Imagine being someone not only regarded as one of the all-time greats in your profession but also being one who is almost universally beloved among your peers.
Odds are pretty good that your name is Charles Schulz.
For 50 years, Schulz entertained the word every day with his comic strip “Peanuts.”
The world? You bet. When I first went overseas in 1976, the International Herald-Tribune carried exactly one comic strip that ran in American papers — “Peanuts.”
There isn’t another comic strip that created so many memorable characters, from Snoopy to Linus, from Lucky to Charlie Brown.
When Schulz died in 2000, the strip ran in more than 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of around 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages.In all its iterations, it earned Schulz more than $1 billion, back when $1 billion meant something.
Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Schulz’s birth, and dozens of cartoonists honored him with reference in their strips.
There was “Blondie,” which antedated “Peanuts:”
There was “Beetle Bailey,” first published a month before “Peanuts:”
There was “Tank McNamara,” which came along in the 1970s:
Then a more modern one, “Zits:”
And “Pearls Before Swine,” my personal favorite as the most intelligent strip still running in daily papers:
Many of the great old strips were passed down from father to son or from artist to assistant. Others just faded away. Schulz’s family offered the original strips as reruns, and hundreds of papers still carry “Peanuts.”
In 50 years of originals and 22 of reruns, the strip was always intelligent and never mean-spirited.
Schulz even had a a rerun of his own. When the Van Pelts had a third child, a little brother for Lucy and Linus, his parents named him Rerun.
He was one of the first cartoonists to integrate his strip, and one of the most successful at TV, film and theatrical spinoffs as well as merchandising in the form of books, toys and stuffed animals.
“Peanuts” is without a doubt the best-known name of any comic strip, which of course brings us to a wonderful irony.
Schulz wanted to call the strip “L’il Folks,”
He absolutely hated the name “Peanuts.”