You're Our Kind of Dog, Snoopy by Charles M. Schulz

'I try to be consistent in their personalities but I also think that none of us is ever really consistent in the things that we do and say,' he said. without each one of those characters being a little bit of myself.' That's probably why they changed in little ways over time, he added.

Schulz spent a lot of time with his characters over the decades (as did the public: By 2000 Peanuts was running in more than 2,500 newspapers in 75 countries).Īnd he related to each of them, telling Fresh Air that he doubted it would be possible to 'do something every day with a group of characters. Brennan Spark Photography It remains a source of comfort, even in reruns Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, Calif., says it has welcomed more than 1 million visitors from around the world since it opened in 2002 and has the largest collection of original comic strips on display at any given time. he was so different than what was on the page when he first started.' 'And also Charles Schulz was the first one to really talk about emotions in the strip, so it changed the cartooning industry. 'We could relate to his strip, like we could see ourselves as Charlie Brown - our kite's stuck in a tree again or the frustration of something happening,' she says. And creatively, Huntsinger says, he was a genius. And they weren't like the other cartoons on the funny pages at that time, Huntsinger says.Īesthetically, Schulz's lines were simple and minimalistic, using only what was necessary to tell the story. The first Peanuts strip appeared in newspapers across the country in October 1950. And so I created Patty and Shermy and those were the four lead characters.' 'So I said, 'Well, that's no problem,' because I already knew I liked to draw a little dog, and I just went home and I asked my friend Charlie Brown if I could use his name and he said that was fine. 'They said, 'Well you'll have to create some definite characters,' ' Schulz remembered. When he went to New York to sign the contract he brought half a dozen strips with him, and the syndication service immediately said they'd rather go with a strip because they were easier to market.

Schulz's original submission to United Feature Syndicate was a panel cartoon rather than a strip, meaning it had no 'definite characters,' Schulz himself recalled in a 1990 interview with NPR's Fresh Air.

Schulz told NPR's Fresh Air decades later that he regretted drawing that strip because he thought 'I hate him' was too strong a declaration. Charlie Brown looked a little different in his official debut in 1950.

You're Our Kind of Dog, Snoopy by Charles M. Schulz