Charlie Brown

The Peanuts ([ˈpinəts] pronounced, English for peanuts) is the title of a successful comic book series. The American author and cartoonist Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000) portrayed the contradictions of human life through a group of suburban American children in his strips, which were published daily for decades. Adults do not appear as characters.

In 1947, there were the first releases under the title Li'l Folks (Little Folks) and initially a signum Sparky, Schulz's nickname. From October 2, 1950 to February 13, 2000, the series appeared under the title Peanuts (Little Things; literally, Peanuts). On February 12, 2000, the day before the last strip was published in the Sunday papers, Charles M. Schulz died. The death of the creator of the cartoon series was mourned worldwide. According to Schulz's will, the series was not to be continued, just as Hergé had decreed with Tintin.

In contradiction, new stories have nonetheless been published in comic book form since 2012. Vicki Scott has developed and sketched these stories, Paige Braddock has executed the drawings. In 2014, the first volume of these stories was published in German by Cross-Cult-Verlag/Toonfish (Peanuts - Auf zu den Sternen, Charlie Brown!).

In Germany, Peanuts was primarily published by the publishers AAR and Krüger. However, the rights were transferred numerous times to other publishers in so-called partial marketing agreements.

Since 2004, the American publisher Fantagraphics Books has published a complete Peanuts edition called The Complete Peanuts in 25 volumes (two years per volume in chronological order). The last volume of the edition, the years 1999 and 2000, was released on 16 May 2016. The German-language implementation Peanuts Werkausgabe was published by Carlsen Verlag starting in August 2006, also with two years per volume. The final volume (1999 and 2000) was released at the end of 2018.

The German literary critic Denis Scheck even included Peanuts in his canon of the 100 most important works of world literature. He wrote of them: "The troubles and woes of Peanuts are not a cheap substitute, not a model of the human world scaled down to fit children, but the real world theatre of little and big people itself."

Figures

Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown is in a sense the main character among the Peanuts. He is the son of a barber and has a little sister named Sally. He is an ardent admirer of the fictional baseball player Joe Shlabotnik. He owns a dog named Snoopy, whose craziness and goofiness he puts up with good-naturedly.

Charlie Brown is a perennial loser and jinx, whose baseball team, with him as manager, almost never wins (to make matters worse, one victory is even disallowed; in one comic version, Snoopy catches the decisive ball after Charlie first drops it, and is thus celebrated as the winner by the team instead of Charlie). In addition, his kites regularly end up in the "kite-eating tree" (though in one comic he explodes, in another he is completely buried under the kite string, and in yet another he even tries to fly kites in the winter).

Charlie Brown is the victim of evil pranks by all the girls and especially Lucy, who, as a psychiatrist, can't help him and instead regularly pulls the football out from under him. However, Lucy is also the one who gives him psychological counseling, even though she is largely responsible for his mental problems. Charlie Brown is hopelessly in love with a little redheaded girl. Because of this, he doesn't realize that both Marcie and Peppermint Patty are in love with him.

Charlie Brown is a serious, unhappy child and thus, according to cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, a reflection of his own childhood.

Snoopy

Snoopy (English: to snoop around) is Charlie Brown's pet dog, who rarely behaves in a manner befitting his species. Most of the time, the beagle lies on the roof of his doghouse and pursues philosophical thoughts while waiting for the food that the "little round-headed boy" (Charlie Brown) brings him. If the food is missing, it sometimes happens that a bug is in his food bowl, mistaking it for a stadium. Snoopy can't talk, and he communicates with thoughts and dances ("That's his 'Haha-you-have-to-shovel-snow-and-I-don't' dance," Charlie Brown to Linus) as well as writing (in comics, among other things, signs expressing exactly what he wants to say). Otherwise, he lives in a fantasy world where he acts as the English "World War I flying ace" in a Sopwith Camel protecting the world from the Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the "world-famous supermarket cashier" ("Actually, there aren't more than a dozen world-famous supermarket cashiers in the whole world"), or the "world-famous ice-dancing coach." Snoopy thinks fondly back to his days as a figure skater with Sonja Henie. He trains Peppermint Patty for a figure skating competition and is a very strict coach. At the competition itself, he is in charge of the music for all the contestants and drives the ice resurfacing machine during the break.

Snoopy's adventures with the Red Baron were later adapted by the rock group The Royal Guardsmen in their songs. Snoopy jogs, plays tennis, ice hockey, and is head of the Boy Scout troop around Woodstock. He is also the Easter Beagle and the first beagle on the moon. As his alter ego Joe Cool, he also likes to roller skate, wears dark sunglasses, and thinks he's the greatest surfer/wave rider on the beach.

Snoopy is an art enthusiast. He even had a real Vincent van Gogh hanging in his doghouse, which unfortunately fell victim to a fire at some point along with his pool table. But Snoopy managed to replace it with a painting by the American painter Andrew Wyeth.

