On October 2, 1950, readers of seven American newspapers opened to the funny pages and met a round-headed kid named Charlie Brown. He was walking down the sidewalk when another kid said, 'Well! Here comes ol' Charlie Brown! Good ol' Charlie Brown - yes, sir! Good ol' Charlie Brown… How I hate him!' That was the first Peanuts strip ever published. Four small panels. One zinger. A new kind of comic was born.
The cartoonist was Charles M. Schulz, a 27-year-old from Minnesota who had been doodling kids since he was a kid himself. He didn't even pick the name Peanuts - his editors did, and Schulz never liked it. He just wanted to draw the strip, and draw it he did, every single day, by himself, for the next fifty years. Snoopy joined in the second week. Lucy showed up in 1952. Linus and his blanket arrived a year later. Schulz drew almost 18,000 strips in total, never letting anyone else hold the pen.
Peanuts became the most-read comic strip in history, appearing in 2,600 newspapers across 75 countries at its peak. The Charlie Brown holiday specials taught generations how to feel kindness, loneliness, hope, and the gentle ache of missing a kick at the football. Schulz drew his final Sunday strip in February 2000 and died the night before it ran. Sparky, as friends called him, kept his promise - nobody else would ever draw his characters.
