is Peanuts really that good?

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prompted by a startlingly long and vehement thread at the Comics Journal message board: http://www.tcj.com/messboard/ubb/Forum1/HTML/009874-5.html

now, i put the '60s Peanuts at #1 on my ballot, and i think it really is the best work ever produced in comics (aside from Krazy Kat, which is so sui generis that i almost think of it as being somehow outside comics). the Seth/Fantagraphics reprints (not to mention it being virtually every major indie 'confessional' cartoonist's #1 influence) have done a good job of cleaning up its reputation and making it hip to mention, but i get the sense that a lot of people are baffled by its reputation and think of it as just a dry newspaper strip - or worse, something stale and cutesy associated with childhood - and wonder why 'serious' comics fans waste their time on such drivel. so this thread is where you get to voice such feelings, if you have them.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 6 June 2005 08:52 (twenty years ago)

I respect it more than like it: I did use to dismiss it but I've read enough very eloquent defences to realise what's special about it. But I still don't think I'd actually read it again.

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 6 June 2005 09:33 (twenty years ago)

Peanuts was the first comic I loved as a kid, back in the early 70s when I was learning to read. Later, I thought I was too sophisimacated for it, and it was just dumb kid stuff. I think it was a combination of teenage hubris and a decline in quality in the 80s. Now, reading the classic Peanuts that run in the paper (late 60s vintage, I think) and of course seeing the Fanta reprints I am appropriately in awe.

Yes, it's really that good.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Monday, 6 June 2005 13:48 (twenty years ago)

When I was a kid, I didn't differentiate between Peanuts and all the other Sunday morning newspaper strips, except that I knew Peanuts was well-known because it had TV shows.

Now, I've read plenty of internet essays on Peanuts but while I respect its reputation, I haven't actually read the reprints or returned to re-evaluate it for myself. So it's not that I don't believe that it's "that good", but I haven't yet had that experience.

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 6 June 2005 14:07 (twenty years ago)

Well, comics.com has a daily reprint of the late 60s strip, which is what I talked about in my previous post. It's pretty close to the ideal way to read it, being all one-strip-a-day (they keep a month of archives on hand, though.)

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Monday, 6 June 2005 14:16 (twenty years ago)

http://www.comics.com/comics/peanuts/archive/images/peanuts2005366220512.gif

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Monday, 6 June 2005 14:43 (twenty years ago)

http://www.comics.com/comics/peanuts/archive/images/peanuts2005029297513.gif

It's like every other daily: you wade through a lot of dross, and then you find a strip that fits you so perfectly, it's like no one else should understand it.

Having said that: I prefer Calvin and Hobbes. And last week I saw Seth do an incredsibly reverent talk about Canadian strip artist Doug Wright ("Nipper"), whose appeal is totally beyond me.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Monday, 6 June 2005 14:48 (twenty years ago)

I find it that good, yes. But I don't have anything clever to say in its defense that hasn't been said a million times before.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:56 (twenty years ago)

Is it where american sitcoms get their joke pacing from?

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:59 (twenty years ago)

I think that comes more from vaudeville.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:08 (twenty years ago)

But Vaudeville got it from Peanuts.

― Huk-L, Monday, 6 June 2005 19:11 (twenty years ago)

That's not how time flows in my sector of the multiverse!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:12 (twenty years ago)

Hypertime rift OH NO!

― David R. (popshots75`), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:13 (twenty years ago)

Look out, it's the Anit-Linus!

― Huk-L, Monday, 6 June 2005 19:18 (twenty years ago)

Anit-Linus is being sexually harrassed by Clarenc-Sally! AUGH!

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:44 (twenty years ago)

(please translate joke for those of us in the peanut gallery that have the one blackened shriveled nut)

― David R. (popshots75`), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:47 (twenty years ago)

(my typo = Anita Hill vs Clarence Thomas)

― Huk-L, Monday, 6 June 2005 19:51 (twenty years ago)

five years pass...

http://3eanuts.tumblr.com/

― slight even by tweet standards (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 30 March 2011 02:13 (fourteen years ago)

um yeah, mentioned earlier tonight --
Peanuts - Classic Or Dud?

― The Louvin Spoonful (WmC), Wednesday, 30 March 2011 02:31 (fourteen years ago)

my bad
i'm on a dumb posting rampage tonight tbh

― slight even by tweet standards (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 30 March 2011 03:09 (fourteen years ago)

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