Interestingly, Peanuts started with a focus on Shermy and Violet as the 'straight men' and young(er) Charlie Brown as the comic upstart. Snoopy shows up fairly soon, but he doesn't even seem to be CB's pet for the first while.

It's fascinating to see Lucy, Linus, Schroeder and Sally grow from tots or babies to the developed characters we know today.

There was a long read article that came out a few years ago called "How Snoopy Killed Peanuts:"

https://kotaku.com/how-snoopy-killed-peanuts-1724269473

about how Peanuts lost it's edge once the "cute" popular dog was introduced, whereas prior it used to be more subversive, philosophical/theoretical with darker material.

It's too bad that there are probably meant to be so many example comics in that article, judging from how it's written, and what's really there is just ads where the comics are probably supposed to be. Wonder what happened.

> Snoopy shows up fairly soon, but he doesn't even seem to be CB's pet for the first while.

Snoopy shows up in the third strip, by which point the count of total appearances is Patty: 3, Charlie Brown: 2, Shermy: 1, and Snoopy: 1.

He appears again in strip 5, but it takes until his third appearance (in strip 8) before he can be identified as Charlie Brown's dog. He remains somewhat ambiguous:

strip 8: Charlie Brown is reading at home, accompanied by Snoopy.

strip 11: Shermy is eating (presumably at home?), accompanied by Snoopy.

strip 12: Shermy takes Snoopy for a walk, holding him on a leash.

1950-10-21: Shermy, Patty, and Snoopy are walking together when they encounter Charlie Brown.

1950-10-25: Patty is speaking on the phone (at home?); Snoopy is present.

1950-11-07: Charlie Brown delivers a lecture to Snoopy beginning "You don't seem to realize that I'm the boss in this house!"; he is interrupted by a call from his mother.

1950-11-13: Patty receives Charlie Brown at her home; Snoopy is already present.

1950-11-25: Charlie Brown says goodbye to Snoopy before going to bed; Snoopy is shown to be able to hear him as he says "I'll see you in the morning" from his bedroom.

1950-12-05: Patty is walking Snoopy on a leash when they run into Charlie Brown.

1950-12-13: Snoopy is playing on the footboard of Charlie Brown's bed while he tries to go to sleep.

1951-01-23: Charlie Brown is writing in his diary while Snoopy watches.

1951-02-02: Charlie Brown yells at Snoopy to stop following him; Patty intervenes to point out that Snoopy "lives in that direction", which you'd expect Charlie Brown to know if they lived together.

(1951-02-07: Violet is introduced.)

1951-04-27: Shermy is building a birdhouse; Charlie Brown assumes it's supposed to be a doghouse for Snoopy.

1951-05-22: An unknown character calls Snoopy to suppertime.

(1951-05-30: Schroeder is introduced.)

1951-08-27: Schroeder (who is a baby) eats from Snoopy's dog dish; Snoopy gets revenge by climbing into Schroeder's high chair and eating from his tray. Snoopy's dish (which is labeled "SNOOPY") is next to the high chair, implying that Snoopy lives with Schroeder.

1951-09-04: Charlie Brown is assigned (by someone speaking over the phone) to mow the grass around Snoopy's doghouse.

1951-09-12: Charlie Brown has a large portrait of Snoopy hanging in his room.

(1951-11-14: Violet holds a football for Charlie Brown to kick. At the last minute, afraid he'll kick her hand, she flinches away and he goes flying into the air.)

(1951-11-26: Schroeder says his first word, "Beethoven".)

1951-12-15: Charlie Brown repairs the roof on Snoopy's doghouse.

Snoopy is frequently shown in association with Charlie Brown, welcoming him home or hearing him unwrap a candy bar, but an explicit statement of ownership doesn't come up.

"Snoopy Come Home" wrecked me as a kid, just absolutely flattened me. Looking back on it now, it’s wild to consider this level of depression was aimed at children. I’m not knocking it; honestly, I kind of treasure how hard I cried over it.

And that’s before you even touch the whole anti-segregation angle running through the story.

The Charles Schulz museum in Santa Rosa, CA is a must visit if you’re in the area!

https://schulzmuseum.org/

There is also a nice ice rink next door that looks like a Swiss Chalet. I think it’s also part of the museum.

https://www.snoopyshomeice.com/

Is that the airport?

No, there is an airport 10 minutes from the museum but the museum itself is closer to downtown.

> Charlie Brown may have been as popular as any character in all of literature

Was he? Maybe this is true inside the US but from outside the US, I've always viewed the character as a peculiarly American artefact – something I was aware of but never really read or watched. This seemed to be reinforced by most major Charlie Brown titles seemingly tied to other American customs like Halloween and baseball.

Snoopy as a character is popular in Japan, but only as a character design - kind of like Hello Kitty. There is zero awareness of any of the shows or really Charlie Brown himself.

