In this way, Charles Schulz introduced a level of melancholy into the mainstream. Beyond the touching scenes and sentiments like, “happiness is a warm puppy,” he also allowed readers an unexpected and beautiful gift. Often, the last scene in the comic strip shows one of the characters disappointed, bereft, or forlorn. Just like for us, there isn’t always an easy answer. Schulz himself noted that the football is always pulled away the loves are always unrequited The Great Pumpkin never comes. In all of them, the characters were left, like all of us, with feelings that were unresolved.

There are Peanuts comics where the characters wonder what it’s like to have a broken heart and not be able to sleep, storylines where Snoopy is aimless and dissatisfied on Sunday afternoons, sketches about worry and anxiety and failure. Yet, no ending in the cartoon, his labor of love, was ever tied up so neatly. Some might say that the timing - the end of the cartoon and the end of Schulz’s life - could not have been better scripted. Schulz submitted the farewell, then retired to his room, where he died in his sleep). Peanuts ended with Schulz’s farewell announcement, published the day after his death in February 2000. Among his many contributions to popular culture, we can even count the term “security blanket” - which Schulz coined for his character Linus. Schulz penned this strip regularly for almost 50 years, over the course of which we watch Lucy, Peppermint Patty, Marcy, and the rest of the characters dabble in everything from sports and curbside psychiatry to bad hygiene and attachment issues. There are few things more iconic in American cartoon art than the ongoing story of several friends, one beagle, and one bird in Charles Schulz’s Peanuts.

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