Schulz and Peanuts

SnoopyAs a kid, Snoopy literally took over my room. I had a Snoopy poster on my wall, my sheets were filled with miniature Snoopys, and my 1970’s yellow bedspread was also covered with Snoopy. At that time, I didn’t really consider the over-merchandising of brands because that really isn’t what elementary school students tend to ponder. I did, however, consider the over-merchandising of the Peanuts brand after reading “Schulz and Peanuts”, which is the biography of Charles “Sparky” Schulz written by David Michaelis.

According to the biography, Schulz aspired to be a cartoonist from an early age and went about it the hard way by training himself at home in a correspondence course and then in an art institute. Once Peanuts was finally established as one of the top comic strips in the nation, Schulz was asked to collaborate on a project: Snoopy in a book entitled “Happiness is a Warm Puppy”.  That simple decision led to the rampant merchandising of the strip and soon after Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy and the rest of the Peanuts had become a brand. Shulz’s conflict about this is  one of the themes that Michaelis touches on in the biography.

In fact, the amount of revenue that the strip generated reached such a height that In 1967, Ronald Reagan who was then governor of California announced  “Charles Schulz Day” and gave the cartoonist a scroll saying that California was lucky to have him because the big bucks that were rolling in.

The most interesting parts of the book examine the differences and parallels between Schulz’s life and the travails of Charlie Brown in the comic strip. The book also shows how the strip and the characters evolved through time. The biography compares Shulz’s awkward childhood with the awkwardness of Charlie Brown himself. As a youth, Shulz was often teased and left out, just like poor ole Charlie Brown.

Shulz was a religious man and Michaelis analyzes some of the strips for religious themes, and sometimes seems to go a little too far. As an example, I’m not exactly sure that Linus waiting for infamous Great Pumpkin to arrive can realistically be viewed as a religious theme to be debated.

The biographer does, however, seem to have a sense of how Shulz’s real life was played out in the comic strip. Throughout the book, he offers examples of the strip to illustrate what the real man was going through at the time. At the time of Sparky’s divorce from his wife Joyce, for example, poor Charlie Brown seeks out help from Lucy at her Pyschiatric Clinic, wondering if he can really make a change.

For any fan of Peanuts and interested in the man behind that particular gang of misfits, I definitely recommend reading "Shulz and Peanuts".