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Peanuts Begins 1/19/2015 7:12:04 AM
This post originally appeared on thunderalleybcp.com
Peanuts Begins offers fans the chance to experience the iconic comic strip on a daily basis from the very beginning.
Peanuts stands as one of the most popular comics ever. It ran for five decades and was a licensing megalith. In the 15 years since the strip ended (shortly before the death of irreplaceable creator Charles M. Schulz in 2000), Peanuts has continued to run popular reprints in daily syndication. Early strips are widely available in book form, as well.
But the comic strip is a unique art form. Created to be experienced one installment at a time, there’s something to be said for reliving a classic strip just that way.
Peanuts Begins kicked off in the new year, starting with strip one. It’s a fairly straight-forward four-panel affair. Shermy and Patty sit on a stoop as Charlie Brown skips pass. “Good ol’ Charlie Brown,” Shermy notes more than once. Then ends with the kicker “How I hate him!”
Not exactly sweetness and light.
Peanuts Begins is fascinating because it’s a work in progress. Schulz was still a few years away from perfecting his approach to both the art and writing of Peanuts. Seeing an extremely talented creator working out those details as he went adds a layer of interest for fans of the art form.
The cast familiar to generations of fans had yet to come together in these early strips. You probably went “who?” at the mention of Shermy and Patty. And yet in these early Peanuts cartoons, they were the focal characters. Patty was not the more famous “Peppermint Patty,” but a random blonde girl. Shermy was a random dark-haired boy. Neither was especially distinctive, which is likely why each faded into the background of the strip over time and eventually disappeared altogether.
Many of the most familiar Peanuts characters are nowhere to be seen in Peanuts Begins. Characters like Lucy, Linus, Sally, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Pigpen and Woodstock had yet to make their debuts in these strips from the early ‘50s. Some of them were still many years away.
The two familiar characters that do appear are in supporting roles behind Shermy and Patty. And neither is quite the character that fans will come to know and love in later years.
Charlie Brown is on hand from day one. In the strips shown in Peanuts Begins he hasn’t quite developed into the loveable loser with a penchant for dark nights of the soul so well known to fans. Instead, Charlie Brown is something of a carefree gadabout. His trademark bald pate is there, but his head shape is fairly proportional to the rest of his body, unlike the exaggerated noggin fans are used to. Also missing is the trademark zig-zag pattern on his shirt. At this point in Peanuts, Schulz was employing a somewhat simpler, more naturalistic art style. The more outsized elements that would bring Charlie Brown and other characters to vivid life would emerge gradually over the following years.
As startling as a genteel Charlie Brown might be, fans will be more shocked by Snoopy in the strips shown in Peanuts Begins. Snoopy is probably one of the most famous anthropomorphized animal characters in pop culture history, up there with Mickey Mouse, Kermit the Frog, and Bugs Bunny. So it’s startling to read his Peanuts Begins appearances and see him acting so, well, dog-like.
Like Charlie Brown, Snoopy’s initial appearance is more naturalistic. He’s smaller and his head is proportional to his body. Unlike the later version that walked on two legs and used his front legs and paws like arms and hands, early Snoopy walked around on all fours. He was shown being led on a leash. His face didn’t have the kinds of human expressions that would later become common. And unlike in later years, when it was clear that Snoopy belonged to Charlie Brown (“The Round Headed Kid”), in the early strips he was just as often to be seen in the company of Shermy or Patty.
But the most startling difference for fans is that, since Snoopy is presented naturalistically, we get no access to his inner life. We don’t see him napping atop his dog house (which apparently is some kind of tesseract with infinite storage space for his variety of entertainment devices). We don’t hear his thoughts. Snoopy doesn’t slip into his “World War I Flying Ace” or “Joe Cool” personas. He doesn’t take to the typewriter to bang out a story that starts with “It was a dark and stormy night.” He doesn’t crack jokes, make witty observations or get into comic trouble with best pal Woodstock.
It’s startling for fans used to the famous version of Snoopy. Revolutionary, almost.
And it makes you appreciate the genius of Charles M. Schulz even more. The strips running in Peanuts Begins are deceptively simple in some ways. From the outset, Schulz demonstrated how he could take a basic, sugary concept and spike it with some unexpected vinegar. You see that play out in these early installments, as the power dynamics between the characters shift in unexpected ways. For fans who loved the later strips, the DNA is there. Seeing how Peanuts morphed into its classic form over time is the chief attraction of Peanuts Begins.
Or for those of you who have waited patiently for years for Shermy and Patty to get their due, Peanuts Begins is their moment to shine.
