Understanding Snoopy: Episode 1 - Super Minimalist Snoopy - Unpacking Peanuts

Episode Transcript
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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 your old pals from Unpacking Peanuts.
We are back.
It's a new era.
The future lies unwritten before us, and I'm so excited that you're here with us.
I'll be your host for these exciting, adventurous proceedings.
My name is Jimmy Gownley.
I'm also a cartoonist.
I did things like Amelia Rules, Seven Good Reasons Not to Grow Up, The Demosidia Ever, and of course, you could read my new comics over there on gvillecomics.substack.com.

(00:46):
Joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts, and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer for the band Complicate People as well as for this very podcast.
He's the co-creator of the original comic book price guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules, and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.

Michael (01:04):
I should have something new instead of say hey.

Jimmy (01:08):
All right, well, you think about that.

Liz (01:10):
We'll come back to you.

Michael (01:11):
All right, say hey.

Jimmy (01:14):
And he's executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
A former vice president of Archie Comics and the creator of the Instagram sensation, Sweetest Beasts, it's Harold Buchholz.

Harold (01:24):
Hello.

Jimmy (01:25):
And making sure we stay out of trouble and everything runs smoothly, it's our producer and editor, Liz Sumner.

Liz (01:31):
Howdy.

Jimmy (01:32):
Now we are, you know what, these new hellos and stuff, I should have approval of these.

Michael (01:38):
Wait a minute, I know exactly who that is.
That's from He-Haw.

Liz (01:44):
From the Grand Ol' opry.

Michael (01:46):
Grand Old Opry.

Jimmy (01:47):
Oh yes, Minnie Pearl, Minnie Pearl.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm sure the young people out there are like, finally some Minnie Pearl content.
That's right.
So welcome back to the show.
We have completed our great Peanuts reread.
We are now in uncharted territory.
Yeah, I'm excited.
I think it'll be fun.

(02:09):
I'm happy that we're doing Snoopy.
I think that's really exciting.
I think it's going to be, it's fun because I think Snoopy has become such an icon yet again in recent years, particularly with younger people.
But not a lot of them are super familiar with the strip.
So should anyone happen upon these podcasts in the great distance future, and they want to know about Snoopy, we'll be here to tell them.

(02:35):
What are your thoughts, Harold?
Are you excited about Snoopy?
Are you excited about, do you have any other thoughts about some of our other things we might be doing coming up?
Any directions you want to take us on?

Harold (02:44):
I'm going to let you kind of guide the way for a bit here.
I'm just enjoying the ride, and Snoopy is a great way to jump out of 50 years of 17,897 strips and into topics, because can we agree Snoopy is the greatest cartoon character of all time?

Jimmy (03:05):
I think it has to be.
I mean, completely original.
It has very few, if any, antecedents.
Lasts forever, is loved around the world.
Yeah.

Harold (03:17):
I'd love to try to answer the impossible question, why?
We've obviously dipped into it, but here we've got five dedicated episodes going through highlights of his career in the strip.
Why?
Why is this character just, I don't know anybody who said, I don't like Snoopy.
I don't think I've ever heard that phrase.

(03:39):
I'm sure there's somebody.
There's always somebody for some reason.

Jimmy (03:42):
Contrarians, sure.

Harold (03:43):
Oh, sure.
Maybe you had a Snoopy plus toy and the head fell off in the dress room or something.
Who knows?
I had a Mickey Mouse that did that to me, so I don't hold it against him at this point though.

Jimmy (03:56):
Yeah, I'm excited.
I do have one other thing which is completely unrelated, but I think this will be fun for people who have followed our podcast thus far.
Michael, I was reading this comic strip the other day.
You may have heard of it, called Strange Attractors.

Michael (04:11):
Rings a bell.

Jimmy (04:12):
And it was so...
It made me laugh out loud.
It was not a joke, but it's funny if people know you.
But, you know, the gang is involved in a little adventure, well, an epic adventure, and Sophie says something like, well, can't you just magic our problem away?
And then Pirate Peg goes, no, even in magic, there has to be rules.

Harold (04:35):
It's just like physics.

Jimmy (04:39):
And I'm like, wow, there is an in-universe rant about there being rules.
That was awesome.

Michael (04:46):
Well, we had Dungeons and Dragons group for many, many years.
And three of us were dungeon masters.
And for years and years afterwards, we just get together and talk about how you can improve the game.
And we made a million changes.
But a lot of discussions on magic and how important it was to have some kind of restraint on it.

(05:13):
Because if you don't, then basically there's no suspense.
You can just get out of anything.
Yeah.
So we'd always say, well, there's got to be some kind of kickback if you use it.
There's a risk of something bouncing back at you.
It had to be dangerous.
Anyway, so that sort of came out of years and years of discussion about magic.

Jimmy (05:35):
I feel that at four years old, you would have done that.
I don't think there needed to be any discussion.
That would have been you out of the womb.

SPEAKER_3 (05:44):
There's got to be rules.

Michael (05:45):
No, no, I didn't have rules when I was in the womb.

Jimmy (05:51):
All right.
Well, so with all that said, it's Snoopy Watch.
We are going to go through these Snoopy strips.
We're starting back at the beginning.
In this episode, Michael has picked the strips, but we're gonna keep them going forward.
I'm gonna pick some.
And our goal is to just try to figure out, you know, like Harold said, what's going on with the Snoopy?

(06:13):
Why is he so popular?
And can we help put our finger on it?
So-

Michael (06:19):
Wait, before you read it in, I'm gonna do a little prelude.

Jimmy (06:22):
All right, go ahead.

Michael (06:23):
Okay, so we started off with Snoopy 1950s, because the 50s was the decade where I discovered peanuts.

Jimmy (06:32):
You don't say.

Michael (06:35):
And this was a little tricky.
Actually, it was very difficult doing the 50s.
And part of the problem was there was too much for me, way too much for me.
But I had rules, of course.
And one of the rules was, we're not going to redo any strips we've already talked about.

(06:59):
I confess, my intention was to check the Google Sheet after I picked a strip to make sure we didn't talk about it.
And I might have missed one or two.
Sorry.
And then the other rule was, we're going to limit it to 20 per decade.
And what I myself imposed rule was, I wanted to cover the various phases of Snoopy's career in the 50s.

(07:32):
And which meant that I did pick some very early strips, not because I think they're in the top 20, but because there's two distinct Snoopys in this decade.
And the transition happens pretty smoothly, but pretty quick.

Harold (07:51):
So I guess this is the decade Snoopy changes the most, right, Michael?
Would you say that?

Michael (07:55):
Well, he goes from puppy to like insane person.

Harold (08:02):
That's extreme.

Michael (08:02):
He goes from cute to not cute at all.
There'll be more morphing in the future, but this is pretty extreme.
You wouldn't recognize them as the same character.
If you showed them to someone who had never seen Peanuts, he'd say there's two dogs.

Harold (08:19):
Yeah, right.
Clearly, there's a huge difference.

Michael (08:22):
The huge difference.
And the thing is, the classic 50s Snoopy has virtually no relationship to later Snoopy.
Again, it's a completely different body type, and personality wise, this is the decade where Snoopy was the funniest character in The Strap.

(08:46):
For me, this is the Snoopy that I grew up with, and I relate to the most.

Harold (08:54):
The crazy one or the?

Michael (08:56):
The crazy one.
The cute Snoopy lasts a couple of years, and they weren't particularly funny.
It was just, they're cute in its way.
People do like cute animals in comics, and Harold knows well.
But within a few years, he morphed into just an amazing comedian, purposely trying to be funny and also being insanely manic.

(09:25):
So most of this is pre-Doghouse.
Doghouse didn't even come into the late 50s.
So when we see Snoopy, he's usually dashing around, dancing furiously, knocking stuff over, trying to knock people over, ruining their games, making funny faces, and even when he's by himself, he's just nuts.

(09:48):
I'm thinking, he reminds me of the burlesque period of comics that extended into TV and in the 50s.
A lot of the other guys came out of the burlesque comedy shows where you had three, four minutes and you had to be as funny as possible.

(10:08):
There was really two schools.
There was a very intellectual school where you had people like Mortsal or even Jack Benny who was very cool.
Maybe his expression was funny and he's mostly reacting to other people's humor.
Then there were a couple of comedians who were just totally manic, like Jerry Lewis or Danny Kay who were always on and trying to just overpower everybody with how crazy they were.

(10:41):
I think that's what Snoopy became was like, he was just being hilarious all the time and enjoyed annoying people, but he enjoyed making people laugh too.

Harold (10:53):
Yeah, it's like Charlie Brown kind of starts as the wise acre.

Michael (10:57):
Yeah.

Harold (10:57):
Snoopy quickly takes over that role, it seems like.

Michael (11:00):
So you'll see, I felt I had to cover some of the cute Snoopy puppy strips.

Harold (11:09):
Thank you.

Michael (11:11):
Then when we got into the meat of the stuff, there were so many and we already covered a lot of them, so I had to skip those.
But I wanted to pick a variety of the famous Snoopy shticks.
I think this is like a good sampler.

Harold (11:29):
Great.

Michael (11:30):
Okay.

Jimmy (11:31):
Sounds good to me.
All right.
Let's get started with those strips.
August 4th, 1951.
We see good old pig-tailed violet running in and she says, I thought I told Snoopy to stay out of that bird bath.
Then in the next panel, we see violet chastising Snoopy and he is in fact, sitting in the birdbath.

(11:52):
She says, you get out of there, Snoopy.
You're not a bird.
Then Snoopy is in fact, out of the birdbath in the next panel as violet starts to walk away.
She says, no one is allowed in there unless he has wings.
Then violet turns around to see Snoopy back in the birdbath, and he has his ears out, mimicking wings.

Michael (12:14):
Yeah, and he's fluttering them.
Yeah, I mean, Snoopy, part of his 50-stick is imitations.
I don't know if it's the first, but it's very early.

Jimmy (12:24):
Is this the first?
I cannot believe.
It's the second time through, and we're saying, there's no way to know.
Is this the first?
It's impossible to tell.

Michael (12:35):
Nobody could possibly know.

