peanuts characters

If I had to make a list of my least favorite newspaper comics, all of the top five would be soap opera or adventure strips. It's not that I'm particularly fond of Garfield, but its lack of continuity lets me know that each day's strip is completely unrelated to the previous decades of strips. Even if I read Brenda Starr Monday through Saturday for months, I have no idea what's happening on any individual day. It's because comic strips are so short that I have trouble finding any reason to familiarize myself with the new characters.



It's not like that with Peanuts or other strips with lots of characters. Since most adventure strips are drawn more realistically than comedic strips and since they're printed so small and with such little detail, it's hard to tell new characters apart. After one Mark Trail story is finished, another starts up involving what looks like the same people only in different clothes.



Maybe that's why I never got into adventure strips: I just assumed the format was no good for serious storytelling. That is, until I got this anthology to review. This book collects the first two years (1934-1936) of Terry and the Pirates, the legendary adventure strip from Milton Caniff, also the creator of Steve Canyon and one of the most influential cartoonists of the early 20th century. And, like books of classic comedic strips, this collection shows just how far downhill the funny pages have gone.



The book is divided into three sections. First are the Sunday strips, presented in their original full-color format. These strips tell a story completely different than the daily black and white strips, which comprise section two. Eventually, the two storylines merge, and section three has both Sunday and daily strips in chronological order.



The fact that the strips are presented uninterrupted makes it much easier to follow the stories. Sections one and two start a little slow with Terry, the titular blond scamp, and his manly, square-jawed pal Pat embarking on some fairly basic journeys/treasure hunts with Connie, their Chinese caricature of a servant, at their side. They don't worry about danger, but eventually end up at the mercy of a gang of pirates. Terry makes wise cracks, Connie fumbles about, and Pat punches all of the bad guys. Eventually the three escape, relax, make bad jokes and get started again.



But near the end of section two, things start to change. Pat becomes darker. He falls in love, but rejects the woman. This turn of events transforms Pat from all-American hunk into a brooding, conflicted leading man. He's tough and violent, but not always heroic. Around this same time, Terry develops actual emotions and Connie's dialogue stops being a constant string of jumbled English with l's in for r's. (By 1930's standards, Connie was probably far more politically correct than he is now.)



When the characters become deeper, so do the stories. They go from cookie-cutter 30s adventures to violent, cinematic epics, presented in four panel doses. These more developed stories work just as well as comic books from the same era, and the firm grounding in reality gives them an edge of authenticity that is nearly unrivaled to this day.



Throughout the metamorphoses, though, the art remains high-caliber. It's just real enough to set moods and scenes, but cartoony enough to make each character distinct. The blend of exaggeration and realism makes the violence easier to stomach as well. There's no blood when a person is shot, but the line drawn from the bullet and the looks on victims' faces make it clear the impact was deadly.



The last few stories alone are worth the price for this wonderfully printed hard cover tome. The tales of Terry and Pat's battles with Pyzon, Captain Judas and the infamous Dragon Lady will surely set the record straight as to the power of adventure comic strips. | Gabe Bullard

Learn more about Terry and the Pirates at the IDW Publishing website.

WHEELING ― With one in three West Virginia high school students currently using tobacco products, Dr. William Mercer plans to use a new tool to teach children not to smoke.

On Wednesday, Mercer, who serves as health officer at the Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department, announced the ''Joe Too Cool To Smoke'' Campaign ― a year-long effort to educate the youth of the county about cigarette smoking, smokeless tobacco and clean indoor air. The program incorporates two of Mercer's favorite things ― Charles Schulz's ''Peanuts'' characters and his passion for promoting a tobacco-free lifestyle.

Mercer recently returned from the ''Peanuts on Parade'' event in Santa Rosa, Calif., to support the Charles Schulz Foundation. Each year a life size ''Peanuts'' character statue is chosen and different individuals and corporations submit themes that they would like to see on the statue.

