Read the Entire Comic Book Adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

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Two years ago, we high­light­ed for you the begin­ning of a promis­ing project — Julian Peters’ com­ic book adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s 1910 poem â€śThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” At the time of our post, Peters had only com­plet­ed the first nine pages of his adap­ta­tion. And, about those first pages, our Josh Jones had this to say:

Dante is where “Prufrock” begins, with an epi­graph from the Infer­no. Peters’ first page illus­trates the ago­nized speak­er of Dante’s lines, Gui­do da Mon­te­fel­tro, a soul con­fined to the eighth cir­cle, whom you can see at the top of the title page shown above. Peters’ visu­al choic­es place us firm­ly in the hell­ish emo­tion­al realm of “Prufrock,” a seem­ing cat­a­logue of the mun­dane that har­bors a dark­er import. Peters gives us no hint of when we might expect new pages, but I for one am eager to see more.

Hap­pi­ly for Josh … and the rest of us … we can now find out where Peters took the rest of the project. The adap­ta­tion is now com­plete. 24 pages in total. All now on dis­play on Peters’ web­site here.

If you’re not famil­iar with â€śThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” I’d strong­ly encour­age you to revis­it a post in our archive where you can hear “Prufrock” being read by T.S. Eliot him­self and also Sir Antho­ny Hop­kins. There you can learn more about Eliot’s mod­ernist mas­ter­piece.

Note: Julian is look­ing for a pub­lish­er to help put his com­ic book in print. If any pub­lish­ers want to chat with him, you can find his con­tact info on his web site.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot’s Rad­i­cal Poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Read by Antho­ny Hop­kins and Eliot Him­self

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats & Oth­er Clas­sic Poems (75 Min­utes, 1955)

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

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iTunes Terms & Conditions Adapted into a Graphic Novel: Read It Free Online

apple-terms-and-conditions-comic

In the past, we’ve brought you the cre­ative work of R. Siko­ryak. An illus­tra­tor who teach­es at the Par­sons School of Design in NYC, Siko­ryak has a pen­chant for cre­at­ing com­ic book adap­ta­tions of lit­er­ary clas­sics. Take for exam­ple Dos­toyevsky Comics where Bat­man stars in a com­ic book ver­sion of Crime & Pun­ish­ment. Or Wait­ing to Go, which mar­ries Wait­ing for Godot with Beav­is and Butt-Head. 

In his lat­est project, Siko­ryak veers sharply away from lit­er­a­ture toward lan­guage that is much more tech­ni­cal. Now, on his tum­blr, you can find iTunes Terms & Con­di­tions: The Graph­ic Nov­el.

Adding a new page every day, Siko­ryak is cre­at­ing an illus­trat­ed ver­sion of the “com­plete, unabridged legal agree­ment.” You can cur­rent­ly view the first 49 pages. Click here. Go to the bot­tom of the page. Then start scrolling up as you read.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bat­man Stars in an Unusu­al Car­toon Adap­ta­tion of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Comics Inspired by Wait­ing For Godot, Fea­tur­ing Tintin, Roz Chast, and Beav­is & Butthead

John Lennon’s “Imagine” & Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” Adapted into Smart, Moving Webcomics

Would John Lennon’s “Imag­ine” have been such a big hit if it had come from an unknown singer/songwriter instead of one of the most famous rock stars in the world? Impos­si­ble to say. Maybe a bet­ter ques­tion is: could any­one else have writ­ten the song? “Imag­ine” has become much more than a soft rock anthem since its release in 1971; it has become a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. Among the innu­mer­able big events at which the human­ist hymn appears we can include, since 2005, New York’s New Year’s Eve cel­e­bra­tion and, just recent­ly, a per­for­mance by pop star Shaki­ra at the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly just before Pope Fran­cis’ his­tor­i­cal appear­ance.

It seems an odd choice, giv­en the song’s appar­ent anti-reli­gious mes­sage. And yet, though Lennon was no fan of orga­nized reli­gion, he told Play­boy mag­a­zine in a 1980 inter­view that the song was inspired by “the con­cept of pos­i­tive prayer” in a Chris­t­ian prayer book giv­en to him by Dick Gre­go­ry. “If you can imag­ine a world at peace,” said Lennon, “with no denom­i­na­tions of religion—not with­out reli­gion but with­out this my God-is-bigger-than-your-God-thing—then it can be true….” As if to under­score that par­tic­u­lar point in his adap­ta­tion of “Imag­ine” in the video above, car­toon­ist Pablo Stan­ley includes such reli­gious­ly diverse, yet ecu­meni­cal fig­ures as the agnos­tic Albert Ein­stein, Protes­tant Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., Hin­du Mahat­ma Gand­hi, and Rasta­far­i­an Bob Mar­ley, along with less-famous free­dom fight­ers like Har­vey Milk and mur­dered Russ­ian jour­nal­ist Anna Politkovskaya.