Harold (12:37):
Man, these are three classic, early, cute Snoopy drawings.
You got the little profile looking straight into Violet's eyes with a little eyebrow and a cute little upturned smile.
Then the next panel is the mouthless kind of sad Snoopy.
It's adorable.
And then you've got the little side-eye, comma-eyed Snoopy doing the airplane.

(13:02):
It's all very, very cute.
And obviously, Schulz knew how to do that really, really well.

Jimmy (13:08):
And we're in this early period where he's totally in space-saving mode, you know, no backgrounds whatsoever.
The only thing is the birdbath, because obviously you need it for the gag to be sold, but otherwise it's a blank square.

Harold (13:24):
Yeah, it's not even the full height of a square like we were seeing in the later strips.
It's a rectangle where you, yeah, you didn't benefit from extra width.
You just kind of chopped off of the top even more.
It was a space-saving strip when they sold it, right?

Jimmy (13:38):
Yeah.

Harold (13:40):
It was not a very good sales tool, apparently, since it started in so few newspapers, but he was stuck with it.
He made the most of it and I think his style came out of his limitations, right?

Jimmy (13:52):
Oh, it absolutely did.
If he had half of a sheet of paper, I think he would have gone for the mid-50s Sunday styles.
I think probably.
But it was actually a huge benefit to him because it made it instantly iconic.

Harold (14:11):
I wonder at what point he did get the pre-printed since everything was always the same, so he didn't have to rule that out because he's got that famous peanuts in quotes in white serif font against black in the upper left-hand corner, which he had for so long.
Either he had to paste that down or at some point, like, oh, wait a second, I don't think at this point he could probably afford to go somewhere and say, hey, could you please print on Bristol board this thing over and over again so I don't have to do it.

(14:43):
I would guess this would be too early for him to feel like that was a luxury he could figure out.

Jimmy (14:47):
But looks good.
I still am interested in the brush strokes that are used for Violet's hair.
If it's a really super flexible pen, but I think he's just putting those in with the brush.

Harold (14:59):
That looks like a brush to me.
It looks super brushy.
I don't really like it.
It just calls attention to it.

Jimmy (15:04):
Yeah, it does.

Harold (15:06):
It's for an artist anyway.
Maybe someone who doesn't know what brush strokes in their pure form look like.

Jimmy (15:11):
Wouldn't even think about it.

SPEAKER_2 (15:13):
Yeah.

Harold (15:14):
Does it bother you, Liz?
I mean, is it something that when you look at the first panel of Violet's hair, does it seem odd with the white and the black?

Liz (15:21):
I don't think I would have understood what it was that bothered me, but it isn't as attractive as some of the other ways of doing hair.
But I am struck by how cute Violet looks in that last panel.
I mean, she's angry in the first three, but she's adorable in the fourth.

Harold (15:41):
Yeah.
Because Violet and Michael have that in common.
They would stay out of that birdbath.
You can't be there if you're not a bird.
It's the rules.

Jimmy (15:49):
It's the rules, people.
May 26th, 1953.
Charlie Brown notices that Snoopy is listening to a record player.
Charlie Brown thinks, hmm.
Then he comes over to Snoopy, who is beyond excited as Charlie Brown says to him, all right, we'll play it once more, but just once more.

(16:12):
That's all, and the music plays again, and Snoopy is just delighted about it.
Then Charlie Brown walks away saying, 300 times is enough for anyone to listen to Doggie in the Window.

Michael (16:28):
I'm surprised this did not get picked the first round.

Harold (16:33):
Okay.
What do you think is going on with the ears, Michael?
We just jumped ahead a little less than two years.

Michael (16:40):
Pretty big, huh?

Harold (16:42):
Yeah.
It's like that second panel, he's almost got a Mickey Mouse.

Michael (16:47):
Yeah.
Well, this is the origin of him being able to imitate Mickey Mouse.

Harold (16:52):
Yeah.
But it's like he's got a bouffant on his ears or something.

Liz (16:55):
He looks a little like Beethoven in the first panel.

Jimmy (16:57):
Yeah, very much.
I don't think, I don't know that I would agree that he's a completely different character.
I think he looks like a puppy version of the adult Snoopy.
And he does have a totally different body type, but so do I.
You know what I mean?

(17:19):
I think it reads a Snoopy to me.

Michael (17:22):
Well, the pointy snout, I think, I don't know if that's an actual puppy quality, but it's very different than his later snouts.

Jimmy (17:33):
Yeah, it's very different, but I still think people would know it's Snoopy.

Harold (17:36):
But even in this strip, the three panels we see of Snoopy, each version is different.
Like you mentioned, the pointy snout in panel two, and it's a little thicker and rounder in panel one, and then you get a totally different angle of Snoopy in panel three, that makes me think of Ernie Bushmiller.
Maybe because the eyes are perfect round circles, and the faces are wide there, and the ears are wide.

(18:02):
It just looks like he dropped right into a Fritzie Ritz Nancy comic really easily.
But yeah, this Snoopy to me, is from cuteness, is a regression.
He's not, I mean, he's still cute in that first panel very much, and he's pretty cute in the second one.
But from that first strip, it's kind of a step back in the cuteness portion.

Michael (18:23):
Well, he's less cute, but he is moving towards less cuteness.
So this is two years later, so this is sort of an in-between phase.

Harold (18:32):
But if you were looking at in that first panel, you're looking at the first half of Snoopy's face, and you didn't see the ear, and then you pulled back to reveal the ear, you'd be like, whoa!
And that is not what I was expecting to be on the back of his head there.

Jimmy (18:46):
I just did that with my hand.
When you do that, it really highlights how weird that is.
I think we talked about this, I called it the Larry Fine.

Harold (19:00):
Well, the other thing that strikes me is that something that I really started to notice, and just take for granted because Schulz is such an amazing cartoonist and he seems to be so good at finding what works even though it breaks the rules because it looks good.
He wants to emphasize certain things.
When he had a profile and he had the little back legs, in the end, the back legs were like tiny.

(19:25):
They were tiny, like one-sixth the size of the front leg.
And here he's following the rule that the back leg has to be, and the paw has to be the same size exactly.
And at some point, that doesn't, that's not meaningful anymore to him.
And he's be able to break that drawing rule and that rule of, you know, the model of the character has to follow.

(19:48):
You know, if you have a front paw, the back paw has got to be the same size.
That goes away at some point.

Jimmy (19:53):
Yeah, well, the other thing that goes away is just his perspective here.
Like, you know, where he'll be putting characters behind other characters, like in Panel 3.
He does it, but rarely later.
You know?

Harold (20:07):
Yeah, it's true.

Jimmy (20:08):
And then in the 50s, I think, you know, we're still right here at this super Minniemal modernist look.
But eventually, as we get into like the Sunday pages of the 50s, you'll see like really elaborate backgrounds.
So he was still interested in like that type of drawing.

(20:28):
You know?
But eventually it becomes all iconography again.

Harold (20:33):
And one other thing that looks unusual now is his word balloons.
He set a rule for himself after a while.
And now, you know, the strip started to be square instead of wide rectangles at the beginning here in the later strips.
But he created the rule for himself that the text is almost always going to be starting at the upper left-hand corner, running all the width of until I run out of text to right.

(21:00):
And then I'll have a little, you know, line with a pointing balloon underneath it.
And you won't see a floating balloon or you won't see the edge of the circle of the balloon, like you see in the second panel here in the upper right-hand corner.
And, you know, in the fourth panel, he's got a totally floating balloon.

(21:21):
And for some reason, I guess he decided that that was taking away from the characters by having design in the balloons.
And so he became kind of rigid in that way.
So you're just focusing on the characters and the balloons are just delivering the text and not becoming an art element.

Liz (21:40):
Well, isn't it related to the fact that there's no backgrounds?
I mean, he can do more things with balloons when there isn't anything that it's covering.

Harold (21:51):
I think so.
I think that's true.
Yeah, he is super Minniemalist in this beginning.
And he is working technically with less space, at least related to his peers, right, on the comic strip page, because they've chopped off the tops of his strip.
And in some cases, they're running it in a column.
So he has to design, assuming the editors might stick it into a tinier space than the massive cartoons that were still being printed in newspapers in 1952 and 3, you know.

Jimmy (22:21):
October 11th, 1954.
Charlie Brown is operating one of those fantastic new Brownie cameras.
I don't know if it is, but it's a camera.
And he's taking a picture of Snoopy, who is glowering at him.
And Charlie Brown says, Come on, Snoopy, give me a smile.
And then Snoopy gives him a smile, but he's actually just making a ridiculous face.

(22:42):
And then Charlie Brown is getting annoyed, says, Oh, come on, give me a big smile.
And then in the next panel, Snoopy gives him an absolutely insane face.
This is something you're really going to have to look at to get full value for it.
Wild eyes, fangs bare, tongue sticking out, a ridiculous smile.

(23:03):
And that sends Charlie Brown into a rage.
He's chasing Snoopy on.
You drive me crazy.
And Snoopy runs away.
He has a big smile on his face.

Michael (23:14):
This is like mid period Snoopy already, and we're like four years.
Yeah, that little sausage upper mouth.
Skinny, where it's really globular later on.
By the way, when I saw Panel 3 makes me laugh still.
You know what it reminds me of?

(23:35):
It's Basil Wolfferson.

Jimmy (23:36):
Yes.

Michael (23:38):
Who's doing these Mad Magazine cover.
I think some covers and illustrations were basically, it was like the most grotesque images you can imagine of a form.

Harold (23:51):
Yeah.

Michael (23:52):
That was very popular.

Jimmy (23:53):
Yeah.
Famously, Al Cap had a character called Lena the Hyena, who was supposed to be the least attractive person in the world.
And they did a contest of who could draw the ugliest character and Basil Wolfferson won.

Harold (24:06):
Because we had never seen Lena, right?
They just talked about her in the strip.
And so, Basil won.
Is it Basil or Basil?

Michael (24:14):
I would say Basil.
I don't know.

Jimmy (24:16):
It could be.
It probably is Basil, I think.

Harold (24:18):
I think it is Basil.
I think I know somebody who was a big fan.

