Comic Strips from the 1970s

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History of Popular Culture—Week 4, Assignment 1

Analyze comic strips from the 1970s, and compare them to present-day strips; or, their present-day counterparts.

Garfield

Jim Davis’ Garfield holds the Guinness World Record for being the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world—about 2,570 newspapers and journals. This popular strip was first published in 1978.

In a time of great political protest, Garfield was a refreshingly non-political strip, refraining from any sort of political commentary. Davis specifically wanted to keep the strip free from controversial topics to make it appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

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Peanuts

Written and illustrated by Charles Schultz, Peanuts was a comic strip that ran from 1950 to 2000, and at its peak reached a circulation of over 2,600 newspapers. The cast consisted of young children and a dog: Charlie Brown was the main character; Charlie Brown had many friends who held supporting roles in the strip; and an imaginative beagle named Snoopy befriended all the characters.

Unlike Garfield, Peanuts often engaged in social commentary, albeit subtle. For instance, Snoopy tossed the character Linus into the air and claimed, via a thought bubble, that he was the first dog to launch a human shortly after the 1957 launch of Sputnik 2 and Laika the dog into space. Other subtleties of the strip broached the topics of racial and gender equality, school dress codes, and the Vietnam War.

Schultz allowed more of himself—his own character—into his comic than most cartoonists. Indeed, his own beliefs were simply accepted as truth in the strip. Even the real meaning of Christmas is related by young Linus van Pelt in the classic Christmastime television special A Charlie Brown Christmas, when Linus quotes a passage from the King James Version of the Bible in Luke 2:8-14. Lead character Charlie Brown himself shared many experiences with Schultz’s younger years.

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What do these comics indicate about the mindset of the people of the time?

Peanuts seems to have been a very conservative strip that emphasized fairly conservative values, but at the same time reflected progressive thought. It placed importance on friendship between its characters. That the strip assumed racially integrated schools and Peppermint Patty’s athletic abilities shows Schultz’s progressive thought on the equality of gender and race.

Garfield seems to have been more liberal with its portrayal of ideas. Perhaps it is only because the strip actually features adults in it rather than children that it addresses more adult topics, such as Jon’s subscription to a “bachelor’s magazine” and Garfield battling his weight. The women Jon occasionally dated usually had exaggerated, “sexy” features, the embodiment of Jon’s perception of women as a whole—a means to an end rather than a companion. Additionally, Garfield’s remarks are often demeaning of Jon and other animals in the cast.

Can you see a common thread in the various social issues that the comics portray? Support your answer with reasons.

No, I didn’t see a common thread between the two comics. Where Peanuts paired pure, traditional, family-friendly values with progressive, optimistic thought, Garfield jokingly offered cynical, sarcastic dialogue, suggestively introduced new female characters into the main character’s life, and afforded its characters more lenient morals—obesity and lust, namely.

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