fulfill visions that you would need an entire animation studio to fulfill.

(59:06):
Maybe there's a path where somebody will be able to create more of a concept.

Jimmy (59:12):
Yeah, me too, actually.
Well, I think the difference is though that AI is learning from stealing.
You know, if you draw something in AI, it's not drawing it.
It's super Googling it and stealing it from stuff that already exists.

SPEAKER_1 (59:26):
That's what it's doing now.

Harold (59:28):
But can we teach it to steal from us?

SPEAKER_1 (59:30):
Ten years from now.
Who knows?

Liz (59:33):
Don't teach it to do anything.
Just stop it.

Harold (59:36):
Can it become sophisticated enough to steal from my library of art and be true to it using more generic algorithms of movement and motion and all that?

SPEAKER_1 (59:46):
It can do that now, Harold.

Liz (59:47):
Miyazaki's right.
He says like this is an abomination.
This has nothing to do with creating.

Jimmy (59:52):
I really think so.
I think the other thing is, here's the thing I would also say is that, I mean, they needed a supercomputer to learn how to draw like Amelia rules.
Like, it's a bowling ball with a smiley face.
If you can't figure out how to draw a bowling ball with a smiley face, then you will give up.
If you saw a news story about anything and said, well, it was my passion, but now I saw this news story, therefore, I'm going to be a welder, I dare say it was not your passion.

(01:00:21):
Because no supercomputer telling me that they can do this would have stopped me.
Will Eisner, one of my heroes, told me I sucked and that didn't stop me, right?
So I think what AI is doing is it is a great tool for people who don't want to work at their craft and they will then find themselves in a lane of people who also don't want to work at their craft and eventually no one will look at that.

SPEAKER_1 (01:00:51):
I think we're being too focused on what's available now and not what these kids are going to experience when they become adults.

Jimmy (01:01:02):
Well, I can't even imagine what that will be.

Harold (01:01:04):
We're going to have to figure out the ethics of it and what can and cannot be done.
And I think that's going to become a very fine point and generally agreed on in some circles.
My guess is that kind of what's going to happen with AI, I don't know in what form, but that there will be nuance where we can put our unique choices and humanity into it because it's not going to be the big clunky thing.

(01:01:27):
It just says, hey, put my character on a schooner in the ocean and he's got a peg leg today.
And you just take whatever it gives you.

Jimmy (01:01:37):
What happened to him?

Harold (01:01:40):
Well, that, see, to an end.

Liz (01:01:43):
Really, I mean, this argument will go on for the end of history.
But basically, the only thing to do is if I am able to sue somebody who steals my work.
That's the only thing that could stop this.
Is if I actually have ownership and if somebody has uses, my stuff's not even known in the world, but it's being used to train.

Harold (01:02:06):
I think that'll happen.

Jimmy (01:02:07):
Well, here's what, do you want to know the actual answer for all of this is within the comic book world or the cartooning world?
It's called the Union.
The Screenwriters Guild, the Actors Guild, they all understand what this means and what Reddit is.
We're not going to figure it out, like you just said, because we're not going to figure it out on this podcast and a bunch of other twats talking on YouTube aren't going to figure it out.

Harold (01:02:31):
Well, unions are for people who work collaboratively together in large organizations to create something together.
That's where I think the cartoonists are always going to struggle because if we want it to be a more solitary job, having a union is tricky.

Jimmy (01:02:46):
The screenwriters sit at home and write.
I mean, no, I don't think that if we want, you know, maybe we have all kinds of...

Harold (01:02:53):
But they plug into a bigger thing to make a final product.

Jimmy (01:02:56):
Like a publisher.

Harold (01:02:57):
Well, okay.
All right.
Well, there are all sorts of problems with screenwriter unions as well.
But yes, they do support you and they do help get the money into the hands of the people who want to do it when there's a hundred people that want to do one job.

Jimmy (01:03:09):
Like, I mean, the upside is 500,000 times better if we unionized than if we didn't.
We're not going to because comic book artists are lazy.
They don't want to engage with the real world.
I'm one of them.

Liz (01:03:25):
Yeah, we're the people who want to sit home alone and create worlds.