According to Mercer, the designs are then chosen by the family of the late Charles Schulz. This year the selected character was ''Joe Cool'' also known as Snoopy. Mercer submitted his design ''Joe Too Cool To Smoke'' and it was accepted.

''My love for the Peanuts characters came to my head and I thought how about 'Joe Too Cool To Smoke?''' Mercer said. ''I wanted to use this as a tool back in Ohio County to teach kids not to smoke.''

Given his interest in promoting a tobacco-free lifestyle in youth, Mercer left one paw of the Snoopy statue blank. He is asking for all fifth grade students in both the Ohio County Schools system, as well as parochial school students to submit a drawing which will be painted on the figure. One winner from each participating school will be awarded and the overall winner will have their design featured as a permanent part of the statue.

On Oct. 24, ''Joe Too Cool To Smoke'' will make his first appearance on the campus of Wheeling Jesuit University with fifth grade students in attendance. Additionally, the 17th Surgeon General Richard Carmona will join other dignitaries as invited guests.

''Can this make a difference? I think so,'' Mercer said. ''If we can get our great community behind this we can have a great thing.''

Once the 500-pound Snoopy is home in Wheeling, Mercer and a medical student, will be visiting each school to speak about the dangers of tobacco use. Mercer will also be incorporating the methods used by Joseph Henry Garagiola, Sr., a former major league baseball catcher, who spoke out about the dangers of tobacco.

Mercer hopes to continue the campaign in other West Virginia counties, promoting ''Joe Too Cool To Smoke.'' He hopes the program will one day reach a national level. For more information call
Writers often talk about their characters taking over and pushing stories in directions they never expected.

That is what happened to Matt Janz, a cartoonist whose 5-year-old comic strip Out of the Gene Pool recently underwent a transformation.

Some of the original lead characters vanished, replaced by supporting characters who proved to have lives of their own. On July 30, the strip was renamed Single and Looking. It takes a cynical yet (occasionally) optimistic look at the dating scene, from the perspective of two very different singles.

One is Jackie, a divorced, 40-ish single mom who has "Prada tastes on a Payless budget" and a precocious son named Travis. The other single is Jackie's friend, Sam, a geeky but good-hearted 20-something bachelor with a party-hardy roommate, a cute little critter named Zoogie. Rounding out the cast is Madame Red, a cantankerous woman who gets many of the strip's funniest lines.

Janz is now in a relationship, but bases some of his strips on his single days and things his girlfriend mentions - or on anecdotes he hears from single friends.

"Jackie's a little easier to write for," he said. "When I write about her dating, I need to write about what's wrong with the other person, and I have her react to that…. Sam, with his social ineptness, he tends to scare people away."

Single and Looking is the third in the Journal's six-month comic strip tryouts. It will run for the month of October, starting Monday on the right-hand comics page in the daily paper.

Janz, 37, lives in the suburbs of Chicago. He became interested in cartooning when he was 8, after a friend of his mother gave him a box full of Peanuts paperbacks.

"By the time I was 10, I had put together a comic strip that was a total rip-off of Family Circus," he said. The strip, Dumbells (sic), was even drawn in a single, circular panel.

He took a stack of cartoons to his local library in Franklin Park, Ill., and asked if they would put them in their inventory. "Then a few months later they actually made a hardbound copy," he said. The library gave Janz, then 11, a copy, and put one in the library - where it is still in circulation to this day.

Janz knew that he wanted to become a cartoonist when he grew up, but also knew how hard it was to break into the comic-strip industry. He became a graphic designer when he was 19 and, every few years tried his hand at developing comic strips to send off to the syndicates.

He knew he was on the right track with his strip Out of the Gene Pool when he got personal responses back from the editors at the syndicates, instead of the generic form letters that most cartoonists get. He tried self-syndicating his strip for a time ("I was making hardly anything, just paying for the postage to send it out") and honed his art and writing. Then he tried again and got picked up by the Washington Post Writer's Group syndicate.

