--- ---  # Why _Peanuts_ Endures: “The Football is Always Pulled Away” by [Jennifer Latson](https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Oct 2, 2014 3:00 PM UTC  The April 9, 1965, cover of TIME The April 9, 1965, cover of TIMETIME by [Jennifer Latson](https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Oct 2, 2014 3:00 PM UTC Despite their wholesome, all-American reputation, Charlie Brown and his friends embody an amount of malaise better associated with French existentialists. Over nearly 50 years and more than 18,000 comic strips, _Peanuts_ made punchlines out of loss and futility. The joke was on humanity. And it started right away: creator Charles Schulz relied on themes like unrequited love and the cruelty of children as early as the comic’s newspaper debut on this day, Oct. 2, in 1950\. The very [first strip](http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1950/10/02) shows Charlie Brown walking by two children, one of whom declares, over four panels: “Well! Here comes ol’ Charlie Brown!/ Good ol’ Charlie Brown… Yes, sir!/ Good ol’ Charlie Brown…/ How I hate him!” That combination of wit, pathos and social commentary was why TIME put _Peanuts_ on the cover in 1965, and why the power of the strip persists to this day, as evidenced by plans for a 2015 _Peanuts_ movie, complete with 3D computer graphics, and the fact that the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif., is currently hosting an exhibit about the way the strip addresses still-relevant social issues. “Most of us will lose more often than we win. That’s the joke of Peanuts,” TIME’s James Poniewozik [wrote](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,992950-1,00.html) in 1999, when Schulz announced that he would quit writing the comic. “Schulz made it funny with characters who faced a Sisyphean suburban world of kite-eating trees and yanked-away footballs with resilience and curiosity.” Schulz, who [struggled](http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,93141-2,00.html) with depression and anxiety, poked fun at his own challenges by exaggerating them in his main character. (One example that Poniewozik cites: “On Tuesdays I worry about personality problems,” Charlie Brown commented in a 1960 strip. “Thursday is my day for worrying about the world getting blown up.”) And Schulz drew on real-world friends and relations to populate the strip with its quirky characters. One, the [Little Red-Haired Girl,](http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1990-02-14/lifestyle/9002132988%5F1%5Fschulz-charles-m-wold%29) for whom Charlie Brown pines but to whom he is invisible, was based on a former co-worker who had rejected Schulz’s marriage proposal. In his biography, _Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz_, he acknowledged that he had never gotten over his disappointment. The humor of Peanuts lies in the extremity of bad luck the characters — particularly Charlie Brown — endure. Schulz’ obituary in the New York _Times_ [pointed out](http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/14/arts/charles-m-schulz-peanuts-creator-dies-at-77.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias:s,{%221=%22:=%22RI:7=%22}=&pagewanted=2) that Charlie Brown “once held onto the string of a kite that was stuck in a tree for eight days running, until the rain made him stop.” The obituary, reporting Schulz’s death from colon cancer the day before his final Sunday comic strip was published in 2000, goes on to quote Schulz’s summary of his formula: “All the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football is always pulled away.” But Charlie Brown persevered nonetheless, and Schulz kept writing. More than 350 million readers joined him in laughing at life’s cruel absurdities. “You can’t create humor out of happiness,” he wrote in his 1980 book, _Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Me_. “I’m astonished at the number of people who write to me saying, ‘Why can’t you create happy stories for us? Why does Charlie Brown always have to lose? Why can’t you let him kick the football?’ Well, there is nothing funny about the person who gets to kick the football.” **_Read a 2000 remembrance of Charles Schulz, here in TIME’s archives:_** The Life and Times of Charles Schulz ### See How _Peanuts_ Addressed Feminism, Nuclear War and More  Peanuts, August 1, 1968 Shortly after the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Los Angeles schoolteacher, Harriet Glickman, wrote to Schulz regarding the integration of Peanuts. She believed that the popular comic strip could help influence American attitudes on race, and as a result of their correspondence, Franklin was introduced to the cartoon in the summer of 1968. Peanuts © 1968 Peanuts Worldwide LLC  Peanuts, June 18, 1954 The United States carried out the first test of a thermonuclear weapon in 1952\. Russia tested a hydrogen bomb in 1953, and several other countries soon followed suit. The innocuous “H-Bomb” game played by Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Patty, contrasts their innocence with the real threat of global atomic warfare. Peanuts © 1954 Peanuts Worldwide LLC  Peanuts, April 10, 1970 By the early 1970s, the National Organization for Women had more than 400 local chapters. Together with the National Women’s Political Caucus and other advocacy groups, they pressed for gender reform on issues such as equal pay, education, and reproductive rights. With her outspoken and unabashed persona, Lucy Van Pelt spoke to the ideology of the feminist movement in Peanuts. Peanuts © 1970 Peanuts Worldwide LLC  Johnny Horizon Environmental Program Flier January ,1972 Schulz collaborated with the United States Department of the Interior at the request of his friend, Clayton Anderson, who worked for the Johnny Horizon Environmental Program. Associated posters and pamphlets featured Peanuts characters to promote the program’s anti-litter campaign. 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