Rats, indeed.

This above pictured is of original art from the recent San Diego Comic-Con I attended. Which got me thinking a lot about the work of Charles Schulz through his strips of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang.

I grew up with the Peanuts strips, then all eventually stopped as I would no longer read the newspaper cartoons, or feel the allure of the paperback compilations. My sequential art appreciation evolved more into serialized comic books with more hard-edged fiction, complex storytelling, and abstract, fantastical settings.

But attending the latest San Diego Comic-Con, I passed by a booth with this displayed for-sale original art strip. The beautiful four-panel magic of Schulz transitional reaction to Lucy’s suggestion of simplifying love by focusing on a particular complexity, perhaps leading to a new emotion. But Snoopy, being a struggling writer who I can relate to, finds such a complex emotion isn’t easily simplified the more you focus on. Agony can be enduring, overbearing to comprehend; especially when expressing deep emotion.

Rats, indeed.

– Orion T