For its first four years, his strip focused largely on Rufus, a homely everyday guy and his family, with Jackie and her son Travis and some other characters. Eventually, Sam - Rufus' brother-in-law - became part of the strip and proved so popular with readers that he became one of the stars.

In the early days, newspaper editors frequently complained about how homely many of the characters were, especially Rufus and Madame Red.

"I set out to give them a cute character, but, I said, he's going to be a real jerk," Janz said. The result was Zoogie, Sam's roommate, who resembles a mix of a koala bear and teddy bear. "If you're around him a couple of minutes, you're going to want to drop-kick him somewhere."

Last year, Janz realized that the supporting cast was taking over the strip and decided to drop Rufus and his family altogether. "I had already started shying away from Rufus, and most of my writing was going to these other characters," he said.

Though the dating lives of Jackie and Sam take center stage, the strip isn't just about the singles scene. "It's not to dating what Dilbert is to office life," Janz said.

Readers shouldn't expect Jackie and Sam to ever pair off with each other. "That Ross and Rachel stuff (from Friends) drives me crazy," he said. "I'm pretty adamant, there's no storyline down the road that will ever bring these two together. I'm thinking of some future strips that make it obvious that they are not interested in each other that way."

The Woodstock Film Festival thrives on being "fiercely independent," but it's starting to look a lot like Hollywood.

After eight successful years, the increasing star power on-screen and off was inevitable.

Films with Meryl Streep, Ryan Gosling, Cate Blanchett, John Cusack, Jennifer Connelly and Heath Ledger are running beside documentaries about or produced by Robert Redford, Charles Schultz and Joe Strummer. On the various panels, expect to see Mary Stuart Masterson and Patricia Clarkson.

Beyond all the big names, there is still plenty of independence to go around: movies about a man telling his life story by blinking, living 30 days on marijuana, a middle-schooler in politics or a prostitute who becomes an artist? With topics like these, no stars are needed, just talented people, a great festival and a willing audience.

Hello, willing audience. Here is your guide to the eighth annual Woodstock Film Festival.

NARRATIVE HIGHLIGHTS


"American Fork" ― An obese young man who works as a grocery store clerk dreams of becoming a movie star. Those dreams seem possible when he begins taking an acting class led by a has-been played by William Baldwin. If it sounds a little "Napoleon Dynamite" in its vibe, it should. It's produced by the same guy.

See it: 7:15 p.m. Oct. 12, UPST 2; 1:30 p.m. Oct. 13 TINK


"Chicago 10" ― Not quite a documentary, not quite a narrative and not quite live action, "Chicago 10" almost defies categorization. It's directed by Brett Morgan, who did the Robert Evans doc "The Kid Stays in the Picture," and uses the animation technologies of "A Scanner Darkly" to recreate the story of protesters arrested after the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

See it: 7 p.m. Oct. 12 TINK, 9:30 p.m. Oct. 12 UPST 1


"Choose Connor" ― With a national voting age of 18, it's simple math to figure out why kids and politics don't mix. But when a overachieving middle-schooler hooks up with a local Congressman, he not only becomes a marketing tool for the campaign but an unwilling insider. Steven Weber, of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and "Wings," stars.

See it: 7 p.m. Oct. 12 ROSN, 11 a.m. Oct. 13 BEAR


"Dark Matter" ― For his first feature film, longtime opera director Chen Shi-Zheng got Meryl Streep and Aidan Quinn to star. Not bad. The film itself is based on the true story of a Chinese student whose obsession with discovering dark matter leads him to butt heads with his brilliant professor and turn to violence.

See it: 8:30 p.m. Oct. 11 BEAR, 2 p.m. Oct. 12 ROSN


"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" ― Director Julian Schnabel ("Basquiat," "Before Night Falls") won an award at Cannes for this film about Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who was paralyzed and, through blinking, wrote a memoir about what it was like to not be able to communicate.