Michael (24:21):
But panel three is not a cute Snoopy.
This would not be on your T-shirt.

Harold (24:28):
Well, it's someone's T-shirt.

Liz (24:30):
It shocks Charlie Brown.

Harold (24:32):
Yeah.
Well, I mean, and if just three trips we've gone through, in what year was this here?

Liz (24:37):
54.

Harold (24:38):
54.
Just looking at this relative size of Snoopy to Violet, and then Charlie Brown in the second, and then this third one, Snoopy is getting to be as close, much closer to the size of the kids in this period.
Also already that back haunch is starting to shrink in relationship to the front haunch.

(25:01):
He's starting to break the rules even now.
But it's still close.
It's closer than certainly what we saw later.

Michael (25:08):
Still the ears are very huge.

Harold (25:11):
Yeah, the ears are still, what would you call them?
Fluffy or big?
Big and almost huge.
Yeah, yeah, they're these ovals, these like football size ovals.
I guess he's a football ear at this point.

SPEAKER_3 (25:23):
Yeah.

Liz (25:24):
And the brownie camera has a strap on the top so that Charlie Brown can hold it and use it like a mallet.

Harold (25:33):
Yeah.

Jimmy (25:33):
Look at the size of Snoopy's feet, especially in panel three.

Harold (25:40):
Yeah.

Jimmy (25:41):
He's going to be a big dog.

Michael (25:43):
Yeah.
But also the snout, the way he's doing the snout during this period, it's flexible.

Harold (25:51):
Yeah, panel four, it's pretty thin there, right?

Michael (25:54):
The first three we saw, it's kind of pointy and it's not going to bend very much.
Now, the 1950s Snoopy is, he can bend that snout in any direction he wants.

Harold (26:07):
Yeah, that's really interesting.
It gives a dynamism to his character.
The Peanuts kids pretty much stay inflexible through the entire run of the strip, but Snoopy breaks free.

Jimmy (26:24):
Let's stop for just a second and talk about, what would he have been influenced by to create a dog in a comic strip at this point?
How many famous dogs were there in comics before Snoopy?

Harold (26:39):
The very first one I thought of, Buster Brown.
Buster Brown.
Tighe was the name of the dog?

SPEAKER_3 (26:44):
Yeah.

Harold (26:45):
Blondie had Daisy, and Daisy was in the movies, and just people loved Daisy, and then had pups, and that was a famous moment in American culture.

Jimmy (26:55):
Yeah.

Harold (26:56):
Then there was, was it Fifi, the dog in Bringing Up Father, that's this little art deco, pointy nose, looks like a mouse.
It's beautifully designed, but forgotten today.
But I'm trying to think of this thing that's Schulz.

Michael (27:11):
Officer Pup.

Jimmy (27:12):
They're just all very much dogs.

Michael (27:15):
Yeah.
That's the thing.
Snoopy at this point is no longer a dog.
He was a dog in the first three, even though a dog's not going to listen to doggy in the window.
He's still sitting, much like a dog who likes music.
This is not a dog.

Harold (27:31):
Right.
Who were the dogs that broke the rules that might have given Schulz the idea?

Michael (27:36):
I think it's just funny animals.
I mean, you get Bugs Bunny, you get Woody Woodpecker.
I think it's more along those lines.

Harold (27:41):
Felix the Cat, turn your tail into a question mark and all that sort of thing had been around for a long time.

Jimmy (27:47):
Yeah, but that's as he progresses, he becomes that way, but that would not have been that early impetus.

Harold (27:55):
What's that now?

Jimmy (27:56):
Well, he becomes more like Felix the Cat and whatever later.

Harold (28:01):
Okay, I mean, because I was thinking of the things, the animals or the characters that would have given him the permission to go the direction Michael is describing.
And I think like Eugene the Jeep, that's not, it's a jeep, it's a strange animal or the shmoo.

Michael (28:16):
Yeah.

Harold (28:16):
Are these oddball animals that break the rules, but they're cute and they're interesting.

Michael (28:21):
I think his influence is at this right now, 54 is animation, not comic strips.

Harold (28:29):
You think animation?
Why do you say that?

Michael (28:32):
Because I think this is something faces getting distorted that much.
You know, maybe for a second and then back to normal.

Harold (28:41):
Like a tech-savory kind of exaggeration.
And the interesting thing is that he designed the kids where he really couldn't do that much with them, but Snoopy, he's slowly changing so that he can.
So yeah, he seems to be slowly giving himself more permission to go on the edges of things.

(29:05):
And it's fascinating to watch.
And just these three strips are really good choices to give us a sense of what he's willing to do with Snoopy.

Jimmy (29:16):
October 17th, 1955.
Snoopy and Lucy are in the first panel.
Lucy has squatted down to Snoopy's level and she says, sit up Snoopy and I'll give you a reward.
And he does it.
He sits up on his hind legs and does a little begging pose.
And Lucy very excitedly says, that's the way.
And then she says, here then is a dog's greatest reward, a pat on the head by a human being.

(29:41):
And she pats Snoopy on the head.
Pat, pat.
And outraged Snoopy after she leaves in the last panel, thinks to himself, oh, good grief.

Michael (29:52):
Yeah, it's anger.
This is part of his character in the 50s, is being treated like a dog.

Jimmy (30:01):
Yeah, he does not like that.

Harold (30:03):
When you look at that second panel, Snoopy, does it make you think of anything, any particular character other than Kangaroo?
For some reason, it makes me think of Huckleberry Hound, the flat head, which is right around this era.
From TV animation, it's slightly angular in the way he's designed it.

(30:28):
That's a really interesting Snoopy.

Michael (30:30):
Huckleberry Hound is from the 50s.
I thought it was the 60s.

Harold (30:34):
Let me double check real quick.
They were just starting to stylize the characters in the way I was describing, but Huckleberry Hound himself doesn't show up till 58.

Michael (30:43):
Really?
It's still there a little bit, I would have thought.
Okay, well, let's talk about ears here.
They seem to be a little thinner.

Harold (30:51):
Yeah, a little more...
I mean, it's like a deflated football on one side now.
It's like a kidney bean or something.

Michael (31:02):
Yeah, the snout definitely is a little longer.
The snout's growing.

Harold (31:10):
The back paw's smaller again than the one prior.
It's shrinking, shrinking.

Michael (31:15):
And still no backgrounds.
But he's thinking.
So, you know, we made...
I'm sure we picked the first Snoopy thoughts when we were picking year by year in the 50s.
But yeah, at this point, that's the classic.
That's how Snoopy communicates from now on.
There are a few panels, if you recall, that they actually had regular word balloons, like he was talking, but that didn't work.

Jimmy (31:42):
Yeah.
Well, he was doing the puffy cloud balloon with the pointer, right?
Those hybrid balloons.
And that's just twice as confusing as it needs to be.
You know, one of the things that's strange, I've been doing that in the real dark night on Substack, and, you know, it has thought balloons in it.
And every time I do it, you know, there's a whole generation of kids that grew up reading comic books without thought balloons if they read Marvel in DC, because they were bad.

Harold (32:10):
The guy just got rid of them kind of?

Jimmy (32:12):
No, there was actually like a fiat from editorial in DC that was like, thought balloons are stupid and childish, so don't use them in Green Lantern.

Harold (32:21):
What?

Jimmy (32:22):
Oh, yeah, yeah, literally, they were not allowed to use thought balloons.

Harold (32:25):
What a shame.

Jimmy (32:26):
Oh, it's ridiculous.
It's one of the...

Liz (32:28):
No thinking.

Jimmy (32:29):
Yeah, no thinking.

Harold (32:30):
Don't ever let a character think it's stupid and childish.

Jimmy (32:33):
Everything went...
Well, everything converted to captions as if it's like a voiceover, and then they put like the logo of the character in the balloon or in the box so you know who's talking.

Harold (32:46):
So what era would this have been?

Jimmy (32:48):
I think it's still going on.

Harold (32:50):
Okay, so that's interesting.
I'm not a huge fan of superhero comics, but those are things that I absolutely loved about those.
I think of the early Spider-Man.
He's thinking through his origin story.
He's thinking through all of these things, and it's all his interior story.

Michael (33:08):
Well, he's falling off a skyscraper.

Harold (33:11):
Nobody to talk to, right?
It would be kind of silly if he was talking out loud while he's swinging between buildings and just talking into the wind.
Then the other thing I always loved about early comics that I was told, maybe I heard it from you, Jimmy, that I thought, what a shame that this went out of style and was considered inappropriate was when you had the caption and it describes the thing you're seeing.

(33:38):
With an amazing show of strength, Superman sweeps in under the bridge and rescues the children in the school bus and takes them to safety, do something like that.
To me, reading it and seeing it at the same time is the magic of comics.
Then they said, no, don't lie you're telling because you're showing.

(34:00):
But to me, somehow the two are like magic when they're together.

Michael (34:04):
Well, I think it was the Hernandez brothers in the early 80s from Eleven Rockets who did away with, meanwhile, two days later on the other side of town, those kind of captions.
It gets to the point where they're changing locations and even time.
There's no way to describe five years ago.

(34:26):
No warning.
The guys were so good that you could tell from the hairstyles that, oh, this is five years earlier.

Jimmy (34:34):
I remember the first time I saw that in Eleven Rockets, where it's Izzy standing in one panel in one pose, and then the next panel, she's standing in the same pose, but she's wearing different clothes and looks younger, and you're like, oh, this was 10 years ago.

Harold (34:48):
Oh, wow.

Jimmy (34:48):
Wow.

Harold (34:50):
That's cool.

Michael (34:51):
I think that caught on, but it was shocking at first.

Jimmy (34:54):
Well, the thing about things that catch on, the genius, this is like Eddie Van Halen.
Wow, that's amazing to hear you do that.
I don't want to hear the next 30,000 people who aren't as good as you try to do that.
I think that's a lot of problems.
I think some people need those meanwhile on the other side of town.

Michael (35:15):
Well, but there's those rules and they are rules, kind of sink in where no word balloons, because they don't use thought balloons, no thought balloons, no descriptive captions.

Jimmy (35:29):
Yeah.

