Cartoonist of the Peanuts Strip

Charles Monroe Schulz was born on November 26, 1922 in St. Paul Minnesota the son of a barber, but within a week he had earned the nickname he would keep for the rest of his live "Sparky", ironically after a cartoon strip horse of the time called Sparkplug. As a boy he used to copy his favourite cartoons, Mikey Mouse, Popeye and Krazy Kat. He took a correspondence course in art but only got a C+ for drawing children. He was drafted during the Second World and rose to the rank of staff sergeant leading a machine gun squad.

In 1948 his sold hos first drawing to the Saturday Evening News and two years later Li'l Folks was syndicated by United Features, where he was encouraged to expand from a single picture to a strip. Renamed Peanuts the first of thousands of Peanuts cartoons appeared in October 1950. Eventually the strip would be drawn daily only by Schulz for 50 years and syndicated to 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries.

Peanuts

Schulz said that if anyone read his strip for two month they would know all of his neuroseses, for he based the main charector Charlie Brown ¹ a born loser, firmly on himself. In the 50 years of the strip, Lucy Van Pelt a bad mannered girl never let Charlie kick the football, she also ran a highly profitable Psychiatric Booth at a nickel a time. Her kid brother Linus was a thumb sucking philosopher, never parted from his security blanket ². The fantasy was provided by Snoopy a beagle of enormous talents, he even had his own book published, his dog kennel ³ was his desk for his typewriter, his World War One bi-plane, and a place to sleep on though never in ⁴, and Woodstock the yellow bird was the sidekick in the sickly looking tree above. Peppermint Paddy was added in the 70's along with an almost Private Secretary like companion.

Sparky was diagnosed with Colon cancer late in 1999 and decided he would retire from his daily job on the 4 January 2000. United Features promised noone else would draw the strip for syndication and started to issue classics from 1974 instead. As Charles M. Schulz died in his sleep on 13 February, the final Sunday strip was running on the presses, the man who had announced his retirement from 50 years of entertaining the world never really retired and will propably never really be forgotten.

Further Reading

Read my Poem in memorium to the man who made the world laugh.

Also check out the H2G2 obituary and Wowbanger's commemerative cartoon in the POST of 21 Feb 2000.