He also likes to read. At some point he starts reading War and Peace, but only one word a day. Then he lies back on his doghouse and thinks about it. His goal of becoming a writer mostly fails because of the ignorance of publishers, who constantly reject his work. The first sentence of this work is: "It was a dark and stormy night" - with which Snoopy quotes from the novel Paul Clifford by the English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

He has seven siblings, including his brothers Spike (the skinny one in the desert), Andy (the fluffy furry one who still lives on the farm the eight of them came from), Olaf (the fat one who also still lives on the farm), and Tupfen (his missing brother; appears only once in a comic strip from September 1982). His best friend is Woodstock. His worst enemy is "the cat next door", who remains invisible to the reader and whom he sometimes calls "World War II".

Woodstock

Woodstock is a little yellow bird and Snoopy's best friend and secretary. Woodstock can type and take shorthand. His thoughts and expressions are represented only by strokes, which his friend Snoopy deciphers for the reader. He is very chaotic, but very lovable despite everything.

Snoopy has to rescue him from his water bowl every now and then due to his extremely poor flying skills. This is because his parents built the nest where he hatched on the sleeping Snoopy's belly. When Snoopy ran out of patience to lie still, he pulled the nest away while Woodstock was taking flying lessons with one of his unnamed siblings. With that, Snoopy forced the birds to fly out into the world with their poorly developed flying skills.

Woodstock is also in Snoopy's Boy Scout troop, which he attends regularly with his friends (Bill, Conrad, and Oliver).

The name is based on the location of the famous music festival.

Sally Brown

Charlie Brown's younger sister is born during the course of the series. She is in love with Linus, whom she calls her "bamboo bear" or "Schnuckiputzi" (but he rejects this), and is often embarrassed by her brother. Sally hates school and is always trying to stay home by making questionable excuses. Nevertheless, she does well in school and would like to be older.

Sally is quite resistant to instruction and tends to take advantage of her brother or influence him to her liking. She also never misses an opportunity to claim his room for herself. This happens especially when he is at summer camp.

In the comics, she never addresses Charlie Brown by his real name, just calls him big brother.

Lucy van Pelt

While Lucy has a doctor's booth where she gives psychological advice to her friends - and herself - for 5 cents, she also enjoys oppressing Charlie Brown and Linus. She doesn't shy away from physical violence in the process, including always pulling the football away from Charlie Brown on field goal attempts as a running gag. She also gets a kick out of teaching her little brother complete nonsense. In the American original, she once accuses him of being stupid for not knowing why farmers bring cows in from the pasture at night. She explains to him that they do so because otherwise the cows are pasteurized. Linus replies that he never realized that.

She is in love with Schroeder, at whose piano she often sits. Unfortunately for her, however, the boy has no interest in her, and so she always drives him to despair with her hints.

She is also a miserable baseball player. However, in this capacity, she respects Charlie Brown as a coach. She also cares deeply for Charlie Brown during his serious illness (1979).

Linus van Pelt

Lucy's little brother is Charlie Brown's second best friend after Snoopy and the most mature personality among the Peanuts. The two often have philosophical conversations. From Linus comes the phrase, "Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you're the Charlie Brownste." To the chagrin of his grandma and especially his sister Lucy, he still relies on his cuddle blanket, which Snoopy is always after in the comics. However, he can also use the cuddly blanket as a weapon when needed, for example to kill pesky flies in flight, which always earns him a lot of respect. That's why hardly anyone dares to make fun of him. He is also very good at building sandcastles, which Lucy is always jealous of and destroys. He is in love with his teacher Frl. Othmar and waits every year at Halloween for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin. His religiosity enables him to prove to his sister that groaning is biblical (Rom 8:22-23 EU). Despite his sister's oppression, he loves her dearly. His career goal is to be a small country doctor, driving around the country in a Porsche and healing people. Schulz considered Linus his spiritual alter ego - his Bible recitation becomes a key scene in the film The Peanuts - Merry Christmas, and at the angel's words "Fear not" Linus even lets go of the cuddly blanket protecting him.

Rerun van Pelt

The last main character introduced by Schulz was a little brother of Lucy and Linus (he looks a lot like the latter). Many strips show him on his mother's bike, a bad driver whose driving gets on his last nerve, playing basketball, in the sandbox asking Charlie Brown if Snoopy wants to play with him, or playing cards with Snoopy. Rerun wants nothing more than to be a basketball player and have a dog, but he hasn't gotten one yet because Lucy and Linus are strictly against it. Re-run means "repeat." After he is born, Lucy says "Another baby brother! All you get in life are re-runs!"

Schroeder

Schroeder worships Ludwig van Beethoven and persistently plays his works on his children's piano, whose black keys are only painted on. Because of his devoted piano playing, he usually doesn't notice Lucy's advances. When Charlie asks him how he can play all the complicated pieces without black keys, he replies, completely unperturbed, "I practice a lot." He is a good friend of Charlie Brown and a member of his baseball team.

Charles M. Schulz borrowed the name "Schroeder" from a boy he had worked with as a caddie in his youth. Schulz even said that Schroeder somehow didn't need a first name because he wasn't yet the great musician.

