[1] I wonder how Schultz felt about Liberty Meadows; Frank Cho went in on him a few times.

[2] I thought Tintin was cool, it was unfortunate the character got caught up in a race controversy not too long ago in a re-released book.

Bloom County was one of my favorites, after Calvin, but ahead of The Far Side. Damn, I need to dig those books out for another read.

I’ve been reading the Volume 1 of The Complete Peanuts and the subsequent interview with Schulz in the back from 1987. It’s a lot to take in as a fan, honestly. Peanuts was a name he reviled his entire career. He was not a fan of Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury at all. In fact, he was not a fan of a lot of comics in general. It’s not so much that he comes off as out-of-touch, but rather very sensitive about himself and his work; a product of his upbringing and the environment he “endured” for the first half of his life. A very vulnerable man who experienced a whole lot more success than he expected or knew what to do with.

Berkley Breathed is the same way, but even moreso. He revealed that he didn’t know much of anything about comic strip craft or history and had regarded himself mostly as an editorial artist who more or less fell into cartooning and doesn’t think he was all that good at it. He once received a get well letter from Charles Schulz after he had an accident, and never followed up on it; something his older self deeply regrets. in both cases, it’s a rather eye-opening peek behind the scenes of the comics page in general.

All in all, cartooning is a very weird and dysfunctional in many ways, so it’s not really surprising that great cartoonists like those two, Bill Watterson and Gary Larson either burn out early or scale back almost completely to something obscure. Well, in Schulz’s case, he ended exactly when his cartoons ended; a very spiritual end for both. The good ones put a whole lot of themselves into their work, to their great benefit and great consequence.