Showing posts with label empathy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label empathy. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

August 26, 1953: Charlie Brown the killjoy

Peanuts

Most of the characters in your standard comic strip have what might be charitably termed "quirks." Usually, comics don't intend you to emphasize with them. The humor comes from laughing at rather than with. One of Peanuts' great innovations is in making all of its characters, at one time or another, truly relatable. Even the terrible Lucy, at the height of her fell power, had strips in which she was a more-or-less normal little girl.

But of all these characters, Charlie Brown, the one Schulz himself described as the Everyman of the cast, is the one who is obviously the one intended to be empathized with the most. That's why I like these strips in which the focus is on another character reacting to CB, instead of the reverse.