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Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
The comic strip Peanuts was originally called Li’l Folks. The great Charles M Schulz created it in 1950, and it soon became the most popular comic strip in history.
Like so many of the great cartoon characters we all love, the main characters went through a metamorphosis before they became the characters we are all so familiar with. Two characters in the comic became the “stars” of the strip, the runaway favorites. The two were, as we all know, Charlie Brown and his dog, Snoopy.
The original Charlie Brown character was not the wishy-washy loser we all now know. Amazingly, the original Charlie Brown was quite popular with the Peanuts gang. He was addressed, frequently, as “Good ol’ Charlie Brown.” Several of the Peanuts girls actually had crushes on him. And Lucy, who was to become his main nemesis, actually fantasized about getting married to him!!!
It even took a few months before he adopted that famous zig-zag shirt. Slowly but surely, Charlie Brown got more and more insecure. And eventually he evolved into the lovable loser we can all associate with.
Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s dog, soon became the comic’s runaway most popular character. But the early Snoopy was pretty much just an ordinary, slightly mischievous dog. Introduced almost immediately in 1950, Snoopy walked on all four legs, much like any other dog. It wasn’t until 1956, six years later, that Snoopy got up and started walking in his famous walk on two legs, like a human would.
Snoopy, again, very ordinarily, would sleep “inside” his dog house. It wasn’t until two years later, in 1958, that he started lying on top of the dog house, as we remember him. And the first time Snoopy tried that, he had a nasty fall. Eventually, Snoopy, who originally was a mute dog, developed the trademark “thought balloons” over his head. These enabled readers to follow his thoughts and responses, verbally as well as physically.
Over the years, almost in an inverse ratio to his owner Charlie Brown, Snoopy became cooler and more confident. Charlie Brown and Snoopy became a kind of yin-yang of the two sides of all of us.
One side, Charlie Brown, symbolized the lack of confidence, shyness, and insecurity we all harbor, to a greater or lesser degree. And the other half, Snoopy, is the confident, totally-in-control, cool character we all, in our hearts (and fantasies) want to be.
Comic strips – they’re usually happy, fun, lighthearted places (unless you prefer the likes of Rex Morgan. But behind the smiles sometimes lie sinister
secrets – the mysterious and questionable disappearance of characters! OK, I’m being a bit dramatic – just consider me in the Halloween spirit, and enjoy these four characters whose faces you might spot on a comic strip milk carton.
Who knew Charles Schulz had a Charles Addams sense of humor? He may not have exhibited it often, but it definitely came out when he killed off one of his Peanuts characters – literally.
Charlotte Braun was Charlie Brown’s counterpart in the early days and was kind of a mix in personality of Charlie’s little sister, Sally, and his nemesis, Lucy. She only made about 10 appearances in Peanuts before Schulz decided to get rid of her undeveloped character, but when a young Miss Elizabeth Swaim wrote him suggesting that he erase Charlotte from the comic, he decided to have a little fun with her. He responded and agreed to do it, but said, “Remember… that you and your friends will have the death of an innocent child on your conscience. Are you prepared to accept such responsibility?” He finished it off with a drawing of Charlotte Braun with an ax in her head. Comic from Jim Hill Media.
For about five years from the late ‘70s to the early ‘80s, Jon Arbuckle had a roommate by the name of Lyman. In fact, Lyman was the original owner of slobbery mutt Odie. Before Garfield evolved into the companion he is portrayed as today, Lyman was there so Jon consistently had someone to have conversations with that would escalate the storyline. As Garfield grew up and he and Jon seemed to sort of understand each other, Lyman wasn’t really needed anymore. Instead of writing him out of the comic strip and giving him some sort of send off, Jim Davis just simply stopped drawing Lyman in the cartoons and offered no explanation. He showed up a couple more times – once in the 10th anniversary strip in the title panel, and once in a flashback.
Eagle-eyed fans also spotted him in Garfield’s Halloween games Scary Scavenger Hunt and Scary Scavenger Hunt 2 – in the first one, Lyman can be found chained to a wall in the basement and in the sequel his head turns up in an oven. Jim Davis hinted at Lyman’s untimely demise once – when asked what happened to Jon’s roommate, Davis replied, “Don’t look in Jon’s basement.” He later said he was kidding and that Lyman’s official plot line, even if it didn’t appear in the cartoon, is that he joined the Peace Corps and was never heard from again. Comic from Garfield Et Cie Blog.
Remember Calvin’s Uncle Max? You know, from Calvin and Hobbes? No? Well, you’re in good company. He was only around for about a week’s worth of comic strips, just long enough for a visit to Calvin’s house.
Apparently Calvin and his uncle had never met before (or perhaps they met when Calvin was an infant) because Calvin couldn’t recall meeting him and speculated that he had most likely been serving time in jail. Uncle Max ended his visit by telling Calvin that he was welcome to visit anytime he wanted, but we never saw or heard from Uncle Max again.
Why the permanent departure? Bill Watterson later explained that because Calvin’s parents were never given any names other than “Mom” and “Dad,” it was getting increasingly difficult for Uncle Max to have conversations with his brother and his sister-in-law. He had to go – so, he went. Comic from Calvin and Hobbes Info.
Denise was the girlfriend of Peter Fox from FoxTrot. If you’re a fan, you undoubtedly remember her – she was one of the only blind characters in comic strips at the time (not that there are that many today). Peter started dating Denise in the strip’s very first year – 1988 – and they only broke up once in 13-14 years (that’s real time, not comic strip-time).
For some reason, though, Denise disappeared from Peter’s life in the early ‘00s with no explanation at all. Maybe Bill Amend just wanted Peter to be free to play the field. Comic from The Unofficial FoxTrot Site.
I don’t know who created these little comics using dead flies, as the source site is not in English. Some are very funny! Link -via Unique Daily
Update: Some of the comics have dialog in Swedish. Lexi has provided a translation in the comments here at Neatorama. -Thanks, Lexi!
