One beloved American comic strip has allowed readers to see the world through the eyes of children – and a feisty beagle, too – for 75 years this year.
Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and all their friends entered American pop culture (and our own hearts) in 1950. Penned by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, the Peanuts strip followed the adventures of a boy named Charlie Brown (ever the underdog, unlucky in both life and love, he was nonetheless the most lovable loser in the Sunday funny pages), along with his rambunctious beagle Snoopy, whose imagination and taste for adventure rivaled his owner’s desire to finally kick a football that was always pulled just out of reach.

Over the years and then decades, a menagerie of friends would join ol’ Chuck, including, to name just a few, Linus Van Pelt, a philosophically minded boy always attached at the hip to his blue security blanket; Linus’ sister Lucy, a bossy, self-proclaimed fussbudget who delighted in tormenting Charlie with the aforementioned football; Schroeder, a highly talented piano prodigy who was singularly focused on his music; and Sally, Charlie’s younger sister whose unrequited love for Schroeder – her “sweet baboo” – seemed neverending.

Before the Peanuts gang hit the scene, Schulz, a military veteran and lifelong illustrator, drew his first comic strip, Li’l Folks, for the St. Paul (MN) Pioneer Press in the late 1940s. Li’l Folks first featured the Charlie Brown character, whom Schulz named after a fellow instructor at an art school where he taught. In those strips, Charlie Brown didn’t yet wear what would become his signature zigzag shirt, though he was accompanied by his best friend, a dog who looked like what would become Snoopy but wasn’t yet given that name.

United Features Syndicate, catching wind of the popularity of Schulz’s comic, agreed to sign a contract to produce a daily strip for syndication. The syndicate pushed for Schulz to use the title “Peanuts,” an idea that Schulz would later say he hated. Why, Schulz argued, would he use that title when there was no character with that name? Still, Schulz reluctantly agreed – yet for the duration of his long career, he never warmed to the idea.

The 1950s

Peanuts made its debut on Oct. 2, 1950, first appearing in just seven newspapers, with Schulz receiving $90 for his first month of content.
Longtime fans who read the earliest strips will note many differences of the characters from those early days and the ones they have come to know and love. Charlie Brown’s entire personality is perhaps the most notable difference. In the early 1950s, Charlie Brown was “flippant, gradually growing into the kinder, gentler hero who most readers are now familiar with,” according to the Charles M. Schulz Museum’s website.

Later, Schulz said of Charlie Brown, “He’s a caricature. We all know what it’s like to lose, but Charlie Brown keeps losing outrageously. It’s not that he’s a loser; he’s really a decent little sort.”

Charlie Brown’s shirt with the iconic zigzag pattern would make its debut in December of that same year. Joining Chuck was his beagle pal Snoopy, who would walk on all fours until 1957, when Schulz first depicted him walking on his hind legs only.

Throughout the decade, readers would be introduced to most of the strip’s primary characters – Schroeder and Violet in 1951; in 1952, Lucy and Linus; eternally filthy Pigpen in 1954; and in 1959, Sally. The art in Schulz’s comic strip was cleaner, sleeker, and simpler, with thicker lines and short, squat characters,” according to the museum, and Charlie Brown’s head began as the shape of a football; it wasn’t completely round, as it would appear in future years.

By the end of the decade, Schulz had decided that he alone would produce all aspects of the comics, from the drawing to the text to the inking. He never employed assistants in his studio.

The 1960s

The ‘60s was considered the Peanuts strip’s Golden Age, incorporating more social commentary, as well as expanding Snoopy’s fantasy world in which he flew his doghouse throughout the sky as the World War I Flying Ace. Readers would meet new characters throughout the decade, including Charlie Brown’s crush, the Little Red-Haired Girl, in 1961; the freckled and tomboyish Peppermint Patty and Woodstock (initially unnamed) in 1966; and Franklin, the comic strip’s first Black character, in 1968 (Schulz created Franklin after a fan who worked as a schoolteacher wrote to Schulz shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., asking Schulz to introduce a Black character in the strip). The Peanuts comic strips of the 1960s tackled other social issues and topics of the day, including the inclusion of women in sports (Charlie Brown’s baseball team featured both boys and girls), the Vietnam War, the space race, and school dress codes.

A new generation of children were introduced to the Peanuts gang in December 1965, when the strip’s first television special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,”made its debut on CBS. The special might be best known for its heavy use of religious themes, including Linus reading Luke 2:8-14 in the Bible in order to explain the true meaning of Christ-mas. In that same year, Peanuts characters appeared on the cover of Time mag-azine. Another TV special, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” first aired the following year, in 1966. At the end of the decade, in December 1969, the strip’s first feature-length film, “A Boy Named Charlie Brown,” opened in theaters.

The 1970s

Snoopy’s avian friend Woodstock finally received his name in 1970, and Peppermint Patty’s bookish friend Marcie, who only refers to Patty as “sir,” made her debut in 1971. Meanwhile, Linus and Lucy’s younger brother Rerun was born in 1973.

Despite the introduction of more characters, by the 1970s, it was clear that Snoopy had become the most popular. Schulz began to incorporate Snoopy into more comics, giving him the alternate personality of sunglasses-wearing Joe Cool, as well as an integral (and memorable) role in 1973’s “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving,” the strip’s 10th TV special. Snoopy’s brother, the desert-dwelling Spike, was introduced in 1975.

Schulz faced criticism for his focus on Snoopy, with fellow cartoonists praising his earlier Peanuts strips as being more cerebral and thought-provoking in nature and criticizing his later cartoons for being “lighter and more whimsical.” Schulz himself recognized that Snoopy’s dominance in his strip was at least a possibility. “I have to be careful not to let the ubiquitous beagle run away with the strip,” he mused.

In The New York Press, one artist would respond to Schulz’s statement by writing, “Snoopy proved a calamitous artistic misjudgment through which the most intelligent comic strip the world had ever seen was transformed, by the late 1970s, into a thoroughly third-rate feature.”