On Mar 7, 10:57*pm, (Joseph Nebus) wrote:
* * * * It's March 8 already, in Japan's time zone, so This Day In
Peanuts History repeats this 1969 classic:

http://www.snoopy.co.jp/archives/history.html

For those looking after Tokyo reaches the 9th of March, try:

http://www.snoopy.co.jp/anohi/date/0...comic/0308.gif

....And it still hurts to think that it's been over a decade since
Sparky left us, the morning before his last Sunday farewell strip hit
the papers. I actually cried like a fracking baby when I read that
one, not just because all us "Peanuts" fans had lost a dear friend and
inspiration, but that Charlie Brown, the Little Red Haired Girl (all
three of them), Lucy, Linus, Snoopy, Woodstock, Franklin, Peppermint
Patty, Marcie, Rerun, Sally, Schroeder, The Kite-Eating Tree, World
War II the Cat Next Door, and even all the "retired" characters like
Shermy, Pig-Pen, "Butterscotch" Patty, Violet, 5, his sisters 3 and 4,
and even the long-forgotten Charlotte Braun, had all lost the creative
soul behind their voices.

....Sure, we still have 50 years of strips and at least three dozen TV
specials with gentle but valid messages of humor, hope, laughter and
inspiration to keep future generations "edumatained", but "Peanuts"
was such a unique and personal expression of Charles Shultz' own life
that his family was at least 99.999% correct in ending the strip as
opposed to letting someone else take over, no matter how familiar they
were with the characters. You could get away with that on "Dick Tracy"
because Tracy wasn't the alter ego or even a persona of Chester Gould,
and Chic Young's son and family were so wrapped up since birth with
"Blondie" that so long as there's a Young family member working on the
strip, Dagwood will continue making impossibly colossal sandwiches and
running over the mailman as he's late for work (again).

....But not with "Peanuts", Like Walt Kelly's "Pogo" and Al Capp's
"Li'l Abner", the strip was too closely tied to the creator to take
the risk of - dare I say this? - "damaging the franchise". Two guys
tried to revive "Pogo" about 25 years ago, but lacking Walt's unique
views on politics and life in general - much less how to apply it to a
bunch of swamp critters - it didn't even last six months before the
syndicate dropped it and now even refuses to admit it ever existed.
And while Hillbilly/"Hee-Haw" humor will be timeless, as the existence
of one Leonard McCoy, MD will provide proof thereof, there's currently
nobody around willing to take on a "Li'l Abner" revival who's got the
"evil eye perspektiv" of Al Capp on how things work in Dogpatch;
granted, I've seen a couple of sample submissions, including a whole
month's worth of strips done on spec, but all three writing teams
apparently just dug out the old "Schmoo" stories - and in one case,
the "Bald Iggle" as well - and just tried to rehash what even Capp
himself had already rehashed to the point where nobody buys Schmoo bop-
n-bags anymore because they're so passe. Gimme a Muhammed Ali one,
tho, and I'll buy two. But I digress...

....No, unless you can find someone whose own life experiences matched
Sparky's right down to a devout christian upbringing, owning a beagle
who slept on a doghouse, never could kick a football worth a frack,
couldn't win a baseball game to save his life, whose only successful
real-life sport was hockey, and had a life-long unrequited love with a
little red-haired girl, then you won't even come close to being able
to even mimic the heads, hearts and souls that Sparky put into each
and every member of the Charlie Brown gang. 50 years of strips is a
lot of reading, and even a rerun is still worth turning to the comics
page in the dwindling number of papers for a daily fix of "Peanuts".
But as timeless as the strip is - and as especially demonstrated by "A
Charlie Brown Christmas", which will outlive not only all of us but TV
itself - even the rare strips where the joke sort of fell flat will
still provide that heartfelt chuckle per day we all need at least once
of.

Keep resting in peace, Sparky. And from us Space Historians, thanks
for the inspiration you gave our heroes for all those years, as the
strip that started this thread was just one example of!

OM