Jimmy (01:03:29):
Right.
So now though, because of our inaction, we will allow supercomputers to show...
Going back to the guy from a hundred years ago that liked Tony Stark so much.
Well, he's going to be able to plug in to some stupid, you know, virtual reality thing.
And a generative text model or language model will present him with a million hours of Tony Stark content.

(01:03:58):
You know, that's the matrix.
And the only thing that can stop that is if we stop it and we can't stop it as individuals.

Michael (01:04:06):
So...

Harold (01:04:08):
Well, yeah.
And to me, that world is the...
If there's a connection to what our world is today, I would say that world is where you make your own Tony Stark thing.
That's the world of video games.
You're playing in somebody else's technical soup.
And if you're happy doing that, you'll have a blast making your own characters with AI.
But then there will be the people who are actually artists who are trying to tell stories with characters that are their own, have their own feeling, and they will find ways to use the technology to put their stamp on it, which will make it different than everything else that will make it.

Jimmy (01:04:41):
Well, don't feel bad that I disagree with this 100 percent, because David Lynch thought that too, and I think he's 100 percent wrong too.

Harold (01:04:47):
Well, no, I'm glad I asked the question because, I mean, and it's cool that we've got this recorded now, so we can go back and see what we were, where our thoughts were just even like five years from now, we'll have a sense of like what happened.

SPEAKER_1 (01:04:59):
Five months.

Harold (01:05:01):
Months, yeah, right?

Jimmy (01:05:03):
Speaking of art, October 11th, the little pigtailed girl has a critique of reruns as they sit there and draw side by side.
And she says, that's not art, your lines are too wiggly.
And then rerun says, that's because you bumped my elbow.
And then the little girl says, you're taking up too much room.
And rerun says, there's no body checking in art.

Liz (01:05:27):
He doesn't actually, he kind of avoids the subject here.
I mean, he could have had something about an artist who draws wiggling lines and that's okay.
But he turns it into a little argument about her bumping.

Harold (01:05:42):
But the first line is probably the line that jumps out that is something that the Schulz has heard, right?
Your lines are too wiggly.
You need to retire.
You're not making art that's good enough to be in the page.
Give it to someone else.

SPEAKER_1 (01:05:58):
I don't think anybody's saying that to him.
I think that's what he's hearing.

Harold (01:06:03):
Well, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, right, Liz.
Yeah, exactly.
And I heard it personally.
I think I mentioned that story where we were at a Barnes and Noble and there was a very talented cartoonist who was saying he needs to give it up.
He's past his prime.
He needs to make room for the new guys to come in and boy.

Jimmy (01:06:23):
Well, here.

Harold (01:06:26):
He got some pretty raw words.

Liz (01:06:28):
Well, I mean, there's some like, I have a friend who's a very good guitar player.

Michael (01:06:34):
Thanks, Michael.

Liz (01:06:39):
He's a great guitar player and he's really concerned that in a couple of years he won't be able to play just through natural nutrition of muscles.
So his project is to record everything now.
This is normal.
It's not like a tragic.
It's for you to face up to it and you deal with it.

Michael (01:07:00):
Yeah.

Jimmy (01:07:01):
Well, you know what I have to face up with and deal with right now?
We've come to the end of our episode.

Liz (01:07:07):
All right.
Well, we get an extra bonus episode.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (01:07:10):
Surprise.
We're going to do four episodes.

Jimmy (01:07:12):
Because that's the kind of full service podcast we are, people.

Michael (01:07:16):
Uh-huh.

Jimmy (01:07:17):
Also, we don't know how to shut up.
So if you don't know how to shut up though, we would love to hear from you.
So the first thing you can do is you can email us.
You can call or email us at unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com.
We would absolutely love to hear from you.
You can also, if you want, you can text or call our hotline [phone].

(01:07:40):
And of course, you can follow us on good old social media where we're at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and good old YouTube.
And remember, when I don't hear from you, I worry.
So don't make me worry.
And we'll be back next week with more 1999.
Sound good?

Liz (01:08:00):
Yes.

Jimmy (01:08:01):
All right.
So for my pals, Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

Liz (01:08:07):
Yes, be of good cheer.

SPEAKER_1 (01:08:10):
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.
Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.

(01:08:32):
For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.

Jimmy (01:08:40):
You know what we should do guys?