The Deceptive Simplicity of ‘Peanuts’ | Hacker News Reader

The Deceptive Simplicity of ‘Peanuts’

theparisreview.org

61 pointsbehoove16 comments

I grew up reading newspaper comics during the “Calvin and Hobbes” era. I read Peanuts but I never understood its appeal as seemed extremely dull.

Later I read a collection of Peanuts from around 1955 and it was incredible. Kinda like early Simpsons

I grew up in the same era, thinking the same thing. I'll have to go check that out.

Even more surprising is to go back and read early Garfield.

Maybe when a cartoon hits syndication that the quality dips?

I read somewhere that is when Bill Waters (of Calvin & Hobbs) quit creating, when syndication was his only viable option moving forward. (I think he was burning out)

I loved Garfield as a kid, but as an adult it was really dull. I tried to even enjoy the old stuff... But this makes Garfield awesome again: (you may need some Garfield experience before appreciating this)

https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

I guess people just get tired of having to be machines of continual creation. It must be terribly wearing. I'm not surprised it becomes just crank-turning after a while.

Unrelated but I'd like to plug this which is brilliant, though it seems the author burned out a while ago. One of the best comics I've come across https://abstrusegoose.com/

Hit Random a few times and you'll start getting some good ones. He seems to be a high level physicist so there are some impenetrable bits of maths etc. which you can safely skip.

> I guess people just get tired of having to be machines of continual creation.

Gary Larson (Far Side) [0] is a great example of a great cartoonist who quit while he was ahead. I was both sad and appreciative when he stopped. Fawlty Towers [1] is an example of a series whose creators also intentionally stopped it before it jumped the shark.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Larson

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawlty_Towers

If you skip the abstruse stuff, it's just goose.

I've no idea what you mean, but upvoted anyway for making me chuckle

Calvin and Hobbes was syndicated. What do you mean?

Sorry if I wrote that vaguely, he did _not_ syndicate. He was burnt out and it was either close up shop or syndicate, he chose to close up shop.

I may be off on this a little, as I did a little reading to verify. Waterson was opposed to having other people write and draw the Calvin & Hobbs cartoon for him. He noted that so many other cartoons had done this and their quality had plumetted.

From memory (because it was written in his last book, and I can't find it online) he said that when he couldn't make a new cartoon every day and be happy with the quality, he would be done.

Edit: I may be conflating syndication with licensing.... :P

Chris Ware is a fantastic author of comics. His "Building Stories" is truly a masterpiece of the form and I highly recommend it to all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_Stories

That looks great, reminds me of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, which was used as textbook in my intro to philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Comics

What a beautiful short take on how we build our own work, unknowingly at the time, by looking at our predecessors' work.

Schulz should have quit in the 70's. He dragged it on for far too long.

He would have died sooner. I say that only partly in jest. When he was going to retire, he wrote the last strip ahead of publication and people were wondering what it would be. It was basically a thank you to the fans. He died the day it ran in the papers.

Edit: he died the day before.

I used to think something similar of many of my favourite musicians who were making their best work in the 1970s.

The thing is that sometimes people crank out something amazing later in their career that no one saw coming.

So I say artists should do what they like whilst they still love doing it; leave the rest of the world to the job filtering the results into a "canon" of best work.

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