Stan­ley’s “Imag­ine” orig­i­nal­ly appeared in web­com­ic form, sans music, on his blog Stanleycolors.com. It seems that sev­er­al peo­ple took excep­tion to an ear­li­er, most­ly black-and-white draft (which also includ­ed what looks like the once-very-South­ern-Bap­tist Jim­my Carter), so Stan­ley issued a mul­ti-point dis­claimer under his revised, full-col­or ver­sion. He states that this “is NOT an anti-reli­gion/athe­ist pro­pa­gan­da comic”—charges also unfair­ly levied at Lennon’s song. Stan­ley does­n’t address the fact that most of the famous peo­ple in his com­ic, includ­ing Lennon, were assas­si­nat­ed, though this blog post offers a sug­ges­tive the­o­ry with inter­view footage from Lennon him­self.

In every respect, the com­ic adap­tion of “Imag­ine” hews pret­ty close­ly to Lennon’s call for world peace. In anoth­er Bea­t­les-penned bal­lad-adap­ta­tion, how­ev­er, things take a much dark­er turn. Stan­ley uses his per­son­al expe­ri­ence of near-sui­ci­dal depres­sion in his com­ic real­iza­tion of Paul McCart­ney’s song of lost love, “Yes­ter­day.” (See a video ver­sion above, web­com­ic ver­sion here.) This is grim stuff, to be sure, but Stan­ley assures us that he “over­came that sit­u­a­tion.” His com­men­tary offers a hope­ful take on the painful end­ing: “Look­ing at the yes­ter­day reminds me that I should thrive for the tomor­row.” I’m sure McCart­ney would agree with the sen­ti­ment.

For many more smart, moving—though non-Beatles-related—comics from Pablo Stan­ley, see his blog, Stan­ley Col­ors.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The John Lennon Sketch­book, a Short Ani­ma­tion Made of Lennon’s Draw­ings, Pre­mieres on YouTube

Hear John Lennon’s Final Inter­view, Taped on the Last Day of His Life (Decem­ber 8, 1980)

The Rolling Stone Inter­view with John Lennon (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Evolution of Batman in Cinema: From 1939 to Present

Bob Kane cre­at­ed Bat­man in 1939 as a way to ful­fill the public’s need for more com­ic book super­heroes in the wake of Super­man. And, by 1943, Bat­man made his way from pulpy print to the screen for first time.

In this video trib­ute to the many looks of Bat­man through the ages, Jacob T. Swin­ney advances chrono­log­i­cal­ly, but also the­mat­i­cal­ly, focus­ing on the inter­play between Bat­man and his side­kick Robin; the fetishiza­tion of Batman’s tool belt; and the evo­lu­tion of his cos­tume from fab­ric (his clas­sic look up through the ’80s) to the BDSM-inspired rub­ber out­fits that have last­ed since Michael Keaton donned the sol­id black get-up through Chris­t­ian Bale’s inter­pre­ta­tion. (It does seem that Ben Affleck’s ver­sion will not devi­ate from this course, but add some armor. He will also con­tin­ue to perch on top of spires and tall build­ings and stand watch over the city.)

The oth­er evo­lu­tion worth notic­ing is in Batman’s voice, and what it says about America’s rela­tion­ship with author­i­ty. In the ear­ly seri­als up through Adam West’s icon­ic TV ver­sion, Bat­man speaks in clipped but enun­ci­at­ed tones, some­where in the region of news­cast­ers and G‑men. This con­nects Bat­man to the detec­tive part of his char­ac­ter and telegraphs his innate good­ness. But once Keaton takes on the role, Bat­man speaks in a low, grave­ly tone to suit his vig­i­lante ethos, designed for meet­ings in dark alleys. This is how we want our heroes now.

