In January 1962, newspapers began running this Charles Schulz piece promoting… newspapers! Yes, newspapers were very special, and newspapers wanted you to know that.

Some papers ran it in full color in the Sunday funnies, others ran it in just black-and-white line art or in greyscale in the main sections. It was laid out like many Sunday strips were, so that you could run it without the first two panels..

…or drop just the second panel, and run it in a vertical format.

And then there’s this abomination:

I mean, I understand the campaigns to get comics out of the gutter, but I will never understand the efforts to get gutters out of comics.

Some papers replaced bits of the text with tributes to presumably their own paper’s efforts.

And the Courier-News made sure to let you know that telling you that newspapers did service for the public was indeed itself a public service!

Thanks to the twitter feed A Daily Schulz for launching me down this rabbit hole.

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