The best decade in the history of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts was no doubt the 1960s. The comic strip launched in 1950, and for the first decade, Schulz’s work was still evolving. The characters took a little while to develop the personality traits we came to love about them. Schulz’s artwork also shifted from a somewhat generic cuteness to the more distinct (but still quite cute) characters that became icons.
By the 1960s, Schulz hit his sweet spot with well-defined characters and a freshness to the material which would sometimes flag in the decades to come. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of hilarious, heartwarming, and inspired Peanuts comics from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, but taken as a whole, nothing tops 1960s Peanuts.
The 1960s are also when the characters became superstars. A Charlie Brown Christmas arrived on TV in 1965, and it was quickly followed by more TV specials. Peanuts also debuted on the big screen in the 1960s with the 1969 film A Boy Named Charlie Brown, even if that film isn’t quite as well-remembered today as some of the perennial TV specials that become appointment viewing on various holidays.
Anyway, the point is, you can’t beat Peanuts during this era. So here are six exceptionally good comic strips from that decade which prove that Charles Schulz truly was a genius who was really cooking in the 1960s.
At the beginning of June, 1965, Schulz launched a series of strips in which Charlie Brown goes away to camp for two weeks.
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