I PEANUTS they are the most famous comic strip in the world, published daily between 1950 and 2000, when its author Charles Schulz died at the age of 77. Even today, replicas of the strips are distributed and published every day in newspapers in dozens of countries around the world: in Italy, by the Post. The popularity and influence of the strip – and of its most famous characters, especially Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus – has extended over time to all media and daily life around the world, through their characters, their jokes, the rooting of their customs, and an extraordinary quantity of very effective aphorisms and quotations. The frustrations, insecurities, illusions, anxieties of the child characters have always reflected those of adult readers, adding childish tenderness that has always fascinated child readers: building success among very different generations over time. The name Peanuts was chosen by the strip’s distributor citing that of a children’s audience in a television show of the time, and it has always been said that Schulz didn’t like it. But as Lucy Van Pelt says, “the older you get, the less certain you are about a lot of things.”
