Wednesday, October 2, 2013
A Peanuts Halloween (In Other Words, Every Halloween)
The Countdown to Halloween 2013 continues here at Tulgey Wood! Today marks the 63rd anniversary of the Peanuts comic strip, for the groundbreaking, indescribably successful and beloved strip by Charles M. Schulz debuted in seven newspapers on October 2, 1950. How appropriate that Charlie Brown and his pals first appeared in October, for Peanuts has come to be an integral part of Halloween, right up there with jack-o-lanterns, costumes and candy corn. One central reason for that is, of course, is the wildly popular animated TV special, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (more about that later this month) but almost from the start, Halloween was a big part of the comic strip itself. (Needless to say, there wouldn't have been a Great Pumpkin television special if Schulz hadn't created the whole concept in the funny pages first.) In 2008, Fantagraphics (publisher of The Complete Peanuts hardcover book set) issued a mini-comic book reprinting some of Schulz' best Halloween themed strips. To help pass the time in the pumpkin patch, here's the wonderfully designed cover and one of the Sunday pages published in the mini comic. Remember to drop by Tulgey Wood throughout October (including more Peanuts) for more Halloween goodies—it's all part of the Countdown to Halloween 2013 blogathon.
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2 comments:
Fun stuff. We have a running commentary here about the Great Pumpkin special. Why do the adults have such a hard-on of hate for Charlie Brown? They have rocks already ready to give the poor kid! Sheesh!
Caffeinated Joe, thank you for dropping by and commenting! It's fun to think about what on earth was with the adults (that's part of the richness of never seeing the adults) but it's really the overarching Peanuts universe making sure that, however ridiculously, Charlie Brown will not only, to take another example, be unable to fly a kite, it will go down a street drain or be entangled around him even as he tries to take a bath that night, or end up in the kite-eating tree, which has a vendetta against him. So not only will he not get the good candy...he will somehow, inevitably get a rock.
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