Charles Monroe "Sparky" Schulz ( SHULZ; November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000) was an American cartoonist who created the comic strip Peanuts, featuring the characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
Schulz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and developed an interest in drawing while growing up in Saint Paul. He was conscripted in 1943 and served in the United States Army during the final years of World War II. After returning to Minnesota, Schulz began his comic strip career with Li'l Folks in 1947.
In 1950, Schulz redeveloped Li'l Folks as a four-panel comic strip and submitted it to United Features Syndicate, who renamed it Peanuts and began publishing that October. Schulz relocated to Northern California with his family in 1958. Beginning with A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965, he helped write several animated television specials and four animated films based on his characters. He continued drawing Peanuts until his death in 2000.
Schulz is regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists in history, inspiring many cartoonists including Jim Davis, Murray Ball, Bill Watterson, Jeff Smith, Matt Groening, and Dav Pilkey as well as animators like Oscar-nominee Don Hertzfeldt and The Peanuts Movie (2015) director Steve Martino. He was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996, and was posthumously inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2007.
Charles Monroe Schulz was born on November 26, 1922, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in nearby Saint Paul. He was the only child of the barber Carl Fredrich August Schulz and Dena Bertina (née Halverson), and was of German and Norwegian descent. His uncle called him "Sparky" after the horse Spark Plug in Billy DeBeck's comic strip Barney Google, which Schulz enjoyed reading. Schulz attended Saint Paul Central High School, and played baseball, golf, and ice hockey there.
Schulz loved drawing and sometimes drew his family dog, Spike, who ate unusual things, such as pins and tacks. In 1937, Schulz drew a picture of Spike and sent it to Ripley's Believe It or Not!. His drawing appeared in Robert Ripley's syndicated panel, captioned, "A hunting dog that eats pins, tacks, and razor blades is owned by C. F. Schulz, St. Paul, Minn." and "Drawn by 'Sparky'". Schulz's drawings were rejected by his high school yearbook. A five-foot-tall statue of Snoopy was placed in the school's office 60 years later. After graduating, Schulz took a correspondence course from Art Instruction Schools.
Military service and post-war positions
In November 1942, Schulz was drafted into the United States Army. He served as a staff sergeant with the 20th Armored Division in Europe during World War II as a squad leader on a .50 caliber machine gun team. His unit saw combat at the very end of the war. Schulz said he had only one opportunity to fire his machine gun but forgot to load it, and that the German soldier he could have fired at surrendered. Years later, Schulz proudly spoke of his wartime service. For being under fire he received the Combat Infantryman Badge, of which he was proud.
In February 1943, Schulz's mother died at age 50, after a long battle with cervical cancer. Schulz was with her as she died at home and later described his sadness that she never saw his work published. In late 1945, Schulz returned to Minnesota, where he did lettering for a Roman Catholic comic magazine, Timeless Topix. In July 1946, Schulz took a job at Art Instruction, where he reviewed and graded students' work. He worked there for several years as he developed his career as a comic creator. At the school, he proposed marriage to a redhaired accountant, Donna Johnson, who turned him down. Johnson inspired the Little Red-Haired Girl, Charlie Brown's unrequited love, in Peanuts.
The anti-Communist propaganda comic book Is This Tomorrow (1947) featured some of Schulz's early work. Schulz's first group of regular cartoons, a weekly series of one-panel jokes called Li'l Folks, was published from June 1947 to January 1950 in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, with Schulz usually doing four one-panel drawings per issue. It was in Li'l Folks that Schulz first used the name Charlie Brown for a character, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys as well as one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In May 1948, Schulz sold his first one-panel drawing to The Saturday Evening Post; within the next two years, a total of 17 untitled drawings by Schulz were published in the Post, simultaneously with his work for the Pioneer Press. Around the same time, he tried having Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association; Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but negotiations broke down. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached United Feature Syndicate (UFS) with Li'l Folks, and the syndicate became interested. By that time, Schulz had also developed a comic strip, usually using four panels rather than one; to Schulz's delight, the syndicate preferred the longer version. However, to his consternation, the syndicate had to change the title for Schulz's strip for legal reasons. Schulz begrudgingly accepted the name Peanuts, allegedly taken from the phrase "peanut gallery".
Peanuts first appeared on October 2, 1950, in seven newspapers. The weekly Sunday page debuted on January 6, 1952. After a slow start, Peanuts eventually became one of the most popular comic strips in history, as well as one of the most influential. Schulz also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip, It's Only a Game (1957–59); however, he abandoned it after the success of Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a gag cartoon, Young Pillars, featuring teenagers, to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
In 1957 and 1961, Schulz illustrated two volumes of Art Linkletter's Kids Say the Darndest Things. In 1964, he illustrated a collection of letters, Dear President Johnson, by Bill Adler.
In 1962, Schulz published a book, Happiness is a Warm Puppy, which spent 42 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list.
At its height, Peanuts was published daily in 2,600 papers in 75 countries, in 21 languages. Over nearly 50 years, Schulz drew 17,897 published Peanuts strips. The strips, plus merchandise and product endorsements, produced revenues of more than $1 billion per year, with Schulz earning an estimated $30–40 million annually. During the strip's run, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997 to celebrate his 75th birthday; reruns of the strip ran during his vacation, the only time that occurred during Schulz's life.
Rinehart & Company published the first collection of Peanuts strips in July 1952. Many more books followed, greatly contributing to the strip's increasing popularity. In 2004, Fantagraphics began their Complete Peanuts series. Peanuts also proved popular in other media; the first animated TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, aired in December 1965 and won an Emmy award. Numerous TV specials followed, the latest being Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical in 2025. Until his death, Schulz wrote or co-wrote the TV specials, as well as the films A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Snoopy Come Home, Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!!), and oversaw their production.
New York City's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has featured a gigantic balloon-version of a Peanuts character since 1968.
Charlie Brown, the principal character of Peanuts, was named after a co-worker at Art Instruction Inc. Schulz drew much from his own life. Some examples include: