Charles M. Schulz was born November 25, 1922, in Minneapolis. His
destiny was foreshadowed when an uncle gave him, at the age of two
days, the nickname Sparky (after the racehorse Spark Plug in the
newspaper strip Barney Google). His ambition from a young age was
to be a cartoonist and his first success was selling 17 cartoons to
the Saturday Evening Post between 1948 and 1950. He also sold a
weekly comic feature called Li'l Folks to the local St. Paul
Pioneer Press. After writing and drawing the feature for two years,
Schulz asked for a better location in the paper or for daily
exposure, as well as a raise. When he was turned down on all three
counts, he quit.
He started submitting strips to the newspaper syndicates and in the
spring of 1950, United Feature Syndicate expressed interest in Li'l
Folks. They bought the strip, renaming it Peanuts, a title Schulz
always loathed. The first Peanuts daily appeared October 2, 1950;
the first Sunday, January 6, 1952. Diagnosed with cancer, Schulz
retired from Peanuts at the end of 1999. He died on February 13,
2000, the day before Valentine's Day-and the day before his last
strip was published, having completed 17,897 daily and Sunday
strips, each and every one fully written, drawn, and lettered
entirely by his own hand -- an unmatched achievement in comics.
Broadcaster Al Roker is the weather anchor on NBC's The Today Show
and co-host of Wake Up with Al on The Weather Channel. He is the
author of several books: Al Roker's Big Bad Book of Barbecue, Al
Roker's Hassle-Free Holiday Cookbook, Big Shoes: In Celebration of
Dads and Fatherhood, Don't Make Me Stop this Car: Adventures in
Fatherhood, and two murder mysteries, The Morning Show Murders and
The Midnight Show Murders.
...The Complete Peanuts: 1979 To 1980... features a touching intro
by Al Roker -- who conducted the one of the last interviews with
Schulz -- along with two years' worth of strips that find Schulz
still going strong as a documentarian of life's simple pleasures
and overwhelming anxieties.--Noel Murray "The A.V. Club"
...[Congress of the Animals] continually tries to outdo itself in
its pure unpredictability. These misshapen figures recall a
combination of Maurice Sendak, Terry Gilliam, and R. Crumb,
blending the loopy and the nightmarish in a way that is both
unsettling and inspiring.--Max Winter "Boston Globe"
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