Michael (35:30):
Find other ways of doing it.
And Jaime, in his first Love and True Maggie story makes it all, all the captions are from a letter she's writing.
That didn't last long, but that was another way of getting around thought balloons and dialogue.
She's writing them too.

Jimmy (35:48):
Well, I guess, and that's also gives it the field that Harold is looking for, where it is very much telling you the story in those words, and then you're seeing a picture that confirms it.
I never thought about that, but even though I've felt, and to this day, that strip is called Mechanics and it's in Living Rockets number two, feels like a super modern thing to me.

(36:09):
But it's really looking back.
I never thought about it that way until right now.

Harold (36:16):
Interesting.

Jimmy (36:18):
November 17th, 1955.
Charlie Brown and Snoopy are hanging out in the curb like they used to before the thinking wall was a thing.
And Snoopy looks a little annoyed and Charlie Brown says to him, I won't believe it until I see it.
Do you hear me?
And then they both noticed that Violet was walking down the street right past them.
And then in panel three, Snoopy jumps up and joins her.

(36:39):
He falls right in line behind Violet and he takes his ear, which is normally hanging down like a regular dog's ear.
And he makes it so it resembles the bun in Violet's hair.
And he mimics her facial expression and her posture as Charlie Brown watches.
And then kind of semi-disgusted Charlie Brown says to Snoopy after it's over, all right, I was wrong.

(37:06):
You can do imitations.
And there's a big smile on Snoopy's face.
There's no way we didn't do this strip.

Harold (37:13):
It feels like something we would have picked.

Michael (37:16):
He was doing a lot of imitations.
This was, I don't think this was one.

Liz (37:20):
It doesn't matter.

Michael (37:22):
But what's interesting here is what's implied in panel one that Charlie Brown is hearing Snoopy's thoughts.

Harold (37:33):
Right.
That's a really good point.
Yeah.
I won't believe it until I see it.
Do you hear me?
How would he know?

Jimmy (37:42):
If someone else saw it and said, if like Linus saw it and said, hey, your dog does imitations.

Harold (37:49):
But then he's talking to Snoopy saying, I won't believe it until I see it.

Jimmy (37:52):
Yeah.
Right.
So Linus says that to him and he sits down next to Snoopy and has a conversation which we don't see the beginning of.

Harold (37:59):
Well, then we can also see.

Jimmy (38:00):
Yeah.
He was a war hero, by the way.
I'm like, I think Charlie Brown must be so proud of me.
I think Snoopy's snout is slightly too pointy.
Different strengths.

Harold (38:17):
That's right.

Jimmy (38:19):
Yeah.
One had some.

Harold (38:24):
Well, then we can flip that and say that this strip at least makes it look like Snoopy can understand Charlie Brown.

Jimmy (38:31):
Yes, definitely.

Michael (38:33):
No, but he always could.
I think going the other way around, it starts somewhere, but this might not be the first time.
But eventually, before too long, everyone can hear what Snoopy's thinking.

Harold (38:45):
Yeah, it gets into that surreal dreamlike territory.
Now, once again, that rear paw is about now 40 percent of the size of the front.

Jimmy (38:53):
I mean, that's tiny.

Harold (38:55):
Yeah, and it's going to get even smaller.

Jimmy (38:57):
But it's also the front feet are way too big.

Michael (39:02):
Panel three, they are.
It's a reversal in panel three.

Liz (39:05):
In panel one.

Harold (39:08):
Yeah, it's interesting.
Yeah, and it's interesting to see what he's doing and why that rear paw is so tiny.
He has the arch of Snoopy's back going into his tail, and he does not want that broken by the rear haunch because he loves the design of the swoop of that back, and he does not want something to break that.

(39:31):
And that's really cool, actually.

Jimmy (39:33):
Do you know what?
I think what makes it work, the fact that he has such fluidity, particularly with Snoopy's design, but everybody's design, really, it's that one, there is nothing else, no extraneous stuff.
So everything that's there, he wants you to look at, but the inking is so smooth, and there's not a lot of filigree, hatching and stuff like that.

(40:03):
So it makes everything look intentional.
There's no point where you're thinking, you're almost not even thinking about it as a drawing.
It's just, if that's not a drawing of Snoopy and Violet, that's just Snoopy and Violet, because nothing, there's no, the wavy line isn't a thing, there's no bad drawing choices like say I would make.

(40:29):
You know, it's just the intentionality of it is so precise that you don't think about the fact that he's breaking all sorts of anatomical rules with these characters.

Harold (40:39):
Yeah, and one thing that Schulz is, has been messing around a little bit in these early strips, and you really see it when he's imitating Violet, is that really interesting black shape of the ear and the nose, where you add a little bit of the white on the edges and a sheen, and somehow that just gives a little more pop to the things.

(41:05):
You see it in the first panel of Snoopy's nose.
It's definitely there, and then it kind of disappears, and there's a little bit of white on the side and bottom of his ear in that first panel.
But Violet, really nice design of her hair, where you can see, you feel like she has jet-black hair, and she's catching the light of the sun, and it's got sheen all around it, and it's got these design elements of the circle of the, but she's got the bun on the top of her head there, and then this line around it that suggests that there's, it's just really shining in the sun.

(41:40):
And so when Snoopy gets behind her, all of a sudden his ear has that sheen, and we're gonna see more of Snoopy having that in the future.
He does it a little bit, but in these reproductions, it looks like he's kind of halfway between, you can't really see it because it all smudges together and it really being defined, like in the fourth panel is kind of like that.

(42:02):
And he does that in earlier strips we were just looking at.
But I feel like he kind of nails that later as part of that perfect Snoopy design.

Jimmy (42:12):
November 22nd, 1955, Charlie Brown is following his very self-satisfied looking Snoopy, and Charlie Brown says, whoever heard of a dog doing imitations?
It's silly.
That's what it is.
I don't know why I bother talking about it.
And at this point, Charlie Brown is ranting, Snoopy catches, his eye catches something off panel.

(42:33):
And then we see in the next panel, Lucy's sitting there on the curb, just smiling, minding her own business.
And Snoopy sits next to her and arranges his ears in a perfect copy of Lucy's hairstyle.
And Charlie Brown looks at the two of them and yells, Oh, stop it!
And baffles Lucy, who says, stop it?

(42:54):
Stop what, Charlie Brown?
And Charlie Brown and Snoopy walk away with Charlie Brown saying, Never mind what you don't know, won't hurt you.

Harold (43:03):
A little happy Snoopy running off.

Liz (43:05):
That was in the Snoopy Reinhardt collection, where I'd first discovered peanuts.

Harold (43:12):
So it really stands out in your memory?

Liz (43:14):
Oh, really, yeah.
A strong memory of that one.

Harold (43:17):
Yes.
Boy, that nose is getting there.
It's getting elongated.
The ear still is a little bouffant.

Jimmy (43:24):
Well, when we see this neck strip, I mean, he looks like he has an eating disorder.
There's something severely wrong with him.
June 23rd, 1956.
Snoopy is sitting on top of a croquet pole, and he's just having his own little sit-in, I guess.
And Charlie Brown comes up to him and says, So you won't come down, eh?

(43:48):
And then the defiant Snoopy is still staying on top of the pole, and Charlie Brown shakes his fist and says, Then you know what we're going to do?
We're going to ignore you.
And Charlie Brown walks away, and Snoopy watches him, and stays on top of the pole.
And in the last panel, Snoopy has slid to the bottom of the pole, and thanks to himself, Bratz, I can't stand being ignored.

Michael (44:10):
Look, imagine a 1970s Snoopy in that pose.
I mean, I don't know if he could even do it, because he's so bendable.

Harold (44:20):
Yeah, this Snoopy is, he's not cute anymore, that's for sure.
This is such a different Snoopy than what we started out with here.

Jimmy (44:29):
Well, this is the part where Schulz calls that he said he was appalled at the way he drew Snoopy in this era.

Michael (44:37):
I love this so much.

Harold (44:39):
It's very expressive.
It's like this Snoopy in this time in the 50s means something different to Schulz in the strip.
There's this independence in Snoopy and the fact that he's not a cute little dog anymore somehow redefines him.

Michael (44:59):
He's a chaos agent.
That's what he is.

Harold (45:03):
Yeah.

Michael (45:04):
She can use him in a strip because that just keeps things sound like a croquet game, which is boring.

Liz (45:09):
You love croquet.

Michael (45:11):
Yeah, but it is boring.
It's boring to watch.

Harold (45:15):
And it's fascinating to me that those rear haunches we've been talking about, been shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.
Now with his butt going down by sitting on just this tiny little croquet post, he can angle the back feet as if they are also on top of the post, possibly impossibly, I guess you could say.

(45:38):
He's just broken all of his own rules for this character now.
He looks so incredibly different.

Liz (45:44):
I'm curious about the difference between panel one and panel two.
They're approximately the same pose, but Charlie Brown is a whole lot shorter in the second panel.

Michael (45:58):
Yeah, that's weird.

Harold (45:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's trying to, I think, show Snoopy's regal, haughty pose that somehow Snoopy's gotten larger in relationship to Charlie Brown metaphorically.
That's quite a panel.

Michael (46:14):
Yeah.

Harold (46:15):
Imagine that on a tote bag.

Michael (46:17):
He could end up be carrying Snoopy in panel two.
Snoopy's bigger than him.

Harold (46:22):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_3 (46:23):
Yeah.

Jimmy (46:26):
August 25th, 1956.
Schroeder comes up to Charlie Brown, who's standing in the background with his hands on his hips looking stern, and in the foreground, Snoopy is having a seizure.
Schroeder says to Charlie Brown, what's going on here?
Snoopy continues to freak out in panel two as Charlie Brown answers, I walked two miles to bring Snoopy to this park so he could frolic.

(46:51):
Then Charlie Brown yells, and when I walked that far for a dog, he'd better frolic.
And then we see Snoopy frolicing like a maniac.
That's what he's been doing.

Michael (47:02):
The punch line is brilliant because nothing changes.

Harold (47:07):
Yeah.

Michael (47:08):
No one's reacting.
It's just like nothing's changing.

Harold (47:10):
It's like now you know what Snoopy's doing.
Yeah.

