Let's Read Peanuts (I don’t understand. Why does Shermy, the oldest and tallest child, not simply eat the others??) – March 1961
There are lots of great strips I just don't have room to comment on. I strongly encourage everybody to read along at the official GoComics page or by purchasing the Fantagraphics hardcover collections.
March 5, 1961
Charlie Brown inadvertently mastering the Rhythm Echo assassination technique. Tragically, this accomplishment only made him a more efficient kite killing machine.
March 6, 1961
Wait, seriously!?
Dang, I was not expecting Frieda to show up this early.
March 7, 1961
Can you guess what Frieda’s schtick is? It’s REALLY subtle.
March 9, 1961
Counterargument: DO IT!
March 17, 1961
Linus gets it.
March 23, 1961
That’s a pretty sweet setup for 1961 actually. I remember the days of watching everything communally (In the 80's damnit, I'm not that old) and constantly having to fight/be judged for the things you wanted to watch. Being able to just roll the TV into your room for an hour or so would have been a freakin’ dream come true.
March 26, 1961
An entire day of bargain bin 50s/60s sci-fi trash is an amazing way to spend a Saturday imo. Sign me the fuck up.
March 30, 1961
You know, I feel like I've been too hard on Charlie Brown as a baseball player lately.
Yeah, he's objectively the worst player on the team and an all-around terrible manager, but he’s also the only one passionate enough about the game to be willing to deal with all the weirdness and bullshit. If he were to quit the whole team would instantly fall apart the first time they had to explain that, yes, their shortstop is in fact a sentient dog in a baseball cap.
It’s actually kind of heartwarming if you think about it.
Thoughts:
So yeah, our newest addition to the cast is Frieda. I put her in the same category as Pigpen and 5 (yes there's an actual character named 5, try and keep up!) as a character with exactly ~ONE~ trait who mostly exists to add a bit of visual variety to the cast in crowd shots. Apparently she’s based on one of Charles Schulz’s friends from art school named Frieda Rich. When asked about the character Frieda (the real one) said she “saw herself” in the character. Which, considering how much Schulz likes to just straight-up put his personal life into the strip, tells me that the comic Frieda was likely much more similar to her namesake than not.
As a side note I have a bit of a theory about Frieda. I have exactly zero evidence for this, but I strongly suspect that she was Schulz’s second crack at the character of Charlotte Braun, who if you’ll remember was so unpopular that she was quite literally killed off-screen less than three months after her introduction.
They both have exactly one trait (Being loud vs naturally curly hair), both have very similar hairstyles, and both are obnoxious to deal with in a conversation (and in general). I mean come on, they’re even wearing the same basic dress.
Personally, I find Frieda to be a bit of an obnoxious presence in the strip but I think that’s kind of the point? I think it's kind of a Lucy situation where the point is generating conflict rather than warm feelings. Either way, she’s not ~that~ prevalent in the strip so it’s hard to be all that annoyed by her.
She’s definitely a big step of from Charlotte though (may she rest in peace) and manages to stick around longer than Shermy. So, mission accomplished I suppose.
On 11/16/25, an anonamous 4chan user posted the following to a thread on the /x/ image board.
>This story happened to my grandfather, who is now 93 years old, but at the time he was 14 years old and living on a farm.
>He always told me this story, but I finally convinced him to detail it for me.
>When I was young, I lived with my family in the countryside on a farm near a small town.
>My father worked on the farm, planting coffee and other agricultural products at the time, and my brothers and I helped him with everyday tasks, such as
>taking care of the animals we had on the farm, such as pigs, chickens and horses.
>We also raised some cattle, and we had pure milk freely due to the many dairy cows that were there. Our farm also sold milk to help with the family income.
>At that time there weren't numerous schools like today, and to study we had to walk for about 8 km to another place where a classroom was built, with the
>teacher traveling from the nearest town to give classes for children in our region.
>It was a hard life, but I miss that time.
>Well, it all started one morning when my father found an ox from his herd dead in the pasture.
>There was no sign of animal attack.
>Except that strangely it didn't have a drop of blood at all, and there were two small holes on the right side of his body.
>Very round holes.
>My father found that strange, but he couldn't figure out what it was.
>A week or so later my father found another ox dead under the same circumstances.
>The second ox, like the first, also had no blood in its body, and had the same types of holes as the first in its body.
>The place where the oxen were killed was near a large forest in the region.
>Two nights after what happened, we woke up at dawn with our dogs barking angrily, as if there was someone close to our house.
>So my father, already worried about the death of the two oxen, took a rifle from our house and went outside with an oil lamp to have a look.
>My mom didn't want him to go, but he left anyway.
>Minutes later we heard two shots, and then my father came home scared.
>So we asked him why he had shot, and he told us with wide eyes that he was near the pigsty, when in the nearby woods he heard a noise, so he lit it with the lamp, but he couldn't see clearly.
