Week 3: The Comic Strip

This week I was given the opportunity to revisit my childhood and read a number of strips from Charles Schulz' Peanuts. This really brought me back to a time when my grandmother would cut out and save Peanuts strips from the Sunday paper for my little sister and I. While they were not as exciting as our favorite animated Disney movies, the little comics were just short enough to hold our young attention spans from start to finish. My grandmother, having known Peanuts since the very beginning, was extremely fond of the series. I, on the other hand, while enjoying characters like Snoopy and Woodstock, often found the way in which the main character, Charlie Brown, was treated to be upsetting. It seemed like he could never catch a break from the harsh words and actions of characters like Lucy, even if they were supposed to be "friends." Good grief.

However, when I brought this up in class I was surprised to learn that the author wrote Charlie Brown in an almost autobiographical way. Schulz himself faced a lot of same the social and self-esteem issues as Charlie Brown during his lifetime. With this new perspective, the comic now seems to be playing nicely into a sort of self deprecating sense of humor. Perhaps this is one of the reasons Peanuts is so beloved. Each morning people are able to pick up a paper, read the strip, and give a sympathetic laugh for poor Charlie Brown, all the while thinking 'Yeah, I feel that way too sometimes.' The combination of these mundane life moments that make up the plot of Peanuts as well as the simple, abstract cartoon designs really allow readers to self insert and relate to the comic. And as I learned in last week's Understanding Comics book, that is truly a recipe for success.