The Nobody Who Became a Somebody

"Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use."

            He thought of himself as "a nothing young man" or just "a nothing" or "a nobody." In seventh-grade, he was too puny to get the honored post of crossing guard. A friend said he "was a genius at becoming invisible." Of his high school years, he recalled "I wasn't actually hated. Nobody cared that much." His high school yearbook rejected his drawings. When asked in school if he wanted to be an artist when he grew up, he replied, "No." Later, he recalled, "I didn't want to be accused of thinking I was better than I was"

            What accounts for this outlook? Many things, undoubtedly. His Norwegian grandmother told him cheerful things like "If you're too happy today, something bad will happen to you tomorrow" and "If you laugh at the dinner table, you'll cry before bed."

            This shy and timid loser was a real Charlie Brown. He was the real Charles Schulz who created Peanuts. He once told an interviewer: "I suppose there’s a melancholy feeling in a lot of cartoonists, because cartooning, like all other humor, comes from bad things happening."

“They Were What Sold”

            When it was at its peak, this comic strip whose main character always fails at almost everything ran every day in 2,600 papers in 75 nations in21 languages. It's estimated that the strip along with licensed product and endorsements generated revenues of more than $1 billion a year, with Schulz taking home as much as $40 million annually.

            Why was Peanuts such as massive hit? "If you're going to create cartoon characters you can create them only from your own personality." That is what Schulz did. Lucy, Linus, and the gang weren't really children—they were adults who looked like children. He had no particularly affinity for children. "I drew them because they were what sold."

            Schulz said he succeeded because his strip relied on the "real minimum gag…. No one had ever done this type of humor before." In what other comic strip would characters say existential things like "What's the matter with me? Where's my sense of responsibility? .... Is it really my fault when I do something wrong? Must I answer for my mistakes…. Who is responsible? Who is accountable?"

            Schulz and only Schulz. He was his father's son. Schulz revered his father, a barber who never graduated from high school. His father never took a vacation in 45 years. Similarly, Schulz wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered Peanuts without an assistant for nearly 50 years, taking only one vacation. The last of his 17,897 strips appeared the day he died.

“I Became a Man”

            He knew from his earliest memories that his destiny was to be a comic strip artist. After all, his kindergarten teacher had told him, "Some day, Charles, you're going to be an artist." After high school, his father enrolled him in the home-study Federal School of Illustrating and Cartooning, and he had a tough time making the monthly $10 payments.

            The rejection was ceaseless, but he had toughened up since his school days. He had been drafted into the Army in 1942. Being in the service changed him. He put on 25 pounds—all muscle, and he rose to the rank of sergeant. He went in "a young guy who nobody ever thought would amount to much," and it gave him the opportunity to spend time "with a bunch of men." The result?  I became a man."

            Disney didn't want him. Neither did Classics Illustrated comics. After being hired as "junior artist," he learned the only implement he would be wielding was a broom so he could sweep the offices. At his next job, he addressed labels.

            He took twice-a-week evening classes at the Minneapolis School of Art. The woman who kept attendance remembered thinking, "He'll never amount to anything."

            He submitted ideas for strips to the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate. "Not professional enough," it said. The Chicago Sun-Times syndicate agreed.

            Every week from 1947 into 1950 he sent submissions to magazines. "This way you are never without hope," he said.

His Big Break—Broken

            Finally, in 1948, he got his big break—the E.W. Scripps syndicate in Cleveland offered him a one-year contract for a comic strip and flew him to its offices. It was Schultz's first trip on an airplane. Once back home, he got the contract in the mail, signed it, and sent it off. The syndicate took Schulz's photo for a sales brochure. Then just like Lucy yanking away the football, it cancelled the deal. The salesforce didn't think it could get enough newspapers to sign on.

            "I was never discouraged," Schulz recalled. "I always knew that I was getting closer and closer." He had so much confidence that when Disney asked him to move to Los Angeles to work as entry-level artist, he declined, preferring to stay with in Minneapolis where he had made a circle of friends.

            Slowly, a trickle of success came. The local newspaper ran his cartoons. Finally, in 1950, United Features saw what a gem he was. There was one condition: He had to change the name of his strip from "Li'l Folk" to "Peanuts." He loathed the title and resented it to his dying day. But he was smart enough to take the deal.

            First only seven papers took the strip, then 35, and soon enough, the strip was a sensation. Charlie Brown even went to the Moon. The astronauts of Apollo 10 named their command module after him, and they named their lunar module Snoopy.

            Happiness is a warm puppy, and happiness is also having the courage to stick with your dream until it comes true.

MORAL: If life keeps pulling away the football before you can kick it,
try taking up baseball. You might have better luck. 
If not, find a friend who plays Beethoven and listen.

Buy the book "Courage 101: True Tales of Grit & Glory" at Amazon!