March 31, 2026 • 62 mins
Linus is doing the St. Francis shtick, but that doesn’t stop him from playing a mean shortstop. The gang discusses Schulz’s ability to layer contradictory elements to create some of the richest characters in comics.
Here's a link to our episode about the football strips: https://tinyurl.com/footballstrips
Transcript available at UnpackingPeanuts.com
Jimmy’s, Michael’s, and Harold’s books are available at UnpackingPeanuts.com/store.
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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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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.
It's Unpacking Peanuts.
Today, we're continuing our look at the Van Pelt family.
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 and The Dumbest Idea Ever.
You can find all of my new comics on Substack or on GVILLE Comics.
(00:39):
Joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer, both for the Van 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 (00:59):
Say hey.
Jimmy (01:00):
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.
Harold (01:09):
It's Harold Buchholz.
Hello.
Jimmy (01:13):
Well, guys, we're back here.
This is episode.
Oh my God, I forgot Liz.
And see, I'm already in trouble.
And making sure everybody is our producer and editor, who we love Liz Sumner.
Dearly.
Dearly.
Liz (01:33):
Howdy.
Jimmy (01:33):
We were just actually before this, we started recording, talking about how important a good editor is.
Harold (01:41):
Yes.
And a good interviewer.
Jimmy (01:43):
And a good interviewer.
All right.
So we are back here in the good old Van Pelt world.
I would love to talk more about Linus and Lucy.
I'll tell you a little bit about how I chose the strips for today's episode.
We talked so much so far really about the relationship of Linus and Lucy and their early development as we kind of watch their personalities form.
(02:08):
So what I did for this episode was I kind of went through and found some of the things, found examples of some of the things that they are most famous for.
So we're going to be hitting some of the big Linus and Lucy moments.
This episode, we're going to be hitting the snowman creation, the pulling the football away, a little bit of things like great pumpkin.
(02:33):
So we'll get to see them kind of at their apex and we get to talk about that.
Does that sound fun?
Harold (02:42):
Yeah.
Jimmy (02:42):
Yes.
Harold (02:43):
Yeah.
Jimmy (02:44):
Now, if you folks out there want to follow along with us, the first thing you got to do is go over there to unpackingpeanuts.com and sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread, which will get you one email a month that will let you know what strips we're going to be covering, because that's even more important in this part of the show, because who knows what we're going to be doing.
(03:05):
It could be absolutely anything that we're covering.
So you're going to need that email to be up to snuff on what we're going to do.
Harold (03:14):
All right.
Jimmy (03:14):
You're ready?
Should we just get to it?
Harold (03:16):
Do it.
Sure.
Yeah.
Jimmy (03:19):
May 23rd, 1967.
Linus is kneeling outside in the grass, and up come three tiny little birds, Proto Woodstocks.
They come up close to Linus, pats them all gently on the head.
Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat.
He has a little smile, and then very happy and satisfied.
They all walk away, sighing, as Linus looks after them, and then Linus looks out at us and says, I think I found my calling.
Michael (03:47):
This became like a major Linus thing.
They marketed this too.
You could get little Linus dolls and these little three little birds, and you patted them on the head and they sighed.
It was huge.
Everybody wanted those.
Really?
Harold (04:05):
Is this true?
No.
Michael (04:09):
Did you most start to see when you hear it?
No.
Jimmy (04:12):
I was already on EFA.
Harold (04:15):
It is now.
Jimmy (04:17):
Oh, how did they miss that?
Harold (04:19):
Come on.
Michael (04:20):
Well, you said you were picking the big tropes.
I love the little petting inkbirds on the head trope.
I think there were a couple of them.
Jimmy (04:29):
Oh, no.
It comes back.
I mean, it sounds big.
Liz (04:32):
Well, and he gets criticized for doing it.
Michael (04:35):
Yeah.
Well, of course, because it's outrageous.
Jimmy (04:37):
He gets roundly criticized for it.
It feels very almost mystical, though.
It feels like you couldn't just go out into the grass and sit down and anyone would pet birds.
It feels like only Linus could do this.
Harold (04:50):
A lot of this is on the birds, I have to say.
Liz (04:52):
That's true.
Jimmy (04:52):
Well, I guess that is true.
Yes.
It is up to the birds.
But they would only approach Linus, right?
Liz (05:00):
Well, was it Patrick McDonald who told us that he tried to do this?
Harold (05:04):
Oh, yes.
Well, it looks like a great idea.
I love the birds in panel three, walking away, all satisfied.
And I love the, they have this wonderful use of the word balloon.
There's just the word sigh, and all three of them have little pointy pointers for the word balloons.
(05:32):
And then you've got this little, what do you call the thing?
I'm sure Mark Walker had a name for it, around the sigh, that it's like this little-
Michael (05:39):
A little cloud of pleasure.
Liz (05:41):
A little asterisk.
Harold (05:43):
An asterisk or a little bubble popping into joy or something.
And then he takes the balloon and he has this really squiggly line around the word sigh.
And then he does a second squiggly balloon on top of it.
And it's so evocative.
Michael (06:04):
That's what I was calling the cloud of pleasure.
Yeah, that's a little strange.
Harold (06:10):
Well, that's evocative or just calling something cloud of pleasure.
But the looks on their faces too, especially the first one on the left, the birds have a different feel than Woodstock.
Woodstock often feels innocent and hapless.
This little bird on the left feels like a 1967 bird.
(06:32):
Does that make sense?
What's going on?
What are the personalities of these birds just having nothing for them to say or know other than they've come up to be patted on the head by Linus?
But the look on the bird, it's almost like a little funky vulturey.
Jimmy (06:51):
Well, you'll notice if you see Woodstock, when you see the final version of Woodstock, the beak isn't pointed like that.
It becomes completely round.
There is something slightly more birdlike about them, despite them having spiky hair with feathers on their head, that I think gives them just a little bit more of an alien in a human look or something.
Harold (07:19):
They make me think of the vultures in The Jungle Book, which came out, I think, this year, 1997, in the Disney animated version.
They just have a different look to them.
There's more to their personality in these little guys.
It's different, but I love it.
(07:40):
I love Linus' little innocent look as they walk up.
It's almost like he's expecting it.
This is not the first time, right?
Jimmy (07:50):
Definitely, he's expecting it.
Harold (07:53):
Yeah.
It's just a sweet thing that Schulz came up with.
Who knows where it came from?
It's one of those mysterious things.
Michael (08:02):
It came from St.
Francis.
Jimmy (08:06):
It is very St.
Francis.
It is out in the woods, patting birds on the head.
Liz (08:11):
It's the 800th anniversary of St.
Francis' death, and there's lots of big celebrations around here.
Jimmy (08:17):
Oh, is there really?
Liz (08:18):
Yeah.
Jimmy (08:18):
There you go.
Shout out to Frank X.
I think one of the secrets to the way peanuts, or the success Schulz has with these characters in Peanuts, is that Linus is this, but he's also the shortstop.
(08:39):
He's the wise friend that you talk to, that's also the idiot sitting out in the pumpkin patch.
Liz (08:47):
And also dismantles a tricycle.
Harold (08:51):
Dismantle a tricycle, right.
Liz (08:52):
Yeah.
Michael (08:53):
Well, another thing is, Schulz didn't have these kids smiling all that often.
So when they're happy, it's kind of an unusual occurrence.
Like, wow, it's really like important.
Jimmy (09:06):
And if you think about that first panel, right?
Like, if you just erase the line on Linus' face, which is a sixteenth of an inch or an eighth of an inch maybe, right?
That would give that stoic peanuts look.
But in this instance, he adds the eighth of an inch of an ink line, and it's a totally different experience.
Harold (09:26):
It's pretty remarkable.
Jimmy (09:27):
This is Linus who is happy.
Harold (09:30):
Yeah, it is totally remarkable.
Jimmy (09:33):
Pretty good stuff.
Harold (09:35):
I was reading about something this week, and it was a very odd book.
It was a guy talking about how people can influence other people for good or for ill, but he was going to weird sources to figure out the techniques like hypnotists, con men, stand-up comedians.
(10:01):
He's just studying them and seeing what do they have in common in terms of commanding their audience, right?
And one of them was called the open loop, which is essentially you don't close the scene out, and so you kind of keep the audience in suspense.
(10:22):
And I think what Michael's saying about you don't often see the characters smiling, even though we're only reading these usually four panels at a time in the Daily newspaper or whatever, it does create this tension, I guess, right, because there's not always a release, the way most cartoonists would do, or certainly gagaday cartoonists.
(10:44):
Yeah.
It's like, you know, the release is the punchline, right?
But somehow there's something in what Schulz is doing that's got an extra layer where he is building up a tension, say, between Linus and Lucy.
And we see it over time, and sometimes there's no, certainly not from a gagaday perspective, no resolution.
(11:06):
And I don't think very many of the cartoonists were good at it.
I think it does go back to the idea that Linus, all the characters, as he said, were notes on a keyboard, was a term he used because you need to have different characters with different styles.
And they are the shortstop and the little kid who pats birds on the head and the kid sitting in the pumpkin patch.
(11:27):
It's like he just, instead of adding another character and another character and another character, he's layering them on.
It's just, it just works so incredibly well.
Jimmy (11:38):
I think that's one of the reasons like something like Seinfeld felt so fresh and successful is that you would be waiting and it would wrap up right before the credit.
Harold (11:49):
Seinfeld absolutely did that.
Jimmy (11:51):
Yes.
Harold (11:51):
And it's a really fun technique that, yeah, I think it's certainly in comic strips.
We don't, it's not taken advantage of the way Schulz does usually.
Jimmy (12:02):
August 31st, 1962, now we're visiting Lucy at her famous Psychiatric Care Stand.
And her patient today is Sally who says, My problem is I'm afraid of kindergarten.
Sally sits down and Lucy's listening.
And Sally says, I don't even know why.
I tried to reason it out, but I can't.
I'm just afraid.
(12:23):
I think about it all the time.
I'm really afraid.
Lucy thinks it over and then says, You're no different from anyone else.
Five cents, please.
Michael (12:33):
That's well worth it, five cents.
Jimmy (12:36):
Yeah, I think that's an important lesson to learn.
Yeah, that's a good five cents.
Now, do you know, you could, and unfortunately, it's not on this, in this strip, but Lucy often has a little can that she has for five cents that you could put the money in.
Famously, she has it in the Christmas card.
(12:57):
You can't, and this is going to sound like a joke because of what Michael said after the first strip, but it's not.
You can buy a bank that looks like Lucy's five cents can, and when you put the nickel in, it will be-
Harold (13:09):
I'm on eBay already.
Jimmy (13:11):
Do you see it?
It will give you advice, and one of them is this one.
You're no different from anyone else.
You put the nickel in, and Lucy will tell you that.
Harold (13:20):
Wow, well, I think that patting birds thing, it's happening.
It's just a matter of time.
Now that Sony owns it, it's happening.
Jimmy (13:27):
Oh, yeah, I think if someone listened to that, it's already in production.
This is, I think, interesting.
In that third panel, we see Lucy, she's really thinking it over.
I guess I want to talk about Lucy as the doctor, because I feel like she does take it really seriously.
I mean, it's just her harsh personality, given some sort of, you know, imprimatur because she is behind the booth, but she means to do well as this, right?
Liz (14:00):
Yeah, and she doesn't suffer fools.
She's impatient.
Michael (14:04):
Yeah.
Harold (14:06):
Yeah, which, I mean, if you got to do it at Five Sets of Pop, you got to keep them coming.
Jimmy (14:10):
That's true, you really got to move them right through.
Liz (14:13):
Five Sets was worth more than $62.
Harold (14:16):
Well, that's true.
Yeah, that's like, what, $3,000 today?
Michael (14:21):
It's been switched comically by.
Liz (14:22):
Oh, that's true.
Harold (14:26):
Wow, that's so true.
Jimmy (14:27):
That was amazing.
Harold (14:28):
Especially 1962, can you imagine?
Jimmy (14:31):
You could buy a lot of-
Harold (14:32):
1962, that would be worth way more than $3,000.
Jimmy (14:35):
Yeah.
It is off topic of The Van Pelt, but I feel better about Rhonda's weird hair when I see Sally.
Harold (14:43):
Yeah, I was just thinking the same.
Michael (14:44):
I just got to Rhonda's new hairdo, I like it.
Jimmy (14:47):
You like the new one?
Michael (14:49):
It's not new, it was halfway through the run.
I'm surprised she didn't do it earlier.
It's looked very good.
Liz (14:58):
But Sally does look younger here than she got to, I mean, her hair is somehow different.
She looks younger.
Jimmy (15:05):
It's lower on her head.
Usually, the wings come out much closer to the top as she gets older.
Yeah.
Harold (15:15):
Interesting.
But I think you're right about Lucy.
I think those are good traits to give Lucy.
I think she gets her bad rap a lot of times for good reason.
But yeah, she genuinely is there to help, I think, over trying to profit from it, right?
Jimmy (15:34):
Yeah.
I mean, the profit is not-
Harold (15:36):
I mean, she's charging.
Jimmy (15:37):
Yeah, she's not doing it for free, which is actually also smart.
Harold (15:42):
I mean, and even psychologically for the buyer, right?
Correct, yeah.
The advice is worth, you know.
Jimmy (15:50):
Yeah, nothing.
Exactly.
Harold (15:51):
But if you paid a nickel, all of a sudden, I think it takes on a bit more importance.
So Lucy understands these things.
Yeah.
You might get more out of it than a glass of lemonade.
Jimmy (16:03):
I think you definitely will.