Michael (47:13):
He's trying to annoy him.

Harold (47:15):
Oh, you think he's trying to annoy him or he's just stressed out?

Jimmy (47:17):
Are you out of your mind?

Liz (47:18):
He's trying to do what he's supposed to do.

Jimmy (47:20):
Yeah.
He's being a good boy.
He's trying to frolic.

Michael (47:23):
You think so?

Harold (47:24):
I don't think so.

Jimmy (47:25):
I know so.

Harold (47:27):
But he's nervously doing it.
He looks up tight while frolicing.
That's such an amazing thing.

Jimmy (47:31):
Yeah, because Charlie Brown is stressing him out.

Michael (47:35):
He's trying to get his go.

Jimmy (47:37):
No, no, no.

Harold (47:40):
Even with that first panel and the third panel where he's looking like he's super stressed and upset.
Terrified, yeah.

Liz (47:45):
Yeah.

Michael (47:45):
But it doesn't read his stress.
It reads his...

Jimmy (47:48):
Yes, it does.

Liz (47:50):
Yes, it does.

Harold (47:51):
What's it mean to you, Michael, when you see that first panel, what's Snoopy's expression like?

Michael (47:56):
He's acting bizarre.
He's not doing what Charlie Brown wants to do.
He's not frolicking.

Jimmy (48:02):
Yes, he is.

Liz (48:04):
He's doing an imitation of frolicking.

Jimmy (48:06):
He's a hostage frolicking.

Michael (48:09):
No, I disagree.
I think he's trying to piss off Charlie Brown.

Jimmy (48:13):
There's no way that's a correct reading.

Michael (48:16):
No.
Well, that's the beauty of it.
It works by itself.

Harold (48:19):
Yeah.

Jimmy (48:19):
It is the beauty of it.
Being right here.

Harold (48:21):
We're all satisfied.
We all love Snoopy no matter what.
Well, yeah.
Okay.
Now, again, this version of Snoopy, he's not a good-looking dog.
He's, I mean, we were always talking about a rerun at the end of the strip, going to be an underground cartoonist.
I could see that second panel, Snoopy being an underground cartoon, he'd fit well because he's got this ugly, nice design look to him.

Michael (48:47):
It's more like a Dr.
Seuss drawing.

Liz (48:49):
It's more like weed claustrophobia.

Michael (48:51):
Yeah, well, we're going to see some of that.

Harold (48:53):
Yeah, so this Snoopy, with these really blocky little kid characters, he just, he's popping so hard out of this strip.
It's pretty remarkable.

Jimmy (49:06):
Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy are out in a field.
Charlie Brown has a little ball and he throws it for Snoopy to go fetch.
And it goes into a giant batch of high, high grass.
So we see Snoopy first go into the high grass.
He gets a little bit confused.
Then he gets a little nervous and then he totally freaks out.

(49:30):
And then he runs back, what it looks like on top of the weeds.
And then in the last panel, he comes out with the ball.
And Charlie Brown says to Lucy, when you have claustrophobia, you learn to walk on top of the weeds.

Michael (49:45):
Okay, this is sort of magic happening already.
Not only is he not a dog, he can suspend the laws of physics.

Harold (49:54):
Yeah.

Michael (49:54):
Due to panic.

Harold (49:56):
Yeah.
He's got a full peanut snout now.
That little peanut head is all there.
And when he's at least stressed out, the back ears are super elongated.
And when he's running toward the weeds, that's quite an evolution.
And we've just seen it over a few strips.
It's amazing.

Jimmy (50:16):
This Snoopy feels even, I don't know, like that the one where it's just his head up there, that barely looks like it's holding together as a drawing.
Like panel.

Harold (50:26):
How do you mean?

Jimmy (50:27):
Panel three on the second tier.
I don't know.
Like it looks like a severed head.
I think in part-

Liz (50:35):
I can sort of see a body.

Jimmy (50:37):
It partly has to do with, I think this is obviously a recolor.
Because I put a little bit of tone in the grass or whatever.
It just looked-
I don't know.

Michael (50:48):
Well, his head could not pop out above by him standing.

Harold (50:53):
Yeah, there's some surreal stuff in here.
Yeah.

Michael (50:58):
But the weeds, that's a running gag.

Jimmy (51:02):
Weed claustrophobia.

Michael (51:03):
Yeah, which I've always remembered as one of Snoopy's best shticks.

Jimmy (51:11):
All right.
Well, one of our best shticks is to take a break.
So how about we do that right now and then come back on the other side and we'll see if we can understand more about Snoopy.

SPEAKER_2 (51:22):
All righty.

Liz (51:23):
Did you complete the Great Peanuts reread?
Then show the world with our latest T-shirt, a giant 17,897, emblazoned on your chest for all to see.
When people stop you to ask what it means, you can tell them about the greatest comic strip of all time and the podcast that unpacks it.

(51:44):
Order your T-shirts today at unpackingpeanuts.com/store.

Jimmy (51:53):
All right.
Well, I am hanging out in the mailbox and I'm just wondering, do we got anything, Liz?

Liz (51:58):
We do.
We heard from a couple of people.
We heard from Paul Castiglia.
He's talking about our final episode of the reread with the strips from 2000 and he says, I'll have you know today's episode destroyed me.
But in the kindest way possible, the way that reminds you your heart has been filled with humanity, empathy and love all along the way.

Jimmy (52:24):
Wow.
Thanks, Paul.
That is beautiful and very true.

Liz (52:29):
Frank Buccello writes, thank you for your touching wrap up, a sad but happy ending to the reread.
An additional thank you to Michael.
During your discussion about the challenges of aging artists keeping their work vibrant over a long career, Michael made a comparison to Beethoven string quartets.

(52:50):
While I'm a classical music lover, I never thought of using that comparison of early, middle and late periods of the quartets with Charles Schulz's work.
I immediately re-listened to the quartets and found a new appreciation of them, along with more appreciation of the effort of Charles Schulz to keep the strip so interesting for so long.

(53:14):
Peanuts and Beethoven in the same podcast?
What more could anyone ask for?

Jimmy (53:20):
That's amazing.
I'm going to have to listen to that.
That's really interesting.

Liz (53:25):
That's it for the mail.
Anything in the hotline?

Jimmy (53:28):
Just heard from Super Listener Mary who said, thanks for making me emotional at work.
Yeah.
If you want to keep in touch, you can shoot us an email or unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com, and on our hotline, we are 717-219-4162.
You can text like Mary did, or you can leave a voicemail.

(53:51):
If you text, just make sure you introduce yourself.
Other than that, that's it.

Liz (53:56):
All righty.

Jimmy (53:57):
Oh, and remember, I worry when I don't hear.

Liz (54:02):
Thanks for writing and calling.

Harold (54:04):
Yes.
Thanks for those lovely notes.
That was an emotional ending.
We knew it was going to happen, and we're so glad we could share it with you guys.
Yeah.

Jimmy (54:13):
Hey, Harold, where are you going to be?

Harold (54:15):
Those of you in the Connecticut area on the 11th through the 14th, I'm going to be at the Berlin Country Fair in Connecticut.
That's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday for September 25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th.
I'm going to be at the Durham Country Fair, Agricultural Fair in Connecticut, and looking forward to seeing people there.

Jimmy (54:41):
All right.
What do you say we get back to the old strips?
Schroeder is plunking away at the toy piano, and Snoopy has his snout resting on it.
He's enjoying the music.
And he enjoys the music slightly more with each panel.
By the time we get to the fourth panel, he's kind of like humming along, going, and Schroeder continues to play, and Snoopy continues to self-satisfied hum.

(55:12):
And then he goes with, ooh, you know, this is a fun one to read.
And then a big sigh as Schroeder finishes the piece, and then Snoopy falls right off the piano and says, Chopin.

Michael (55:26):
Well, I was six years old, so he said, Chopin.

Liz (55:30):
Right?

Michael (55:32):
And then I'm going like, ooh, that must be a composer.

Jimmy (55:37):
It should be what we say when we like music.
That was Chopin, man.

Liz (55:42):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_3 (55:42):
What song was Chopin?
Totally.

Harold (55:48):
Now, looking at the design of this, this feels like Charles Schulz is now at the forefront of his era of design in a comic.
He's found something that nobody else is doing, and he's made it his own, and Snoopy's like the star example of that.
There's nobody drawing quite like this, right?

Jimmy (56:09):
No.
There's nobody who would draw essentially the same panel over and over again with just one character.
I mean, both of them are moving, obviously, but it's, you know, Schroder's staying more still, and Snoopy, you know, is kind of emoting all over the place.
I would never want to draw this as a cartoonist.
To draw the same kid at a piano eight times in a row, that's very difficult.

(56:34):
But it looks awesome.

Harold (56:35):
Yeah.
And one of the things we were talking about, how after a while, when Schroder and Lucy are at the piano, he almost always has Schroder just kind of hovering over the keys.
Well, I guess it's more like Snoopy in the typewriter, you know?
There's just one pose.
And here, because Snoopy is responding to the playing, we've got all sorts of different poses of where Schroder's hands are, that you can really feel like he's playing different moods and moments in the show.

Jimmy (57:04):
It feels like this might be one of the strips that they referenced for Schroder in the Christmas special.

Harold (57:10):
I was thinking that, yeah.

Jimmy (57:12):
Particularly that shot on the second tier, third panel.
I can picture that being the bump, bump, bump, bump, bump.
That is the animation of him playing those chords.

Harold (57:25):
And the drapery here, the drapery here, that with this art style, it just feels like he's of his era and defining something for this era.
That's kind of exciting.

Liz (57:38):
This may be sacrilegious, but Snoopy is expressing cat behavior in this.

Jimmy (57:44):
Yeah, that's very true.

Harold (57:47):
Yeah, yeah.
I can see that.
I can see that.
As I draw cats in my comics and they act like dogs.

Jimmy (57:56):
Go figure.
It's funny, we were talking about Snoopy enjoying art and stuff like that.
And we have a cat and Stella showed me that animated movie Flow that won the Academy Award last year, I guess it was, which is all about animals like surviving a flood.
And our cat watched the entire thing.