See it: 6:45 p.m. Oct. 11 TINK, 7 p.m. Oct. 11 UPST 1, 9 p.m. Oct. 13 CATS 1


"Grace Is Gone" ― John Cusack plays a man in an awful situation. He's left with the duty to tell his two daughters that their mother has been killed in Iraq. Avoiding the inevitable as long as possible, he takes the girls on a road trip to an amusement park.

See it: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 13 BEAR


"Lars and the Real Girl" ― The sign of a great actor is their lack of fear in tackling a scary role. Well, Ryan Gosling, he of "The Notebook," does that with this off beat comedy. He's an introvert who has fallen in love...with a sex doll. Also starring Emily Mortimer and Patricia Clarkson, it's a star-studded addition to the festival.

See it: 6:45 p.m. Oct. 13 TINK, 6 p.m. Oct. 14 ROSN


"The Living Wake" ― On his last day of life, an eccentric artist rides around on a rickshaw getting into all types of shenanigans. The fun leads up to his final act, a living wake, where he hopes his friends will toast him and watch him die in front of their eyes. Comedy at its darkest featuring comedian Jim Gaffigan and Jesse Eisenberg of "The Squid and the Whale."

See it: 7:15 p.m. Oct. 12 BEAR, 3 p.m. Oct. 14 UPST


"Neal Cassady" ― The man immortalized as a character in Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" was named Neal Cassady. He was big in the Beat movement but after the famous book was released, he was forced to find himself between real life and the pages of Kerouac. He's played by Tate Donovan ("The OC"). The film was shot in black and white, and this is the world premiere.

See it: 6 p.m. Oct. 11 BEAR, 1:45 p.m. Oct. 13 UPST 1


"Reservation Road" ― Terry George ("Hotel Rwanda") directs a heavy-duty cast (Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Connelly, Mira Sorvino) in a film about what happens when a terrible accident forever links two different families. Focus Features will release the film in a few weeks.

See it: 9:30 p.m. Oct. 12 TINK, 9:45 p.m. Oct. 13 ROSN


"Under the Same Moon" ― The second Centerpiece film, set to be released by Fox Searchlight next year, tells the touching story of a young Mexican boy who travels into the United States to find his mother. At the same time, she ventures to find him.

See it: 6:45 p.m. Oct. 13 UPST 1, 3:15 p.m. Oct. 14 TINK

FILMS FROM HERE


"Bonneville 101" ― A local motorcycle team went to see "The World's Fastest Indian" at Rosendale and afterwards decided they wanted in on the speedy real-life action. This film follows team members as they build a bike in the area and then take it to Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

See it: 1:15 p.m. Oct. 14 TOWN


"The Cake Eaters" ― Two families living in the Hudson Valley realize that as long as you're living, you're never too old to change your life for the better. The film marks the directorial debut of Mary Stuart Masterson and was shot in the Hudson Valley with help of the Hudson Valley Film Commission.

See it: 1:45 p.m. Oct. 13 BEAR, 3:15 p.m. Oct. 14 ROSN


"For Love of Julian" ― Woodstock Film Festival director Meira Blaustein screens her ode to her multihandicapped son who passed away earlier this year. It's narrated by Susan Sarandon.

See it: 10 a.m. Oct. 13 TOWN


"Oswald's Ghost" ― Rhinebeck filmmaker Robert Stone world-premieres his documentary deconstructing all the wild and wacky conspiracies surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

See it: 7 p.m. Oct. 12 UPST 1, 1:30 p.m. Oct. 13 BEAR


"Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America" ― Directed by a Bard graduate and shot in the Hudson Valley, it's an adventure story set in 1007 AD about two Vikings forced to survive in the wilderness.

See it: 9:30 p.m. Oct. 12 UPST 1


"Superheroes" ― Watch this film and you'll be in the character's backyard. It takes place in the Catskills and explores the horrors a former solider goes through when he comes home from Iraq as a young filmmaker documents him.