I think you definitely will, even if you learn maybe to shop around more for your psychiatric care.
At least you'll learn something.
Harold (16:13):
Well, and it's interesting.
I'm just from Schulz, the perspective of Schulz, this may be a weird thing, but the very fact that you've got a character who is offering what's called psychiatric care.
Lucy's been known to give some incredibly bad insights on life that are totally wrong.
(16:34):
When she's behind that booth, I don't think Schulz gives himself that leeway.
It's like, it may be harsh, but there's truth behind it.
I can't think of one where Schulz would have totally disagreed with what Lucy said.
I'm sure maybe we could find one, but it seems like there's a kernel of truth in the ones when she's behind the booth, versus say when she's walking around with little Linus and just doing a little spritz of this information.
(17:05):
Absolutely.
Jimmy (17:06):
Well, I think Michael put it well in one of our last episodes when we were talking about what William Pepper said and then Michael said that she's trying to help in the meanest possible way or whatever.
It really does satisfy both of her desires.
She wants to help and she also wants to be me.
Harold (17:27):
Well, it's interesting that third panel when she's looking away from Sally who's all stressed out over school.
Jimmy (17:34):
Yeah.
Harold (17:34):
She's thinking.
Lucy is thinking hard.
It's like, how do I give this?
Liz (17:40):
Or Schroeder is over to the right.
Jimmy (17:44):
No, I think the eyebrow indicates thinking.
Harold (17:51):
The hand to the chin doesn't hurt.
Classic thinker pose.
But yeah, it's like she's, well, she's forced in a four-panel strip to have an answer that's going to be less than 10 words.
It's very concise.
You remember a concise, pithy response.
And so, it works for Lucy.
(18:12):
It's cool.
Jimmy (18:15):
July 23rd, 1972.
We start with the symbolic panel, or maybe not symbolic panel.
We start with a picture of the psychiatry booth, but no one is at it.
And then, we cut to Schroeder's room, where he is playing along on his piano.
Lucy's in her classic position, leaning on the piano.
And then, she looks back at Schroeder, and seeming visibly upset, she walks away and goes to her own psychiatric booth, which is great.
(18:46):
And she sits there in the patient's position and says, I need some advice.
And then, Dr.
Lucy, she goes back to behind the stand.
Dr.
Lucy says, good, that's what I'm here for.
Patient Lucy says, there's this boy I kind of like, C, but he never pays any attention to me.
Is it because I'm unattractive?
(19:06):
Then Dr.
Lucy says, nonsense, you're a very beautiful young girl and you shouldn't have to chase after anyone.
And patient Lucy says, do you really think so?
And Dr.
Lucy says, of course, would I lie to you?
And then Lucy goes back to Schroeder's music room, gets back into her position at the piano and says to Schroeder, my psychiatrist says, blah, which means Schroeder flying butt over tea kettle.
Michael (19:33):
Well, this would be confusing for somebody who didn't know peanuts.
Jimmy (19:41):
Forget that.
How about it's your first comic strip ever?
What do you think?
Harold (19:47):
I think this is a great idea.
I'm surprised he didn't do it more often.
Jimmy (19:51):
It's a great idea.
Harold (19:52):
Have a character talk to themselves and have them take up the different positions that the different versions of themselves are responding to.
Great idea.
I would love to play around that with my characters.
Because you can visualize a conversation and have some variety in the art.
It's really cool.
Jimmy (20:12):
And it's a brilliant idea for Lucy because of course she would have to go to the person that she thinks is the best.
Harold (20:18):
Sure, yeah.
Jimmy (20:19):
And that's her, you know?
Harold (20:22):
Well, and also we talk about, again, her being the one who wants to give truth in the meanest way possible.
But then you see how she gives it to herself.
She's not, she's stern.
Stern.
But she's not mean.
She's saying, hey, you're beautiful.
(20:42):
You shouldn't have to chase after anyone.
Because I think that just shows her esteem for the person on the other side of the booth.
Is probably higher than it ever has been, right?
Yes.
Jimmy (20:53):
Oh, a hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
Because there is some part of Lucy, whenever Charlie Brown or someone comes up, she's thinking, oh, look at this loser.
I'll straighten him out.
Harold (21:03):
Right.
Yeah.
He needs to be really shook up a little for this to stick.
Jimmy (21:10):
Yeah, exactly.
Harold (21:11):
And again, even in that regard, the meanest way possible is really the most effective way possible.
It's another way to give Lucy a little leeway there, right?
He's going to remember this because he's thick.
I'm going to say something harsh because he needs to hear it.
And if I don't give it, he's wishy washy.
If I don't give it to him the way he needs to hear it, then it's not going to stick and that nickel is wasted.
(21:36):
So, yeah, you can give Lucy, I think, quite a bit of props for through her lens.
She's trying to do good.
Jimmy (21:44):
What do we think of Blair as the, like, I don't know.
I'm not sure.
I love the punchline.
I think I'm probably.
I mean, it's all right.
Michael (21:52):
You read it well.
Jimmy (21:55):
Yeah, it's a great looking.
It's such a great idea.
I think if this would have had like a classic peanuts punchline, this would be up in the pantheon just because it's such a great idea.
Harold (22:08):
Well, here's my theory, Jimmy.
The reason this final panel does not work for you is because it's open loop.
It has not been resolved.
Jimmy (22:16):
It has not been resolved?
Harold (22:18):
Look at the quotation marks around Blair.
Jimmy (22:20):
I did notice that when I was trying to search the date for it.
Yeah, he forgot it.
Harold (22:25):
He left out the close quotes.
Michael (22:28):
Oh, it's open.
Harold (22:30):
I can't imagine somebody at the syndicate who's supposed to be editing.
He's like, don't even bother editing his stuff.
Jimmy (22:36):
Don't even.
Harold (22:36):
No matter what it was, he meant to do it.
Don't even touch it.
Michael (22:40):
Let it go.
The rest of the strip until the very end is all.
Jimmy (22:44):
Is a quote.
Harold (22:45):
It is an open quote.
I think, Michael, you have discovered the secret to peanuts from 1972 to 2000.
That's pretty crazy, yes.
Michael (22:54):
It's all.
Harold (22:57):
It's really all.
All the.
You're a psychiatrist.
Unbelievable.
Jimmy (23:05):
Well, we did it, guys.
We figured it out.
Harold (23:07):
Oh, wait.
Wait, guys.
All right.
I just drew the close quote.
So we're done.
Jimmy (23:14):
Now, with that, I say it's time to take a break because that was just too much excitement for one time of the show.
So we'll take a break.
We'll come back and check the mail and do stuff like that, and then finish some more Linus and Lucy strips.
Liz (23:27):
Sounds good.
Jimmy (23:28):
All right.
Harold (23:28):
Be right back.
Liz (23:29):
Hi, everyone.
We love it when you write or call to tell us how much you enjoy the show.
But don't just tell us.
Tell your friends.
Tell complete strangers.
Share your appreciation in a review.
It doesn't have to be on Apple podcasts.
60 percent of you listen on other apps.
Some of those apps have review sections.
(23:50):
Think of all the poor Peanuts fans out there who haven't found us yet.
There are review instructions on our website at unpackingpeanuts.com/spread the word.
Thank you for your support.
Now, let's hear what some of you have to say.
Harold (24:08):
We are back.
Jimmy (24:09):
Hey, Liz.
I'm hanging out in the mailbox.
Do we got anything?
Liz (24:12):
We do.
We heard from Super Listener Paul Ebert.
He posted on Blue Sky a link from Core 77, which is an online industrial design magazine.
It's an article titled, Charlie Brown lived in a world of mid-century modern furniture.
Jimmy (24:32):
That's great.
Liz (24:35):
In the article, it shows a strip from March 1st, 1953 where Charlie Brown and Patty are at Patty's house.
The final panel shows them in a room with an Eames chair, a Hardoy chair, the kind that I know of as a butterfly chair, and a Barwa lounge chair, which I assume is named for the designers Bartolucci and Waldheim.
(25:00):
I recommend that everybody go up and go and look up the March 1st, 1953 strip.
Jimmy (25:06):
Is that the strip that ends with what in the world is a rocking chair?
Liz (25:09):
Yes.
Jimmy (25:12):
How good.
Come on.
Wait, wait, wait.
Let's come on.
Liz (25:15):
Well, I did put it in our chat.
Michael (25:17):
You saw the chat.
It's in there.
But you are good.
Harold (25:22):
I love the expertise of this website because somebody in the comments is like, well, what's the lamp?
And then if you see, it's a photo of the lamp that someone has replied.
I was like, okay, you guys know your Mid-Century Modern.
And I love the subtitle of the Charlie Brown lived in a world of Mid-Century Modern furniture, back when you could buy it for peanuts.
Liz (25:46):
So the link is in our, I reposted Paul Hebert's link, and so you can find it on our Blue Sky account.
Harold (25:56):
Thanks for sending that.
Liz (25:59):
And Spider Stomper wrote again, and sent us a variation on the Muppet Babies theme, which is, little buff babies, they make their dreams come true.
Harold (26:13):
Little buff babies.
Liz (26:18):
I should probably explain what little buff babies is for people who didn't listen to our previous episode.
Jimmy (26:26):
No, I think they have to go search now through almost 200 episodes to figure out what the heck we're talking about.
Harold (26:34):
Okay.
So Liz, were you watching that show when it was coming out then?
Liz (26:39):
I was probably like 40 when that came out.
So no, I was not.
Harold (26:44):
So how did you go about, did you do some research here?
Liz (26:48):
I did.
I looked it up on YouTube to learn the-
Harold (26:52):
Because there's nothing wrong with being 40 years old and watching Muppet Babies.
Liz (27:01):
I was not familiar with that.
Harold (27:03):
My little pony.
Jimmy (27:05):
Oh, there's something real wrong with that.
Liz (27:09):
So that's it for the mail.
Jimmy (27:11):
We did get one thing, a super listener, on the hotline, super listener, Anne wrote in, and she is voting for Mean Girls for our next season.
Liz (27:20):
Okay.
Harold (27:21):
One.
Yeah, Michael.
Michael (27:23):
That's a foreign slide.
Liz (27:24):
Yeah, get your votes in.
Jimmy (27:26):
Yeah, we will do all of these eventually, but here are, if you're out there and you want to weigh in on what our next season will be, you got the Many Moods of Marzi, Mean Girls, Patty and Violet, or Woodstock Festival, all about Woodstock.
So if you want to vote on that, or if you just want to shoot us an email and let us know what's going on, because remember, when I don't hear from you, I worry, you can email us at unpackingpeanutsatgmail.com, or you can do what Super Listener Anne did and go ahead and text or leave a voicemail on our hotline, which is 717-219-4162.
Harold (28:07):
And we'd love to hear from you.
Jimmy (28:09):
All right.
Michael (28:10):
So, before we go from the mailbox, I'd like to give a little shout out to our friends in Ukraine, where we're number nine in visual art.
So, folks, when you're sitting there in the dark in your apartment, glad you can at least listen to our podcast.
Harold (28:27):
We are here.
Michael (28:28):
But we'd love to hear from anybody from Ukraine who actually listens to this podcast.
Jimmy (28:34):
Now, you guys were doing English lessons for Ukraine.
Liz (28:36):
We still are.
Yeah, it's been coming up on three years, I think.
Jimmy (28:40):
That's fantastic.
Michael (28:41):
Yeah, but my friend didn't seem to impress with our number nine in Ukraine.
Jimmy (28:48):
Oh, really?
Wasn't that much?
Liz (28:51):
My friend was really pleased.
She thought it was great.
But she doesn't listen.
She's not one of our listeners.
Michael (28:56):
Also, I tried early on because her English was pretty rudimentary.
I thought, hmm, I bet peanuts is a good way to learn English.
We tried reading one, but she had absolutely no idea what was going on.
Liz (29:11):
But apparently, there are some who like peanuts enough to listen to us.
Jimmy (29:16):
Number nine, well, that's wonderful.
We hope that you're safe and warm.
Harold (29:22):
We're thinking of you.
Liz (29:23):
Yeah.
All right.
Jimmy (29:25):
As long as we're talking about current events, I just want to say really quickly, I got a delicious beverage on my break, and you know what I like best about it?
Liz (29:32):
What?
Jimmy (29:33):
No ice.
Liz (29:34):
Ah, but I'll drink.
Jimmy (29:37):
So, let's get back to the strips.
June 24th, 1965.
Back at the old psychiatric help booth, and Lucy is sitting there behind it, looking really angry.
And Linus is there in front, and she says to Linus, who is the patient, if you'd listen to me, you wouldn't need that thumb and blanket.
(29:59):
And then Linus, quite smugly, and really tempting fate, leans across the patient-doctor divide with his eyes closed and says, years from now, when your kind has passed from the scene, thumbs and blankets will still be around, to which Lucy reaches through the doctor-patient divide and punches Linus right in the nose.
(30:25):
Pow!
Sending him flying.
And then Linus, lying on the ground, disheveled and dazed, says, doctors always tell you to say what's on your mind, but they don't really mean it.
Michael (30:38):
Man, he was asking for it.
Jimmy (30:40):
He's totally asking for it.
Harold (30:44):
Yeah, you had to close that loop.
Jimmy (30:46):
Yeah, and I wanted to bring this up because we talked about this last time saying there are very few instances where Lucy administered to Linus while he was a patient, but here was another one.
Michael (30:56):
Yeah, this is a classic.
I'm surprised we didn't pick it.
Harold (31:00):
Yeah.
Look how high Linus is in the panel, the last panel.