(58:19):
Like was stared right at it, jumped up, was looking at like would get up on the table that was holding the TV, we'd have to take her down.
She was totally into it.

Harold (58:30):
Wow.
And I think I'll shut up about this after I mentioned this, because this is the ultimate strip to show what Schulz is thinking for those hind haunches.
It's all about what can I fit into the shape of the back without crossing the line of the back with the haunches, because it changes every single drawing since he's all over the place.
But you can see if he's got room to put a big haunch, because he's got a big arch in the back, like in panel five, he'll do it.

(58:59):
If he doesn't have it, like in panel three, he'll make it as tiny as he has to make it.

Jimmy (59:04):
Because he is not going to break that big smooth line of his back.

Harold (59:07):
This is the first time I noticed what he was doing with that.
Because it's clear now to me, he loves the arch of the back and that's never going to get violated no matter what for the back paw.
Yeah.
I never saw that before.

SPEAKER_3 (59:20):
Yeah.

Jimmy (59:21):
March 17th, 1957, Charlie Brown is behaving like a kid from the 1870s by rolling a barrel stave wheel or whatever with a stick, a hoop and a stick, I think is the game, what's called hoop and stick.
And Snoopy chases after it.
And as Charlie Brown is rolling the hoop, Snoopy is zooming through it.

(59:43):
Then he's racing it.
Then he's lying on top of it as it rolls beneath him.
But then, of course, all good things come to an end.
And it causes Charlie Brown to trip and they fall over each other and Charlie Brown screams, OOOG!
And then they land in a pile of dust with Snoopy on top of Charlie Brown's stomach, the hoop around Charlie Brown's head, the little stick shattered and Charlie Brown says, You drive me crazy.

(01:00:11):
This is another example of him drawing the same.
One character is the same drawing, essentially, for almost the whole strip.
It's Charlie Brown with the handout and the hoop.

Harold (01:00:23):
Okay.

Michael (01:00:23):
Well, I'm just admiring how long Snoopy's body is.

Harold (01:00:28):
Yeah.
And how he can arch it in that animation kind of light of action way.
Like when he's floating above the hoop and his entire body on its back is mimicking the angle of the hoop.
Great.
Love it.

Jimmy (01:00:43):
I wonder who the first person to use speed lines was.
You know, we just assume that that reads as a dog racing, right?
Charlie Brown running all of it.
But it's just, it's pure graphic design.
It's not imitating anything visual that you could actually see.

Harold (01:01:00):
And is it very common what he's doing like that upper right hand corner panel where the speed lines don't begin behind him, they begin like at his neck and they go through his body.
I guess everyone has a different way of doing it, but that's it.

Jimmy (01:01:12):
I think that feels like it's extra fast.
And it also may have been that he didn't like how stretched out Snoopy's body became and he masked it.

Harold (01:01:21):
He didn't have much space in the panels to put behind him.

Jimmy (01:01:23):
Oh yeah, that's true.

Harold (01:01:26):
I love him going through the hoop, especially the first time and Charlie Brown has a big question mark.
Talk about elongated and again, but the cute Snoopy is kind of still there.

Liz (01:01:38):
Is he whistling in that bottom, that first panel in the bottom?

Harold (01:01:42):
He's humming a waste to himself.

Michael (01:01:47):
Okay, this is off topic, but it's showing off how my art history classes.
The guy named Lionel Feininger invented a modern art technique called futurism.

Jimmy (01:01:59):
Yep, where Seymour was at.

Michael (01:02:01):
Futurism was showing motion in the paintings.
It was depicting motion.
Feininger had a comic strip in the 20s.

Harold (01:02:12):
He did?

Michael (01:02:13):
Yes.
Wow.
It'd be interesting to look at it and see what he's using for motion lines.
Yeah, and it was beautiful.
Of course, in the 20s, there was-

Harold (01:02:25):
Oh, he was the guy who did the Kinder kids.

Jimmy (01:02:28):
Yeah, the Kinder kids.
Right.
Yeah.

Harold (01:02:30):
Okay.
Super stylized.
Yeah.

Jimmy (01:02:34):
June 16th, 1957.
Charlie Brown is blowing some bubbles out of a bubble pipe, and Snoopy is chasing them.
The first one, he catches ever so gently in his teeth, but then he swallows it and he doesn't like that taste.
Then this starts up all over again because we have that weird issue of the strip being, the top tier being cut off.

(01:02:58):
Charlie Brown says to Schroeder, Snoopy is the only dog in the world who can retrieve a soap bubble.
We see this, Snoopy goes to catch a bubble, has it perched in his teeth, and then he swallows it again.
Then we have one, two, three, four, five panels that you really just got to see.
Great cartooning of Snoopy freaking out having just swallowed a soap bubble.

(01:03:22):
Beautiful coloring even turns green in the last two panels.
Then he's leaning nauseated up against Charlie Brown's stomach in the last panel, and Charlie Brown says to Schroeder, of course, it's not one of those things you can do all day long.

Michael (01:03:37):
Okay.
So Harold, you're the animation expert.
I've seen this in cartoons.
Somebody drinks something and they get all distorted.
Can you think of what it is?
It's like a bug's bunny or something.

Jimmy (01:03:51):
Ickity-ackity-oop, ah-ah, zickity-zaggity-zoop, ah-ah, ah-ah, squeak, oh-oh, flippity-flappity-floop.
It's yours.
Daffy Duck in Alibaba Bunny.

Michael (01:04:03):
I thought it would have been Harold, but...

Harold (01:04:05):
Wow.
Impressed.
Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, this is a tour de force of art styles.
And again, Schulz is not afraid to make Snoopy look odd, to look ugly, to look, you know, just to express something.
That last panel in Tier 2.

Jimmy (01:04:24):
That could be in the 70s of Not Peanut.

Harold (01:04:27):
Yeah, I don't know what he's imitating, but when I see it, I see influence on other people, not influence on him.
So I see that last panel and it makes me think of all things, the Dupayde Frieling Ant in the Aardvark.

Jimmy (01:04:40):
Oh, yeah, sure.

Harold (01:04:41):
I don't know why, but that kind of weird, stylized angle, somewhat ugly design.

Jimmy (01:04:49):
The really ugly one is the one after that first panel and panel on the third tier where he looks like he had his head stuck in a Pringles can or something.
When I say ugly though, it totally is all work.
This is great.
I don't dislike it.
I love it.
The ones that I think are actually adorable drawing are the last two, the green ones.

Harold (01:05:12):
I love both of those.
Yeah, you really feel for him.
He's so messed up.

Jimmy (01:05:17):
I don't think this top tier works.
I think it's better if you cut the top tier off.

Harold (01:05:26):
Yeah, I don't mind a few more drawings Snoopy, just because they're so fascinating.

Jimmy (01:05:29):
Oh yeah, they're great.
But I'm just saying.

Harold (01:05:32):
They're obviously unnecessary because they cut the top.

Michael (01:05:33):
Boy, but look at the blue one.
There's a number two on the top and number three in the middle.

Liz (01:05:39):
Oh yeah.

Michael (01:05:40):
That's as close to a photocopy as I've ever seen.

Harold (01:05:43):
He's missing one.

Michael (01:05:44):
Yeah.

Liz (01:05:45):
And he doesn't have the motion lines.
Yeah.

Harold (01:05:48):
What do you think of the third panel in the bottom?
I highly, highly recommend, if you're listening, go back and look at this one because this is crazy amazing.

Liz (01:05:57):
June 16th, 1957.

Harold (01:06:02):
This is one of the, thank you, that's one of the peak Snoopy strips of all time.
And that third panel in the bottom tier as well, makes me think of so much stuff, like from slightly later in cartooning.
And I don't know who was doing it at this point, but it shows what he's capable of and the links he's willing to go to get across a comic idea.

(01:06:29):
He's not restrained by the design of Snoopy.
He is willing to break rule after rule after rule.
It's just master cartooning.
He's obviously very, very confident in what he's doing.
He's inventing things for himself.
And it's hard to do that sometimes as an artist too.

(01:06:51):
Sometimes we are trying to look like something else.
We often are trying to look like something else.
And when you do something different, you think it's wrong because you haven't seen it before.
It takes a genius to be able to, or somebody who just can't do it otherwise.

Jimmy (01:07:04):
Yeah.

Harold (01:07:04):
Well, that's more he's on the genius side.
I think that he's finding looks of things.
I mean, you can just go through this trip over and over again.
The top panel on the right were these bags under his eyes that actually overlap each other, which suggests not only is he really put out and knocked out from what he's just done, he's super knocked out that the bags, I've never seen anybody draw the bags under the eyes of a character overlapping.

Jimmy (01:07:34):
Well, he's also drawing, the more expressive Snoopy gets, it looks like the faster he's going.
I think that's what's giving you that 70.
If there is a controlled carefulness to Charlie Brown and Schroeder, and it's just pure abstract art when it comes to Snoopy, as he gets more and more freaked out by swallowing the bubble.

Harold (01:08:00):
I think the juxtaposition, like you said, of that fixedness of the human characters against Snoopy, makes Snoopy all the more fantastic because he's living in that world, and he's breaking the rules that no one else is.

Jimmy (01:08:12):
Yeah, I would definitely get a t-shirt with that next to last Snoopy, the one with the tongue sticking out.

SPEAKER_3 (01:08:20):
No one would recognize it.

Jimmy (01:08:22):
It would be a great shirt anyway.

Michael (01:08:24):
Take care.
Who is it?

Harold (01:08:26):
Yeah, just do a collage of those.
Can you imagine this?
The ones that don't have any dialogue.
That would be an amazing shirt.
They've probably done that one.
I hope they have.
That's great.

Jimmy (01:08:38):
June 28, 1957.
There's a seminal moment.
Charlie Brown is teaching Snoopy how to walk in his hind legs.
And he's very gently holding his front paws as Snoopy gets upright.
And Charlie Brown says, Stand up, Snoopy.
I'll teach you to walk on your hind legs.
And then, of course, Snoopy just does it instantly.

(01:08:59):
Great.
And with various emotion.
And Charlie Brown is annoyed.
And by the fourth panel, he says, It's no fun teaching you anything.
Now, Charlie Brown should have known this was happening since he's already seen Snoopy walk upright.

