The First Peanuts Strip

On this day in 1950 a new and very different comics strip appeared in syndication for the first time. That first strip was this one (h/t Lileks):

The early Peanuts strips looked very different from the characters most of us remember. I was a huge fan of Peanuts as a kid and still have a bunch of books that I bought or received as presents over the years, including some collections the 50's era strips that look much like the one above. Snoopy was just a puppy back then and hadn't started his adventures with the Red Baron or some of the other things he used to do. The quality of the strip is evidenced by the fact that it's still in syndication today several years after the end of original strips and later the death of Charles Schulz. I have the newspaper in my files with that last original Peanuts strip, and I can still remember the Sunday morning that I was driving to a concert and heard that Schulz had died. It was a sad day.

Today the Schulz family and my family have a different connection. The main library and technology center at Sonoma State University where my daughter attends is named for Jean and Charles Schulz who provided the funding for the building, and one of the restaurants is the Charley Brown cafe. Charles Schulz lived in nearby Santa Rosa and on one of my trips up there I want to visit the Peanuts museum.

On October 29th the American Masters series on PBS will do a special on Charles Schulz. You might want to set your TiVO's for that one.