People often do a double take when I tell them that Charles Schulz is one of my influences as an artist. His strip PEANUTS, which spawned the wildly popular Charlie Brown cartoons, reveals Schulz's mastery of economy, something I always appreciate in great artists.
One of my favorite PEANUTS characters, the resident wild child Peppermint Patty, is celebrating a birthday today.
Peppermint Patty made her first appearance in the PEANUTS comic strip 55 years ago on August 22nd, 1966.
First of all, I am surprised that in her first strip, Patty is trying to spit at Linus (sight unseen), not Charlie Brown. We all know Patty's mild infatuation with "Chuck" is the stuff of legend. She is persistent, but never forceful. I love that about her.
Also, I love that she makes her debut with Roy, a much lesser known character who had debuted the year before. Roy functions as Peppermint Patty's bestie for a short time, until he is replaced by Marcie, another fan-favorite.
Although comic books, particularly superhero comics, dominated my reading as a child, I have always had a soft spot for comic strips. As I became a "serious" reader of grim and violent comics as a teenager, fun and silly comic strips were more of a guilty pleasure. Of all the strips I enjoyed, Schulz's pudgy crumb-snatchers were never challenged for favorite status.
Although comic books, particularly superhero comics, dominated my reading as a child, I have always had a soft spot for comic strips. As I became a "serious" reader of grim and violent comics as a teenager, fun and silly comic strips were more of a guilty pleasure. Of all the strips I enjoyed, Schulz's pudgy crumb-snatchers were never challenged for favorite status.
I don't think I have ever read a "new" PEANUTS strip. But I'm grateful that Schulz's melancholy PEANUTS strips were popular enough to make it to me via newspaper reprints, trade collections, and (of course) cartoons.
Happy 55th Birthday, Peppermint Patty!
(((airhorn)))
(((airhorn)))
-"some AX".
Samax Amen is a professional Content Developer, Illustrator and Cartoonist. He is the artist of many great comics you never heard of like FREELANCER LIFE, Herman Heed, Champion of Children, and The World As You Know It. He even writes and draws his own comics, like Dare: The Adventures of Darius Davidson, Spontaneous, and Manchild when he gets around to it. Because making comics is hard and stuff, he started GhettoManga as a blog in 2006 and as a print magazine in 2008.
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