I'm Brazilian, in my middle 40s. When I was a little kid my best friend used to carry a blanket around. Neighbors called him "Linus" for years. But I'm confident it was because of the TV show, not the comic strips.

The BBC published this article. I agree with "all of literature" being hyperbolic though.

People in eg Germany are mostly aware of the Peanuts, but it's nowhere near as central to the culture as in the US.

I'm an American and I've really never related to Charlie Brown myself, but I've heard Peanuts is huge in Japan and other asian countries.

“I'm talking only about the minor everyday problems in life. Leo Tolstoy dealt with the major problems of the world. I'm only dealing with why we all have the feeling that people don't like us."

I felt that in my bones.

I'm a musician, and something I've noticed is that children no longer recognize the "peanuts" theme song.

Snoopy or Peanuts in general is (was) very famous in my country (at least for my age) but I only read it in comic.

So no idea what the song is about, unfortunately. I don't even know it has animation version.

The earlier Peanuts animated specials had marvelous jazz soundtracks by Vince Guaraldi (and later others, after Vince's passing). Not sure if jazz trio is the most obvious music to accompany cartoons, but somehow this music blended exquisitely with the characters.

Indeed from what I've read, the network was originally skeptical that jazz trio made any sense in a children's animated show, but it was remarkably successful. A couple of other tunes from the show, "Skating" and "Christmas time is here" are recognizable jazz standards to this day.

Aha. I'm showing my age. I didn't know there was a "Peanuts" movie. I was talking about the tune "Linus and Lucy" which was the theme for the original animated TV show "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

(And I shouldn't have called it a song, as there are no words).

Perhaps-fun stuff:

Linus and Lucy was recorded by the Vince Guaraldi Trio back in 1964.

They're all dead now, which is a shame.

But there's a brilliant modern recording, from 2016, that features the original drummer, Jerry Granelli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OODA_K5hxyc

And it's definitely worth spending some time to give it a watch/listen. There's a lot more to that little tune than most people probably realize.

It starts about twelve seconds into https://youtu.be/tcHNHRGPkkw .

The Thanksgiving and Christmas specials aired every year, and might still. But who has an antenna any more? I do.

The combination of cable-cutting and the fact that many people either can't access OTA (or don't bother) probably means that a lot of the content that people reflexively tuned into over various holidays just doesn't happen any longer. Even if some of it is on streaming, it's not an automatic holiday thing.

I can't get OTA and cut cable TV so I don't get a lot of things without effort that I don't generally go to.

Newspaper comics haven’t been relevant to anyone 30. By the time you were old enough to read them or care about reading them, smartphones were in the scene.

My kids watch and love the Peanuts TV specials. They also love the Peanuts movie that came out a few years ago.

I'm college age and grew up reading newspaper comics. Then we stopped getting the newspaper since it became too expensive and then our local paper stopped doing print copies...

Sad, but true. I was born in the 80s and had a dad who read the paper religiously, so getting that section with the comics every morning was super important to me!

snoopy is the perfect dog name

Thanks. I never thought about the word "snoop" as part of the name until just now.

I think many people have seen only the commercially exploited peanuts imagery.

In fact the comics - especially the older ones are incredibly clever and funny and insightful and there’s long running threads and connections and strong characters.

Peanuts the tshirt/hat/poster/cup is crass.

Peanuts the comic is genius.

It exactly the same with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. The commercially exploited imagery is crass and dumb. The comics written by Karl Barks were genius and often really entertaining adventure stories.

I would think the closest comparison to my eye is the Calvin and Hobbes commercialization? As a child of the 90s, I almost exclusively knew of Calvin stickers pissing on Ford and Chevy logos growing up. The great comic was a pleasant surprise for my teenage self.

Watterson refused to allow Calvin & Hobbes to be commercialized, other than the books. Those crass stickers are unauthorized knock-offs.

Amazing - these were Circle K chain stores selling these stickers. How was this not enforced?!

It's not like stickers are particularly difficult to make, or Watterson had an army of auditors combing every gas station or car meet looking for sticker makers.

They have (as I understand it) challenged and stopped some folks from doing things, but something like the Calvin sticker was pretty ubiquitous. Even then, some later ones were particularly bad Calvins.

I had a vinyl sticker of Spaceman Spiff on the back of my motorcycle helmet. I bought it at a motorcycle race back in the 90s.

Speak for yourself, i enjoy both. :)

I mean, even originally, Garfield strips had some substance, but Jim Davis really liked money, I think...

Garfield was conceived from the get go as a cash grab devoid of artistic merit.

(And that's fine by me, nobody is forcing anyone to consume Garfield.)

Interesting, you know more about it than I do, I suppose. Do you know of any source for Jim discussing how/why he started Garfield?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield#History is probably a good start.

Wikipedia is a bit coy and trying to be neutral. But even just from there you can see that the author decided to make strips about cats, because Snoopy had already cornered the dog market.