SPEAKER_3 (01:09:16):
Yeah.

Michael (01:09:17):
But he's really got that imitation thing down.
I mean, this is almost like our crumb type cartoon.
The way people walk, you know, depressed or bouncy.

Harold (01:09:31):
Yeah.
Again, I'm thinking 50s.
This is Snoopy in the 50s.
Yeah.
You think almost like 90s Snoopy would be more likely to be kind of the thing he's going for in the 50s.
I don't know.
But looking at this, yeah, you're thinking like Mortsal.
Like you say, it's like this is that third panel Snoopy is nuts.

(01:09:52):
And it takes me back to Schulz saying, I did not make this strip for kids.
I would not even begin to know how to make a strip for kids.
And then I look at this and like, oh, okay.

Jimmy (01:10:06):
As an artist, the first thing you have to do is interact with your own culture, right?
If you're going to be successful, you have to somehow find something that will speak to the people who are reading it at the time.
But then, you're also probably slave and you're just associated with all of the kinds of tropes and stylistic tricks and everything that are for that era.

(01:10:35):
It's wild to see something that was resonating in its time, but still really, really feels timeless.
I've been reading a bunch of 80s comics on the Marvel and DCFs, and you have to completely get yourself in the mindset of what these things are.
You have to overlook things and maybe you skip some of the captions or whatever, and you can approximate a good time.

(01:11:06):
But this requires none of that.
You just read it.
It's perfect.
It's great.
There it is.

Harold (01:11:14):
Yeah.
Great cartooning is just stripping away all the barriers to accessing someone's mind.
You know?
Visually and with words.
And this is like cartooning in its finest.

Michael (01:11:29):
I laugh every time I look at this.
I saw the race somewhere.

Jimmy (01:11:33):
July 3rd, 1957.
It's raining and Snoopy's walking in the rain.
It's just all coming down on him.
And then we see Charlie Brown and Lucy run by in their swimsuits.
And they're singing, it's pouring, it's pouring.
The old man is snoring.
Snoopy watches as they dance by him.
And then he continues on his way thinking, idiots.

Michael (01:11:57):
Oh, man.
The LA version was, it's raining.

Jimmy (01:12:03):
It is, it's raining, it's pouring.
And we've definitely discussed this one because I remember that conversation.

Liz (01:12:07):
We've had that same conversation.

Michael (01:12:10):
Anyway, this is indelibly cemented into my brain.

SPEAKER_3 (01:12:15):
Idiots.

Harold (01:12:17):
Yeah, again, I mean, Schulz talked about sophistication in the strip, that he was proud that he felt he was adding a sophistication to the strip.
And at first, when he was talking about that, as we were starting the Great Peanuts reread, that's not a term I would have thought of.
And then with that in the back of my head, as I'm reading these and seeing these, all of a sudden, it kind of does feel like that.

(01:12:38):
We know he read Mad Magazine at the time, and Mad seemed to be on a cutting edge of a style of humor that was on the fringes of 50s culture.
And he's reading that, and some of the attitudes of that, that will come out of characters that you just would not, this would not show up in Blondie, right?

SPEAKER_3 (01:12:56):
No, no.

Harold (01:13:00):
And here, Schulz is doing it, and it's done with that strange mixture of innocence, of the characters, but also some sharp words that seem to have a lot of weight coming out of Snoopy.

Jimmy (01:13:16):
I would love a strip of Dagwood being late for work, and he's running, and he's bumbling all over, and he shoots out the door, give him Blondie a kiss, and she's like, have a great day, okay, get him.
Closes the door.
Idiot.

SPEAKER_3 (01:13:29):
IDIOT.

Jimmy (01:13:33):
November 9th, 1957.
This was the middle of a little sequence where Charlie Brown made the mistake of saying dogs are a dime a dozen, or something, or Snoopy is a-

Michael (01:13:44):
Dogs like Snoopy are a dime a dozen, because he's not a-

Jimmy (01:13:48):
He's a pet, that was my dog.
It was pet quality, which made her our quality pet.

Harold (01:13:53):
Pet quality.

Jimmy (01:13:54):
That's what they said.

Harold (01:13:56):
No.

Jimmy (01:13:56):
But Snoopy is annoyed by a dime a dozen, and he just keeps headbutting Charlie Brown, racing from side to side and plowing into him, saying, a dime a dozen, eh?
Thud.
Charlie Brown goes flying in the air.
Snoopy from the other direction, a dime a dozen, eh?
Thud.
And the third panel, coming back again from the left, a dime a dozen, eh?
Thud.
Charlie Brown's flying in the air.

(01:14:18):
And the last panel is Snoopy thuds him one more time, Charlie Brown says, Somehow I have the feeling that I have offended him.

Harold (01:14:30):
Man, angry Snoopy.

Michael (01:14:33):
Yeah, okay.
So on your anger index is.

Harold (01:14:37):
Yeah.
Well, I do think it was at 58 or something like that.
It was like peak anger.
It was off the charts.
And I guess Snoopy had a lot to do with that.
And a great, great cartooning.
He's making choices again.
Both characters are very stiff in the drawing.
So it looks like you really feel the impact.
It's crazy.

Jimmy (01:14:57):
Yeah.

Michael (01:14:58):
Yeah, he's longer than Charlie Brown at all.

Harold (01:15:00):
Yeah.
That first panel and the third panel.
It's crazy how long he is.

Jimmy (01:15:08):
January 23rd, 1958.
This is another little sequence where people have been calling Snoopy Fuzzy Face.
And he's annoyed by it and he thinks to himself, here comes Charlie Brown.
If he calls me Fuzzy Face again today, I think I'll scream.
And Charlie Brown says, good morning, Fuzzy Face.
Snoopy's ears shoot skyward.
And then in the next panel, Snoopy screams, eeee.

(01:15:34):
And Charlie Brown walks away a little shaken and says, that's the first time I ever heard a dog scream.

Michael (01:15:41):
I'm seeing a little evolution in the snout here.
Panel 1, it's a lot fatter than it's been.
It's been kind of sausage-y and I'm starting to get that big peanut shaped.

Jimmy (01:15:53):
This is getting towards my favorite.
Like this is getting closer to what they do in the animated special, you know, and stuff.

Harold (01:16:03):
What do you think of Panel 2, Snoopy's face?

Michael (01:16:06):
That's a weird, that's a weird drawing.

Liz (01:16:08):
It's sort of like Halloween.

Michael (01:16:12):
Yeah, the head doesn't seem to connect with the neck in the right way.

Jimmy (01:16:15):
You know, the one thing he doesn't do ever is put any highlight in the eyes.
Everybody does that or almost everybody does that.

Harold (01:16:24):
Yeah.

Jimmy (01:16:25):
And he never does it.
It's just pure black eyes.

Harold (01:16:27):
That is interesting.
Yeah, he's...
And that second panel, I think, strangely, what makes the look on Snoopy's face so arresting?
No eyebrows.

Jimmy (01:16:41):
Right.

Harold (01:16:43):
For some reason, that...
If he had put eyebrows floating above his head, it would somehow have less impact than what he just did here, where they're elongated and the ears are straight up.
But there are no eyebrows.
There's this weird, creepy look.
It's amazing.
It's great cartooning.

Michael (01:17:04):
It is a weird look.
Mentally, I'm getting white out and reshaping the head.

Jimmy (01:17:11):
I once was doing a school visit, and I've done hundreds and hundreds of school visits, and I'm drawing Amelia, and someone raises their hand and goes, why do her eyebrows go above her hair?
It just froze me.
Like, I don't know, that's just the way it is.

SPEAKER_3 (01:17:30):
I don't know.

Harold (01:17:31):
I have no words.

Jimmy (01:17:37):
July 18th, 1958, Snoopy is lying on the ground with his head on top of a rock like it's a pillow.
And he says, let's see now.
There are a quarter of a million dogs and cats born each day in America.
That's 10,000 an hour.
Then he's actually like leaning up a little bit.
This is shocking him so much.

(01:17:59):
And then he says, or 166 a minute.

SPEAKER_3 (01:18:03):
Good grief.

Jimmy (01:18:04):
And then he lays his chin on the rock and he looks forlorn and thinks, I'm not unique.

SPEAKER_3 (01:18:11):
Wow.

Michael (01:18:13):
I see this leaning towards his 60s style.

SPEAKER_3 (01:18:17):
Absolutely.

Michael (01:18:18):
Not just drawing.
I'm talking about Snoopy's punch lines are generally his thoughts from here on in.
Interesting.

Jimmy (01:18:28):
This could have been on the doghouse if it was a few years later.

Michael (01:18:32):
Yeah.
And there's no doghouse.
That's the difference.
But it could be a static four-panel doghouse roof.
Yeah.
He's starting to move Snoopy in another direction.

Harold (01:18:46):
In panels one and two, you finally see the fulfillment of the title of this strip, Miss Peanut Head, especially panel two.
And it's such great design.
It's just amazing design.
And he's in different poses, all four panels and the rules change for the drawing every time.

Michael (01:19:14):
I am very confused.
What's going on with the pause in the last panel?

Harold (01:19:18):
His chest is facing out toward us.
Yeah.
Very, very, I don't think this is probably the only time he ever did this.
But yeah, isn't it weird looking?
Yeah.

Jimmy (01:19:30):
Well, later on, I think he would eliminate one of those pause and we would just assume that it's on the other side.
I think he was trying to go for something.
He was thinking too much about it.

Harold (01:19:41):
Maybe.
Yeah.

Jimmy (01:19:42):
It's still a really good draw.

Harold (01:19:43):
I could.
Right.
Yeah.
Tons of experimentation going on here.
And I think the fact that he kind of keeps the other paw totally inside the shape of the body, really, it doesn't hurt.
Right.
And when you look at it, it's actually like you kind of admire it, but you have to figure it out and you're not used to having to figure out something in peanuts design-wise.

Michael (01:20:05):
I don't know if a neck would actually work if you could actually do that.
Of course, he can do anything.
But yeah, I'm now looking at it now.
I just went like, is there like an extra paw in the race?

Harold (01:20:20):
It's like it was done by AI.