His head is going into the word balloon, but there's a lot of white space below him.
It's interesting.
I would not have thought to do it that way, where it's not the composition I would expect.
Jimmy (31:19):
Yeah, it's not even a classical composition because it's way more centered.
Usually, you would lower the horizon line or raise the horizon line to make it more interesting.
In this instance, you'd have to lower it, but yeah, it works with him.
I love the punch.
It's a great panel.
He gets a little more sketchy when action is happening, because you're allowed to see the little bit of motion, like the way he's scribbled in those lines on Linus' shirt.
Harold (31:53):
Yeah, everything looks like it's a little rushed.
Well, certainly the shading and that sort of thing, like on the side of the booth.
It's a really cool angle on the psychiatric help booth that you don't normally see.
Michael (32:07):
But we shouldn't be looking at this that long, because if she punched him in panel two, he'd go over backwards.
He's completely flipped around, unless he did a complete circle in the air.
Harold (32:21):
Yeah, well, that's it.
Yeah, it looks like she's punching him in the back, the way he draws it.
Jimmy (32:27):
Well, we could look at it too long.
Let's do that.
Because, like Michael said, if you were going to draw this accurately, first off, you probably would want to show either the impacts point or he'd want to show Lucy having swung through the punch, right?
(32:50):
And Linus would have fallen backwards.
But he just goes for iconic, extreme poses, and just whether they would all be in actually different moments, right?
But he puts them all in the one panel and it gives you, it's like a collage effect on them.
Liz (33:09):
But it works.
Jimmy (33:10):
Yeah, it works.
Harold (33:11):
You totally believe it.
Jimmy (33:12):
Oh, it totally works.
It works probably much better than what I would have done.
Like I would have tried to show the character reacting to the punch, which is the wrong feel.
Because also this makes it, you don't feel for Linus getting physically punched in the way that you would if you showed something more real.
(33:33):
Does that make sense?
Harold (33:35):
Yeah.
If you dart your eyes between panels two and three, it's just like cause-effects or whatever.
Like you said, Linus is leaning in past the little post of the psychiatric help booth.
Michael (33:47):
And then he's-
It's almost like it's two panels divided by the post, different time sequences.
Harold (33:57):
Yeah.
It does work so well.
And yeah, again, just kind of gives a sense of freedom.
As a cartoonist, he's breaking the rules because he can.
And he makes a new rule, and it's even better.
Jimmy (34:12):
October 29th, 1959.
Now we're going to go back to just Linus on his own.
He's talking to his friend, good old Charlie Brown.
And Linus says, and then on Halloween night, the great pumpkin rises up out of the pumpkin patch, and he brings toys to all the good little children in the world.
Charlie Brown says, you're crazy.
And annoyed Linus says, all right, so you believe in Santa Claus, and I'll believe in the great pumpkin.
(34:38):
And then Linus walks away saying, the way I see it, it doesn't matter what you believe, just so you're sincere.
The sincere thing comes out.
This is, you know, one of Linus' big bugaboos or whatever you'd call it, right?
He wants people to be sincere.
That's what the great pumpkin is all about.
(34:58):
He finds the most sincere pumpkin patch.
I think Lucie's sincere.
I guess sincerity is probably an important thing in the Van Pelt household, right?
Harold (35:07):
Because Lucie's certainly sincere.
Michael (35:09):
She's sincere.
So sincerity is the opposite of being a phony.
Jimmy (35:15):
That's right.
It is.
Back to Salinger again.
Michael (35:19):
Yeah.
Harold (35:20):
Definitely a bugaboos of Schulz's.
He's trying to point out a fallacy in this.
The idea that people are saying, yeah, I was sincere about it as well.
But were you right?
Jimmy (35:32):
Right.
Well, right, right.
Sincerity.
Well, I mean, it counts for something, right?
But it doesn't absolve you from being wrong.
Michael (35:46):
Right.
Jimmy (35:48):
Yeah.
Boy, looking at 1959, that incline is so clean and precise.
And yet it does not feel over, it still feels very casual.
It's not into the super casual of the 60s and 70s.
Harold (36:11):
It doesn't seem to have the life that I read into the 60s, let's say.
Jimmy (36:16):
It's like a thinner pen line that's more consistently, it doesn't have the thick thins as much as it will later, or even that it did earlier.
He's going through like a weird period, which is a cool period.
I love it, but it's weird.
Yeah.
Michael, as the aficionado of the 50s, if you're just looking at 1950 to 1959 as its own strip, where do you put the peak of this era for you personally?
Michael (36:45):
Probably around 58, 59.
That was the Blue Nose Snoopy, which was pretty expressionistic.
Yeah, this panel struck me when I first looked at it today.
Yeah, it looks very clean.
Jimmy (37:01):
Very clean.
Michael (37:02):
Yeah.
Liz (37:03):
But also like Harold said, it's very static.
It doesn't have some of the movement that others that we've looked at have.
Michael (37:12):
Yeah, I wouldn't have picked this as, guess this was 59 as a different look.
Jimmy (37:17):
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out exactly when I would place it.
It almost has that European clean line style.
It almost looks like an ergue kind of ink line.
Michael (37:26):
Yeah, it almost looks like it's meant to be colored.
Harold (37:29):
Colored, yeah.
Jimmy (37:31):
Yeah.
Harold (37:32):
Interesting.
Jimmy (37:34):
Well, we're going to leave that loop is unclosed.
Harold (37:37):
We don't know.
Jimmy (37:40):
December 28th, 1966.
Now, we're talking about one of Linus' early talents because we see in panel one, he is making some snowmen, and we see he is actually working on what looks like his fifth snowman, at least from what we can see.
Then in panel two, we see he has made an entire regiment of snowmen.
(38:03):
You can't even see how many there must be.
It's got to be at least 30, 40 snowmen.
Then he is outside, of course, because it's snowmen.
Then he runs upstairs, and then from the second floor bedroom, Linus addresses all the snowmen he has built, and he says, today the neighborhood, tomorrow the world.
Harold (38:21):
As long as he's sincere.
Jimmy (38:25):
He's sincerely going to take over the world.
Michael (38:27):
I wouldn't have expected Linus to be the character who is a proto-fascist.
Jimmy (38:32):
He does it again and again though.
Michael (38:34):
I know.
Harold (38:34):
Well, what we don't know is, what are they going to do to the world?
Michael (38:44):
It's iced.
Liz (38:45):
Oh, no.
Harold (38:46):
No.
Jimmy (38:52):
Yeah, I think a lot of this has to come from being repressed by Lucy.
Michael (38:56):
He isn't very angry, but it comes out in a strange way in these strips.
Jimmy (39:01):
Yes, it sure does.
But it also goes back to, and we didn't talk about it much this season because we covered a lot of them in the original reread, but Linus just being very good and facile at lots of things, lots of parts of childhood, like making snowmen, like building card houses.
Harold (39:20):
Taking apart tricycles.
Jimmy (39:22):
Yeah, taking apart tricycles with just a pair of pliers in two seconds.
So what do you think about that element of Linus?
Michael (39:29):
Well, he was a genius.
You don't see much of that in the 70s, but he apparently could do anything.
He built that snow dinosaur, which defied gravity.
I was pretty proud of that.
Jimmy (39:43):
Right.
It's a really interesting thing to put into one of the human characters, because we could have Snoopy who can do everything, because he's partly fantasy.
Linus is just another kid, right?
Harold (39:57):
He's mechanically brilliant, but it seems like something that he takes for granted.
He's not particularly leaning into it or interested in it, doesn't put his identity in it.
Yeah.
There's a lot of work to draw those snowmen.
Jimmy (40:11):
I just think there's a lot of work to draw the railing.
Liz (40:14):
A lot of work to build those snowmen.
Harold (40:16):
But the one thing that he seemed to do particularly fast is Linus' hair on the back of his head as he's looking out over his snowman.
It's like he's drawing the Hirschfeld Nina in there.
He's just a stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, just ending one line, then going one direction and taking it down the other.
It's a really, really fast, fast drawing.
(40:40):
Again, compared to 1959, going back there and looking at this, there just does seem to be more life in the line.
I really do like this period.
Jimmy (40:49):
But my God, yes, there's 100 percent more life in the line, but I don't blame just sort of, what's the word I'm looking for, people out there in the world who are not aficionados of this, just casual readers for not noticing that there's changes.
(41:10):
I don't think anybody who's not looking at this from a cartooning perspective would think there's any difference between those two versions of Linus.
Am I wrong?
Tell me, you guys.
Harold (41:21):
Sure, yeah, I think so.
I mean, again, it takes me back to talking to somebody about, I think we were talking about with you, Liz, and the idea, I used to watch Flintstones and the Flintstones had a certain line style that the early Hannah Barbera TV shows had, and it was this thick and thin, really thick and thin line.
(41:42):
I remember talking to somebody else about that and they're like, what are you talking about?
It's just not on their radar, it's not important to them.
The thick and the thin and the line, it's the outline of the character, the character is the character, and that's all there is to it.
You don't need any more thought about it.
Michael (41:58):
Yeah, but it's not that because we're cartoonists are paying attention, because I'm the least observant person in the world.
Case in point, halfway through the Amelia Ruehl's books, there's eight of them, halfway through book four, I go, oh my God, they only have four fingers.
(42:20):
We've even talked about that much.
Then I went back and I checked and I went, yep, they always have four fingers.
Jimmy (42:26):
Yeah, they did, and I've regretted it ever since, but I'm working on a workaround.
Michael (42:34):
So me not observing Linus' tuft of hair is not unusual.
Jimmy (42:43):
December 5th, 1969, we got another snowman.
Linus has made just one and he's berating it.
He says, you're mine.
I have made you with my own hands.
Then he continues, unless you forget, as I created you, I also can destroy you.
Then he crosses his arms and looks away, stern and resolved.
(43:04):
Then the last panel, he hugs the snowman and says, I'm sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.
This is Linus trying to be Lucy for half a strip, and it doesn't work.
Harold (43:17):
It doesn't pan out.
The first two panels look like they've been redrawn.
Michael (43:22):
The first panel is that outline is super thick.
Jimmy (43:25):
No, this is someone was screwing with these.
Don't go by that.
I think someone did that online.
Michael (43:33):
Okay.
Liz (43:35):
But it's wonderful because the snowman never changes.
The expression on the snowman is absolutely the same in every single panel.
Jimmy (43:43):
Yeah, and it's that.
Harold (43:46):
I'd be disturbed if it were different.
Jimmy (43:48):
Yeah.
What is that expression on the snowman's face?
I mean, the snowman looks like he's berated.
No, I think the snowman looks upset.
Liz (44:00):
I don't think it has any, it's not even hearing what he's saying.
Jimmy (44:04):
No, I think the snowman looks upset because the stick goes down on both sides.
Liz (44:10):
And what makes you say that, Jimmy?
Harold (44:15):
I don't know.
Jimmy (44:17):
No, don't you see, like, look in panel two.
If we look really close at the snowman, you can see the stick that makes the mouth goes down on the left side and down on the right side.
So it's definitely a frown.
I think he is reacting to getting yelled at by his thrill sergeant or whatever.
Liz (44:33):
I think you're reading something into that that's not there.
Jimmy (44:37):
I think the snowman is wondering why he never was respected by his parents.
Liz (44:43):
He's wondering why his arms are so short.
Jimmy (44:45):
Yeah.
Harold (44:48):
Why are there only two buttons on my jacket?
Jimmy (44:53):
September 22nd, 1957.
One of the all-time classic peanuts bits, something everyone in the world knows, it's the pulling away of the football.
And there's Lucy sitting there and she's all set up to go and Charlie Brown is there.
And he says, no, absolutely not.
You must think I'm crazy.
(45:15):
Charlie Brown continues.
You say you'll hold the ball, but you won't.
You'll pull it away and I'll break my neck.
And then Lucy says, why Charlie Brown?
How you talk?
And then with a ridiculous grin on her face, she says to him, I wouldn't think of such a thing.
I'm a change person.
Look, isn't this a face you can trust?
(45:36):
And the grin almost reaches her ears.
And Charlie Brown walks away saying, all right, you hold the ball and I'll come running up and kick it.
And then Charlie Brown runs, does that.
And of course Lucy pulls it away.
Charlie Brown yells, she did it again.
And then whomp, Charlie Brown flat in his back.
And then Lucy comes up to him and says, I admire you, Charlie Brown.
You have such faith in human nature.
(46:01):
Now, this is something that we did a whole episode on.
So if you guys want to check that out, there's a whole episode about the football strips.
And I think what we all sort of decided at the time was, although they were never our favorites when they would come up, when we read them all in a bunch, a bunch in a row, they all seemed to really work together.
(46:22):
So that's when I remember about this.
I also, I really like the first panel where there's the really, really, almost pointillistic drawing of the background.
Harold (46:33):
You know, where it's all just little hash marks for grass and stuff.
Jimmy (46:37):
Really pretty.
Michael (46:38):
Yeah, it's a nice little curving sidewalk.
Harold (46:40):
The thing that stands out to me visually in this strip, going back to how Schulz shows action in panels, I never noticed this before, but this is wild.
In the bottom panel, you have Lucy pulling the football away and Charlie Brown's arc of motion is understandably going past her and then up in the air as he's now parallel to the ground.
(47:07):
But when he lands on the next panel, the arc of motion is completely opposite of what we just saw in the panel before.
It's now showing him landing as if he had gone up in the air on the other side of Lucy before he even got to the football.
And again, it's like he is not looking at consistency.
(47:30):
He's looking at what makes this have the greatest impact.
He's totally breaking the rules.
