October 02, 2008

good ol' charlie brown

Today, October 2, is “Peanuts day,” since it marks the anniversary of the date of the first Peanuts cartoon in 1950. Snoopy.com, the official online home of all things Peanuts, has the first Peanuts comic strip. Being a conscientious blogger, I won’t just swipe and reprint it here – you really should click on through.

What I love about that first strip is how true to form it is in terms of tone; sure the characters and their voices evolved over the years, but even the first one is spot on. (You can also learn at Snoopy.com that it took less than a year for Charlie Brown to first be called a blockhead.) My kids are getting into Peanuts now, and I need to put some of the Peanuts box sets on my wishlist for Christmas, so they can spend extended periods of time soaking up “the strip’s still-surprising balance of exuberance and misery.”[1]

[1] That line’s from the Amazon.com review of the Schulz and Peanuts biography. And you know what? I actually like most Amazon.com reviews.