Peanut Gallery

Greetings, Jazz Pickles. As usual, we're starting off with a pipe pic, and we have one that's odd and fascinating.

 

This comic is from a short-lived side project of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. Schulz collaborated with another cartoonist named Jim Sasserville on It's Only a Game, which ran from November, 1957 to January, 1959. Each gag was based on a sport or game. 

Schulz cancelled It's Only a Game due to the increasing demands on his time to produce Peanuts, which was becoming wildly popular. He almost never included adults in Peanuts, and it's interesting to see these characters drawn in his unmistakable style.

We're not planning to start any other comic features, and will continue to concentrate on Bizarro. Following are our most recent offerings.

 

Oscar Wilde's enduring story is still relevant, and it seemed to me that the anonymous online behavior of many people paralleled Dorian Gray's pursuit of hedonistic pleasures while avoiding their ill effects, or at least the physical ones.

 

 

A simple gag, which gave me an excuse to load up the panel with Bizarro secret symbols.

Several readers thought that the character had pieces of paper attached to his body with magnets, or, more disturbingly, tacks. These comments prompted me to look at the art again to see if it could have been made clearer that the character is covered in tattoos resembling children's art as displayed on a refrigerator.

 

By removing the white color around each image, I think this version would have worked better, making it more apparent that the icons, as well as the edges of each piece of paper and the magnets are part of dad's tattoos. It's usually best to simplify a drawing, and in this case, it would have been smarter to simplify the coloring as well. I'm always learning (or relearning) something.

 

 

When someone gives you a thumbs up sign, you normally see the pad of the thumb rather than the nail, but drawn that way, I thought it looked like a toe.

 

My favorite detail in this one was employing a parody of the Munsingwear Company's Penguin clothing logo as a stand-in for Bizarro's inverted bird symbol.

 

 

Sometimes a farmboy needs a quiet place to sulk in peace.

 

 

Friday's panel gave me an opportunity to draw two classic comic characters: Lucy van Pelt, from Peanuts, and the protagonist of George Herriman's Krazy Kat. 

Peanuts © Peanuts Worldwide, LLC

I drew Lucy sitting behind an early version of her psychiatric booth, without the overhead sign, as in this 1959 strip. This made it easier to format the gag for the strip layout.

 

Drawing Krazy Kat also reminds me to recommend Michael Tisserand's excellent biography, Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White.

 

They wrote their own refreshingly honest and realistic vows.

That's the latest from Bizarro Studios North. If you're looking for additional backstage comics talk, direct your browser to Dan Piraro's blog. Dan's writings are always insightful and thought-provoking, and he also shares his newest glorious Bizarro Sunday page.

Thanks for stopping by. We'll be back next week with another batch of amusing words and pictures.

Bonus Track

Hans Blum: Charly Brown
Electrola Records, Germany, 1959

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on this blog to see the video link and preview image.

This German remake of the Coasters' classic, "Charlie Brown" was digitized from my record collection. Years ago, I found a stack of 45s, all featuring popular American rock and folk tunes with German lyrics, recorded by German performers. Many of them are amusingly schizophrenic, with a military, non-rocking rhythm.

Written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, the song had nothing to do with the Peanuts character, but that's no reason not to share this wacky version with you.

Also, it has one of the greatest picture sleeves of all time.

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