Jimmy (01:20:27):
January 3rd, 1959, Lucy walks by Charlie Brown, and she has a whole ream of paper she's carrying, and she looks very pleased with herself.
And in the next panel, Charlie Brown looks to see where she has gone, because she walked off panel.
And then third panel, we see Snoopy chasing Lucy, snapping at her butt as Lucy runs away with the paper she was carrying, thrown in the air.

(01:20:52):
And then Snoopy walks back to his dog house or wherever, leaving a shaken Lucy next to Charlie Brown.
And Charlie Brown says, some people don't like to have their faults pointed out.

Michael (01:21:06):
Look at that peanut head in the last panel.

Harold (01:21:08):
Yeah, I've never seen that before.

Michael (01:21:09):
That's really extreme.

Harold (01:21:11):
Wow, that's a change.

Michael (01:21:13):
I think he's pouting or something.

Harold (01:21:15):
Yeah, that snout is about the thickness we're going to expect 20, 30 years later.

Jimmy (01:21:23):
That's really peanut-y.

Michael (01:21:24):
Yeah, so that's a two-year jumper.
This is 50.
We said no 58 here, 59.
Yeah, he's getting ready for the 60.

Jimmy (01:21:32):
It's crazy.
Like this next one.

Michael (01:21:35):
Look how compact the body is compared to some panels.

Jimmy (01:21:39):
Well, yeah, if you check out the body of him racing after Lucy, compared to the body of him racing after the bubbles, it's much more compact now.

Harold (01:21:50):
What do you think of the rounded but very obvious teeth?
That he doesn't fang them out to make him look totally scary.

Jimmy (01:22:00):
You know what?
I think I probably prefer the rounded ones maybe.

Harold (01:22:04):
For Snoopy, I do.

Jimmy (01:22:06):
Because the whole strip is round and curves, and it looks a little less jarring and violent.
January 16th, 1959, Snoopy is hugging Charlie Brown and has been hugging him for a while now.
Charlie Brown is getting a little sick of it.
Charlie Brown is walking around the neighborhood and dragging Snoopy, who has his forearms, his front paws wrapped around Charlie Brown's torso.

(01:22:33):
And Charlie Brown says, Anybody around here like dogs?
Next panel, Charlie Brown standing there, Snoopy is still hugging him.
And Charlie Brown continues, How about it?
Are there any dog fanciers around here?
Any real dog lovers?
How about it?
And he continues walking.
Snoopy is still dragging behind him as he hugs Charlie Brown.
And Charlie Brown yells, What do you say?

(01:22:54):
Anyone around here like dogs?
How about it?
Huh?
What do you say?
And then he continues walking and just sighs with Snoopy still attached to him.
And then we see Lucy, Violet and Schroeder all hiding behind a big rock.

Michael (01:23:11):
Yeah, Charlie Brown said something nice about dogs and Snoopy is just like latched on to him.
I'm going to let go.
So he's trying to find someone else to transfer.

Liz (01:23:23):
That's unusual.
Snoopy doesn't usually show that much affection.

Jimmy (01:23:29):
Well, yeah, and I also noticed that he calls him Charlie Brown earlier.
So the roundheaded kid is way in the future.

Harold (01:23:35):
Yeah.
So he's got his heart on his sleeve here in 1959.
The deep feeling you just get of Snoopy here.
Again, what makes Snoopy the greatest comic strip character of all time, greatest cartoon character of all time?
He certainly runs the gamut of emotion.
He's certainly an underdog, which gives him, I think, the freedom to be things that if he was bigger would make him more off-putting.

(01:24:05):
But here, Schulz is letting him show this incredibly heartfelt need and gratitude.
How can that not make you want to bond with this character in some way?
Then play it off of the fact that the characters in the strip can't handle it.

(01:24:27):
You really have this opportunity to feel for Snoopy because Snoopy is in a world where this is not appropriate.
I think that's genius.

Jimmy (01:24:38):
The simple fact of it is to that people love dogs.
I saw the new Superman movie and that crypto, putting the dog in it was a genius idea.
As soon as the dog is on screen, you're just disarmed because dogs are just lovable and loving, and if you can get a dog that has a lot of character, create a dog that has a lot of character, you're well on your way, I think, to having something special.

Harold (01:25:10):
Yeah, it makes me want to let Snoopy come and give me a hug.

Jimmy (01:25:16):
I'll take a Snoopy.

Harold (01:25:19):
But it's also funny because at least in this world, in this moment, in the Peanuts neighborhood, that is just so inappropriate.
Maybe because he's half-human in a way.
He's going in that direction and how inappropriate that is.

Jimmy (01:25:38):
Yeah, right.
June 26, 1959.
Lucy has put a bonnet on Snoopy, so now he is acting like a baby and Charlie Brown is holding him like a baby, roughly.
Charlie Brown says to Lucy, look, this is your baby, not mine.
I have my own baby sister at home.

(01:26:00):
They plop Snoopy on the ground.
Snoopy is just standing there looking ridiculous in his bonnet.
Charlie Brown says to Lucy, you were the one who put the bonnet on him, now you take care of him.
Lucy turns and walks away saying, I'm not interested anymore.
I have other things to do.
Then Charlie Brown takes Snoopy's paw and yells after Lucy, you're a poor excuse for a mother.

(01:26:23):
Then a very upset Snoopy thinks to himself, mama.

Harold (01:26:31):
That last panel makes me think of Chuck Jones.

Jimmy (01:26:35):
Oh, yes.

Harold (01:26:36):
Absolutely.
Who's got the big nose.

Michael (01:26:39):
I was thinking this could be like a pogo stick.

Liz (01:26:44):
Or a sweepy.

Harold (01:26:46):
I love that Snoopy is stiff as a board, lying on his back in Charlie Brown's arms too.
There's something hilarious about that.
It's like he just took a drawing of him standing and turned at 90 degrees.
That's hilarious.

Michael (01:26:59):
He's pretty short.
He's pretty compact.

Harold (01:27:03):
In fact, every drawing of Snoopy in all four of these are absolutely amazing.
The little smug look on Snoopy's face as if he thinks Lucy has to take him back, because he's her baby.
Then that little look on his.
Then you get the impression of an eyebrow, at least I do, on that little baby bonnet, just coming out of it, again, floating above his head.

(01:27:27):
The elongated eye that looks like the pupil, everything's just enlarged when he realizes his mother is leaving.

Michael (01:27:36):
You don't see the ears, which make him look more baby.

Harold (01:27:39):
Yeah.
There's this strange, partially human butted dog, so I can get away with anything, I think is part of that magic of Snoopy.
He's human, but you can't put human rules on him, and therefore he gets away with things that a human couldn't in a comic.

Jimmy (01:27:59):
Absolutely.
Well, that brings us to the end of this particular episode.
I have a new segment I'm going to introduce here, guys, that you are not prepared for.

Michael (01:28:11):
Ooh, I like segments.

Harold (01:28:12):
We're never prepared.

Jimmy (01:28:12):
Because we're not going to do Strip of the Year, obviously, or MVP, because obviously the MVP would be Snoopy.
But we are going to pick panel of the episode.
What is our favorite drawing?

Michael (01:28:26):
Oh, man, we gotta go through.

Jimmy (01:28:28):
Wow.
Well, I can start since I knew.
First off, there's no choice as to me.
It's absolutely the green face Snoopy with the big tongue on the soap bubble strip.
I like all the drawing in the soap bubble strip.
I love how it goes from the smooth controlled Snoopy to the out of control expressive Snoopy.

(01:28:55):
Nowhere is that better exemplified than Tier 3, Panel 3 on the June 16th, whatever year it was stripped.
That is my Panel of the Month or Panel of the Episode.

Michael (01:29:08):
Well, I'm just flipping through quickly.
I really like it when he says idiots because the difference between that panel and the first panel is you can't really even see it, but he looks angry in the last panel.
He doesn't look angry in the first panel.

Jimmy (01:29:24):
And listen, nobody draws rain like Charles Schulz.

Harold (01:29:28):
Yeah.
There's so much good stuff in here.
We just looked at it and it's as good as anything and I won't steal another soap bubble panel because there's so many brilliant ones in that.
I'll do the last panel we just read.

Jimmy (01:29:43):
That's a good one.

Harold (01:29:43):
Charlie Brown yelling off to Lucy with some of the most amazing, bold cartoony lettering that is in Schulz's unique style.
I don't think anybody else is lettering quite like that.
I love that.
And that little drawing of Snoopy looking out at us with big, wide eyes and a baby bonnet and with a little tie underneath and his little paw in Charlie Brown's hand is genius.

Jimmy (01:30:14):
Liz, how about you?

Harold (01:30:15):
Yeah, Liz.

Liz (01:30:17):
November 22nd, 1955, with Charlie Brown saying, Oh, stop it when Snoopy is doing Lucy.

Jimmy (01:30:25):
That's another great one.

Harold (01:30:28):
Oh my gosh.

Michael (01:30:30):
Oh my, and you should have seen the ones I had to cut in the last one.
I got it down to 30 and then it was torture getting it down to 20.

Harold (01:30:38):
Not bad.

Jimmy (01:30:38):
Well, I will tell you what, it says a lot for the work of this cartoonist that after 170 some episodes and going through the entire thing from beginning to end, we're still entertained by it and still want to talk more about it and find new things in it.
That's just what art is all about and no one did it like Mr.
Schulz.

(01:30:59):
That's the first episode of Understanding Snoopy.
We're going to be back in two weeks where we pick up where we left off and we take Snoopy into the good old World War I flying ace era and all the fun stuff of the 60s.
Be there and we'll be looking out for you.
See you in two weeks.

(01:31:20):
Until then, from Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

Harold (01:31:24):
Yes.

Michael (01:31:25):
Be of good cheer.

Liz (01:31:26):
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz and Liz Sumner.
Produced and edited by Liz Sumner.
Music by Michael Cohen.
Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark.
For more from the show, follow Unpacked Peanuts on Instagram and threads.
Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.

(01:31:49):
For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.

Jimmy (01:31:57):
That was chopping, man.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Understanding Snoopy: Episode 1 - Super Minimalist Snoopy