Oh, Good Gravy!

How many errors can you find in this first paragraph of a review of Schulz and Peanuts?

Charles M. Schulz’s original syndicated comic strip, called L’il Folks, appeared in just seven newspapers. Shortly afterward, he renamed it Peanuts, and the rest is legend. At the time of Schulz’s death in 2000, the names of Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy Van Pelt, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, Snoopy, and the rest of the gang were known to 300 million readers in 75 countries. Royalties from newspaper syndication, toys, games, TV specials, and commercials for Met Life and Ford brought in billions. Schulz’s international celebrity and monetary rewards should have added up to an immense satisfaction. But no, according to David Michaelis’s new biography.

It a surprise when a former editor of Time (one Stefan Kanfer) writes with the accuracy of a third grade book report…

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Charlie Brown, (at) All American?

There’s been a little editing back-and-forth over at Wikipedia about what is put in the “nationality” field for the various Peanuts kids. Thing is, in what is considered absolute canon — the strip itself — this question is never actually answered. Most of the time that you see the word …

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Something hatted, something hated

I’d been wondering about this for a while, so I decided to finally check the dates to see which was the inspiration and which the copy. Meanwhile, to bring us into the present moment…. artificial “intelligence”, how I hate you. Share the news!

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On the four panel status

For more than the first three decades of Peanuts, the daily strip was always four panels… well, no, that’s not quite 100% true, as I think of the August 31, 1954 daily strip of Patty jumping rope, but even that had panel breaks at the quarter, half, and three-quarter marks …