Friday, November 16, 2007

An Introduction

Charles Schulz’s beloved Peanuts comic strip was one of the most influential and long-lasting strips in history. The simply drawn Sunday comic grew into a phenomenon spawning TV Shows, movies, books and countless merchandise. It is near impossible, in fact, to find an American who hasn’t heard of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, Linus and the rest of the Peanuts gang.
The character of Daniel, however, is considerably less familiar, even to the most devoted Peanuts fans.

Before Peanuts officially debuted in 1950 for the national public, it developed a fairly substantial cult following in the underground comic scene from 1947-49. This following was largely due to the somewhat controversial, Daniel, a character you most certainly will not read about in any modern Peanuts history book. In exchange for proper funding and the means to reach a mainstream audience, Schulz’s lawyers demanded that the character of Daniel be discontinued and removed from the Peanuts world entirely on the grounds that he was “a bad influence,” “slightly offensive,” and “too racist.” The lawyers didn’t feel that Daniel’s moral flexibility and unyielding racial intolerance “fit in” with the rest of the gang and, in a tight financial situation, Schulz begrudgingly agreed to the terms and began categorically denying Daniel’s entire existence, much to the dismay of the underground comic scene.

What you will find on this site are rare, hitherto-concealed original Peanuts comics featuring the now extinct Daniel character...Enjoy...

2 comments:

Theenie D said...

I have recently decided I am going to leave a comment on everything and anything I come across on the internet or have accessed (to my memory) in the past. I have been commenting on different posts on this Bartender and in some cases am a year or so late.

It is a hell of a lot of work catching up on years of missed posts. I had planned to include the evil FB in my commenting plans, but got as far as posting "i lyk bewbz" on about 20 old status updates from a friend's profile that I decided posting on every link, photo and status of every person on my facebook would take too much damn time. Especially since I could spend that time doing even less constructive things like rambling in the comment section of someone's blog.

Now I am keeping my commenting for my favourite blogs and sites and ignoring social networking and message boards.

Long Story Short: Expect a lot of comments from me catching up on shiz from ages ago.

By the way, skimming through to get to the original post I saw a lot of censorship which can only mean this is bound to be awesome.

- Theenie D

Matthew said...

Seeing as how Theenie commented on this, I figured nobody would mind if I did, even if I am markedly less female and perhaps slightly less loquacious than Miss D.

Anyway, I wanted to say yet again that I really like the stuff you do Dan. I don't know if I come across as an annoying admirer or something, (hopefully not), but I really appreciate what you do. My goal is to be able to make half as many people laugh, guffaw, or at least chuckle that you do daily.

I figure this world needs funny people to cheer it up, lest everyone just becomes grumpy and boring. Between you, Cracked, and Dr. McNinja, (best webcomic on the internet), I figure I can learn a lot. So thanks, and keep up the hilariously great work.

Matthew W.