I don't know.
I've never seen this with another cartoonist.
Jimmy (47:39):
And conceptually, it's really interesting though, because as a reader, right, if you follow the arc or like you follow the lines of Charlie Brown from off panel left in the last tier, and just follow those motion lines up to Charlie Brown, and then you skip to the next panel, the lines continue and then bring you down.
It brings this sine wave of your eyes.
(47:59):
So your eyes actually move up and then hit like Charlie Brown would.
Harold (48:04):
So it has its own logic, but it's completely illogical from the standpoint of what's happening.
And he's landing closer to his Lucy than when we've seen the panel before.
He's already be further beyond her.
Michael (48:16):
I think what he's attempting here and he's not showing it clearly is the camera's moving.
So she should be a little smaller and behind him in that second panel on the third tier.
In other words, you're looking at Lucy from a completely different angle.
Jimmy (48:33):
Yeah.
Harold (48:35):
He doesn't change the angle, right?
Jimmy (48:37):
He does change it.
Michael's saying, yeah, you're seeing, right, Mike, you're saying if this was a camera.
Michael (48:44):
It's moving to the right.
Jimmy (48:45):
To the right.
Yeah.
Michael (48:46):
Turning to the left.
Jimmy (48:48):
Right.
Harold (48:48):
Exactly.
Michael (48:49):
Yeah.
But you'd need like perspective lines to make it work.
Harold (48:53):
Yeah.
Jimmy (48:53):
Because there's no reference points in the background so you can't see it.
So he's really, I think he is doing that based on the, his concern is the reader's eye 100% more than what is going on in the world of the comic.
He is worried about you following Charlie Brown up and then following Charlie Brown down.
(49:15):
And if he has to move the camera for Lucy, he'll do it.
And if that makes it look like it's wrong, he'll do that too.
Because it doesn't matter because he wants the clarity and emotional impact of the reading experience.
Harold (49:30):
Pretty amazing.
Liz (49:31):
And he doesn't say an og this time, but he does say that you hold the ball and I'll come running up and kick it.
Yeah.
Which is usually Lucy's line.
Harold (49:41):
Yeah.
Jimmy (49:42):
Yeah, I'll hold the ball and you come running up and kick it.
Harold (49:44):
Yeah, that's right.
So what does this say about Lucy?
She loves the repetition of doing this and finding a new way to fool Charlie Brown every time.
Jimmy (49:57):
There was a kid, there's this long shaggy joke, shaggy dog joke that someone taught me when I was a kid about, it's really hot and you run to the store and you ask for a Pepsi, and the guy behind the counter hits you in the head and says, a Pepsi, and you say, do you get it?
Then the kid says, no, I don't get it.
You tell the whole story again and then you hit the kid in the head and say, Pepsi.
I knew a kid for years, you would tell him that joke and he would just get hit in the head over and over again, not realizing that the point was to hit him in the head, that there's no actual joke.
(50:27):
It's such a catnip for someone like Lucy, she has to do it.
Liz (50:32):
Or maybe she's thinking that this time he'll learn.
Jimmy (50:39):
Definitely not.
That is so nice of you people to think that.
Michael (50:42):
This is not Lucy's fault.
This is Charlie Brown's.
Right?
Liz (50:46):
Yes.
Harold (50:47):
Well, I would say maybe it has to be shared a little bit.
Michael (50:50):
No, she's just trying to teach him a lesson about life and he doesn't learn it.
Right.
Jimmy (50:55):
Look, it's like, fool me once, shame on you.
Can't fool me.
Can't get fooled again.
You know, that famous saying.
Right?
This is fool me 500 times, shame on you.
Harold (51:11):
So it's okay for the person to take advantage of someone's weakness over and start over again?
Michael (51:15):
She's trying to teach him.
No.
She's trying to teach him not to be a sucker.
Jimmy (51:20):
Well, that's true too.
He could learn from this and it would be a good thing.
Michael (51:27):
So, good for Lucy.
She's a good person and she's a change person.
I trust that face.
Harold (51:36):
You know what?
Jimmy (51:38):
The whole comic strip, this particular strip, I mean, hinges on that face in the middle of the second year.
Her having that unbelievable grin.
Harold (51:51):
Yeah.
Which just grabs your eye.
Jimmy (51:54):
Yeah.
But boy, then he's like, she looks terrible in the panel after that, actually.
Harold (51:59):
Yeah.
It's like the old Neanderthal Lucy.
Jimmy (52:01):
Yeah.
It's like he forgot that he's not doing the smile again, so he didn't put the head back the way it should be.
All right.
Now, where would you rate the pulling away of the footballs in the pantheon of great peanuts bits?
Let's say, would you give it an A, a B?
Harold (52:21):
Where would you put it?
Michael (52:23):
I don't like it.
I mean, once was good.
Yeah.
Give it a C-.
When we're doing the read-through and I read every strip, I'd always go, ugh, I forgot.
There's going to be another football strip.
Liz (52:37):
But it has certainly reached the public as a philosophical statement.
Michael (52:46):
Yeah.
Most people like it and the red baron and things like that.
Liz (52:49):
I mean, it's meaningful that I have often heard and said, it's like Charlie Brown and the football.
Jimmy (52:57):
Oh, yeah.
It's one of the great metaphors for failure.
Michael (53:02):
Yeah.
Jimmy (53:02):
Yes.
Harold (53:03):
And hope, you know.
Liz (53:06):
And banging your head against a wall.
Yeah.
Jimmy (53:08):
Right.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Which is usually just my business plan.
What do you think, Harold?
Harold (53:14):
Where do you rate it?
I think culturally an A and I think I'm with Michael as a reader, I'd say a C, so I have to give it a B and just drop it in the middle there.
Yeah.
Jimmy (53:31):
I'm going to give it an A minus because of the episode we did with reading them all in once, and because of what Liz said.
All right.
It averages out to a B, a low B.
That's not bad.
Harold (53:44):
I'd take it.
Sure.
To think of something like that, that it's known in the culture, like the security blanket is remarkable.
Jimmy (53:55):
Yeah.
This is only within the context of peanuts, is this a B.
If I created something half as good as that, I would not stop running in the streets telling people and showing them.
Harold (54:06):
Right, right.
Jimmy (54:06):
It's only within his own oeuvre.
Harold (54:10):
You know that whole football thing, pulling away, that was me.
Yeah, exactly.
Jimmy (54:15):
January 5th, 1964.
We're at home with the Van Pelt and Linus is watching TV, and Lucy comes in and says, Switch channels.
Linus ignores her.
This irritates Lucy.
So Lucy says it again.
I said, switch channels.
I want to watch my program.
Linus turns and says, are you kidding?
What makes you think you can just walk right in here and take over?
(54:39):
And Lucy brandishes her fist to Linus and says, These five fingers.
Individually, they're nothing.
But when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold.
Which Linus says, which channel do you want?
Lucy watches the TV show and Linus sighs and then looks at his own hand and says, Why can't you guys get organized like that?
Harold (55:08):
Oh boy, this was the thing back when there was one TV set in the house.
Yeah, really.
I remember these moments on Saturday morning with my sister, and then forget it if your parent wanted to watch something, it's over.
But Saturday morning, yeah, my sister sometimes wanted to watch the Sid and Marty Croft live-action stuff, and I was all about the animation.
(55:31):
It was fraught moments of childhood.
Jimmy (55:36):
Only child watch whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.
Like these mysterious things that happened in your childhood, you don't know, for like six months, my grandmother lived with us when I was like seven.
Harold (55:50):
No, six or seven, no idea why.
Jimmy (55:52):
Then she moved into an apartment, but she had cable in the room.
Suddenly, I had cable TV in my bedroom, because I moved into that room then.
Basically, it was just great being me.
Harold (56:04):
How old were you?
Seven, eight.
See, that's what did it.
Jimmy (56:09):
Yeah, that's what did it.
Harold (56:10):
Free access to cable at seven in your own bedroom, that's the recipe for trouble.
Jimmy (56:14):
No, I only had 13 panels.
I didn't have like MTV.
We don't need to get into that.
But anyway.
Harold (56:19):
All right.
Yeah.
Headline news.
Jimmy (56:24):
February 27th, 1963, Linus and Charlie Brown are out for a walk.
Linus says, I don't like to face problems head on.
I think the best way to solve problems is to avoid them.
This is a distinct philosophy of mine.
Then Linus proclaims, no problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from.
Michael (56:43):
Amen.
Did they do a book of The Wisdom of Linus?
Harold (56:47):
Oh, yes.
They did.
Michael (56:49):
This had to be in there.
Jimmy (56:50):
Oh, I'm sure.
Harold (56:51):
Yes.
Yeah.
This strip is a wonderful example of the optional eyebrow.
You use it when you need it and goes away.
Jimmy (57:01):
Oh, yeah.
You're right.
Harold (57:02):
So weird.
Jimmy (57:04):
That is so weird.
But again, it does give you the little more thousand yard stare.
Sometimes I think when that happens, I really think he penciled them in super lightly, then erased them and sent them off and just never inked it.
Harold (57:18):
This one's such a hodgepodge.
The thing that's interesting to me is we clearly see that Charlie Brown thinks that philosophy is not a good one.
But most cartoonists would absolutely use those eyebrows, the arched kind of falling back eyebrows, like you're rolling your eyes or you're like, oh, boy.
(57:40):
And he kind of does a weird thing on the pupils.
He makes the pupils darker and it's like there's a little bit of line over the pupil.
Jimmy (57:47):
Yeah.
It's a little bit like a comma tail, but not very much.
Harold (57:51):
Almost like an eyelid or something.
Jimmy (57:53):
Yeah.
Harold (57:54):
Because he's gone up so high, it's hitting his eyelid.
But no, no eyebrows.
I think almost any cartoonist that used this style of drawing would have used those eyebrows from Charlie Brown.
And Schulz doesn't.
Jimmy (58:06):
Yeah.
Harold (58:07):
But he does have one in the second panel when he's listening.
So yeah, I don't know what, maybe he penciled it in and erased it and never.
But yeah, he's going for the emotional effect and he's not trying to follow his own drawing rules.
He's like, the rule is you don't have to follow the drugs.
(58:28):
Does it look good?
Carry what I want to have emotionally.
That's it.
That's all I need.
Jimmy (58:34):
What do you think of that fence?
That's a Peanuts fence you see a lot, but I'm not 100% sure.
Is it supposed to be a wire fence or is it supposed to be wood slats and we're seeing the back of it?
Liz (58:44):
I thought wire.
Jimmy (58:45):
Yeah, it looks wiry.
Harold (58:46):
It looks like wire, yeah.
Jimmy (58:49):
It looks like a croquet, you know.
Liz (58:52):
Wicked.
Jimmy (58:52):
Wicked, thank you.
Harold (58:54):
Yeah, but what do you think about Linus' philosophy here?
Jimmy (58:58):
Oh, huge fan.
Liz (59:00):
Yeah, me too.
Jimmy (59:01):
Now, it doesn't work.
It's disastrous.
It will lead to misery and despair, but I highly recommend it.
Liz (59:09):
And do I.
Harold (59:11):
My wife, Diane, she for years had a poster in her bedroom, the opposite.
It says, the best way out is always through.
Jimmy (59:19):
The only way out is through often.
Yeah, that's very true.
Yeah.
Liz (59:21):
I remember a wonderful experience with my stepmother who loved to go sledding and she also loved to swim in the oceans to do body surfing.
I was terribly afraid of big breakers that would come over my head and knock me down and I would feel like I was going to drown.
(59:45):
But she told us that if you dive through it, you see this huge wave coming over arching over your head.
If you dive through it, then you're safe.
And I did it and she was absolutely right.
That is the way to avoid getting crushed by a wave.
(01:00:05):
And this is still my life philosophy.
Jimmy (01:00:10):
Can't be avoided.
All right, guys, that brings us up to May 23rd, 1972.
And Charlie Brown is hanging out with Linus and Joe Kuhl at Snoopy's dog house.
And Charlie Brown says, what I don't understand is why your mother would allow Lucy to throw you out of the house.
Because of course Lucy has thrown Linus out of the house at this point.
(01:00:33):
And Linus says, mom isn't home.
She went to the hospital yesterday.
This perks up Snoopy's ears.
And Charlie Brown says, is she all right?
And Linus says, I don't know, nobody ever tells me anything.
And then we cut to Lucy on the phone.
And she's saying, a new baby brother, but I just got rid of the old one.
(01:00:53):
And that's the beginning of the third Van Pelt rerun, who we are gonna focus in our next episode.
So guys, do you have any final thoughts on the Linus and Lucy era of the Van Pelt family?
Michael (01:01:09):
Well, there was very little after 1972, which was picked.
Do you think it got anywhere in the 70s and 80s?
Jimmy (01:01:19):
Well, we're gonna find out, because that's what we're gonna be looking at next time.
Michael (01:01:22):
Well, when rerun doesn't really hit it till the mid 90s.
Jimmy (01:01:26):
Yeah, it's crazy to watch rerun be basically ignored for 23 years.
Harold (01:01:34):
Before he's living down his name.
Jimmy (01:01:38):
All right, so I guess that brings us to the end of another episode.
We'll be back in two weeks.
Of course, we'd love to hear from you.
Remember, you can email us at unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com.
You can call or text the hotline 717-219-4162.
If you want to follow this show on social media, we're at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads, and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky, and YouTube.
(01:02:04):
Remember, when I don't hear from you, I worry.
That's it for this week.
For Michael, Harold, and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.
Liz (01:02:13):
Yes, be of good cheer.
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz, and Liz Sumner.
Produced and edited by Liz Sumner.
Music by Michael Cohen.
Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark.
For more from the show, follow Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads.
(01:02:34):
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.
Michael (01:02:46):
It's a little cloud of pleasure.
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.
It's Unpacking Peanuts.
Today, we're continuing our look at the Van Pelt family.
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 and The Dumbest Idea Ever.
You can find all of my new comics on Substack or on GVILLE Comics.
(00:39):
Joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer, both for the Van 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 (00:59):
Say hey.
Jimmy (01:00):
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.
Harold (01:09):
It's Harold Buchholz.
Hello.
Jimmy (01:13):
Well, guys, we're back here.
This is episode.
Oh my God, I forgot Liz.
And see, I'm already in trouble.
And making sure everybody is our producer and editor, who we love Liz Sumner.
Dearly.
Dearly.
Liz (01:33):
Howdy.
Jimmy (01:33):
We were just actually before this, we started recording, talking about how important a good editor is.
Harold (01:41):
Yes.
And a good interviewer.
Jimmy (01:43):
And a good interviewer.
All right.
So we are back here in the good old Van Pelt world.
I would love to talk more about Linus and Lucy.
I'll tell you a little bit about how I chose the strips for today's episode.
We talked so much so far really about the relationship of Linus and Lucy and their early development as we kind of watch their personalities form.
(02:08):
So what I did for this episode was I kind of went through and found some of the things, found examples of some of the things that they are most famous for.
So we're going to be hitting some of the big Linus and Lucy moments.
This episode, we're going to be hitting the snowman creation, the pulling the football away, a little bit of things like great pumpkin.
(02:33):
So we'll get to see them kind of at their apex and we get to talk about that.
Does that sound fun?
Harold (02:42):
Yeah.
Jimmy (02:42):
Yes.
Harold (02:43):
Yeah.
Jimmy (02:44):
Now, if you folks out there want to follow along with us, the first thing you got to do is go over there to unpackingpeanuts.com and sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread, which will get you one email a month that will let you know what strips we're going to be covering, because that's even more important in this part of the show, because who knows what we're going to be doing.
(03:05):
It could be absolutely anything that we're covering.
So you're going to need that email to be up to snuff on what we're going to do.
Harold (03:14):
All right.
Jimmy (03:14):
You're ready?
Should we just get to it?
Harold (03:16):
Do it.
Sure.
Yeah.
Jimmy (03:19):
May 23rd, 1967.
Linus is kneeling outside in the grass, and up come three tiny little birds, Proto Woodstocks.
They come up close to Linus, pats them all gently on the head.
Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat.
He has a little smile, and then very happy and satisfied.
They all walk away, sighing, as Linus looks after them, and then Linus looks out at us and says, I think I found my calling.
Michael (03:47):
This became like a major Linus thing.
They marketed this too.
You could get little Linus dolls and these little three little birds, and you patted them on the head and they sighed.
It was huge.
Everybody wanted those.
Really?
Harold (04:05):
Is this true?
No.
Michael (04:09):
Did you most start to see when you hear it?
No.
Jimmy (04:12):
I was already on EFA.
Harold (04:15):
It is now.
Jimmy (04:17):
Oh, how did they miss that?
Harold (04:19):
Come on.
Michael (04:20):
Well, you said you were picking the big tropes.
I love the little petting inkbirds on the head trope.
I think there were a couple of them.
Jimmy (04:29):
Oh, no.
It comes back.
I mean, it sounds big.
Liz (04:32):
Well, and he gets criticized for doing it.
Michael (04:35):
Yeah.
Well, of course, because it's outrageous.
Jimmy (04:37):
He gets roundly criticized for it.
It feels very almost mystical, though.
It feels like you couldn't just go out into the grass and sit down and anyone would pet birds.
It feels like only Linus could do this.
Harold (04:50):
A lot of this is on the birds, I have to say.
Liz (04:52):
That's true.
Jimmy (04:52):
Well, I guess that is true.
Yes.
It is up to the birds.
But they would only approach Linus, right?
Liz (05:00):
Well, was it Patrick McDonald who told us that he tried to do this?
Harold (05:04):
Oh, yes.
Well, it looks like a great idea.
I love the birds in panel three, walking away, all satisfied.
And I love the, they have this wonderful use of the word balloon.
There's just the word sigh, and all three of them have little pointy pointers for the word balloons.
(05:32):
And then you've got this little, what do you call the thing?
I'm sure Mark Walker had a name for it, around the sigh, that it's like this little-
Michael (05:39):
A little cloud of pleasure.
Liz (05:41):
A little asterisk.
Harold (05:43):
An asterisk or a little bubble popping into joy or something.
And then he takes the balloon and he has this really squiggly line around the word sigh.
And then he does a second squiggly balloon on top of it.
And it's so evocative.
Michael (06:04):
That's what I was calling the cloud of pleasure.
Yeah, that's a little strange.
Harold (06:10):
Well, that's evocative or just calling something cloud of pleasure.
But the looks on their faces too, especially the first one on the left, the birds have a different feel than Woodstock.
Woodstock often feels innocent and hapless.
This little bird on the left feels like a 1967 bird.
(06:32):
Does that make sense?
What's going on?
What are the personalities of these birds just having nothing for them to say or know other than they've come up to be patted on the head by Linus?
But the look on the bird, it's almost like a little funky vulturey.
Jimmy (06:51):
Well, you'll notice if you see Woodstock, when you see the final version of Woodstock, the beak isn't pointed like that.
It becomes completely round.
There is something slightly more birdlike about them, despite them having spiky hair with feathers on their head, that I think gives them just a little bit more of an alien in a human look or something.
Harold (07:19):
They make me think of the vultures in The Jungle Book, which came out, I think, this year, 1997, in the Disney animated version.
They just have a different look to them.
There's more to their personality in these little guys.
It's different, but I love it.
(07:40):
I love Linus' little innocent look as they walk up.
It's almost like he's expecting it.
This is not the first time, right?
Jimmy (07:50):
Definitely, he's expecting it.
Harold (07:53):
Yeah.
It's just a sweet thing that Schulz came up with.
Who knows where it came from?
It's one of those mysterious things.
Michael (08:02):
It came from St.
Francis.
Jimmy (08:06):
It is very St.
Francis.
It is out in the woods, patting birds on the head.
Liz (08:11):
It's the 800th anniversary of St.
Francis' death, and there's lots of big celebrations around here.
Jimmy (08:17):
Oh, is there really?
Liz (08:18):
Yeah.
Jimmy (08:18):
There you go.
Shout out to Frank X.
I think one of the secrets to the way peanuts, or the success Schulz has with these characters in Peanuts, is that Linus is this, but he's also the shortstop.
(08:39):
He's the wise friend that you talk to, that's also the idiot sitting out in the pumpkin patch.
Liz (08:47):
And also dismantles a tricycle.
Harold (08:51):
Dismantle a tricycle, right.
Liz (08:52):
Yeah.
Michael (08:53):
Well, another thing is, Schulz didn't have these kids smiling all that often.
So when they're happy, it's kind of an unusual occurrence.
Like, wow, it's really like important.
Jimmy (09:06):
And if you think about that first panel, right?
Like, if you just erase the line on Linus' face, which is a sixteenth of an inch or an eighth of an inch maybe, right?
That would give that stoic peanuts look.
But in this instance, he adds the eighth of an inch of an ink line, and it's a totally different experience.
Harold (09:26):
It's pretty remarkable.
Jimmy (09:27):
This is Linus who is happy.
Harold (09:30):
Yeah, it is totally remarkable.
Jimmy (09:33):
Pretty good stuff.
Harold (09:35):
I was reading about something this week, and it was a very odd book.
It was a guy talking about how people can influence other people for good or for ill, but he was going to weird sources to figure out the techniques like hypnotists, con men, stand-up comedians.
(10:01):
He's just studying them and seeing what do they have in common in terms of commanding their audience, right?
And one of them was called the open loop, which is essentially you don't close the scene out, and so you kind of keep the audience in suspense.
(10:22):
And I think what Michael's saying about you don't often see the characters smiling, even though we're only reading these usually four panels at a time in the Daily newspaper or whatever, it does create this tension, I guess, right, because there's not always a release, the way most cartoonists would do, or certainly gagaday cartoonists.
(10:44):
Yeah.
It's like, you know, the release is the punchline, right?
But somehow there's something in what Schulz is doing that's got an extra layer where he is building up a tension, say, between Linus and Lucy.
And we see it over time, and sometimes there's no, certainly not from a gagaday perspective, no resolution.
(11:06):
And I don't think very many of the cartoonists were good at it.
I think it does go back to the idea that Linus, all the characters, as he said, were notes on a keyboard, was a term he used because you need to have different characters with different styles.
And they are the shortstop and the little kid who pats birds on the head and the kid sitting in the pumpkin patch.
(11:27):
It's like he just, instead of adding another character and another character and another character, he's layering them on.
It's just, it just works so incredibly well.
Jimmy (11:38):
I think that's one of the reasons like something like Seinfeld felt so fresh and successful is that you would be waiting and it would wrap up right before the credit.
Harold (11:49):
Seinfeld absolutely did that.
Jimmy (11:51):
Yes.
Harold (11:51):
And it's a really fun technique that, yeah, I think it's certainly in comic strips.
We don't, it's not taken advantage of the way Schulz does usually.
Jimmy (12:02):
August 31st, 1962, now we're visiting Lucy at her famous Psychiatric Care Stand.
And her patient today is Sally who says, My problem is I'm afraid of kindergarten.
Sally sits down and Lucy's listening.
And Sally says, I don't even know why.
I tried to reason it out, but I can't.
I'm just afraid.
(12:23):
I think about it all the time.
I'm really afraid.
Lucy thinks it over and then says, You're no different from anyone else.
Five cents, please.
Michael (12:33):
That's well worth it, five cents.
Jimmy (12:36):
Yeah, I think that's an important lesson to learn.
Yeah, that's a good five cents.
Now, do you know, you could, and unfortunately, it's not on this, in this strip, but Lucy often has a little can that she has for five cents that you could put the money in.
Famously, she has it in the Christmas card.
(12:57):
You can't, and this is going to sound like a joke because of what Michael said after the first strip, but it's not.
You can buy a bank that looks like Lucy's five cents can, and when you put the nickel in, it will be-
Harold (13:09):
I'm on eBay already.
Jimmy (13:11):
Do you see it?
It will give you advice, and one of them is this one.
You're no different from anyone else.
You put the nickel in, and Lucy will tell you that.
Harold (13:20):
Wow, well, I think that patting birds thing, it's happening.
It's just a matter of time.
Now that Sony owns it, it's happening.
Jimmy (13:27):
Oh, yeah, I think if someone listened to that, it's already in production.
This is, I think, interesting.
In that third panel, we see Lucy, she's really thinking it over.
I guess I want to talk about Lucy as the doctor, because I feel like she does take it really seriously.
I mean, it's just her harsh personality, given some sort of, you know, imprimatur because she is behind the booth, but she means to do well as this, right?
Liz (14:00):
Yeah, and she doesn't suffer fools.
She's impatient.
Michael (14:04):
Yeah.
Harold (14:06):
Yeah, which, I mean, if you got to do it at Five Sets of Pop, you got to keep them coming.
Jimmy (14:10):
That's true, you really got to move them right through.
Liz (14:13):
Five Sets was worth more than $62.
Harold (14:16):
Well, that's true.
Yeah, that's like, what, $3,000 today?
Michael (14:21):
It's been switched comically by.
Liz (14:22):
Oh, that's true.
Harold (14:26):
Wow, that's so true.
Jimmy (14:27):
That was amazing.
Harold (14:28):
Especially 1962, can you imagine?
Jimmy (14:31):
You could buy a lot of-
Harold (14:32):
1962, that would be worth way more than $3,000.
Jimmy (14:35):
Yeah.
It is off topic of The Van Pelt, but I feel better about Rhonda's weird hair when I see Sally.
Harold (14:43):
Yeah, I was just thinking the same.
Michael (14:44):
I just got to Rhonda's new hairdo, I like it.
Jimmy (14:47):
You like the new one?
Michael (14:49):
It's not new, it was halfway through the run.
I'm surprised she didn't do it earlier.
It's looked very good.
Liz (14:58):
But Sally does look younger here than she got to, I mean, her hair is somehow different.
She looks younger.
Jimmy (15:05):
It's lower on her head.
Usually, the wings come out much closer to the top as she gets older.
Yeah.
Harold (15:15):
Interesting.
But I think you're right about Lucy.
I think those are good traits to give Lucy.
I think she gets her bad rap a lot of times for good reason.
But yeah, she genuinely is there to help, I think, over trying to profit from it, right?
Jimmy (15:34):
Yeah.
I mean, the profit is not-
Harold (15:36):
I mean, she's charging.
Jimmy (15:37):
Yeah, she's not doing it for free, which is actually also smart.
Harold (15:42):
I mean, and even psychologically for the buyer, right?
Correct, yeah.
The advice is worth, you know.
Jimmy (15:50):
Yeah, nothing.
Exactly.
Harold (15:51):
But if you paid a nickel, all of a sudden, I think it takes on a bit more importance.
So Lucy understands these things.
Yeah.
You might get more out of it than a glass of lemonade.
Jimmy (16:03):
I think you definitely will.
I think you definitely will, even if you learn maybe to shop around more for your psychiatric care.
At least you'll learn something.
Harold (16:13):
Well, and it's interesting.
I'm just from Schulz, the perspective of Schulz, this may be a weird thing, but the very fact that you've got a character who is offering what's called psychiatric care.
Lucy's been known to give some incredibly bad insights on life that are totally wrong.
(16:34):
When she's behind that booth, I don't think Schulz gives himself that leeway.
It's like, it may be harsh, but there's truth behind it.
I can't think of one where Schulz would have totally disagreed with what Lucy said.
I'm sure maybe we could find one, but it seems like there's a kernel of truth in the ones when she's behind the booth, versus say when she's walking around with little Linus and just doing a little spritz of this information.
(17:05):
Absolutely.
Jimmy (17:06):
Well, I think Michael put it well in one of our last episodes when we were talking about what William Pepper said and then Michael said that she's trying to help in the meanest possible way or whatever.
It really does satisfy both of her desires.
She wants to help and she also wants to be me.
Harold (17:27):
Well, it's interesting that third panel when she's looking away from Sally who's all stressed out over school.
Jimmy (17:34):
Yeah.
Harold (17:34):
She's thinking.
Lucy is thinking hard.
It's like, how do I give this?
Liz (17:40):
Or Schroeder is over to the right.
Jimmy (17:44):
No, I think the eyebrow indicates thinking.
Harold (17:51):
The hand to the chin doesn't hurt.
Classic thinker pose.
But yeah, it's like she's, well, she's forced in a four-panel strip to have an answer that's going to be less than 10 words.
It's very concise.
You remember a concise, pithy response.
And so, it works for Lucy.
(18:12):
It's cool.
Jimmy (18:15):
July 23rd, 1972.
We start with the symbolic panel, or maybe not symbolic panel.
We start with a picture of the psychiatry booth, but no one is at it.
And then, we cut to Schroeder's room, where he is playing along on his piano.
Lucy's in her classic position, leaning on the piano.
And then, she looks back at Schroeder, and seeming visibly upset, she walks away and goes to her own psychiatric booth, which is great.
(18:46):
And she sits there in the patient's position and says, I need some advice.
And then, Dr.
Lucy, she goes back to behind the stand.
Dr.
Lucy says, good, that's what I'm here for.
Patient Lucy says, there's this boy I kind of like, C, but he never pays any attention to me.
Is it because I'm unattractive?
(19:06):
Then Dr.
Lucy says, nonsense, you're a very beautiful young girl and you shouldn't have to chase after anyone.
And patient Lucy says, do you really think so?
And Dr.
Lucy says, of course, would I lie to you?
And then Lucy goes back to Schroeder's music room, gets back into her position at the piano and says to Schroeder, my psychiatrist says, blah, which means Schroeder flying butt over tea kettle.
Michael (19:33):
Well, this would be confusing for somebody who didn't know peanuts.
Jimmy (19:41):
Forget that.
How about it's your first comic strip ever?
What do you think?
Harold (19:47):
I think this is a great idea.
I'm surprised he didn't do it more often.
Jimmy (19:51):
It's a great idea.
Harold (19:52):
Have a character talk to themselves and have them take up the different positions that the different versions of themselves are responding to.
Great idea.
I would love to play around that with my characters.
Because you can visualize a conversation and have some variety in the art.
It's really cool.
Jimmy (20:12):
And it's a brilliant idea for Lucy because of course she would have to go to the person that she thinks is the best.
Harold (20:18):
Sure, yeah.
Jimmy (20:19):
And that's her, you know?
Harold (20:22):
Well, and also we talk about, again, her being the one who wants to give truth in the meanest way possible.
But then you see how she gives it to herself.
She's not, she's stern.
Stern.
But she's not mean.
She's saying, hey, you're beautiful.
(20:42):
You shouldn't have to chase after anyone.
Because I think that just shows her esteem for the person on the other side of the booth.
Is probably higher than it ever has been, right?
Yes.
Jimmy (20:53):
Oh, a hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
Because there is some part of Lucy, whenever Charlie Brown or someone comes up, she's thinking, oh, look at this loser.
I'll straighten him out.
Harold (21:03):
Right.
Yeah.
He needs to be really shook up a little for this to stick.
Jimmy (21:10):
Yeah, exactly.
Harold (21:11):
And again, even in that regard, the meanest way possible is really the most effective way possible.
It's another way to give Lucy a little leeway there, right?
He's going to remember this because he's thick.
I'm going to say something harsh because he needs to hear it.
And if I don't give it, he's wishy washy.
If I don't give it to him the way he needs to hear it, then it's not going to stick and that nickel is wasted.
(21:36):
So, yeah, you can give Lucy, I think, quite a bit of props for through her lens.
She's trying to do good.
Jimmy (21:44):
What do we think of Blair as the, like, I don't know.
I'm not sure.
I love the punchline.
I think I'm probably.
I mean, it's all right.
Michael (21:52):
You read it well.
Jimmy (21:55):
Yeah, it's a great looking.
It's such a great idea.
I think if this would have had like a classic peanuts punchline, this would be up in the pantheon just because it's such a great idea.
Harold (22:08):
Well, here's my theory, Jimmy.
The reason this final panel does not work for you is because it's open loop.
It has not been resolved.
Jimmy (22:16):
It has not been resolved?
Harold (22:18):
Look at the quotation marks around Blair.
Jimmy (22:20):
I did notice that when I was trying to search the date for it.
Yeah, he forgot it.
Harold (22:25):
He left out the close quotes.
Michael (22:28):
Oh, it's open.
Harold (22:30):
I can't imagine somebody at the syndicate who's supposed to be editing.
He's like, don't even bother editing his stuff.
Jimmy (22:36):
Don't even.
Harold (22:36):
No matter what it was, he meant to do it.
Don't even touch it.
Michael (22:40):
Let it go.
The rest of the strip until the very end is all.
Jimmy (22:44):
Is a quote.
Harold (22:45):
It is an open quote.
I think, Michael, you have discovered the secret to peanuts from 1972 to 2000.
That's pretty crazy, yes.
Michael (22:54):
It's all.
Harold (22:57):
It's really all.
All the.
You're a psychiatrist.
Unbelievable.
Jimmy (23:05):
Well, we did it, guys.
We figured it out.
Harold (23:07):
Oh, wait.
Wait, guys.
All right.
I just drew the close quote.
So we're done.
Jimmy (23:14):
Now, with that, I say it's time to take a break because that was just too much excitement for one time of the show.
So we'll take a break.
We'll come back and check the mail and do stuff like that, and then finish some more Linus and Lucy strips.
Liz (23:27):
Sounds good.
Jimmy (23:28):
All right.
Harold (23:28):
Be right back.
Liz (23:29):
Hi, everyone.
We love it when you write or call to tell us how much you enjoy the show.
But don't just tell us.
Tell your friends.
Tell complete strangers.
Share your appreciation in a review.
It doesn't have to be on Apple podcasts.
60 percent of you listen on other apps.
Some of those apps have review sections.
(23:50):
Think of all the poor Peanuts fans out there who haven't found us yet.
There are review instructions on our website at unpackingpeanuts.com/spread the word.
Thank you for your support.
Now, let's hear what some of you have to say.
Harold (24:08):
We are back.
Jimmy (24:09):
Hey, Liz.
I'm hanging out in the mailbox.
Do we got anything?
Liz (24:12):
We do.
We heard from Super Listener Paul Ebert.
He posted on Blue Sky a link from Core 77, which is an online industrial design magazine.
It's an article titled, Charlie Brown lived in a world of mid-century modern furniture.
Jimmy (24:32):
That's great.
Liz (24:35):
In the article, it shows a strip from March 1st, 1953 where Charlie Brown and Patty are at Patty's house.
The final panel shows them in a room with an Eames chair, a Hardoy chair, the kind that I know of as a butterfly chair, and a Barwa lounge chair, which I assume is named for the designers Bartolucci and Waldheim.
(25:00):
I recommend that everybody go up and go and look up the March 1st, 1953 strip.
Jimmy (25:06):
Is that the strip that ends with what in the world is a rocking chair?
Liz (25:09):
Yes.
Jimmy (25:12):
How good.
Come on.
Wait, wait, wait.
Let's come on.
Liz (25:15):
Well, I did put it in our chat.
Michael (25:17):
You saw the chat.
It's in there.
But you are good.
Harold (25:22):
I love the expertise of this website because somebody in the comments is like, well, what's the lamp?
And then if you see, it's a photo of the lamp that someone has replied.
I was like, okay, you guys know your Mid-Century Modern.
And I love the subtitle of the Charlie Brown lived in a world of Mid-Century Modern furniture, back when you could buy it for peanuts.
Liz (25:46):
So the link is in our, I reposted Paul Hebert's link, and so you can find it on our Blue Sky account.
Harold (25:56):
Thanks for sending that.
Liz (25:59):
And Spider Stomper wrote again, and sent us a variation on the Muppet Babies theme, which is, little buff babies, they make their dreams come true.
Harold (26:13):
Little buff babies.
Liz (26:18):
I should probably explain what little buff babies is for people who didn't listen to our previous episode.
Jimmy (26:26):
No, I think they have to go search now through almost 200 episodes to figure out what the heck we're talking about.
Harold (26:34):
Okay.
So Liz, were you watching that show when it was coming out then?
Liz (26:39):
I was probably like 40 when that came out.
So no, I was not.
Harold (26:44):
So how did you go about, did you do some research here?
Liz (26:48):
I did.
I looked it up on YouTube to learn the-
Harold (26:52):
Because there's nothing wrong with being 40 years old and watching Muppet Babies.
Liz (27:01):
I was not familiar with that.
Harold (27:03):
My little pony.
Jimmy (27:05):
Oh, there's something real wrong with that.
Liz (27:09):
So that's it for the mail.
Jimmy (27:11):
We did get one thing, a super listener, on the hotline, super listener, Anne wrote in, and she is voting for Mean Girls for our next season.
Liz (27:20):
Okay.
Harold (27:21):
One.
Yeah, Michael.
Michael (27:23):
That's a foreign slide.
Liz (27:24):
Yeah, get your votes in.
Jimmy (27:26):
Yeah, we will do all of these eventually, but here are, if you're out there and you want to weigh in on what our next season will be, you got the Many Moods of Marzi, Mean Girls, Patty and Violet, or Woodstock Festival, all about Woodstock.
So if you want to vote on that, or if you just want to shoot us an email and let us know what's going on, because remember, when I don't hear from you, I worry, you can email us at unpackingpeanutsatgmail.com, or you can do what Super Listener Anne did and go ahead and text or leave a voicemail on our hotline, which is 717-219-4162.
Harold (28:07):
And we'd love to hear from you.
Jimmy (28:09):
All right.
Michael (28:10):
So, before we go from the mailbox, I'd like to give a little shout out to our friends in Ukraine, where we're number nine in visual art.
So, folks, when you're sitting there in the dark in your apartment, glad you can at least listen to our podcast.
Harold (28:27):
We are here.
Michael (28:28):
But we'd love to hear from anybody from Ukraine who actually listens to this podcast.
Jimmy (28:34):
Now, you guys were doing English lessons for Ukraine.
Liz (28:36):
We still are.
Yeah, it's been coming up on three years, I think.
Jimmy (28:40):
That's fantastic.
Michael (28:41):
Yeah, but my friend didn't seem to impress with our number nine in Ukraine.
Jimmy (28:48):
Oh, really?
Wasn't that much?
Liz (28:51):
My friend was really pleased.
She thought it was great.
But she doesn't listen.
She's not one of our listeners.
Michael (28:56):
Also, I tried early on because her English was pretty rudimentary.
I thought, hmm, I bet peanuts is a good way to learn English.
We tried reading one, but she had absolutely no idea what was going on.
Liz (29:11):
But apparently, there are some who like peanuts enough to listen to us.
Jimmy (29:16):
Number nine, well, that's wonderful.
We hope that you're safe and warm.
Harold (29:22):
We're thinking of you.
Liz (29:23):
Yeah.
All right.
Jimmy (29:25):
As long as we're talking about current events, I just want to say really quickly, I got a delicious beverage on my break, and you know what I like best about it?
Liz (29:32):
What?
Jimmy (29:33):
No ice.
Liz (29:34):
Ah, but I'll drink.
Jimmy (29:37):
So, let's get back to the strips.
June 24th, 1965.
Back at the old psychiatric help booth, and Lucy is sitting there behind it, looking really angry.
And Linus is there in front, and she says to Linus, who is the patient, if you'd listen to me, you wouldn't need that thumb and blanket.
(29:59):
And then Linus, quite smugly, and really tempting fate, leans across the patient-doctor divide with his eyes closed and says, years from now, when your kind has passed from the scene, thumbs and blankets will still be around, to which Lucy reaches through the doctor-patient divide and punches Linus right in the nose.
(30:25):
Pow!
Sending him flying.
And then Linus, lying on the ground, disheveled and dazed, says, doctors always tell you to say what's on your mind, but they don't really mean it.
Michael (30:38):
Man, he was asking for it.
Jimmy (30:40):
He's totally asking for it.
Harold (30:44):
Yeah, you had to close that loop.
Jimmy (30:46):
Yeah, and I wanted to bring this up because we talked about this last time saying there are very few instances where Lucy administered to Linus while he was a patient, but here was another one.
Michael (30:56):
Yeah, this is a classic.
I'm surprised we didn't pick it.
Harold (31:00):
Yeah.
Look how high Linus is in the panel, the last panel.
His head is going into the word balloon, but there's a lot of white space below him.
It's interesting.
I would not have thought to do it that way, where it's not the composition I would expect.
Jimmy (31:19):
Yeah, it's not even a classical composition because it's way more centered.
