Charles Schulz's 'Peanuts' Was Our Security Blanket
By AMY REEVES, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
12/01/2011
Most people who reach the top of their profession are focused, but few are as single-minded as Charles Schulz.
Schulz (1922-2000) decided as a youngster that he wanted to be a cartoonist, and he never wavered from that conviction.
Once he created his first successful comic strip, "Peanuts," in 1950, he spent half a century drawing every single panel that appeared under its name.
When he finally gave in and quit due to severe illness, he was so close to the end that he died the night before his last strip ran.
"With me, it was not a matter of how I became a cartoonist, but merely a matter of when," Schulz wrote in a 1973 article reprinted in last year's anthology "My Life With Charlie Brown," edited by Thomas Inge. "I am quite sure that if I had not sold 'Peanuts' when I did, that I would have sold something eventually, and that even to this day, if I had not yet sold something, I would continue to draw because I had to."
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