Our story starts in 1922. On November 26th, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Charles Schulz was born. Just days after his birth, and uncle came to visit him and his mother, and gave Charles the nickname, “Sparky”, after the horse from comic strip, Barney Google. Ever since then, he’s been referred to as “Sparky”. In 1943, he was drafted into the army. The night before he reported to Fort Snelling, he said his goodbyes to his mother, as she passed away.
In 1945, he struck a job at Art Instruction Inc., where he met some great people, including the name sakes of characters like Linus, Charlie Brown, or Freida. He began dating a woman named Donna, who he proposed to, but was turned down. She later became the inspiration behind the Little red haired girl. Around this time, he began trying to get a gig as a cartoonist. He ended up striking a contract in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, with a strip called “Lil’ Folks”. It ran once a week from 1947-50. The paper dropped it after Schulz asked for a pay raise. In October of 1950, Schulz got United Feature Syndicate to pick up Lil’ Folks. They ended up changing the name because Lil’ Folks was too similar to 2 other strips, They named it “Peanuts” without asking Schulz first. He ended up hating the name.
On October 2nd, 1950, Peanuts ran in 6 newspapers (hip hip hooray). Characters would be introduced throughout the whole 50-year run.
In 1968, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a school teacher named Harriet Glickman wrote to Schulz, asking him to add a black character. At first, Schulz said no, because he didn’t want to seem like he was patronizing black children. After some convincing from Glickman, on July 31st, 1968, Franklin was added. A worker at United Feature syndicate said to Schulz, “You can’t draw a black kid sitting next to a white kid in school!” And Schulz replied, “Okay, either print it the way I draw it, or I quit. How does that sound?”.
In 1996, Schulz even got a star on the Hollywood walk of Fame.
On February 12, 2000, Schulz passed away in his sleep from Colon cancer, at age 77. Chillingly, the last Peanuts comic hit papers the same day- they were drawn 2 weeks in advance.
Some random facts about Peanuts
-Schulz has seen the movie, “Citizen Kane” 40 times. Talk about excessive!
-In 1969, NASA’s Apollo 10 crew named 2 of their modules, Snoopy and Charlie Brown
-There are 46 peanuts animated specials, including screen and stage musicals
-One of his sons did professional Motocross, and one of his daughters was a professional Figure skater
-Snoopy has 5 siblings, which I will now name from memory. Spike, Belle, Marbles, Olaf, and Andy. I am very cool, I know.
-Through 50 years of comics, Charlie Brown never once kicked a successful field goal.
-It ran in over 2,600 newspapers, and 20 languages
-There is a Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, where Schulz lived for most of his life. Visiting it is easily on my bucket list.
Reflect:
I really enjoyed this project. Say I was writing about, I don’t know, Star Wars, I definitely wouldn’t have enjoyed it, because I don’t like or care about Star Wars. Since I got to choose what to write about, I definitely enjoyed this project. It’s fun to write about things you’re passionate about. I think I definitely could continue to write on blog. I have this weird tendency of talking to myself, like- a lot. Maybe this blog will give me a place to say things. Maybe I can stop ranting about the Canucks games to mom, and instead, rant to random people on the internet. The only thing I didn’t enjoy about this project was choosing my topic- there were infinite options! Other than comic strips, I am very passionate about hockey, cooking, politics, and music. On the other hand, writing it was the easiest, for reasons I mentioned before. Overall, I enjoyed this project, and I hope we get to do a similar project in the future.