This “seri­ous” shift takes its cue from Frank Miller’s ground­break­ing The Dark Knight Returns com­ic book, which is ground zero for every super­hero film since that wears its grit­ty real­ism on its sleeve. This affect­ed speech reach­es its fair­ly ridicu­lous apoth­e­o­sis in Christo­pher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Ris­es, where both hero and vil­lain are incom­pre­hen­si­ble. The only thing left is par­o­dy, and that’s how we end this video, with Will Arnett’s voice ani­mat­ing the Lego Movie’s ver­sion of the super­hero: affect­ed, nar­cis­sis­tic, and believ­ing too much in his own myth.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bat­man Stars in an Unusu­al Car­toon Adap­ta­tion of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment

Slavoj Žižek’s Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy Decodes The Dark Knight and They Live

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

The 1982 DC Comics Style Guide Is Online: A Blueprint for Superman, Batman & Your Other Favorite Superheroes

DC Style Guide 1

Even if you don’t like com­ic books, think of names like Super­man, Bat­man, and Won­der Woman, and you get a very clear men­tal pic­ture indeed. Clas­sic super­heroes live, breathe, bat­tle supervil­lians, and even die and return to life across decades upon decades of sto­ry­lines (and often more than one at once), but we all know them because, just like the most endur­ing cor­po­rate logos, they also stand as sur­pass­ing­ly effec­tive works of com­mer­cial art. But giv­en that count­less dif­fer­ent artists in var­i­ous media have had to ren­der these super­heroes over those decades, how have their images remained so utter­ly con­sis­tent?

DC Style Guide 2

That owes to doc­u­ments such as the 1982 DC Comics Style Guide, scanned and recent­ly post­ed to a Face­book group for fans of com­ic-book artist JosĂ© Luis Gar­cĂ­a-LĂłpez. Hav­ing spent most of his career with DC Comics, care­tak­er of Super­man, Bat­man, Won­der Woman, and many oth­er well-known and much-licensed heroes and vil­lains besides, Gar­cĂ­a-LĂłpez sure­ly knows in his very bones the sort of details of cos­tume, physique, pos­ture, and bear­ing these style guides exist to con­vey.

DC Style Guide 3

Being 33 years old, this par­tic­u­lar style guide does­n’t per­fect­ly reflect the way all of DC’s super­heroes look today, what with the aes­thet­ic changes made to keep them hip year on year. But you’ll notice that, while fash­ions tend to have their way with the more minor char­ac­ters (long­time DC fans espe­cial­ly lament the head­band and big hair this style guide inflict­ed upon Super­girl), the major ones still look, on the whole, pret­ty much the same. Sure, Super­man has the strength and the flight, Bat­man has the wealth and the vast armory of high-tech crime-fight­ing tools, and Won­der Woman can do pret­ty much any­thing, but all those abil­i­ties pale in com­par­i­son to the sheer pow­er of their design. You can flip through the rest of the Style Guide here.

dc style guide 5

 

(via Metafil­ter)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from the Com­ic Book PlusArchive

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Kapow! Stan Lee Is Co-Teach­ing a Free Com­ic Book MOOC, and You Can Enroll for Free

Bat­man & Oth­er Super Friends Sit for 17th Cen­tu­ry Flem­ish Style Por­traits

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

R. Crumb’s Vibrant, Over-the-Top Album Covers (1968–2004)

Cheapthrills

It is sur­pris­ing to me, but a few peo­ple I’ve come across don’t know the name of car­toon­ist Robert Crumb, cult hero of under­ground comics and obscure Amer­i­cana record col­lect­ing. On sec­ond thought, maybe this should­n’t come as such a sur­prise. These are some pret­ty small worlds, after all, pop­u­lat­ed by obses­sive fans and archivists and not always par­tic­u­lar­ly wel­com­ing to out­siders. But Crumb is dif­fer­ent. For all his social awk­ward­ness and hyper-obses­sive­ness, he seems strange­ly acces­si­ble to me. The eas­i­est ref­er­ence for those who’ve nev­er heard of him is Steve Buscemi’s Sey­mour in Ter­ry Zwigof­f’s Ghost World. There’s an obvi­ous trib­ute to Crumb in the char­ac­ter (Zwigoff pre­vi­ous­ly made an R. Crumb doc­u­men­tary), though it’s cer­tain­ly not a one-to-one rela­tion (the film adapts Daniel Clowe’s com­ic of the same name.)

