Category: Charles M. Schulz

The all-time greatest comic strip

Blackbeard’s treasure

Bill Blackbeard was to comic strips what Forrest J. Ackerman was to science fiction — a lifelong, compulsive collector who wrote and edited articles and books about his hobby. Blackbeard’s singular passion was comic strips, and he saved millions of them by rescuing tons of newspapers. They’re all now in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University. Blackbeard died in March, but the news wasn’t widely known until this past week.

At the other end of the comic strip game is the original art market, with Charles Schulz originals commanding premium prices. Heritage Auctions has a Schulz original being sold by the family of the real-life Frieda.

The piece predates Peanuts, but you can see where his work was headed. Its significance is that it seems to prove that Schulz didn’t adopt the four-panel format by choice. The art has only three panels, and Sparky wouldn’t return to doing that until February 29, 1988. Enlarge the image above and you will see that in his early work Schulz inked mostly with a brush, and not a pen as he would later do.

A big admirer of Schulz is cartoonist Jimmy Johnson, whose strip Arlo and Janis has been a favorite of mine for many years. It was introduced in 1985, the same year that Calvin and Hobbes premiered. Arlo and Janis began on July 29, and this photo of Jimmy ran in some of the papers that carried the new strip. The caption reads, “Arlo and Janis Day are anti-Yuppies, the young upwardly mobile who don’t glory in it, says their creator Jimmy Johnson.”

Schulz brothers have their say

Since losing her husband to colon cancer, Katie Couric has urged people over 50 to have a colonoscopy. Monte Schulz lost his father to colon cancer, and he made this PSA for the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance.

Since the death of Charles M. Schulz, Monte has been writing novels and his brother Craig has been in charge of their father’s studio, Creative Associates. Craig talks about the studio’s new DVD, Happiness is a Warm Blanket with Geek To Me at this link. Check the AAUGH Blog for a review and more information.

Schulzian doings

Right now, Monte Schulz is at Warwicks, a bookstore in La Jolla, CA. Monte’s new book, The Last Rose of Summer is out, and I have my copy, although I’m 3,000 miles from La Jolla, so I won’t be able to get Monte’s autograph on it. I’ll be reading it as soon as I am through a couple of non-fiction books. I prefer to read novels without having any other books in progress. Monte owns the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, which this year is being held June 18-23 in, you guessed it, Santa Barbara.

On the Peanuts side of the Schulz family, which is run by Monte’s brother Craig, there is a new DVD coming out, and a graphic novel, the first Peanuts publication from the Kaboom! arm of BOOM! Studios.

You may recall that Charles Schulz never had an assistant helping him with the comic strip, but that did not hold for the Peanuts comic books from DELL (before there was a computer company by the same name), and later Gold Key. Jim Sasseville, then Dale Hale, worked with Schulz on those comics. D.F. Rogers has a great idea, that Nat Gertler should put together the complete collection of Peanuts comic books. High quality color scans from the original comics would be great.

I haven’t checked eBay lately, but I assume there are still sketches being offered that sellers claim are by Charles M. Schulz, but are obvious fakes. Here’s a sketch that looks like it might be genuine. The owner asked a newspaper columnist for an estimate of what it’s worth, and assuming it was done by Schulz I think he’s wrong about the personalized autograph holding down the value of the piece.

Johnston Flood

Lynn Johnston’s “modern classic” family comic strip, For Better Or For Worse (It’s not “For Better Or Worse”!), is in reprints, and the Boston Globe, which I still get as a newspaper, carries it. Since Lynn isn’t producing new daily strips, on her web site she writes comments about the old ones. Tuesday, she explained that she will soon be the age that Charles Schulz was when she met him. Lynn says that she’ll be speaking at the Charles M. Schulz Museum, and she mentions that she stays in touch with Jeannie Schulz. Jeannie can be heard in this recent audio interview. (And, no, I didn’t forget Monte Schulz’s birthday on February 1. I wished him well on Facebook.)

[audio:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Feb/Airtalk_CharlesSchulz.mp3|titles=KPCC: The Legacy of Charles Schulz]

Last September, Lynn did a video podcast interview. You’ll find it here in six parts.

Peanuts and nut cases

The 1975-to-1976 volume of “The Complete Peanuts” has a thoughtful and sincere appreciation of Charles M. Schulz, in a foreword by cartoon comedy bad boy Robert Smigel. His “TV Funhouse” series began on “The Dana Carvey Show”, before moving to “Saturday Night Live”. Smigel’s outrageous parody of 70’s Saturday morning cartoons, “The Ambiguously Gay Duo”, features the voices of Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell, and Colbert also did some of the writing. This is the first episode, “It Takes Two To Tango”, from September 28, 1996. Watching this makes me wish Colbert would bring back Tek Jansen. Note: this is a PG-13 cartoon! It starts after a brief comic bit by Carell about a dedicated athlete.

It’s the post-Christmas blahs, Charlie Brown!

  • Another Christmas, another 2-volume box set of Fantagraphics’ “The Complete Peanuts”. With the release of the strips from 1977 and ’78, the series now covers the time from when my parents got married, through the first full calendar year after I graduated from college.

  • Time Magazine has an interview with Lee Mendelson, the producer of the “Peanuts” cartoons.

    http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2039669,00.html

  • With Monte Schulz’s new book, “The Last Rose of Summer”, being published soon, here’s something of interest that Monte co-wrote with his dad — the TV movie, “It’s the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown”, from 1988, starring Monte’s kid sister Jill.