Linus’ Final Peanuts Quote Calls Back to Classic Comic Strip 27 Years Later

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts has one of the more dedicated fan communities on the internet, for whatever reason. The Peanuts Fandom wiki is an invaluable resource for anything you might want to know about the strip. It covers obscure characters, running jokes and even the gang’s unofficial cameos in later media like Family Guy. Academics have discussed Peanuts widely since its original run ended, but the wiki offers the dense, exhaustive, well-organized trivia that only dedicated fans produce. (They probably ought to move the wiki off Fandom at some point.)

The wiki also has a more depressing feature, a rundown of the daily strip that tracks its various unofficial finales. Flip through the last couple of months of published strips and you’ll find footnotes about everything that is now over.

By the end of January 2000, almost every character, interaction, catchphrase and recurring scenario in Peanuts had appeared for the last time. The football gag ended on Oct. 24, 1999, and the Great Pumpkin on Halloween 1999. Snoopy’s weird cousin Spike left on Dec. 21, 1999, and Lucy Van Pelt on Dec. 13, 1999. In most of those cases, Schulz didn’t know he was drawing a sendoff. He was going about his usual business until he was suddenly forced into medical retirement.

As a result, Peanuts has no official final chapter beyond Schulz’s farewell note on Feb. 13, 2000. A couple of strips feel like they carry some subtext about his failing health. One is Nov. 1, 1999 (“You’re the last one . . . did you turn out the light?”). Another is Peppermint Patty’s last appearance. Reading meaning into them is mostly left to the reader.

Peanuts for the people

Linus Van Pelt technically bowed out on New Year’s Day 2000, in a wordless strip about a snowball fight. It was also the last weekday Peanuts comic. That strip and the one before it use computer lettering, a rare thing in Peanuts that came from Schulz’s failing health. After Jan. 1, 2000, Peanuts ran on Sundays only until the end.

Linus’ last speaking role came a few weeks earlier, on Dec. 14, 1999, in a simple strip about a snowman with poor posture. On Dec. 15, Linus “improved” his snowman by giving him a snow violin. It was a rare music joke in Peanuts that didn’t involve Schroeder.

Before that, Linus’ trademark security blanket appeared for the last time on Nov. 13, 1999. The strip was the final entry in a decades-long struggle. The blanket faded into the background over the years, but across the run quite a few strips show other characters, mainly Sally, Lucy and Snoopy, trying to take it from him.

The Nov. 13 strip is a simple version of that fight. Snoopy tries to grab the blanket from Linus, and the two end up in a scuffle. One month earlier, on Oct. 17, Snoopy had snatched the blanket without a scratch.

For my money, though, the best Linus strips are the ones where he plays child philosopher. My favorite Peanuts comic is from April 26, 1961, where he describes his political position as being on “the lunatic fringe.”

With that in mind, the best of Linus’ last appearances is from Oct. 18, 1999. A number of the kids are stuck outside on a rainy morning before school.

Sally asks, “Does standing in the rain waiting for the school bus show our desire for education?”

“No,” Linus replies. “It shows how our lives are controlled by those in power.”

That isn’t even the strip’s punchline, but it’s the kind of dialogue that made Linus a fan favorite back in the ’50s.

By this point in Peanuts‘ evolution, Linus and Lucy had both taken a bit of a backseat to their little brother Rerun. Charlie Brown and Snoopy still got their share of panel time, but Rerun was the star of the Van Pelt lineup in the ’90s. The Oct. 18 strip marks one last piece of philosophy from Linus, which arguably makes it a better sendoff than his actual finale.

Source: Polygon