Charles Schulz and Jim Davis

Actually, I think Peanuts got a lot simpler in the last decade for the most part. There were still some flashes of brilliance, but I think Sparky was losing his touch by the strip's final decade. There were far too many punchlines involving the word Zamboni, too many Rerun/Snoopy gags that were a little too cutesy, and some gags that were epic fail. Other times the strip settled for formulaic setups, like:

*Peppermint Patty calls something by a wrong name. Marcie corrects her. PP says "Whatever, Marcie…"
*PP inverting Marcie's "You're weird, sir" by saying "You're [adverb] weird, Marcie…"
*Charlie laying awake at night, saying "Sometimes I lay awake at night and wonder [something]. And then a voice answers, [something else]". These ones were always winners, though, so I'll cut him slack there.

An example of just how low the strip sometimes sank in its last days (the dialogue probably isn't exact):

Snoopy and Charlie see a snowman that's melting.
Charlie: He's melting! Quick! Dial "nine-one-one!"
Snoopy runs in the house, stares at the phone, runs back out.
Charlie: The "nine" looks like a small "zero" with a tail…
Snoopy runs back in, woofs into the phone, then runs back out again. By now, the snowman is almost entirely melted.
Charlie: Never mind, it's too late, cancel the call.
Snoopy runs back in, and makes a CROSSED-OUT WOOF into the phone.

This gag is just wrong on so many levels:
*Calling 911 over a melting snowman?
*Why did he not only spell out 911, but also "put" it in "quotes"? I guess "some" people go "crazy" with "quotation marks" and I "don't" know "why".
*Snoopy knows what a zero looks like but not a nine?
*What does a crossed-out woof sound like anyway?

That may have been a little harsh on the strip, but I've always wanted to get that one off my chest. Peanuts was excellent for quite a long time, but the late 90s were kinda rough on it.
 
Well, obviously. Friends, foes or just acquaintances, Davis couldn't use Shulz's characters without his permission.



No, this wasn't a series. It was a one-shot prime-time special which aired on CBS. Filmation's Fabulous Funnies ran on NBC on Saturday mornings.
 
People at my college are often unhappy on how Garfield is created more by a committee compared to how Charles Schulz did the Peanuts on his own.
Jim Davis hasn't even drawn the Garfield strip since 1980.

Actually I'm surprised that Schulz hated Garfield so much. They seemed to be on pretty good terms.
As for Watterson, his distaste for Garfield has been publicly known for years. He's mostly appalled by its lack of artistic integrity.
 
if bill waterson was so against exposer for calvin and hobbs how did robot chicken get away with a skit of them
and I find it a little weird that right after charles m schulz died suddenly peppermint patty and Marcy became lesbians
 
You don't need to get permission to do a parody.



Peppermint Pattie and Marcie didn't become lesbians, ever. Some have theorized that way, but for crying out loud, THEY'RE SEVEN YEARS OLD. They don't know what lesbianism is.
 
To be fair, Peppermint Patty and Marcie aren't actually lesbians. Officially, they're not anything because they're little kids who have obviously never dated nor have had sex. The lesbian thing is just a common joke among Generation Xers, primarily because of Marcie's habit of calling Patty "Sir". Peppermint Patty and Marcie are no more real lesbians than Scooby Doo and Shaggy are pot heads or Bugs Bunny is a homosexual (because of his tendency to dress up in drag to confuse his foes).
 
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