Week 3: The Comic Strip

The comic strip back in its hay day had entertained millions of newspaper readers. For most it was the only source of amusement to be had on a Sunday. One of the earliest comic strips was Little Nemo by Winsor McCay. At this point in time, the artist was able to use a full page of newspaper to create a scene. But as the comic strip evolves, it slims down to a simple horizontal panel comic where the success of Charles Schulz Peanuts begins to shine.

I enjoyed seeing the progression of Peanuts and how the writer slowly adds more characters into the suburban world of Charlie brown. It's fun to see the comic morph into how its represented today. Starting with 3 kids and dog and moving to more and more characters as the years went by. A lot of jokes use Charlie Brown as the end of the joke and none of the jokes are laugh out loud funny, but they are still genuinely amusing. Sure like with most comics of the time the characters of Peanuts are predominantly white and lack diversity, but it doesn't really harm the content and just shows the history of representation in media of the time. Comparing this with Archie it doesn't seem as if the comic is teaching children how to be kids in a white suburban area, but its more about the feelings of the characters and is more realistic than the teenage fantasies of Archie. I feel like the some of the content would go over most of children's heads and would be better understood by an older demographic. I suspect the demographic of the Peanuts comic was adults recounting on their childhood years as they read the wittiness of Schulz. Peanuts definitely stands the test of time and can be enjoyed and completely understood in this day and age.