October 2: Peanuts Debuts

On 2 October 1950, Peanuts, created by Charles M. Schulz, premiered in nine newspapers across the country including The Washington Post and The Denver Post. It became a daily strip quickly after its national premiere.

Charles Schulz made history with his comic strip. The very first strip included a scene where Charlie Brown is walking by two other children. The one child lauds Charlie as he walks by but then soon after Charlie Brown passes the boy tells the other child how he hates Charlie. This strip was really ground-breaking because rarely had other comic strips expressed children’s hatred for others.

Schulz did not explicitly address racial and gender equality issues in Peanuts so much as he assumed them to be self-evident. Over the years Schulz also took on different topics from the Vietnam War, to dress codes at school, and to other social issues within the country. It seemed that no topic was off limits for Schulz.

While religion wasn’t as touchy of a subject in the 1980s and 1990s as it is now, A Charlie Brown Christmas was still a big risk for the writer.

It was obvious that since it’s national debut in 1950, Peanuts was going to be a huge success, not only in the comic world but also in film and other media. Peanuts had numerous television and movie appearances before the strip ended on 13 February 2000, the day after Schulz’s passing.

Peanuts is regarded as one of the most influential and well-written comic strips of all time. Schulz won numerous awards for this strip. It became an American icon in it’s 50 short years and has had a mass influence on the American media culture.
Women and kids should not take this medicine as stated above in this article that make viagra cheap prices this tablet the best choice for use. Now there are many treatments and drugs available like levitra properien raindogscine.com that will enable you buy them at greatly reduced rates when buying online. Most of the young males, cialis generika who have exhausted after rigorous exercises, can enjoy faster recovery and reenergize muscles quickly. This helps to enlarge the blood vessels in the penile region to stay dilated for like this generic sildenafil a longer time.

–Robert “Bobby” Casler


Meet the Author: Robert Casler

I am a student in my last year at Schoolcraft College and will be transferring to Western Michigan University next year. I plan to major in finance while also pursing my goal of becoming a corporate lawyer. Some of my interests include music, sports, and movies. I love to watch older movies and really unravel the story lines and figure out what the writer’s message is. While business is my life I also have a soft spot for writing. My goal is to one day publish a fictional book.


6 Responses

  1. Sarah Lloyd says:

    Comic strips have been appearing in newspapers ever since newspaper printing began in the early 1600’s. Prior to that time, there were cartoon drawings on tablets of stone, wood, and papyrus. In fact, no one knows the exact date the first comic strip appeared. The history of comic strips may be tricky, but one cannot deny the significant role it has played in the shaping of journalism as we know it today.
    A cave painting found from the caves at Lascaux in France was found. Cave painting is the earliest known form of sequential art. Frequently depicting animals, these illustrations were usually an illustrated chapter of a prehistoric tribe’s hunt for food in 170th century BC. For some twenty centuries, Egyptian rulers were deemed as deities and were immortalized in Egyptian hieroglyphics inside the great pyramids. One found in the tomb of Neferronpet, nineteenth dynasty, from about 1300 BC. Greek and Roman rulers were similarly immortalized in marble carvings that told their stories around the sides of ancient structures like one from the outer circumference of the Parthenon, in Athens, Greece 400 BC.
    There is evidence of people using sketches to tell stories as far back to caveman. However, it was not until the early 20th century that people began to acknowledge the important role the comic strip has played in world history. For this reason, recordkeeping about comic strips did not occur prior to the 20th century. Most of the information about the development of comics prior to the 20th century is based on hearsay, while other statistics were formulated from assumption.

  2. Rachael Reister says:

    The Peanuts comics created by Charles Schulz had a broad number of topics portrayed to the public as stated above by Robert. He also stated how in the 80’s and 90’s that it wasn’t as controversial as it is today. Recently, there has been an outbreak of controversy in many schools and churches because of the religious references made in the film. Charlie Brown Christmas has multiple references from the bible stating verses about the birth of baby Jesus. The Nativity is from the book of Luke and describes the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem to his mother Mary. These religious views main come from the Catholic Church or other Christian religions. According to the Book of Luke, Jesus was born to the Virgin Mary and Joseph. They traveled across Jerusalem for a long time looking for a place to stay. No one had room anywhere until they found themselves to an inn with a manger. Baby Jesus was born and many came from afar to give him gifts and adore him. Those who came were of said to of followed the North Star. Angels then proclaimed Jesus would now be the King of the Jews.

    • Rachael Reister says:

      Immediately after Jesus was born, people doubted him and wanted him killed and if he could save himself, then they would believe that he was the son of God. The Salem Witch trials deemed some similar tactics trying to kill innocent people. Those who exerted any actions out of the norm were thought to be unacceptable and they must be prosecuted.

  3. Matthew Brooks says:

    its seems like over the years the peanuts have become a household cartoon that parents past down from their children and their children past it down to theirs. The reason i say this is because my parents when i was younger have always watched the charlie brown Christmas special and the Halloween special every year.

  4. Nik Stavreski says:

    Charles M. Schulz is very open with his topics and tries to open his ideas to the world. Dr. Seuss is another person who also seems to have that same risk taking trait as Schulz. Theodor Seuss Geisel was an born in March 2, 1904 and died September 24, 1991 of cancer. He is widely known for his writing, cartoon’s and children’s books. “Dr. Seuss” came about from a time in college, when he got caught drinking in his dorm room, and was put on probation for violating the laws of Prohibition, and striped Geisel of his editorship. To work around his punishment and still be able to publish work, he used the alias name “Seuss” then later used “Dr. Seuss” as to mock the scholarly title.

  5. Nick Rotter says:

    The Peanuts comic strip has been around forever and I think everybody has either read one or watched one of the many movies or TV specials. Currently there are 45 TV specials, the most famous of these include A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. The Peanuts comic strips and cartoons will be around forever. It is a timeless classic that kids generations from now will be enjoying just as I did as a kid.

Leave a Reply