Schulz’s dry, intellectual, and self-effacing humor was a natural fit for the evolving cultural standards of the mid-20th century comics.
Newspaper editors in the late 1940s and 50s, however, promoted a post-War minimalist model, pushing their cartoonists to shrink strip size, minimize pen strokes, and sharpen their humor with daily gags and cerebral humor for an ever-increasingly educated audience. The full-page comics of the 1920s and 30s afforded artists the space to reflect the Art Deco details and sensibilities of the day, including the highly-stylized illustrations of Dick Tracy and Little Nemo in Slumberland. He took his artistic studies to a new level when, as a senior in high school and with the encouragement of his mother, he completed a correspondence cartoon course with the Federal School of Applied Cartooning (now Art Instruction Schools).Īs Schulz continued to study and hone his artistic style from the late 1920s through the 1940s, the genre of comic art experienced a great shift. In his deepest desires, he always knew he wanted to be a cartoonist, and seeing the 1937 publication of his drawing of Spike, the family dog, in the nationally-syndicated Ripley’s Believe it or Not newspaper feature was a proud moment in the young teen’s life. Throughout his youth, father and son shared a Sunday morning ritual reading the funnies Sparky was fascinated with strips like Skippy, Mickey Mouse, and Popeye.
Sparky’s father, Carl, was of German heritage and his mother, Dena, came from a large Norwegian family the family made their home in St. The poetry of Schulz’s life began two days after he was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 26, 1922, when an uncle nicknamed him “Sparky” after the horse Spark Plug from the Barney Google comic strip. It was a poetic ending to the life of a devoted cartoonist who, from his earliest memories, knew that all he wanted to do was “draw funny pictures.” Schulz, who once described his life as being “one of rejection,” passed away peacefully in his sleep the night before, succumbing to complications from colon cancer. This Sunday was different, though mere hours before newspapers hit doorsteps with the final original Peanuts comic strip, its creator Charles M. On the morning of Sunday, February 13, 2000, newspaper readers opened their comic pages as they had for nearly fifty years to read the latest adventures of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts Gang.
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