Peanuts is often
regarded as one of the most influential and well-written
comic strips of all time.
Charles
M. Schulz, the author, was born in Minneapolis in 1922, his
father was German and his mother Norwegian, he began the
publication of Peanuts on October 2, 1950, at the beginning,
it appeared in seven different American
newspapers. It was a daily strip which consisted
of four panels. The style was minimalist, with
simple
characters and backgrounds.
The strip
probably reached its peak of popularity in the period
between 1965 and 1980, in those times it was published in
2600 newspapers in 75 countries and a lot of television
animated specials were produced. Anyway, the comic strip
never ceased to appear until January 2, 2000, year in which
Schulz retireddue to health reasons. That is to
say, it ran for almost 50 years in which around 18000
different strips were published!
The initial
cast of
characters was very small, consisting of only Charlie Brown, Shermy and Patty and Snoopy, a beagle dog.
As the years went by
Shermy and Patty appeared less often and new major
characters were introduced: Schroeder, who plays the piano,
Lucy van Pelt, who is usually very bad-tempered, and her brother Linus,
who often carries a blanket, and later Charlie
Brown’s younger sister Sally.
In spite of the fifty years of
uninterrupted appearance of the comic strip, the characters
in it never grow any older, except baby characters who
age
just as much as to catch up to the rest and then stop.
Apart
from the comic strip, a lot of cartoons for television and
cinema have been produced and there is a lot of
merchandising surrounding the Peanuts characters!
