The Comics of Charles Schulz: The Good Grief of Modern Life by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781496812896
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2017-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

PEANUTS AND HISTORY

-7-

FOOTBALLS AND OTTIM LIFFS

Charlie Brown in Coconino

MICHAEL TISSERAND

There’s something about Peanuts that reminds me of Krazy Kat.

CARL SANDBURG1

Officer Pupp sees the football on the ground, but he doesn’t notice a string attached to one end. Pupp takes off running. His foot goes out; the string tightens and the ball pulls away. Pupp flies in the air, throwing one leg skyward. He lands hard.

Ignatz emerges from behind a brick wall, blowing smoke rings from a tiny cigar. “Lost your equilibrium, Officer Pupp?” he asks slyly.

This scene from George Herriman’s comic strip Krazy Kat first appeared in newspapers on the day after Christmas, 1932. At the time, ten-year-old Charles “Sparky” Schulz was a comics-loving student at Richards Gordon Elementary School in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Yet Schulz didn’t read this strip or follow Krazy Kat at all. The Minneapolis Tribune had once carried Herriman’s comics, but by 1932, Schulz later recalled, William Randolph Hearst’s King Features Syndicate had no Krazy Kat customers in the Twin Cities. Possibly, young Schulz knew the name “Krazy Kat” from early-1930s animations that screened at the nearby Park Theatre, but those weren’t Herriman’s works.

Unseen by Schulz, then, Herriman’s football gag stretched over the final week of 1932. On one day, Krazy tries and fails to kick the ball, and goes flying. On another, Pupp gives the ball a kick and discovers it’s made of stone. The series ends as do many of Herriman’s tales, with a modernist acknowledgment that it’s all a comic strip. This time, Pupp hits the ball with his billy club and makes it explode in a splash of printer’s ink.

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