Usually, you would lower the horizon line or raise the horizon line to make it more interesting.
In this instance, you'd have to lower it, but yeah, it works with him.
I love the punch.
It's a great panel.
He gets a little more sketchy when action is happening, because you're allowed to see the little bit of motion, like the way he's scribbled in those lines on Linus' shirt.
Harold (31:53):
Yeah, everything looks like it's a little rushed.
Well, certainly the shading and that sort of thing, like on the side of the booth.
It's a really cool angle on the psychiatric help booth that you don't normally see.
Michael (32:07):
But we shouldn't be looking at this that long, because if she punched him in panel two, he'd go over backwards.
He's completely flipped around, unless he did a complete circle in the air.
Harold (32:21):
Yeah, well, that's it.
Yeah, it looks like she's punching him in the back, the way he draws it.
Jimmy (32:27):
Well, we could look at it too long.
Let's do that.
Because, like Michael said, if you were going to draw this accurately, first off, you probably would want to show either the impacts point or he'd want to show Lucy having swung through the punch, right?
(32:50):
And Linus would have fallen backwards.
But he just goes for iconic, extreme poses, and just whether they would all be in actually different moments, right?
But he puts them all in the one panel and it gives you, it's like a collage effect on them.
Liz (33:09):
But it works.
Jimmy (33:10):
Yeah, it works.
Harold (33:11):
You totally believe it.
Jimmy (33:12):
Oh, it totally works.
It works probably much better than what I would have done.
Like I would have tried to show the character reacting to the punch, which is the wrong feel.
Because also this makes it, you don't feel for Linus getting physically punched in the way that you would if you showed something more real.
(33:33):
Does that make sense?
Harold (33:35):
Yeah.
If you dart your eyes between panels two and three, it's just like cause-effects or whatever.
Like you said, Linus is leaning in past the little post of the psychiatric help booth.
Michael (33:47):
And then he's-
It's almost like it's two panels divided by the post, different time sequences.
Harold (33:57):
Yeah.
It does work so well.
And yeah, again, just kind of gives a sense of freedom.
As a cartoonist, he's breaking the rules because he can.
And he makes a new rule, and it's even better.
Jimmy (34:12):
October 29th, 1959.
Now we're going to go back to just Linus on his own.
He's talking to his friend, good old Charlie Brown.
And Linus says, and then on Halloween night, the great pumpkin rises up out of the pumpkin patch, and he brings toys to all the good little children in the world.
Charlie Brown says, you're crazy.
And annoyed Linus says, all right, so you believe in Santa Claus, and I'll believe in the great pumpkin.
(34:38):
And then Linus walks away saying, the way I see it, it doesn't matter what you believe, just so you're sincere.
The sincere thing comes out.
This is, you know, one of Linus' big bugaboos or whatever you'd call it, right?
He wants people to be sincere.
That's what the great pumpkin is all about.
(34:58):
He finds the most sincere pumpkin patch.
I think Lucie's sincere.
I guess sincerity is probably an important thing in the Van Pelt household, right?
Harold (35:07):
Because Lucie's certainly sincere.
Michael (35:09):
She's sincere.
So sincerity is the opposite of being a phony.
Jimmy (35:15):
That's right.
It is.
Back to Salinger again.
Michael (35:19):
Yeah.
Harold (35:20):
Definitely a bugaboos of Schulz's.
He's trying to point out a fallacy in this.
The idea that people are saying, yeah, I was sincere about it as well.
But were you right?
Jimmy (35:32):
Right.
Well, right, right.
Sincerity.
Well, I mean, it counts for something, right?
But it doesn't absolve you from being wrong.
Michael (35:46):
Right.
Jimmy (35:48):
Yeah.
Boy, looking at 1959, that incline is so clean and precise.
And yet it does not feel over, it still feels very casual.
It's not into the super casual of the 60s and 70s.
Harold (36:11):
It doesn't seem to have the life that I read into the 60s, let's say.
Jimmy (36:16):
It's like a thinner pen line that's more consistently, it doesn't have the thick thins as much as it will later, or even that it did earlier.
He's going through like a weird period, which is a cool period.
I love it, but it's weird.
Yeah.
Michael, as the aficionado of the 50s, if you're just looking at 1950 to 1959 as its own strip, where do you put the peak of this era for you personally?
Michael (36:45):
Probably around 58, 59.
That was the Blue Nose Snoopy, which was pretty expressionistic.
Yeah, this panel struck me when I first looked at it today.
Yeah, it looks very clean.
Jimmy (37:01):
Very clean.
Michael (37:02):
Yeah.
Liz (37:03):
But also like Harold said, it's very static.
It doesn't have some of the movement that others that we've looked at have.
Michael (37:12):
Yeah, I wouldn't have picked this as, guess this was 59 as a different look.
Jimmy (37:17):
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out exactly when I would place it.
It almost has that European clean line style.
It almost looks like an ergue kind of ink line.
Michael (37:26):
Yeah, it almost looks like it's meant to be colored.
Harold (37:29):
Colored, yeah.
Jimmy (37:31):
Yeah.
Harold (37:32):
Interesting.
Jimmy (37:34):
Well, we're going to leave that loop is unclosed.
Harold (37:37):
We don't know.
Jimmy (37:40):
December 28th, 1966.
Now, we're talking about one of Linus' early talents because we see in panel one, he is making some snowmen, and we see he is actually working on what looks like his fifth snowman, at least from what we can see.
Then in panel two, we see he has made an entire regiment of snowmen.
(38:03):
You can't even see how many there must be.
It's got to be at least 30, 40 snowmen.
Then he is outside, of course, because it's snowmen.
Then he runs upstairs, and then from the second floor bedroom, Linus addresses all the snowmen he has built, and he says, today the neighborhood, tomorrow the world.
Harold (38:21):
As long as he's sincere.
Jimmy (38:25):
He's sincerely going to take over the world.
Michael (38:27):
I wouldn't have expected Linus to be the character who is a proto-fascist.
Jimmy (38:32):
He does it again and again though.
Michael (38:34):
I know.
Harold (38:34):
Well, what we don't know is, what are they going to do to the world?
Michael (38:44):
It's iced.
Liz (38:45):
Oh, no.
Harold (38:46):
No.
Jimmy (38:52):
Yeah, I think a lot of this has to come from being repressed by Lucy.
Michael (38:56):
He isn't very angry, but it comes out in a strange way in these strips.
Jimmy (39:01):
Yes, it sure does.
But it also goes back to, and we didn't talk about it much this season because we covered a lot of them in the original reread, but Linus just being very good and facile at lots of things, lots of parts of childhood, like making snowmen, like building card houses.
Harold (39:20):
Taking apart tricycles.
Jimmy (39:22):
Yeah, taking apart tricycles with just a pair of pliers in two seconds.
So what do you think about that element of Linus?
Michael (39:29):
Well, he was a genius.
You don't see much of that in the 70s, but he apparently could do anything.
He built that snow dinosaur, which defied gravity.
I was pretty proud of that.
Jimmy (39:43):
Right.
It's a really interesting thing to put into one of the human characters, because we could have Snoopy who can do everything, because he's partly fantasy.
Linus is just another kid, right?
Harold (39:57):
He's mechanically brilliant, but it seems like something that he takes for granted.
He's not particularly leaning into it or interested in it, doesn't put his identity in it.
Yeah.
There's a lot of work to draw those snowmen.
Jimmy (40:11):
I just think there's a lot of work to draw the railing.
Liz (40:14):
A lot of work to build those snowmen.
Harold (40:16):
But the one thing that he seemed to do particularly fast is Linus' hair on the back of his head as he's looking out over his snowman.
It's like he's drawing the Hirschfeld Nina in there.
He's just a stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, just ending one line, then going one direction and taking it down the other.
It's a really, really fast, fast drawing.
(40:40):
Again, compared to 1959, going back there and looking at this, there just does seem to be more life in the line.
I really do like this period.
Jimmy (40:49):
But my God, yes, there's 100 percent more life in the line, but I don't blame just sort of, what's the word I'm looking for, people out there in the world who are not aficionados of this, just casual readers for not noticing that there's changes.
(41:10):
I don't think anybody who's not looking at this from a cartooning perspective would think there's any difference between those two versions of Linus.
Am I wrong?
Tell me, you guys.
Harold (41:21):
Sure, yeah, I think so.
I mean, again, it takes me back to talking to somebody about, I think we were talking about with you, Liz, and the idea, I used to watch Flintstones and the Flintstones had a certain line style that the early Hannah Barbera TV shows had, and it was this thick and thin, really thick and thin line.
(41:42):
I remember talking to somebody else about that and they're like, what are you talking about?
It's just not on their radar, it's not important to them.
The thick and the thin and the line, it's the outline of the character, the character is the character, and that's all there is to it.
You don't need any more thought about it.
Michael (41:58):
Yeah, but it's not that because we're cartoonists are paying attention, because I'm the least observant person in the world.
Case in point, halfway through the Amelia Ruehl's books, there's eight of them, halfway through book four, I go, oh my God, they only have four fingers.
(42:20):
We've even talked about that much.
Then I went back and I checked and I went, yep, they always have four fingers.
Jimmy (42:26):
Yeah, they did, and I've regretted it ever since, but I'm working on a workaround.
Michael (42:34):
So me not observing Linus' tuft of hair is not unusual.
Jimmy (42:43):
December 5th, 1969, we got another snowman.
Linus has made just one and he's berating it.
He says, you're mine.
I have made you with my own hands.
Then he continues, unless you forget, as I created you, I also can destroy you.
Then he crosses his arms and looks away, stern and resolved.
(43:04):
Then the last panel, he hugs the snowman and says, I'm sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.
This is Linus trying to be Lucy for half a strip, and it doesn't work.
Harold (43:17):
It doesn't pan out.
The first two panels look like they've been redrawn.
Michael (43:22):
The first panel is that outline is super thick.
Jimmy (43:25):
No, this is someone was screwing with these.
Don't go by that.
I think someone did that online.
Michael (43:33):
Okay.
Liz (43:35):
But it's wonderful because the snowman never changes.
The expression on the snowman is absolutely the same in every single panel.
Jimmy (43:43):
Yeah, and it's that.
Harold (43:46):
I'd be disturbed if it were different.
Jimmy (43:48):
Yeah.
What is that expression on the snowman's face?
I mean, the snowman looks like he's berated.
No, I think the snowman looks upset.
Liz (44:00):
I don't think it has any, it's not even hearing what he's saying.
Jimmy (44:04):
No, I think the snowman looks upset because the stick goes down on both sides.
Liz (44:10):
And what makes you say that, Jimmy?
Harold (44:15):
I don't know.
Jimmy (44:17):
No, don't you see, like, look in panel two.
If we look really close at the snowman, you can see the stick that makes the mouth goes down on the left side and down on the right side.
So it's definitely a frown.
I think he is reacting to getting yelled at by his thrill sergeant or whatever.
Liz (44:33):
I think you're reading something into that that's not there.
Jimmy (44:37):
I think the snowman is wondering why he never was respected by his parents.
Liz (44:43):
He's wondering why his arms are so short.
Jimmy (44:45):
Yeah.
Harold (44:48):
Why are there only two buttons on my jacket?
Jimmy (44:53):
September 22nd, 1957.
One of the all-time classic peanuts bits, something everyone in the world knows, it's the pulling away of the football.
And there's Lucy sitting there and she's all set up to go and Charlie Brown is there.
And he says, no, absolutely not.
You must think I'm crazy.
(45:15):
Charlie Brown continues.
You say you'll hold the ball, but you won't.
You'll pull it away and I'll break my neck.
And then Lucy says, why Charlie Brown?
How you talk?
And then with a ridiculous grin on her face, she says to him, I wouldn't think of such a thing.
I'm a change person.
Look, isn't this a face you can trust?
(45:36):
And the grin almost reaches her ears.
And Charlie Brown walks away saying, all right, you hold the ball and I'll come running up and kick it.
And then Charlie Brown runs, does that.
And of course Lucy pulls it away.
Charlie Brown yells, she did it again.
And then whomp, Charlie Brown flat in his back.
And then Lucy comes up to him and says, I admire you, Charlie Brown.
You have such faith in human nature.
(46:01):
Now, this is something that we did a whole episode on.
So if you guys want to check that out, there's a whole episode about the football strips.
And I think what we all sort of decided at the time was, although they were never our favorites when they would come up, when we read them all in a bunch, a bunch in a row, they all seemed to really work together.
(46:22):
So that's when I remember about this.
I also, I really like the first panel where there's the really, really, almost pointillistic drawing of the background.
Harold (46:33):
You know, where it's all just little hash marks for grass and stuff.
Jimmy (46:37):
Really pretty.
Michael (46:38):
Yeah, it's a nice little curving sidewalk.
Harold (46:40):
The thing that stands out to me visually in this strip, going back to how Schulz shows action in panels, I never noticed this before, but this is wild.
In the bottom panel, you have Lucy pulling the football away and Charlie Brown's arc of motion is understandably going past her and then up in the air as he's now parallel to the ground.
(47:07):
But when he lands on the next panel, the arc of motion is completely opposite of what we just saw in the panel before.
It's now showing him landing as if he had gone up in the air on the other side of Lucy before he even got to the football.
And again, it's like he is not looking at consistency.
(47:30):
He's looking at what makes this have the greatest impact.
He's totally breaking the rules.
I don't know.
I've never seen this with another cartoonist.
Jimmy (47:39):
And conceptually, it's really interesting though, because as a reader, right, if you follow the arc or like you follow the lines of Charlie Brown from off panel left in the last tier, and just follow those motion lines up to Charlie Brown, and then you skip to the next panel, the lines continue and then bring you down.
