This February marks the 25th anniversary of the last original Peanuts comic strip and the death of the legendary strip’s creator Charles M. Schulz. Smithsonian Magazine did a good factual write-up of the strip’s history and the importance of the Peanuts gang, so I thought I’d go a different route and discuss how they have impacted me personally.
I grew up among a constant, benign background radiation of Snoopy, who was, and still is my mother’s favorite character. We had endless comic strip reprint collections. Drawers of VHS tapes with the various specials and movies (Flashbeagle, anyone?). Enough Peanuts-themed Christmas ornaments to decorate an entire tree (okay, a little Charlie Brown-sized one, but still).
In those days, if my mom liked something, I automatically liked that something too, so Snoopy became the first comic character I ever loved. I don’t mean to imply that Peanuts is not an excellent strip that would deserve my affection regardless, only that there was never any question of my knowing about and embracing these characters.
Even though I knew Snoopy and the Peanuts gang originated in comic strips, I have never thought of them specifically in those terms. They had broken free of their black and white, two-dimensional origins to join a very limited pantheon of characters who have become their own self-sufficient entities. My childhood experience with them was this phenomenon in miniature. Snoopy wasn’t anything in particular. Snoopy just was.
These days, my interests lie elsewhere. The only Peanuts strips I read are those that happen to flash across my screen when I’m scrolling social media. I don’t actively seek them out. But Snoopy and company have left a permanent imprint (pawprint?) on my dog-loving psyche.
I still smile and go, “Hey look, Snoopy!” whenever I see him on merchandise at the store or on a TV commercial. I empathize with Snoopy’s failed attempts to become the next great American novelist. And I feel a sliver of pride whenever I watch the TV specials—the Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas ones are required viewing every year—and see Bill Melendez’s name in the credits. Melendez, who produced and directed countless Peanuts cartoons and provided the voice for Snoopy and Woodstock, was a Mexican-born animator without whom our favorite Peanuts shows could not exist. As a Mexican American animation fan, that’s always nice to see.
There’s a scene in the film Snoopy Come Home, possibly derived from a strip but I don’t remember, where Charlie Brown remarks that Snoopy never seemed like a dog to him. He’s “more like a friend.” That’s true for all Snoopy fans, I think. Including me. Maybe he and I aren’t as close as we once were, but he’s always in the back of my mind and heart.
I still live in the gentle radiation cast by the Peanuts gang. It’s a little more faded than before, a little dissipated, but it will never entirely go away, nor would I want it to.