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Peanuts

Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000 (the day after Schulz's death). The Peanuts strip was one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and was "arguably the longest story ever told by one human being,'"' according to Professor Robert Thompson of Syracuse University. At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages. Peanuts helped to cement the four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United States. Reprints of the Peanuts strip are still syndicated and run in many newspapers.

In addition, Peanuts achieved considerable success for its television specials, several of which, including A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown won or were nominated for Emmys.

The initial cast of Peanuts was small, featuring only Charlie Brown, Shermy, Patty (not to be confused with Peppermint Patty), and a beagle, Snoopy.

Though the Peanuts strip did not have a lead character at the onset, it soon began to focus on Charlie Brown, a character developed from some of the painful experiences of Schulz's formative years. Charlie Brown's main characteristic is either self-defeating stubbornness or admirable determined persistence to try his best against all odds: Charlie Brown can never win a ballgame, but continues playing baseball; Charlie Brown can never fly a kite successfully, but continues trying to fly his kite. Though Charlie Brown 's inferiority complex was evident from the start, in the earliest strips Charlie Brown also got in his own jabs when verbally sparring with Patty and Shermy. Some early strips also involved romantic attractions between Charlie Brown and Patty or Violet (the next major character added to the strip).

As the years went by, Shermy and Patty appeared less often and were demoted to supporting roles, while new major characters were introduced. Schroeder, Lucy Van Pelt, and her brother Linus debuted as very young children � Schroeder and Linus both in diapers and pre-verbal. Snoopy, who began as a more-or-less typical puppy, soon started to verbalize his thoughts via thought bubbles. Eventually Snoopy adopted other human characteristics, such as walking on his hind legs, reading books, using a typewriter, and participating in sports. Snoopy also grew from being a cute little puppy to a full-grown dog.

One recurring theme in the strip is Charlie Brown's Little League baseball team. Charlie Brown is the manager of the team and, usually, its pitcher, with the other characters of the strip comprising the rest of the team. Charlie Brown is a terrible pitcher, often giving up tremendous hits which either knock him off the mound or leave him with only his shorts on. The team itself is also poor, with only Charlie Brown's dog Snoopy being particularly competent. Because of this, the team consistently loses (their all-time record is 2 � 930). However, while the team is often referred to as "win-less", it does win at least 10 games over the course of the Peanuts strip's run, though most of these wins occur when Charlie Brown is not playing.

In the 1960s, the Peanuts strip began to focus more on Snoopy. Many of the Peanuts strips from this point revolve around Snoopy's active, Walter Mitty-like fantasy life, in which Snoopy imagined himself to be a World War I flying ace or a best selling suspense novelist, to the bemusement and consternation of the other characters who sometimes wonder what Snoopy is doing but also at times participate. Snoopy eventually took on many more distinct personas over the course of the strip, notably college student Joe Cool.

Schulz continued to introduce new characters into the Peanuts strip, particularly including a tomboyish, freckle-faced, shorts-and-sandals-wearing girl named Patricia Reichardt, better known as Peppermint Patty. Peppermint Patty is an assertive, athletic, but rather obtuse girl who shakes up Charlie Brown's world by calling him "Chuck," flirting with him, and giving him compliments he's not so sure he deserves. Peppermint Patty also brings in a new group of friends (and heads a rival baseball team), including the strip's first black character, Franklin, and Peppermint Patty's bookish sidekick Marcie, who calls Peppermint Patty "Sir" and Charlie Brown "Charles." (Most other characters call him "Charlie Brown" at all times, except for Eudora, who also calls him "Charles"; Charlie Brown's sister Sally, who usually calls him "big brother"; and a minor character named Peggy Jean in the early 1990s who called him "Brownie Charles" after he couldn't remember his own name. Also, Snoopy calls his owner, Charlie Brown, "that round-headed kid.")

Several additional family members of the characters were also introduced: Charlie Brown's younger sister Sally, who is fixated on Linus; Linus and Lucy's younger brother Rerun; and Spike, Snoopy's desert-dwelling brother from Needles, California, who was apparently named for Schulz's own childhood dog[10]. Snoopy also had two other brothers who made some appearances in the strip.

Other notable characters include: Snoopy's friend Woodstock, a bird whose chirping is represented in print as hash marks but is nevertheless clearly understood by Snoopy; Pigpen, the perpetually dirty boy who could raise a cloud of dust on a clean sidewalk or in a snowstorm; and Frieda, a girl proud of her "naturally curly hair", and who owned a cat named Faron, much to Snoopy's chagrin.

Peanuts had several recurring characters who were actually absent from view. Some, such as the Great Pumpkin or the Red Baron, may or may not have been figments of the cast's imaginations. Others were not imaginary, such as the Little Red-Haired Girl (Charlie Brown's perennial dream girl), Joe Shlabotnik (Charlie Brown's baseball hero), World War II (the vicious cat who lives next door to Snoopy - not to be confused with Frieda's cat, Faron), and Charlie Brown's unnamed pencil pal. After some early anomalies, adult figures never appeared in the strip.

Schulz also added some fantastic elements, sometimes imbuing inanimate objects with sparks of life. Charlie Brown's nemesis, the Kite-Eating Tree, is one example. Sally Brown's school building, that expressed thoughts and feelings about the students (and the general business of being a brick building), is another. Linus' famous "security blanket" also displayed occasional signs of anthropomorphism.