Music Never Stopped

Whether or not Ghost World (or Zwigof­f’s Crumb) rings a bell, there’s still the mat­ter of how to com­mu­ni­cate the lov­able lewd­ness and aggres­sive anachro­nism that is Crum­b’s art. For that one may only need to men­tion Big Broth­er & the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny’s 1968 clas­sic Cheap Thrills (top), the first album cov­er Crumb designed—and which Janis Joplin insist­ed upon over the record com­pa­ny’s objec­tions. With its focus on musi­cians, and its appro­pri­a­tion of hip­pie weird­ness, racist Amer­i­can imagery, and an obses­sion with female pos­te­ri­ors that rivals Sir-Mix-a-Lot’s, the cov­er pret­ty much spans the spec­trum of peren­ni­al Crumb styles and themes. Above, see anoth­er of Crum­b’s cov­ers, for a com­pi­la­tion called The Music Nev­er Stopped: Roots of the Grate­ful Dead, which col­lects such roots and old-school rock and roll artists as Mer­le Hag­gard, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Rev­erend Gary Davis, Howl­in’ Wolf, and more.

Crumb BBKing

 

Though he object­ed to the 1995 assignment—saying to Shanachie Records, “You want all these peo­ple on a CD cov­er? What are they, like, five inch­es across?”—Crumb must have rel­ished the sub­ject. (And he was paid, as per usu­al, in vin­tage 78s.) Next to those pos­te­ri­ors, Crum­b’s true love has always been Amer­i­can roots music—ragtime, swing, old coun­try and blue­grass, Delta coun­try blues—and he has spent a good part of his career illus­trat­ing artists he loves, and those he does­n’t. From famous names like Joplin, Dylan, and B.B. King (above, whose music Crumb said he “did­n’t care for, but I don’t find it that objec­tion­able either”), to much more obscure artists, like Bo Carter, known for his “Please Warm My Wiener,” on the 1974 com­pi­la­tion album below.

Crumb Weiner

Crum­b’s use of racial­ly ques­tion­able and sex­ist imagery—however satirical—has per­haps ren­dered him untouch­able in some cir­cles, and it’s hard to imag­ine many of his album cov­ers pass­ing cor­po­rate muster these days. His recent work has moved toward more straight­for­ward, respect­ful por­trai­ture, like that of King and of Skip James on the best-of below, from a series called “Heroes of the Blues.” (Crumb also illus­trat­ed “Heroes of Jazz” and “Heroes of Coun­try,” as we fea­tured in this post.) See Crum­b’s inim­itable, loos­er por­trait style again fur­ther down in 2002 album art for a group called Hawks and Eagles.

Crumb Skip James

Crumb Hawks and Eagles

Crumb may have shed some of his more unpalat­able ten­den­cies, but he has­n’t lost his las­civ­i­ous edge. How­ev­er, his work has matured over the years, tak­ing on seri­ous sub­jects like the book of Gen­e­sis and the Char­lie Heb­do mas­sacre. For an artist with such pecu­liar per­son­al focus, Crumb is sur­pris­ing­ly ver­sa­tile, but it’s his album cov­ers that com­bine his two great­est loves. “What makes Crum­b’s art so appro­pri­ate for the album sleeve,” writes The Guardian’s Lau­ra Bar­ton, “is its vivid­ness, and its cer­tain oomph; it’s in the min­gling of sex and joy and com­pul­sion, and the vibran­cy and move­ment of his illus­tra­tions.”

Crumb Soundtrack

Crumb has­n’t only com­bined his art with music fan­dom, but also with his own musi­cian­ship, illus­trat­ing cov­ers for sev­er­al of his own albums by his rag­time band Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders. And he even pro­vid­ed the illus­tra­tion for the sound­track to his own doc­u­men­tary, as you can see above—an extreme exam­ple of the many self-abas­ing por­traits Crumb has drawn of him­self over the years. Crum­b’s album cov­er art has been col­lect­ed in a book, and you can see many more of his cov­ers at Rolling Stone and on this list here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try Fea­tures 114 Illus­tra­tions of the Artist’s Favorite Musi­cians

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

Car­toon­ist R. Crumb Assess­es 21 Cul­tur­al Fig­ures, from Dylan & Hitch­cock, to Kaf­ka & The Bea­t­les

Ralph Steadman’s Evolv­ing Album Cov­er Designs: From Miles Davis & The Who, to Frank Zap­pa & Slash (1956–2010)      

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

The Evolution of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck & Other Looney Tunes Legends: A Video Essay

Not­ed car­toon per­son­al­i­ty Bugs Bun­ny has war­bled his way through Wag­ner­ian opera, played every defen­sive posi­tion known to base­ball, styled a monster’s hair…is there any­thing that was­cal­ly wab­bit can­not do?

