Charles Schulz
The
very best comic strips, for my taste, are the magic ones. They all come from
the same place: "left field." Also known as "the blue." Or the intuition. The
other place they come from is, of course, the real world. It's a combination of
the two. The cartoonist experiences real life in some penetrating way. Then he
(or she) takes a leap into the unconscious, the dreamlike, the mysterious
within, hoping to emerge with something fresh, something original. In the best
and rarest cases, what emerges is something brilliant and enduring like
Peanuts .
When
it first came on the scene, it was unlike any other cartoon. It had (and has) a
powerful originality both visually and verbally. Schulz would set you up with a
couple of tiny tots speaking in childlike innocence for three panels, then come
out of the wild blue yonder with one of them sounding suddenly like a
middle-aged college professor in the grip of a nervous breakdown. The
dimensions of comic-strip possibility expanded.
Simplicity is its initial appeal. And openness. Innocence. It catches our eye
and draws in our psyches. Economy of line with so much between the lines. A
fraught simplicity, a growing complexity, an emotional involvement in Schulz's
deeply felt world.
It
works because it's genuine and because Schulz has just the right touch of
magic. Not a bunch of schlocky gags. No overwrought corn. A genuine search is
going on. The comic strip has a soul. Schulz believes in his world and cares
about it, and so do we.
Jean
Shepherd, the recently deceased radio genius who created magic with the spoken
word, used to berate Snoopy back in the late '60s. Shepherd thought the whole
idea of a dog with an imaginary life as a World War I pilot and a novelist,
etc., destroyed the credibility of the strip. Shepherd was a hero of mine. His
criticism caused me to question my own belief in Peanuts . I took it
under consideration. I concluded that Shepherd was wrong.
How
much leeway a comic strip can sustain, how far afield it can stretch and stray
is always a delicate balance guided by the intuition of the cartoonist. Schulz
has great instincts. I say all of it works.
I
especially love the nutty, out of the blue lines, like Lucy telling Linus,
"When oak trees get real old, they're cut down and used to make knotty-pine
recreation rooms."
That's not contrivance.
Not a hack gag. That's pure left field.
