A few Christmases ago, I got several pounds of Peanuts comic strips in three bound volumes. Finally managed to work my way through the set covering the 1960s, and I learned something startling:
Linus -- grounded, studious, intelligent Linus -- may be just as bad a student as Charlie Brown.
In reading the dailies (before the strip ended in 2000; I am old) and in reading the much smaller collections I gathered over the years, I always assumed that Charlie Brown was the more lackluster student, particularly when it came to not finishing book reports until 3 am the night before they're due. (The strip below is from 1965.)
But the 1960s Peanuts are rife with such comics as above (I'm not sure when this is from, but I suspect it's later than the 1960s) Linus shows some habits of procrastination that I thought were much more Charlie Brown-ish.
Maybe this is Schulz just populating his strip with characters of ordinary mein (except for the Beethoven prodigy Schroeder). But even Schroeder has his faults.
But ask anyone to identify the "loser" in Peanuts and it's Charlie Brown, all the time, hands down.
Maybe it's a message to look past the stereotypes and see people for what they are. Or something.
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