Feeling Snoopy-Deprived? Go Online

After remaining children for nearly 50 years, the precocious posse known as the Peanuts gang has been put to bed.

Worse than any Y2K catastrophe, the beginning of January ushered in the end of the Peanuts comic strip as creator Charles M. Schulz retired. But while fans savor classic strips about Charlie Brown in the daily newspaper, wired devotees can go online for an even bigger fix of the chronically depressed blockhead and his pint-sized tormentors.

“Good ol’ Charlie Brown . . . how I hate him!” Shermy pronounced in the first Peanuts strip. This strip can be viewed at the Official Peanuts Homepage (https://www.peanuts.com/). The site offers gads of content for the insatiable Peanuts nut.

Here you can glean a plethora of information about Schulz and the strip’s history, as well as a timeline of pivotal events and personal profiles of Snoopy, Linus, Sally and all the other members of the peanut gallery. Here you can see the strip in which each character first appeared--and, in the case of Charlie Brown, you can also see the strips in which he is called wishy-washy for the first time (1952), the first time his kite is eaten by a tree (1956) and the first time he is called blockhead (1958). Other firsts? Peppermint Patty’s first D minus (1973), the first time Linus gets his blanket washed (1955), Snoopy’s first attempt to sleep on top of his doghouse (1958).

If you need to know more minutiae about Schulz and Peanuts, The Peanuts FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) is a stupefying collection of trivia. Here you can get to the important questions: What was the baseball team’s lineup? When is Snoopy’s birthday? The file, available at the newsgroup alt.comics.peanuts or at https://www.peanutscollectorclub.com/peantfaq.txt, lists each and every book, movie and TV special, along with every instance of adult sightings, every instance of a punch line that was repeated and every item ever mentioned in the strip as being inside Snoopy’s doghouse (a ping pong table, a pool table, bunk beds, a Van Gogh painting, a whirlpool).

“Like the bus occupied by the Spice Girls in the film ‘Spice World,’ Snoopy’s doghouse seems to have a whole lot more space inside than can be justified by its small exterior appearance,” writes the meticulous Derrick Bang, author of the FAQ.

If you’re more into action than facts, pop by Shockwave’s cartoon corner, where you can catch a host of Snoopy filmlets wherein the singular beagle shoots hoops (and accidentally flattens the hapless Woodstock) and engages in other escapades including dancing atop Schroeder’s piano (at https://www.shockwave.com/bin/shockwave/main/navcontent.

jsp?menu=cartoons/peanuts).

When Schulz penned his last daily strip, cartoonists around the country paid tribute to him in their own cartoons. In Doonsbury, (available at https://www.comics.com), a bummed-out Zonker, in a Charlie Brown-style zigzag shirt, stretches out on Snoopy’s doghouse. “AACK! I can’t stand it!!” shouted Cathy in her strip. For more wistful tributes by the nation’s editorial cartoonists, check out https://www.cagle.com/news/peanuts.

Perhaps nicest of all was a cartoon that appeared in Schulz’s hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where, in 1947, Schulz first published a strip called Li’l Folks. A precursor to Peanuts, the strip appeared in the Sunday women’s section for two years, but when Schulz requested a raise and better placement, his editor declined and Schulz, Charlie Brown, Lucy and Snoopy moved on to make cartoon history.

Kirk Anderson, the paper’s current editorial cartoonist, recently published a strip that shows Snoopy typing on his doghouse. Snoopy writes: “A shy local boy puts pen to paper, not knowing he will become the most successful and beloved cartoonist of all time. He raises the cartoon to high art; brings psychology, philosophy and theology into the comics; changes pop culture forever, gives the world characters as allegorical as Shakespeare’s.” “I hope this has a happy ending!” Snoopy then thinks, a little nervously. You can see this cartoon at https://www.cagle.com/news/peanuts/p9.asp.

For those inartistic types eager to pay tribute to Schulz, you can sign the electronic get well card at the National Cartoonists Society Web site (https://www.reuben.org/schulz.asp). So far, 38,724 people have signed the card, wishing the artist luck with his battle with colon cancer.

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Erika Milvy writes about entertainment from her home in San Francisco. She can be reached at erika@well.com.