Category: Charles M. Schulz

The all-time greatest comic strip

Good, Aged Charlie Brown

The Charles M. Schulz Museum has obtained a few more originals from a proposed strip by Sparky that didn’t take off. They were even drawn on paper with pre-printed Peanuts panels. Click to enlarge to full size, and you can see that the original India ink is much darker than the printer’s ink.

Little-seen original art for a proposed 50s comic strip Hagemyer, as drawn by Charles M. Schulz/copyright SFIPT

The museum has assembled the originals, and some other material, for an interesting new exhibit. More information is available from The Washington Post.

The strips were supposedly drawn by Schulz, but I’m wondering if Jim Sasseville, his assistant for the comic book stories, had a hand in producing the samples. It seems likely to me that if “Hagemeyer” had been launched, Sasseville would have worked on it, just as he did for the “It’s Only a Game” strip.

It’s Sunday, Charlie Brown

On Facebook the Charles M. Schulz Museum is featuring the 9th Sunday installment of Peanuts, originally published just a month after Monte was born.

‘Peanuts’ March 2, 1952

In 1952 Schulz was still inking lines with a brush, before switching to a pen. The characters hadn’t yet developed their individual personalities, but Chip Kidd has commented on Patty’s fascination with mud. Note that Kidd gets the year wrong.

From ‘The Art of Charles M. Schulz’ by Chip Kidd, 2001

The third Peanuts collection, “Good grief, more PEANUTS!” was the first with Sunday strips. Published in 1956, it doesn’t include the 3/2/52 strip.

Digging the Groove

One of the most familiar pieces in the traditional Classical music repertoire is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, the “Overplayed.” I’m up for listening to it again, thanks to this early stereo recording that should be heard with a decent pair of headphones to best appreciate its sonic splendor (with apologies to the hearing impaired).

And oh, by the way…

Another post that ticks three blog categories!

ABBA Above All

This past week on the DVR I watched the PBS documentary The Eugenics Crusade, showing how the American Eugenics movement contributed to Hitler’s nightmare of a Master Race. Then I watched a PBS fundraiser feature, ABBA Forever: A Celebration. The two programs have a connection in the person of Frida, whose mother bore her as a German soldier’s “Lebensborn” baby, during the Nazi occupation of Norway.

Anni-Frid Lyngstad

Speaking of PBS, that’s where A Charlie Brown Christmas can be watched tonight. Quite a switch from decades of airing on commercial TV. And with that comment, this posts ticks three of my blog categories.