Category: Cartooning

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere a couple of times, reading Peanuts books on Christmas Day is a favorite childhood memory. It’s a tradition that is back again, thanks to the Fantagraphics Complete Peanuts series! This year’s boxed set covers the years 1963-1966, when Sparky’s creation went from being a popular comic strip to being a pop culture phenomenon.

I’m sure you recall that a couple of weeks ago I was on Stu’s Show, a feature on Shokus Internet Radio. I promised to post my five minutes on the program, and here they are.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Nov/ShokusRadio.mp3|titles=Stu Shokus with Monte Schulz]

I was pleased to have an opportunity not only to speak with Monte, but to provide a quote from the book attributed to him that he could directly refute. And Monte certainly does that.

I got wrapped up in listening to Monte and forgot to hang up! So I took advantage of that to add a comment. I end the audio clip with Monte answering a question I had asked here on the blog, about David Michaelis’ first draft of Schulz and Peanuts.

Wednesday, animation expert Jerry Beck will be the guest on Stu’s Show at 7 PM ET. Jerry is Webmaster on CartoonBrew.com, where much of the discussion about the Michaelis book has been taking place. Charles Schulz’s wife Jeannie has kept things interesting by adding a comment on Monday.

As posted previously, Charles and Joyce Schulz claimed a false date of marriage, in order to maintain the appearance that Meredith is his biological daughter. The document at that link shows 1949 as the wedding date, when in fact it was 1951.

Another date deception had been carried out by Charles Schulz’s mother Dena, except she moved a date forward. Dena always gave her year of birth as 1895, when in fact it was 1893.

As my buddy D.F. Rogers likes to say, “let’s look at the record!” And he has provided that record in the form of the 1930 census from Needles, California. Dena’s age is falsely listed as 32, the same as her husband Carl, when in fact even her claimed birth year of 1895 would have made her 34 years old at the time of the census. Curious.

Other interesting items in the census are that the Schulz family did not live on a farm, they paid $28/month in rent, and Carl came to the United States from Germany in 1897, the year he was born. Click the picture and see for yourself, but beware — it’s a B-I-G image.

Jimmy Johnson, who for over 20 years has produced Arlo and Janis, one of the very best syndicated comic strips, has added a bit more of his take on the David Michaelis biography Schulz and Peanuts. Jimmy was married to Rheta Grimsley when she wrote Good Grief, the only authorized biography of Charles M. Schulz during his lifetime.

I grabbed this picture from an eBay auction.

©UFS

Here’s another installment of Peanuts that I think relates nicely to all of the recent discussion about Charles M. Schulz.