Watch the First Animations of Peanuts: Commercials for the Ford Motor Company (1959-1961) — openculture.com

Bill Watterson, creator of arguably the last great comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, wrote the following about perhaps the greatest comic strip ever. “Peanuts pretty much defines the modern comic strip, so even now it’s hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty….” Charles Schulz, the artistic force behind Peanuts, funneled a lifetime of loneliness and emotional pain into these spare little drawings, creating a strip that was bleakly funny, philosophical and real. Characters like the socially inept Charlie Brown or the bossy though oddly tragic Lucy connected with audiences in a way that few ever did.

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