It brings this sine wave of your eyes.
(47:59):
So your eyes actually move up and then hit like Charlie Brown would.
Harold (48:04):
So it has its own logic, but it's completely illogical from the standpoint of what's happening.
And he's landing closer to his Lucy than when we've seen the panel before.
He's already be further beyond her.
Michael (48:16):
I think what he's attempting here and he's not showing it clearly is the camera's moving.
So she should be a little smaller and behind him in that second panel on the third tier.
In other words, you're looking at Lucy from a completely different angle.
Jimmy (48:33):
Yeah.
Harold (48:35):
He doesn't change the angle, right?
Jimmy (48:37):
He does change it.
Michael's saying, yeah, you're seeing, right, Mike, you're saying if this was a camera.
Michael (48:44):
It's moving to the right.
Jimmy (48:45):
To the right.
Yeah.
Michael (48:46):
Turning to the left.
Jimmy (48:48):
Right.
Harold (48:48):
Exactly.
Michael (48:49):
Yeah.
But you'd need like perspective lines to make it work.
Harold (48:53):
Yeah.
Jimmy (48:53):
Because there's no reference points in the background so you can't see it.
So he's really, I think he is doing that based on the, his concern is the reader's eye 100% more than what is going on in the world of the comic.
He is worried about you following Charlie Brown up and then following Charlie Brown down.
(49:15):
And if he has to move the camera for Lucy, he'll do it.
And if that makes it look like it's wrong, he'll do that too.
Because it doesn't matter because he wants the clarity and emotional impact of the reading experience.
Harold (49:30):
Pretty amazing.
Liz (49:31):
And he doesn't say an og this time, but he does say that you hold the ball and I'll come running up and kick it.
Yeah.
Which is usually Lucy's line.
Harold (49:41):
Yeah.
Jimmy (49:42):
Yeah, I'll hold the ball and you come running up and kick it.
Harold (49:44):
Yeah, that's right.
So what does this say about Lucy?
She loves the repetition of doing this and finding a new way to fool Charlie Brown every time.
Jimmy (49:57):
There was a kid, there's this long shaggy joke, shaggy dog joke that someone taught me when I was a kid about, it's really hot and you run to the store and you ask for a Pepsi, and the guy behind the counter hits you in the head and says, a Pepsi, and you say, do you get it?
Then the kid says, no, I don't get it.
You tell the whole story again and then you hit the kid in the head and say, Pepsi.
I knew a kid for years, you would tell him that joke and he would just get hit in the head over and over again, not realizing that the point was to hit him in the head, that there's no actual joke.
(50:27):
It's such a catnip for someone like Lucy, she has to do it.
Liz (50:32):
Or maybe she's thinking that this time he'll learn.
Jimmy (50:39):
Definitely not.
That is so nice of you people to think that.
Michael (50:42):
This is not Lucy's fault.
This is Charlie Brown's.
Right?
Liz (50:46):
Yes.
Harold (50:47):
Well, I would say maybe it has to be shared a little bit.
Michael (50:50):
No, she's just trying to teach him a lesson about life and he doesn't learn it.
Right.
Jimmy (50:55):
Look, it's like, fool me once, shame on you.
Can't fool me.
Can't get fooled again.
You know, that famous saying.
Right?
This is fool me 500 times, shame on you.
Harold (51:11):
So it's okay for the person to take advantage of someone's weakness over and start over again?
Michael (51:15):
She's trying to teach him.
No.
She's trying to teach him not to be a sucker.
Jimmy (51:20):
Well, that's true too.
He could learn from this and it would be a good thing.
Michael (51:27):
So, good for Lucy.
She's a good person and she's a change person.
I trust that face.
Harold (51:36):
You know what?
Jimmy (51:38):
The whole comic strip, this particular strip, I mean, hinges on that face in the middle of the second year.
Her having that unbelievable grin.
Harold (51:51):
Yeah.
Which just grabs your eye.
Jimmy (51:54):
Yeah.
But boy, then he's like, she looks terrible in the panel after that, actually.
Harold (51:59):
Yeah.
It's like the old Neanderthal Lucy.
Jimmy (52:01):
Yeah.
It's like he forgot that he's not doing the smile again, so he didn't put the head back the way it should be.
All right.
Now, where would you rate the pulling away of the footballs in the pantheon of great peanuts bits?
Let's say, would you give it an A, a B?
Harold (52:21):
Where would you put it?
Michael (52:23):
I don't like it.
I mean, once was good.
Yeah.
Give it a C-.
When we're doing the read-through and I read every strip, I'd always go, ugh, I forgot.
There's going to be another football strip.
Liz (52:37):
But it has certainly reached the public as a philosophical statement.
Michael (52:46):
Yeah.
Most people like it and the red baron and things like that.
Liz (52:49):
I mean, it's meaningful that I have often heard and said, it's like Charlie Brown and the football.
Jimmy (52:57):
Oh, yeah.
It's one of the great metaphors for failure.
Michael (53:02):
Yeah.
Jimmy (53:02):
Yes.
Harold (53:03):
And hope, you know.
Liz (53:06):
And banging your head against a wall.
Yeah.
Jimmy (53:08):
Right.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Which is usually just my business plan.
What do you think, Harold?
Harold (53:14):
Where do you rate it?
I think culturally an A and I think I'm with Michael as a reader, I'd say a C, so I have to give it a B and just drop it in the middle there.
Yeah.
Jimmy (53:31):
I'm going to give it an A minus because of the episode we did with reading them all in once, and because of what Liz said.
All right.
It averages out to a B, a low B.
That's not bad.
Harold (53:44):
I'd take it.
Sure.
To think of something like that, that it's known in the culture, like the security blanket is remarkable.
Jimmy (53:55):
Yeah.
This is only within the context of peanuts, is this a B.
If I created something half as good as that, I would not stop running in the streets telling people and showing them.
Harold (54:06):
Right, right.
Jimmy (54:06):
It's only within his own oeuvre.
Harold (54:10):
You know that whole football thing, pulling away, that was me.
Yeah, exactly.
Jimmy (54:15):
January 5th, 1964.
We're at home with the Van Pelt and Linus is watching TV, and Lucy comes in and says, Switch channels.
Linus ignores her.
This irritates Lucy.
So Lucy says it again.
I said, switch channels.
I want to watch my program.
Linus turns and says, are you kidding?
What makes you think you can just walk right in here and take over?
(54:39):
And Lucy brandishes her fist to Linus and says, These five fingers.
Individually, they're nothing.
But when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold.
Which Linus says, which channel do you want?
Lucy watches the TV show and Linus sighs and then looks at his own hand and says, Why can't you guys get organized like that?
Harold (55:08):
Oh boy, this was the thing back when there was one TV set in the house.
Yeah, really.
I remember these moments on Saturday morning with my sister, and then forget it if your parent wanted to watch something, it's over.
But Saturday morning, yeah, my sister sometimes wanted to watch the Sid and Marty Croft live-action stuff, and I was all about the animation.
(55:31):
It was fraught moments of childhood.
Jimmy (55:36):
Only child watch whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.
Like these mysterious things that happened in your childhood, you don't know, for like six months, my grandmother lived with us when I was like seven.
Harold (55:50):
No, six or seven, no idea why.
Jimmy (55:52):
Then she moved into an apartment, but she had cable in the room.
Suddenly, I had cable TV in my bedroom, because I moved into that room then.
Basically, it was just great being me.
Harold (56:04):
How old were you?
Seven, eight.
See, that's what did it.
Jimmy (56:09):
Yeah, that's what did it.
Harold (56:10):
Free access to cable at seven in your own bedroom, that's the recipe for trouble.
Jimmy (56:14):
No, I only had 13 panels.
I didn't have like MTV.
We don't need to get into that.
But anyway.
Harold (56:19):
All right.
Yeah.
Headline news.
Jimmy (56:24):
February 27th, 1963, Linus and Charlie Brown are out for a walk.
Linus says, I don't like to face problems head on.
I think the best way to solve problems is to avoid them.
This is a distinct philosophy of mine.
Then Linus proclaims, no problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from.
Michael (56:43):
Amen.
Did they do a book of The Wisdom of Linus?
Harold (56:47):
Oh, yes.
They did.
Michael (56:49):
This had to be in there.
Jimmy (56:50):
Oh, I'm sure.
Harold (56:51):
Yes.
Yeah.
This strip is a wonderful example of the optional eyebrow.
You use it when you need it and goes away.
Jimmy (57:01):
Oh, yeah.
You're right.
Harold (57:02):
So weird.
Jimmy (57:04):
That is so weird.
But again, it does give you the little more thousand yard stare.
Sometimes I think when that happens, I really think he penciled them in super lightly, then erased them and sent them off and just never inked it.
Harold (57:18):
This one's such a hodgepodge.
The thing that's interesting to me is we clearly see that Charlie Brown thinks that philosophy is not a good one.
But most cartoonists would absolutely use those eyebrows, the arched kind of falling back eyebrows, like you're rolling your eyes or you're like, oh, boy.
(57:40):
And he kind of does a weird thing on the pupils.
He makes the pupils darker and it's like there's a little bit of line over the pupil.
Jimmy (57:47):
Yeah.
It's a little bit like a comma tail, but not very much.
Harold (57:51):
Almost like an eyelid or something.
Jimmy (57:53):
Yeah.
Harold (57:54):
Because he's gone up so high, it's hitting his eyelid.
But no, no eyebrows.
I think almost any cartoonist that used this style of drawing would have used those eyebrows from Charlie Brown.
And Schulz doesn't.
Jimmy (58:06):
Yeah.
Harold (58:07):
But he does have one in the second panel when he's listening.
So yeah, I don't know what, maybe he penciled it in and erased it and never.
But yeah, he's going for the emotional effect and he's not trying to follow his own drawing rules.
He's like, the rule is you don't have to follow the drugs.
(58:28):
Does it look good?
Carry what I want to have emotionally.
That's it.
That's all I need.
Jimmy (58:34):
What do you think of that fence?
That's a Peanuts fence you see a lot, but I'm not 100% sure.
Is it supposed to be a wire fence or is it supposed to be wood slats and we're seeing the back of it?
Liz (58:44):
I thought wire.
Jimmy (58:45):
Yeah, it looks wiry.
Harold (58:46):
It looks like wire, yeah.
Jimmy (58:49):
It looks like a croquet, you know.
Liz (58:52):
Wicked.
Jimmy (58:52):
Wicked, thank you.
Harold (58:54):
Yeah, but what do you think about Linus' philosophy here?
Jimmy (58:58):
Oh, huge fan.
Liz (59:00):
Yeah, me too.
Jimmy (59:01):
Now, it doesn't work.
It's disastrous.
It will lead to misery and despair, but I highly recommend it.
Liz (59:09):
And do I.
Harold (59:11):
My wife, Diane, she for years had a poster in her bedroom, the opposite.
It says, the best way out is always through.
Jimmy (59:19):
The only way out is through often.
Yeah, that's very true.
Yeah.
Liz (59:21):
I remember a wonderful experience with my stepmother who loved to go sledding and she also loved to swim in the oceans to do body surfing.
I was terribly afraid of big breakers that would come over my head and knock me down and I would feel like I was going to drown.
(59:45):
But she told us that if you dive through it, you see this huge wave coming over arching over your head.
If you dive through it, then you're safe.
And I did it and she was absolutely right.
That is the way to avoid getting crushed by a wave.
(01:00:05):
And this is still my life philosophy.
Jimmy (01:00:10):
Can't be avoided.
All right, guys, that brings us up to May 23rd, 1972.
And Charlie Brown is hanging out with Linus and Joe Kuhl at Snoopy's dog house.
And Charlie Brown says, what I don't understand is why your mother would allow Lucy to throw you out of the house.
Because of course Lucy has thrown Linus out of the house at this point.
(01:00:33):
And Linus says, mom isn't home.
She went to the hospital yesterday.
This perks up Snoopy's ears.
And Charlie Brown says, is she all right?
And Linus says, I don't know, nobody ever tells me anything.
And then we cut to Lucy on the phone.
And she's saying, a new baby brother, but I just got rid of the old one.
(01:00:53):
And that's the beginning of the third Van Pelt rerun, who we are gonna focus in our next episode.
So guys, do you have any final thoughts on the Linus and Lucy era of the Van Pelt family?
Michael (01:01:09):
Well, there was very little after 1972, which was picked.
Do you think it got anywhere in the 70s and 80s?
Jimmy (01:01:19):
Well, we're gonna find out, because that's what we're gonna be looking at next time.
Michael (01:01:22):
Well, when rerun doesn't really hit it till the mid 90s.
Jimmy (01:01:26):
Yeah, it's crazy to watch rerun be basically ignored for 23 years.
Harold (01:01:34):
Before he's living down his name.
Jimmy (01:01:38):
All right, so I guess that brings us to the end of another episode.
We'll be back in two weeks.
Of course, we'd love to hear from you.
Remember, you can email us at unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com.
You can call or text the hotline 717-219-4162.
If you want to follow this show on social media, we're at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads, and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky, and YouTube.
(01:02:04):
Remember, when I don't hear from you, I worry.
That's it for this week.
For Michael, Harold, and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.
Liz (01:02:13):
Yes, be of good cheer.
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz, and Liz Sumner.
Produced and edited by Liz Sumner.
Music by Michael Cohen.
Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark.
For more from the show, follow Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads.
(01:02:34):
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.
Michael (01:02:46):
It's a little cloud of pleasure.
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