Is there a better image for the repeated betrayal of trust than Lucy yanking the football out just as Charlie Brown is about to connect? What depiction of stubborn, ridiculed faith is more powerful than Linus sitting alone in his pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin? All of Murphy's laws together offer no better illustration of the malign nature of inanimate objects (and the futile mixture of rage and resignation available in response) than Charlie Brown with his kite stuck in a tree.
For close to half a century, Charles Schulz has been contributing indelible images to our consciousness, from Snoopy's fantasied "dogfights" with the Red Baron to Linus' security blanket to Lucy's hopeless infatuation with the monomaniacal Schroeder. Some of them even pop up and acquire new meaning, contemporary layers of meaning, long after we thought they'd been exhausted. Who would have ever guessed, for instance, that Lucy's hostile, self-aggrandising, destructive and ultimately useless (but inexpensive!) psychiatric advice booth would anticipate, so completely and pitilessly, the '90s radio advice-giver Dr. Laura?
Peanuts began in 1950, neatly bisecting the century and making it the first (and arguably the last) great modern comic strip. To those unfamiliar with it, that first year is bizarre, almost unrecognisable - and it's not just a matter of the slicker, button-cute character designs. Rather than a gentle, philosophical loser, Charlie Brown is a hyperactive prankster (prefiguring Bill Watterson's Calvin, down to the manic open-mouthed grin); the reader looking for familiar faces among the rest of the cast will be disappointed by interchangeable second bananas such as Shermy and Patty, and soon thereafter, Violet (who?).
The peculiar thing about Peanuts' early development is that, with one significant exception, all of Charlie Brown's major co-stars-to-be debuted as toddlers or infants. Not only that, but as generations of infants: baby Schroeder, little Lucy Van Pelt and her baby brother Linus were introduced and allowed to "grow up" (ie to reach Charlie Brown's age); later, they were followed by Charlie Brown's sibling Sally (and much later, Lucy and Linus' brother, the somewhat pointedly-named Rerun). Nowadays, of those five characters (six, if you count Snoopy, who began as a non-speaking puppy, too), only Sally seems genuinely younger than the rest. Peanuts is entirely different from other strips in which characters age, such as Gasoline Alley or For Better Or For Worse. Lucy, Linus, Schroeder and Sally didn't mature so much as they evolved from a sketch to a finished drawing - as if Schulz had to work his way into his best characters literally by raising them to maturity. It's also been suggested that the "babies" were Schulz's way of easing into the quirkier characterisations, with Schroeder as the icebreaker, without endangering the interior logic of the early strip. And, of course, it allowed him to incorporate the dynamics of sibling age differences, particularly with the Van Pelt kids.
(The one exception is Peppermint Patty, literally an "outsider" who lives across town; she often seems to be starring in her own, separate strip, and remains an intruder when she "crosses over" with the rest of the cast. Curiously, in the fallow '80s, when the rest of Peanuts was awash in irritating Snoopy relatives and talking schoolhouses, the "Peppermint Patty" strip within-a-strip seemed to retain its snap.)
Peanuts has been going steady for close to 50 years. Even though it has declined from its peak (late '50s to late '60s), even though it sometimes lurches into mystifying, private non-sequiturs, it can still provoke laughter and delight. (And it's worth noting that the '90s Peanuts is a substantial improvement on the '80s Peanuts.) The witty aggressiveness of yore has been toned down: you don't hear anyone call Charlie Brown a blockhead any more, and the trademark explosive, exasperated "Good grief" is a thing of the past, too - but there is a deeper, darker current of wistfulness (those haunting strips of Charlie Brown alone in his room, at night) that can be surprisingly affecting. Even the shakiness of the line - as well as those odd un-funny strips - remind us that Peanuts is, and has always been, a daily, hand-crafted gift from one of the greatest cartoonists of all time.
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