Peanuts and My Writing

[AndrewCrossett]

Gasoline Alley ran in my local paper until a couple of years ago.

I was very into comic strip history for a while when I was younger (animation history, too), so I would probably love this park... but, I'd probably be alone in that.

Come have a meet-and-greet with Moon Mullins, Barney Google and the Toonerville folks! No pushing and shoving, please... plenty of time for everyone to get their Katzenjammer Kids autographs.

[Endy52]

Peanuts & BC was a huge influence; my nickname growing up was Clumsy Carp, the guy who could trip on his own shadow but still be nimble enough to make "water balls".

[Spiffy]

You just named four of the five strips that had the biggest impact on me personally, although I'd actually throw B.C. into the mix. (On a personal level)

Bloom County, Doonesbury, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes and B.C. were all pretty constant obsessions of mine from an early age (Calvin and Hobbes a little later, but, still...).

There were other strips I obsessed over (Popeye/Thimble Theater, Barnaby, Polly and Her Pals, Krazy Kat, the Far Side, and on and on), but those strips had a real impact on my outlook, and a big influence on my creativing thinking.

-BCM

Has anyone else seen these? They were done like a year and a half ago, but apparently they are um... meming again a bit lately.

http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/arc...bes-and-bacon/
http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/arc...and-bacon-002/
http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/arc...nd-bacon-03-2/
http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/arc...nd-bacon-04-2/

[Gail Simone]

I say again, sirs, PEANUTS.

[Dr Ray Palmer]

"Peanuts" hugely shaped the way I see the world.

[Dr Ray Palmer]

Woodstock has always been my favorite character, and I think there's something hugely profound about the way he sees and interacts with the world, but I find something of myself in just about all the characters. As a kid and especially a teenager, I identified most with Charlie Brown, but as an adult I find myself drawn to Sally and her sense of confusion and outrage at being pushed and pulled by the absurdity of the world. She tries to fight back and take some control but in the end, like her brother, she mostly finds herself acted upon. I rejoice in her little victories.

[Patrick Gerard]

I'd say, for me, it's:

Calvin and Hobbes, Mother Goose and Grimm, The Far Side, Foxtrot.

Peanuts and Garfield were more often than not misses for me. But both could hit a powerful chord for me when they hit.

Take "The 9 Lives of Garfield" or the one a few years back that implies Garfield is living in a house, talking to hallucinations. Jim Davis is capable of going beyond the mundane in his strips, even if he goes straight for morbid and terrifying when he does. But I think the funnies need a dose of that.

I'd say where Peanuts usually hit me were in the Charlie Brown/Lucy exchanges or the rare bit about the red headed girl. Otherwise, it's too cute and too sweet for me, which is the same overall attitude I have towards the Simpson's, which I like when it hits bittersweet notes but which I find overall to be too warm and silly.

[CutterMike]

I always appreciated Peanuts, but neither of the daily papers we got carried it, so my relatively early experience with it was in the paperback collections in the '60 and it was never one of the formative ones for me.

B.C., certainly, and Pogo was brilliant. We got Li'l Abner which, even then, I loved for the artwork over the story. Later on, of course, Doonesbury and Calvin & Hobbes and Bloom Country were mind-blowing.

Even early on, though, I was all about the adventure strips. Hal Foster"s Prince Valiant, Dan Barry's Flash Gordon, Milt Caniff's Steve Canyon, Saunders and Overgard"s Steve Roper, and Frank Robbins' Johnny Hazard. My favorite, though, was the western strip Rick O'Shay by Stan Lynde.

Lynde, besides being an absolutely impeccable draftsman, did the strip in what I consider the most difficult style imaginable: daily "punchline" strips that each contributed to generally serious serial stories (In the early years the stories were set more or less in the present and tended to be more comedic. Later on, Lynde simply announced that henceforward all stories took place exactly 100 years ago and became more generally serious. Sunday strips were generally gag strips unrelated to the weekday continuities.). The characters" faces were drawn in a rather cartoony style while the figures were generally fairly realistic. Scenery, animals and accoutrements were drawn with scrupulous accuracy. Besides the titular character, Sheriff Rick O'Shay, the regular cast included his best friend, hired gunslinger Hipshot Percussion, the owner of the local dance hall (later Rick's longtime girlfriend and eventual wife) Miss Gaye Abandon, gambler Deuces Wylde, town banker Mort Gage, Doc Basil Metabolism, and on and on. The whole thing worked seamlessly.

When I was away at college, I asked my mother to clip and send two comic strips that I couldn't get locally in her weekly letters: Doonesbury and Rick O'Shay. My roommates quickly began to look forward to my mother's letters as much as I did!

[Cam63]

So does this explains why you can only write on the roof of your house?

So, that's why Gail walks like a cowboy !

[ever_seeking]

So does this explains why you can only write on the roof of your house?

And her imagined dogfights on a sopwith camel?

P.S. Who gets the vulture glare?