Good Grief
it’s a perfect phrase for the way I’m feeling about new Peanuts content in a post Schulz world.
Charles Schulz always insisted that only he could draw Peanuts. I know this because it said so in his obituary.
Nobody is trying to draw new Peanuts comic strips. The daily syndicated feature, which still runs in papers, consists of reruns. But last year, Boom Studios released a new Peanuts comic book that features brand new stories written and drawn by not Charles Schulz.
And now there’s news of a new feature length animated movie, by the makers of Ice Age. That’s right. I said the makers of Ice Age. The new movie, we’re being told, will be scripted by Craig Schulz and Bryan Schulz, who are Schulz’s son and grandson. We’re being told this because why? That’s good news? That means it’s going to be okay?
Look, I’m a cartoonist, and while my comic strip is pretty retarded when compared to Peanuts, I care very deeply about the work and the characters that inhabit it. I love my wife with all of my heart but I don’t want her writing PvP. Nor my brother, who is probably the only other person on the planet who thinks about PvP as much as I do. I don’t have kids but if I did I would encourage them to tell their own stories with their own characters and not feel burdened to carry my flag. If I wouldn’t trust anyone else to get something as dumb as PvP right, how can we expect anyone else to get Peanuts right?
Dear America, it’s okay for things to die. It’s poetic and gives the work more meaning that there ISN’T more of it. We don’t have to keep making shit until we dilute it to a point where we fucking hate it.
Nobody else can make new Peanuts because Peanuts was an expression of everything that was Charles Schulz. It was him channeled through ink onto paper. Any new Peanuts content can only be dirivitive works. If Charles Schulz didn’t write and draw it, it’s not Peanuts. It’s a reasonable facimilie at best and an unreasonable one at worst.
End of argument.
I know that there are some cartoonists (Mork Walker, Dik Browne, Bil Keane), who worked with and groomed their sons to take over their comic strips. I have read nothing to indicate that this is what happened in the Schulz household. Ever. Everything I’ve ever read on the subject or heard from the man himself in interviews or talking directly to his widow was that the strip stopped when he stopped.
The man passed away hours before his final strip ran. I don’t know how more clear he could have been on the subject.
Stop. Making. More. Peanuts.
