Reportedly, the Peanuts characters represent facets of cartoonist Charles Schulz's personality as well as his perspectives on the 20th century. Check out PBS tonight for an hour show on the cartoonist.

Poor Charlie Brown he never got to kick the football.

 

Because it's close to Halloween, the tried-and-true Peanuts strips about the Great Pumpkin are being re-(re-re-re-)run. And, while reading the one yesterday, something occurred to me:

Shultz' dark side is something (apparently) that comes out a bit in the PBS special tonight, if the newspaper columns can be believed; and this less-than-sweetness-and-light aspect of his personality is something that's been discussed before.

Could it be that the Great Pumpkin business was written as pointed social satire (rather than the humorous misunderstanding of poor Linus)? HPH

 

I loved the Great Pumpkin cartoon ages ago. My uncle took a carload of us kids to an huge tank (oil tank?) down in Long Beach (?) California, when I was a kid. It was painted to be the "Great Pumpkin." I think there was someone giving out free popcorn or something too.

Also, had the Charlie Brown Christmas tree stick our heads. When we would go pick out a cut tree for Christmas, if the more bare types were for sale, we'd steer away from those Charlie Brown kind.

 

 

That was an interesting show. Comic books were my escape as a only child growing up, so I could relate to a lot of that since that's when I started drawing as well.