Ten years ago today, the final Peanuts strip came out.
It seemed like the end of Peanuts, but really it wasn’t. The strips were still there, and so few of us had read them all, so there was still much more to discover. There are still rarely-seen pieces being unearthed to delight the dedicated Peanuts fan, and there are still new Peanuts fans coming into being all the time. My daughter wasn’t alive when the strip ended, but now she delights in what she sees and still has so much of the strip to discover. New Peanuts animation has continued, first on TV and more recently on computer. The characters still reach out in ways beyond storytelling media – how many people will visit a theme park with a new Planet Snoopy this year? Peanuts books have clearly not stopped, some reminding us of what we know, some looking at it all in different ways.
Perhaps the day shall come when Peanuts is done, when it is almost solely a referenced relic like Fibber McGee, or is known only in a form far removed from its source, like Buster Brown. But that day is not now, it does not look to be soon, and every time you share a good strip with someone, you delay it that much further.
