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Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American newspaper comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz that ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterwards. It is among the most popular and influential in the history of comic strips, with 17,897 strips published in all, making it "arguably the longest story ever told by one human being". The strip reached 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages. In 1984, it was estimated the strip had readership of around 355 million. By the time of Schulz's death in 2000, it ran in over 2,600 newspapers. It helped to cement the four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United States.

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Tom Batiuk wrote: "The influence of Charles Schulz on the craft of cartooning is so pervasive it is almost taken for granted." Batiuk also described the depth of emotion in Peanuts: "Just beneath the cheerful surface were vulnerabilities and anxieties that we all experienced, but were reluctant to acknowledge. By sharing those feelings with us, Schulz showed us a vital aspect of our common humanity, which is, it seems to me, the ultimate goal of great art."

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2019-11-27/the-peanuts-papers-charles-schulz-andrew-blauner https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/dec/05/charlie-brown-charles-schultz-peanuts-cartoon-movie-steve-martino https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)00338-4/fulltext https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/peanuts-real-little-red-haired-girl https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/what-charlie-brown-from-peanuts-teaches-us-about-being-a-man/ https://philosophynow.org/issues/44/Sartre_and_Peanuts

Early development: 1950-1955
Peanuts began as a daily strip on October 2, 1950, in seven newspapers: Minneapolis Tribune, the hometown newspaper of Schulz; The Washington Post; Chicago Tribune; The Denver Post; The Seattle Times; and two newspapers in Pennsylvania, Evening Chronicle (Allentown) and Globe-Times (Bethlehem).

Schulz was required to draw the strip in four equally sized panels, to allow editors run the strip horizontally, vertically, or 2-by-2. The strips were created with blank ink on white paper.

By October 1951, the strip appeared in 36 newspapers. Schulz sought to rival with other then-contemporary newspaper comics, such as Pogo which appeared 80 newspapers at the time, and Nancy which appeared in 400.

Schroeder began playing this piano in September 1951, and revealed his love for Beethoven in November 26, 1951.

Schulz began to draw a half-page format Sunday strip that first appeared in newspapers on January 6, 1952. The strip was in 40 newspapers in the US.

The design of the characters quickly developed in the first two years of the strip, with less exaggerated proportions and slightly more realistic postures.

In February 1952, Schulz indicated that the strip had reached a certain level stylistic maturity: Schulz recommended that very early strips should not be reprinted when book publisher Rinehart & Company proposed that the strips from 1950 and 1951 be collected into a book, where "characters were beginning to develop and the ideas were changing".

Over the course of four years the strip began to syndicate outside of the US, being translated into Spanish and syndicated in Latin American countries with the title Carlitos.

Cultural success: 1956-1987
On April 9, 1965, Peanuts became the subject of an edition of Time magazine; the characters appeared on the front cover along with the title "The World According To Peanuts", signalling the strip's ascension in American culture. The 1960s is generally considered to be the "golden age" for the strip.

The strip appeared in 1,480 newspapers in the US by 1975, and in 175 outside the US.

Change of format: 1988-2000
Beginning Leap Day, February 29, 1988, the four-panel format for the daily strip was discontinued in favour of a free-form horizontal format that offered Schulz more creative freedom; Schulz began to regularly draw three-panel strips, as well as two panel and single panel strips. Schulz' pen lines during this period began to be rendered frazzled and wobbly due to him developing an essential tremor in his hand, resulting in the graphical style of strips being significantly different than earlier decades. While such a medical condition would normally justify hiring assistant artists, as was normal for other popular newspaper comic strips at the time, Schulz asserted his ideals of craftsmanship by continuing to draw the strip like this.

Schulz announced his retirement on December 14, 1999.

The last daily strip appeared on January 2, 2000. The last Sunday strip, concluding the strip as a whole, appeared on February 13, 2000. Schulz died on February 12, the night before the last strip; commentators have noted the close timing of these two events as an unusual coincidence, metaphorically suggesting that Schulz's life depended on the strip.

Film
As director:
 * Arthur Christmas (2011)
 * Ron's Gone Wrong (2021)

Television
As producer:
 * Fist of Fun (1995)
 * The Jim Tavaré Pictures (1995)
 * Where's Elvis This Week? (1996) †
 * The Friday/Saturday Night Armistice (1996-1998) †
 * In the Red (1998)
 * The League of Gentlemen (1999)
 * The Armando Iannucci Shows (2001) ‡
 * Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years (2001) ‡

Other credits include Bob & Margaret (1998) as a writer for one episode; The Awful Truth (1999) as executive producer; Brass Eye: Paedogeddon! (2001) as a script consultant; Nighty Night (2004) as a script associate; I Am Not An Animal (2004) as a writer; Dead Man Weds (2005) as director; and Thin Ice (2006) as director.

† Writer ‡ Director