Yes, in fact. Accord­ing to his long time direc­tor, ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones, Bugs could nev­er pick a fight. Unlike his hair trig­ger Looney Tunes col­league, Daffy Duck, the bun­ny had to be pro­voked before enter­ing the fray. That applies whether he’s a box­er, a gang­ster, or imper­son­at­ing the biggest movie stars of his day.

Abid­ing by the strong rules he estab­lished for the char­ac­ters in the Looney Tunes sta­ble was crit­i­cal to his com­ic approach, as Jones explains in the above video essay, a bit of a depar­ture for Tony Zhou’s cel­e­brat­ed cin­e­ma series, Every Frame a Pic­ture. Rather than exam­ine the fram­ing and tim­ing of “one of the all-time mas­ters of visu­al com­e­dy,” this time Zhou delves into the evo­lu­tion of his subject’s artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ties.

Like all good direc­tors, Jones learned from his actors–in this case, ani­mat­ed, and not all of them his babies. Bugs and Daffy were the brain­chil­dren of the great Tex Avery. Friz Fre­leng cre­at­ed Yosemite Sam and everyone’s favorite stut­ter­ing pig, Porky.

Jones teased out the desires that became the pri­ma­ry engines for those char­ac­ters’ phys­i­cal­i­ty as well as their behav­ior. Daffy comes off as an unhinged lunatic in his ear­ly appear­ances. His com­ic poten­tial grew once Jones reframed him as a con­niv­er who’d do any­thing in pur­suit of wealth and glo­ry.

Once the char­ac­ters’ moti­va­tions were clear, Jones could mess around with the ol’ one-two punch. It’s a clas­sic com­ic struc­ture, where­in real­i­ty wreaks hav­oc on the audience’s expec­ta­tions about how things should unfold. Then again, a child can tell you what dri­ves Jones’ cre­ation, the pas­sion­ate French skunk, Pepé Le Pew, as well as how those amorous ambi­tions of his are like­ly to work out. Fun­ny! Depend­ably so!

Zhou also draws atten­tion to the evo­lu­tion of the char­ac­ters’ expres­sions, from the antic to the eco­nom­i­cal. John Belushi was not the only com­ic genius to under­stand the pow­er of a raised eye­brow.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chuck Jones’ 9 Rules For Draw­ing Road Run­ner Car­toons, or How to Cre­ate a Min­i­mal­ist Mas­ter­piece

How to Draw Bugs Bun­ny: A Primer by Leg­endary Ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones

The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

How Franklin Became Peanuts’ First Black Character, Thanks to a Caring Schoolteacher (1968)

Like many chil­dren of the 70s, I was wild for Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, and had the mer­chan­dise to prove it. I was a Snoopy girl, for the most part, but not averse to receiv­ing items fea­tur­ing oth­er characters—Linus, Schroed­er, the caus­tic Lucy, Pig­Pen, and, of course, Char­lie Brown. My father was a suck­er for the com­par­a­tive­ly butch Pep­per­mint Pat­ty, and Mar­cie, the bespec­ta­cled hang­er-on who referred to Pat­ty as “Sir.”

But there was one char­ac­ter I don’t remem­ber see­ing on any Peanuts swag in 1970s Indi­ana…. Actu­al­ly, that’s not accu­rate. I don’t remem­ber any Shermy sweat­shirts. Female sec­ond bananas like Vio­let, the orig­i­nal, i.e. non-Pep­per­mint Pat­ty, and Frie­da were also under­rep­re­sent­ed, despite the latter’s oft-men­tioned nat­u­ral­ly curly hair.

The char­ac­ter I’m think­ing of nev­er became a major play­er, but he was notable. Ground-break­ing even. Can you guess?

Franklin

Thats right: Franklin, the only African-Amer­i­can mem­ber of the Peanuts gang.

(An African-Amer­i­can tod­dler, Milo, below, had a 17-strip run in 1977 when Char­lie Brown had to skip town after exact­ing his revenge on the kite-eat­ing tree… That’s it. Poor Franklin.)

