comic history

When Charles M. Schulz's comic strip "Li'l Folks" was finally accepted by United Features Syndicate, re-christened "Peanuts" and debuted in seven newspapers on October 2, 1950, little did he realize that from such humble beginnings would mushroom worldwide popularity and prominence over the next 50 years. Peaking in the 1960's, this wonderfully endearing slice of Americana has become an institution continuing to delight us to this date. "Peanuts" can honestly claim the title of the worlds most successful comic strip, producing characters that will remain on the American landscape quite possibly forever.

Much has been written about this strip: Precocious children interacting in a world where adults are never seen, the underlying level of pathos of its main hero Charlie Brown, and most phenomenally, the growth from a minor role to eventual stardom by his dog Snoopy. "Peanuts" is the template for all modern child-star comic strips that followed, up to and including today's precocious wonderkid, the almost equally phenomenal strip, the late and terribly missed, "Calvin and Hobbes".

With all that said, and all that has been written about its place in comic strip history, I've seen little or no mention about "Peanuts" appearances in comic books.

A period of research has produced the following information. The earliest comic book appearances of "Peanuts" have a somewhat cloudy chronology and there has long been some question to its origins as I've found many factual data errors and omissions in the annual Overstreet Price Guide. Based on this fact, Overstreet mentioned appearances will be accepted but confirmation will await further discovery as I continue to locate a few remaining books. The information that follows is as up-to-date as possible.

"Peanuts" has been published in 4 major comic book waves summarized below :

1) United Feature Syndicate (U.F.S.) (1952-1954), which published a line of comics including TIP TOP, TIP TOPPER, UNITED COMICS, FRITZI RITZ and PEANUTS (a Comics On Parade one-shot). These were United Feature Syndicate newspaper strip reprints of early 1950's newspaper comic strips.

2) St. John (1955-1957), after a 7 month hiatus, followed when U.F.S. ceased publishing and continued with TIP TOP and FRITZI RITZ. These appear to be "Fritzi Ritz" and "Nancy & Sluggo" reprints from earlier U.F.S. issues.

3) Western, under its Dell imprint (1957-1962), after another hiatus, began the third wave with NANCY (Sept/57), then continued with TIP TOP (Nov/57), FRITZI RITZ (Dec/57), FOUR COLOR (1958), and finally PEANUTS (1960 ).

4) The final wave was published by Western under its Gold Key imprint (1962-1964), which continued the numbering from the Dell title NANCY & SLUGGO and a new, re-numbered PEANUTS. Notable of these issues is the fact that they are primarily re-packaged Dell reprints.

Now to begin at the beginning :

Peanuts" characters quietly made their comic book debut simultaneously in the Mar/Apr, 1952 issues of TIP TOP COMICS #173 and UNITED COMICS #21. These appearances are not mentioned in Overstreet and only recently discovered by myself. Overstreet does mention TIP TOP COMICS #177 (Nov/Dec, 1952) as a possible debut along with FRITZI RITZ #31 (Nov/Dec, 1953) but these are obviously incorrect. Timeline research has placed TIP TOP COMICS #173 and UNITED COMICS #21 as the earliest "Peanuts" appearances, chronologically pre-dating all other appearances as you will see.
TIP TOP COMICS was a long running title stretching back to 1936 and lasting 225 issues to 1961. United Feature Syndicate published #1 -188 (Overstreet incorrectly lists #187), St John published #189-210, and the last 15 issues 211-225, (1958-61) were published by Dell, featuring new story art "not" by Charles Schulz. I will explain this shortly. This title over its history featured Hal Foster's "Tarzan", "Li'l Abner", "Fritzi Ritz" , "Nancy", "The Captain and the Kids", "Peanuts", and historically speaking, the first published art of Jack Davis (#32, Dec/38, a Buffalo Bob's Cartoon Contest winner, age 12) and first comic work by Harvey Kurtzman (The "Peanuts" appearance history in TIP TOP COMICS begins haphazardly. I've established #173 as co-debut. From here Overstreet mentions #180, but this is incorrect. I have confirmed that #174, 175, 176-183 do "NOT" have appearances. Since #184 does have an appearance, we can state that the total TIP TOP COMICS appearances are : #173, #184-225. Issue #173 consisted of two 4-panel, half-page daily strip gags, but by #185 "Peanuts" was occasionally featured on the entire cover and inside received four full pages of daily and/or Sunday strip reprints.


UNITED COMICS (starring Fritzi Ritz) and FRITZI RITZ were two intertwined titles that presented comic strip characters owned by United Feature Syndicate, most notably Ernie Bushmiller's "Fritzi Ritz", a leggy "good-girl art" humor character who happened to be the aunt of "Nancy" of "Nancy and Sluggo" fame. UNITED COMICS was published in its entirety by United Feature Syndicate while FRITZI RITZ had #1-36 published by UFS, #37-55 by St. John, and # 56-59 by Dell. The exact publishing chronology of these two titles, with their "Peanuts" appearances, is the following:
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FRITZI RITZ 1-7 (1948-49) Pre-dates "Peanuts"

UNITED COMICS 8-26 (1950-53)"Peanuts" in #21-23,25,26

FRITZI RITZ 27-59 (1953-58) "Peanuts" in #27-33, 37-49, 51-59

The Overstreet Guide mentions UNITED COMICS "Peanuts"
by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo