Comedy, and more specifically cartooning, is an interesting paradox; we create amusement by drawing on common experience presented in a shocking, and often horrifying, manner. Humor is equal parts truth and surprise. But it's not enough to just present recognizable strangeness. It needs to draw upon the things that we bury deep within ourselves, things that aren't discussed in polite company. The best cartoonists know how to drag out the worst parts of themselves and smear them on paper for the rest of the world to see. Sure, a cartoonist can put a cute spin on things, draw adorable animals and little children, appease the family-friendly syndicates, but in the end, the thing that makes for an effective gag is the cartoonist's ability to neatly package the worst things about humanity and leave them on your doorstep in a flaming paper bag.
It can be a therapeutic, cathartic process; a cleansing of sorts. It can be highly traumatic. Often, it's a bit of one, half-dozen of the other. But it's always a difficult process that requires the cartoonist to face their worst fears about the nature of people and themselves, and still be able to close that Pandora's box at the end of the day to go home to their family and friends and deal with society at large as though everything was hunky-dory; a sort of self-imposed blindness. Sanity depends on it. But the cartoonist continues to do this on a daily basis, which makes me think, some days, that we must be a strange breed of masochist. But there's also a hope that in exposing these nasty little bits of ourselves, we'll somehow make a difference, somehow help to destroy society's uber-nasty-bits in the blinding light of day.
The undisputed master of cartoon humor was Charles Schulz. He created the archetypes of cartoon characters that the rest of us can only hope to imitate in our own flailing, pale manner. I see bits of Charlie Brown in Jon, bits of Snoopy in Toothgnip, bits of Lucy in Diablo. And the greatest compliment I can think of to receive would be if someone emailed me a nasty flame telling me how unoriginal I am, because that would mean that I had managed to steal even a little bit of the man's brilliance.
Charlie Brown is the self-conscious, paranoid (and rightly so), insecure everyman in all of us, the focus of all the world's evil. He's surrounded by abusive, uncaring people. Women won't talk to him. He's a Loser. And that's why we laugh at him; because it's the only way we can deal with the truth. We are Charlie Brown.
Not only did Schulz create the archetypes which litter modern comic strips, he created the methods that we use to portray these shadows. Recurring locations and events; A baseball game, a doghouse, a lemonade-stand-turned-psychiatrist's-office. Children who speak like adults. Sentient animals. And possibly the most important, the sparsity of line and dialogue he used influences virtually every current comic strip. Schulz honed his craft to a razor's edge, using the bare minimum of tools to get his message across, and strengthened that message in the process. It's easy to write a novel; It takes a genius to convey the same information in a paragraph.
Schulz died in his Santa Rosa home this Saturday after a bout with cancer, around the same time his final "Peanuts" strip was being prepared for printing in the following day's newspaper. Some people have mentioned to me that the timing of his death was an eerie coincidence. I'm not surprised, however. An artist's life is his work. And Schulz's work was done. Luckily for us, he's left us fifty years of treasures to enjoy in his absence.
Our condolences to Charles M. Schulz's family.
And to Mr. Schulz, thank you. Thank you for everything.
-jonathan rosenberg, cartoonist extraordinaire
february 14, 2000