Peppermint Patty

Named after the brand name of a candy (her real name, Patricia Reichardt, is almost never mentioned), she doesn't come straight from the neighborhood of Charlie Brown and his friends. She manages a baseball team that he constantly loses to, and she coaches him for a track meet. In some ways, she represents an independent, modern woman, is athletic (including baseball, skating, and rugby), and is able to take on anyone. Despite this, she only ever writes 'Fours or Fives Minuses' in school and doesn't realise Snoopy is a dog for a long time until her friend Marcie points it out to her directly.
She is also in love with Charlie Brown and calls him by the pet name Chuck, which has been translated as Schatz in the German comic strips and films.

She has a close relationship with her father. Although it is never stated outright, she appears to be half-orphaned. In one comic, she rather casually says to her best friend Marcie, "I don't have a mother, Marcie." Marcie mostly just calls her "sir" (= "my lord"). Peppermint Patty has given up pointing out to Marcie that she's not a "sir" ("Don't always call me 'my sir'!").

Peppermint Patty is constantly falling asleep at school because she suffers from narcolepsy. She once visited a center for sleep disorders, where, strangely, nothing is found. She tends to be arrogant and self-important in her few successes, most of which come by accident.

Patty also wears sandals (or bathing slippers) in the winter, although she wears a jacket and longer pants then. In the summer she almost always wears dark blue shorts, green polo shirt (with pinstripes) and said bathing shoes.

Marcie

Marcie is Peppermint Patty's best friend and a member of her baseball team. Nevertheless, the two compete for Charlie Brown, who doesn't even notice this situation.

Marcie, unlike her friend, is quiet, does well in school, and doesn't share her broad interest in sports, but even allows herself to be persuaded to participate in a decathlon competition out of loyalty, which she actually wins. Marcie is also not afraid to call Peppermint Patty to remind her of her homework. They met at a summer camp; since then, Peppermint Patty has been called "sir" by Marcie and is on a first-name basis. In the comic version, however, Marcie ducks Patty and calls her "boss" instead of "sir", which seems to suit Patty better. In Snoopy's visions of the World War I pilot, she is the French waitress at the café who serves him malt beer (root-beer in the original).

Franklin

Schulz first drew Franklin in 1968, adding an African-American boy to the group. In the first strip featuring Franklin, he met Charlie Brown on the beach. His father was stationed in Vietnam at the time of the introduction. When Franklin told this to Charlie Brown, he said, "My father's a barber. He was in the war too, but I don't know which one". Franklin has similar interests to Linus; both are interested in the Old Testament and quote from it frequently.

Other figures

• Charlotte Braun (an anytime loud-talking girl introduced in 1954 who disappeared after a few strips).
• Pig Pen (from pigpen "pigsty" - an extremely dirty boy who is always surrounded by a cloud of dust and is called a dirt magnet)
• Snoopy's siblings (in the original American version): Spike, Andy, Belle, Marbles, Molly, Olaf and Rover. (In the German version, they partly have different names, Marbles is called Tupfen, for example); Spike in particular had multiple appearances, in which he is denied access to a golf club, for example ("No Spikes").
• Violet (snobby neighborhood girl, one of the main characters of the early years, friend of Patty, tall and with a ponytail, from the 1960s on only a minor character)
• Patty (appears in the very first comic, friend of Violet, motherly and neat, blonde and always with hair bow, from the 1960s only a minor character)
• Eudora (weird, always perplexed friend of Sally)
• The Little Red-Haired Girl (Charlie Brown's unattainable and - except in two TV specials and the 3D theatrical film, in which she goes by the name Heather - never visible crush).
• Molly Volley (tennis partner of Snoopy)
• Miss Othmar (never to be seen teacher of Linus)
• 5 (full name: 555 "5" 94572 (zip code of Schulz's hometown Sebastopol), a neighborhood boy) and his sisters 3 and 4.
• Frieda (imagines a lot about her naturally curly hair and likes to try to force Snoopy to chase rabbits)
• Shermy (Charlie Brown's friend in the early comics, largely devoid of distinct character traits, disappeared by the late 1950s).
• Roy (boy with no special character traits, has black hair and wears a rectangular cap)
• World War II (the never to be seen cat next door)
• Out-Andy (a tennis player who thinks any shot he doesn't like is an "out").
• Quengel-Lilly or "crybaby" Patzer (tennis player who whines all the time and tennis partner of Aus-Andy)
• Lila (was Snoopy's owner before Charlie Brown)

Snoopy in his role as a flying ace on a patch of the 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron of the USAF


Peanuts mural in Aachen on the occasion of the Comiciade 2016

Story location

The series is predominantly set in a typical American suburb in the northern Midwest of the USA. The main characters live in typical, wood-paneled bungalows that are located either on a street or a sidewalk. Important other locations include the baseball field where Charlie Brown and his team practice, and a suburban school where all the Peanuts kids attend. Many scenes also take place in a town center that consists almost entirely of older brick buildings.

Although the series never describes which city or region the Peanuts live in, the climate and geography shown, the architecture of the local buildings, the international airport at the beginning of Good Voyage, Charlie Brown, as well as the stay at summer camp in The Summer Was Very Short clearly argue for a plot location in northern Minnesota, where Schulz himself spent the longest part of his childhood in a similar suburb.