That’s how many Peanuts comics Charles Schulz created over the 50 years that he wrote and drew his beloved comic strip. Peanuts debuted on Oct. 2, 1950, began publishing Sunday strips on Jan. 6, 1952, and concluded its legendary run on Feb. 13, 2000. That’s a heck of a lot of comics, which makes determining the very best one — which I attempted to do here — a rather daunting task.
At first, I thought maybe it would make sense to go for the first comic strip or the last one. Both of those comics are really important to the history of Peanuts, but if you actually read them, neither represents the very best the strip has to offer. Peanuts didn't arrive fully-formed.
It took Charles Schulz a while to develop its characters and find their iconic look. That’s clear in the very first comic strip, which features the characters Shermy and Patty (not Peppermint Patty, just Patty) in a starring role and Charlie Brown in a supporting one. Charlie Brown also doesn’t quite look like himself yet.
For these reasons, it can’t be the first one. The last one isn’t perfect either because, unlike, say, Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts didn’t end because its artist was ready to conclude their story. Bill Watterson’s readiness to end Calvin and Hobbes motivated him to craft a beautiful ending for the characters.
Peanuts, in contrast, ended because Charles Schulz got incredibly sick and was no longer able to carry on. And while the last strip — which is basically just Schulz’s goodbye letter to fans — is moving, it isn’t some deeply satisfying ending for the characters. Okay, so that only leaves 17,895 other comics to evaluate.
With such an insurmountable number of comics that could be the best strip ever, I decided to break the problem down as mathematically as possible, setting a handful of parameters around whatever the best strip ever would be, thus narrowing the candidates and selecting from there. At first, I couldn't decide if the best strip ever should be about Charlie Brown, the star of the comic and the stand-in for Schulz himself, or if it should focus on Snoopy, the strip’s most beloved character. So I decided the best Peanuts comic strip ever should feature both of them.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
