Tuesday, December 20, 2011

3931. Charlie Brown as Santa Claus


Charles "Charlie" Brown (occasionally called Chuck by certain characters) is the main character in the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schultz. Charlie Brown is a lovable loser, a child possessed of endless determination and hope, but who is ultimately dominated by his insecurities and a "permanent case of bad luck". He is often taken advantage of by his peers.

Charlie Brown first appeared in 1947, three years before Peanuts started, in a comic strip by Charles M. Schulz called Little Folks. He later appeared in the first Peanuts comic strip on October 2, 1950. He is one of the most well known characters in Peanuts and is considered to be the main character in the strip.
Charlie Brown states in the strip from November, 3, 1950, that he is "only four years old", but he aged over the next two decades. He says he is six in the strip from November 17, 1957, and eight-and-a-half years old in the strip from July 11, 1979. Later references continue to peg Charlie Brown as being approximately eight years old.

Charlie Brown falls for the football gag again.
Charlie Brown is an avid kite-flyer, but his kites keep landing in a "Kite-Eating Tree" or suffering even worse fates. In one strip from 1958, he finally gets the kite to fly before it spontaneously combusts in the air.
Every autumn Lucy van Pelt promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown to kick, and every year she pulls it away as he follows through, causing him to fly in the air and land painfully on his back. Charlie Brown was never shown as succeeding to kick the football in the comic strip. In a strip from 1979, in which Charlie Brown is in hospital, Lucy promises she will never pull the football away again. She does not pull the football away when Charles Brown tries to kick it after he gets well, but he misses the football and kicks her hand. However, he kicks it in a 1981 TV special, It's Magic, Charlie Brown when he was invisible. In a strip from 1999, Lucy delegates the task of holding the ball to her brother Rerun van Pelt. Rerun does not reveal whether Charlie Brown kicks the ball or not.

Charlie Brown is drawn with only a small curl of hair at the front of his head, and a little in the back. Though this is often interpreted as him being bald, Charles M. Schulz has explained that he saw Charlie Brown as having hair that was so light, and cut so short, that it could not be seen very easily. Snoopy thinks of his owner as "the round-headed kid". He almost always wears black shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, usually yellow, with a black zig-zag stripe around the middle (he originally wore a plain white tee shirt in 1950). Charlie Brown's apperance has become "iconic. " During the Christmas he wears a green jacket and jeans.

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