Castrubyaustin-1-

Franklin owes his exis­tence, in large part, to Har­ri­et Glick­man, a white teacher from LA, who found let­ter writ­ing one of the few forms of activism in which a moth­er of three children—all square­ly with­in the Peanuts demographic—could ful­ly par­tic­i­pate. Raised by lib­er­al par­ents to con­sid­er her­self a glob­al cit­i­zen, and to speak out against injus­tice, she wrote the authors of sev­er­al lead­ing com­ic strips in the wake of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King’s assas­si­na­tion in April, 1968.  Would the cre­ators of Peanuts and Mary Worth con­sid­er intro­duc­ing a black char­ac­ter into the mix, as a first step on what Glick­man fore­saw as a “long and tor­tu­ous road” toward a future cli­mate of “open friend­ship, trust and mobil­i­ty” between the races?

Mary Worth’s Allen Saun­ders declined, appar­ent­ly say­ing that he shared Glick­man’s sen­ti­ments but feared the syn­di­cate would drop his strip if he fol­lowed her sug­ges­tion.

Schulz didn’t exact­ly leap at the chance, either, say­ing that he was in the same boat as the oth­er sym­pa­thet­ic car­toon­ists who’d begged off. What he feared wasn’t so much the syndicate’s response, as the sus­pi­cion that he might be seen as “patron­iz­ing our Negro friends.”

Glick­man per­sist­ed, ask­ing his per­mis­sion to share his let­ter with some of her “Negro friends,” all par­ents. Per­haps they could offer some thoughts that might induce the car­toon­ist to say yes.

One of these friends, Glickman’s neigh­bor, Ken Kel­ly, prompt­ly fired off his own let­ter to Schulz, writ­ing:

I’d like to express an opin­ion as a Negro father of two young boys. We have a sit­u­a­tion in Amer­i­ca in which racial enmi­ty is con­stant­ly por­trayed.


Like Glick­man, he felt that a “casu­al day-to-day scene” fea­tur­ing a non-white char­ac­ter would give his sons and oth­er chil­dren of col­or a chance to see them­selves reflect­ed in the strip, while pro­mot­ing “racial ami­ty” to read­ers of all races.

Glick­man expressed hope that Peanuts would even­tu­al­ly grow to include more than one black child:

Let them be as adorable as the others…but please…allow them a Lucy!

With­in weeks of receiv­ing Kelly’s let­ter, and just over two months into Glickman’s let­ter-writ­ing cam­paign, Schulz reached a deci­sion. He wrote Glick­man that she should check the paper the week of July 29, 1968.

July_31,_1968_Peanuts_comic

Franklin, his skin tone indi­cat­ed by close­ly set diag­o­nal lines, made his debut in a bathing suit, return­ing Char­lie Brown’s run­away beach ball. The encounter took three days to play out, dur­ing which Franklin and Char­lie Brown form an alliance of vaca­tion­ing chil­dren whose usu­al play­mates are else­where. It would seem that the major dif­fer­ence between them is that Franklin’s dad is in Viet­nam. Obvi­ous­ly, a lot of thought went into their casu­al dia­logue.

Benign as Franklin was, his pres­ence sparked out­rage. Some South­ern read­ers cried foul when he showed up in the same class­room as Mar­cie and Pep­per­mint Pat­ty. Oth­ers felt Franklin wasn’t black enough.

Ulti­mate­ly Franklin nev­er achieved A‑list sta­tus, but he did res­onate with cer­tain read­ers, notably William Bell, a diver­si­ty offi­cer work­ing with the Cincin­nati Police Depart­ment.

And while Franklin t‑shirts have shown up on the racks, it was only a cou­ple of years ago that he joined the realm of offi­cial­ly licensed action fig­ures, as a Char­lie Brown Christ­mas fig­urine.

Vis­it Mash­able to see repro­duc­tions of Glick­man and Schulz’s cor­re­spon­dence. And watch the video above to hear more about her upbring­ing and anoth­er com­ic that fea­tured black char­ac­ters, Date­line: Dan­ger!, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Saun­ders’ son John and artist Al McWilliams.

Via Mash­able

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Schulz Draws Char­lie Brown in 45 Sec­onds and Exor­cis­es His Demons

Watch the First Ani­ma­tions of Peanuts: Com­mer­cials for the Ford Motor Com­pa­ny (1959–1961)

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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