A comiXologist recommends:
Peanuts

by: Harris Smith

A man, walking down the road, finds himself chased by tigers.  Running to escape them, he comes to the edge of a cliff and jumps off, grabbing a vine on his way down.  Looking below, he realizes there are more tigers waiting beneath him.  With nowhere left to go, the man sees a strawberry bush growing from the rock beside him.  He plucks a berry off the bush, eats it, and exclaims, “That’s a delicious berry.”

This story is not from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, but rather an oft-quoted Buddhist koan.  In many ways, though, it captures the essence of what makes Peanuts so appealing- a delicate balance of simplicity and deep complexity, a tempering of the negative with the positive, topped off with a genuinely funny punch line.  Though predicated largely around the comic strip format of setup and gag, Peanuts (which ran daily for nearly 50 years, and still appears in reprints in many newspapers) evokes, along with laughter, both emotion and thought, commenting on the absurdity, often cruel, and joy, often in the small things, of life.  

If Seinfeld was a show about nothing, then Peanuts is a comic about everything, even if its narrative only focuses on a small group of small children, its perspective extends well beyond the scope of its characters, and beyond the scope of childhood.  Kids can read and enjoy Peanuts, of course, but it has much to offer adult readers as well.  

Given the series’ longevity, its adaptions into other media (including more than 40 animated TV specials) and the general pervasiveness of its imagery, you’ve probably already encountered Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Peppermint Patty and the rest of the gang, but it’s never a bad time to revisit them.  Fortunately, Titan Comics is rereleasing classic collections of the strip, presented as exact recreations of their paperback editions from the 1950s.  Their latest releases are Good Grief, More Peanuts! and Good Ol’ Charlie Brown, both of which collect comics from Peanuts’ early years.  The art looks like a little different than in later, more familiar iterations (Snoopy’s still a puppy!), but the wit and wisdom are very much the same.  

Life may often feel like hanging off a cliff with tigers everywhere you look, but Peanuts, fortunately, remains a very delicious berry.  

[Read classic Peanuts on comiXology]

Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Neagtive Pleasure on Newtown Radio.