The Peanuts’ creator in a nutshell
Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, was
born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1922. Schulz
loved to read the comics section of the newspa-
per so much that his father gave him the nick-
name Sparky after Sparkplug, the horse in a
popular comic strip of the day, Barney Google.
Schulz was a gifted child who skipped two
grades and copied pictures of his favor-
ite cartoon characters from the newspaper.
Recognizing his passion for drawing, his mother
enrolled him in a correspondence course from
an art instruction school. Following a stint in the
army, Schulz had his new comic strip picked up
by United Features. He originally called his strip
Li’l Folks, but the strip was renamed Peanuts
without Schulz’s knowledge. The first strips
focused on the iconic characters like Charlie
Brown, Shermy, Patty, and Snoopy. Within the
year, Peanuts was appearing in 35 papers, and
by 1956, that number increased to well over 100.
By the 1960s, Peanuts was appearing in over
2,300 newspapers, and Schulz was famous
worldwide. The cartoon branched out into
TV, and in 1965, the classic Christmas special
“A Charlie Brown Christmas” premiered to an
entire generation of young children, followed by
several others. Many volumes of Schulz’s work
were published over the years, and many made
the New York Times Best Seller list.
In 1999, Schulz was diagnosed with cancer and
subsequently announced that he would retire
the following year. He died on February 12th,
2000, the night before his farewell strip was set
to run in newspapers.
The success of Peanuts has inspired the creation
of clothes, stationery, toys, games, and other
merchandise. The financial success of Peanuts
and the wealth it brought Schulz was unprec-
edented in the comics world. At the peak of his
earnings, Forbes magazine estimated his annual
income at $30–$50 million a year. And Schulz
would have made considerably more if it had not
been the custom of the day to sell the rights to
your feature as part of the syndicate contract.