Book review: Blockheads, Beagles, and Sweet Babboos: New Perspectives on Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts

reviewed by Chris York

Michelle Ann Abate. Blockheads, Beagles, and Sweet Babboos: New Perspectives on Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts. University of Mississippi Press, 2023. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/B/Blockheads-Beagles-and-Sweet-Babboos

 It is difficult to overstate impact of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, both on the American comic strip and, more broadly, on international popular culture. Regardless of the metric—critical acclaim, financial success, longevity, franchise recognition—Schulz is inarguably one of the greatest American comic strip creators. Michelle Ann Abate notes, however, that scholarship regarding Schulz has been relatively limited considering the magnitude of his contribution. Her new volume adds to this growing corpus and, in many ways, it is a welcome addition.

 Blockheads, Beagles, and Sweet Babboos approaches the core cast of Peanuts from unfamiliar perspectives in order to yield, in Abate’s words, “new critical insights about the composition as well as the aesthetics of Peanuts” (9). The first chapter is devoted to Schulz, himself, while each subsequent chapter focuses on a specific Peanuts character: Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Franklin, Woodstock, and Linus (A complete list of chapter titles in provided below). Abate’s approaches vary from an exploration of Charles Schulz’s essential tremor to a correlation of Lucy Van Pelt with Lucille Ball, and from an analysis of Charlie Brown’s iconic shirt to some thoughts on the origin of Woodstock’s name.

 Despite these wide-ranging analyses, the book is most successful when it concentrates on the composition of Peanuts. The chapter “Franklin and Pig-Pen: The Aesthetics of Blackness and Dirt,” for example, compares Schulz’s rendering of Franklin, for a long time the strip’s only non-white character, with Pig-Pen, a character known for his inability to stay clean. The simplicity of his composition has always been a hallmark of Schulz’s greatness, but Abate points out the challenges such simplicity can pose when differentiating between characters. Discussions of Franklin have long centered around representation and whether the inclusion of Franklin (first introduced to the strip in 1968) was a positive step toward breaking down racial barriers or whether it was just another instance of tokenism. Abate gives attention to this debate, but the chapter’s real focus is the techniques Schulz used to identify Franklin as non-white. At times, she notes, the shading technique he employs is similar to the way he illustrates Pig-Pen’s dirty face. The visual similarities between the two characters, Abate argues, recalls a correlation between blackness and dirtiness that has long existed in American culture.

 Other instances when she focuses on Schulz’s composition are also compelling. Early representations of Lucy Van Pelt, Abate argues, bear a striking resemblance to Lucille Ball, whose sitcom “I Love Lucy” made her one of the most popular and recognizable celebrities of the 1950s, the decade in which Peanuts launched. Abate makes this comparison particularly compelling by focusing on Lucy Van Pelt’s eyes, which were initially drawn differently than every other Peanuts character, and seem to mimic the wide-eyed, startled look that was one of Lucille Ball’s signatures. Abate also analyzes Charlie Brown’s iconic shirt design as a triangle wave. Musical elements play a significant role in Peanuts, largely through the character of Schroeder, but Abate suggests that reading Charlie Brown’s shirt as a triangle wave engages him in the rich aural dimensions of Peanuts.

 The epilogue explores Schulz’s legacy by focusing on the echos of Peanuts in Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For. Although Abate notes that Bechdel never cited Schulz as a direct influence, the similarities between Schulz’s Linus Van Pelt and Bechdel’s Mo Testa, including clothing that is often horizontally striped, are compelling. The fact that Bechdel never consciously acknowledged Schulz as an influence only seems to reinforce how ubiquitous his impact has been on the American comic strip.

 At times, however, Abate’s explorations are less successful. She devotes her first chapter, for instance, to a discussion of Schulz’s essential tremor, which manifested in the early 1980s and led to his increasingly unsteady lines in Peanuts. His disability is, as she notes, a largely ignored element within Peanuts criticism. As such, Abate’s willingness to engage in this discussion is, in itself, valuable. For much of the chapter, though, she seems to be in search of something meaningful to say. She outlines, for example, the history of disability rights in the United States and notes that this history is largely concurrent with the fifty-year run of Peanuts. However, for Peanuts’ first thirty years, Schulz was not affected by essential tremor, and he never introduced disabled characters into his strip, so the concurrence Abate identifies leads her to no significant revelations. She does argue that viewing the strip through the lens of the disability “changes the way that we view, engage, and interpret it,” and while this is an intriguing claim, she rarely moves beyond generalization to draw more concrete conclusions about engagement and interpretation (30).

 Despite some inconsistencies, though, Blockheads, Beagles, and Sweet Babboos is a useful addition to the critical literature of Peanuts. Abate’s approaches yield some interesting insights and illustrate that there is still much to be said about one of the world’s most popular and critically acclaimed comic strips.

 

Table of Contents:

Introduction. Character Studies: The Peanuts Gang, Reconsidered.

Chapter 1: “Sometimes My Hand Shakes So Much I Have to Hold My Wrist to Draw:” Charles M. Schulz and Disability.

Chapter 2: What’s the Frequency, Charlie Brown? Sound Waves, Music, and the Zigzag Shirt.

Chapter 3: “Why Can’t I Have a Normal Dog Like Everyone Else?” Snoopy as Canine — and Feline.

Chapter 4: I Love Lucy: The Fussbudget and the First Lady of Sitcoms.

Chapter 5: Franklin and Pig-Pen: The aesthetics of Blackness and Dirt.

Chapter 6: Chirping ‘Bout My Generation: Woodstock, Youth Culture, and Innocence.

Epilogue: Peanuts to Watch Out For: Linus van Pelt, Alison Bechdel, and the Legacy of Charles M. Schulz.