>Suddenly, in the moonlight, he saw in the woods a creature about eight feet tall, walking upright, standing, and when it turned to my father's side, it's eyes were red, as if they were lit.
>And that was when my father shot it and came home scared.
>We asked him if he hit the shot, and he said he didn't know, but that we were supposed to go check it out in the morning because that thing shouldn't be from this world.
>Needless to say, we were all scared of what my dad saw, especially from my dad who wasn't afraid of anything and was tall and strong.
>Early the next day, we all went out to see if there were any blood marks or traces where my father said he had seen the creature.
>We looked around and found no blood, but strangely we found some footprints we had never seen before.
>They were of a type of two-legged animal with five long fingers, looking like the marks of some kind of lizard, and they were heading towards the dense
>the woods that were close to the site.
>Curious about what happened, my father went to talk to his neighbor and friend, Mr. John, telling him what had happened on our farm.
>My father asked if something similar had ever happened in his place.
>Mr. John told him that not like that, but that he had heard strange noises at night near his house, like a grunt, and the dogs were barking all night long.
>It was then that my father invited Mr. John to go out on a hunt, to het the creature that was prowling our lands.
>Two days later they set out to hunt the creature.
>l, very curious, wanted to go too, because I really wanted to know what it was.
>At first my father didn't want to, but he ended up letting me tag along.
>So on the appointed day, early in the morning we left, me, my father, my uncle Bill and our neighbor, Mr. John.
>So we started hunting that strange creature.
>My father carried a rifle, my uncle and Mr. John each carried a hunting pistol.
>I imagined what we might find along the way.
>We went into the forest looking for footprints, but found nothing.
>So when we arrived at the edge of a large lake that existed in the region, Mr. John called us to show us some different footprints he had found.
>They were very similar to the ones we found on our farm the night my father spotted and shot the creature.
>So my father said that the creature should be around.
>We then followed those strange tracks, but mysteriously, after about 300 ft they disappeared.
>We were all amazed at the disappearance of the footprints, as the ground was soft in that patch of forest.
>We wondered how they could disappear like that.
>We walked for a few more hours, and found no sign of the creature.
>Then we returned home.
>Arriving home, my mother, already worried, was waiting for us anxiously asking if we had found something.
>My dad said no, but we'd look it up another time.
>Some time passed, until a few days later when my father found another ox dead in his pasture, and by the signs of it, it had been killed in the same way as the previous ones.
>There were, as before, two holes, and not a drop of blood on its body.
>My father was enraged by that, and said it was too much.
>So he called Mr. John again, and said they would go after the creature at night, as that was when it attacked.
>My mother, knowing that, didn't want to let him go, but my father was stubborn.
>He said that it was decided, and that he was going to solve that problem because he didn't want to see his animals dead anymore.
>So early in the evening the next day, we all got together and went after the strange creature that was attacking our cattle.
>As before, my father, Mr. John and my uncle took their weapons.
>My father and Mr. John each carried a torch, and my uncle and I an oil lamp.
>We went into the forest and stayed in the nearest area, as he attacked at night, my father figured it shouldn't be far.
>As we walked, we kept trying to look for tracks, but we didn't find them due to the darkness and the little lighting we had available.
>Arriving in a clearing at a certain point in the forest, my father decided to take a break and build a fire.
>It must have been about 10 o'clock at night or so.
>So we stayed there talking for a while, and always looking around.
>It was a night with a full moon, but with some clouds, with the moonlight illuminating the darkness of the night a little.
>I believe we stayed there for about an hour and a half, talking.
>After resting, we went back to walking, and headed towards a small river that crossed that part of the forest.
>There we began to look for more traces, until in a certain part of the bank my father called us to show us something.
>They were the same footprints we had seen before, and they were recent.
>So the creature should be around.
>We followed the footprints, which entered the forest, but as before, they mysteriously disappeared.
> My father was angry about that, as it was the second time we lost track of it.
>So he decided that we should go in the direction the footprints were going.
>We continued through the woods for a long time, until in a certain place we began to hear sounds of the bushes moving and sticks breaking as if someone or something was moving.
>It wasn't that close, but it indicated something.
>We headed in that direction where we had heard the noises. As we approached, the noise ceased.
>So we were looking around, looking for clues to something, but we didn't see anything except Mr. John and my Uncle who found broken tree branches and crushed weeds, indicating that something had been there.
>My father then prepared his rifle and the others drew their pistols.
>We stayed for a few minutes in that place in silence, looking for something or some sound that would draw our attention.
>Then a few minutes later we heard a noise coming from the woods just ahead.
>We went there carefully.
>I was already in a cold sweat from all that dread I felt at that moment.
>We went through the forest, along a very precarious type of trail that existed there.
>Ahead, there were many more trees than where we were, and the darkness was increasing due to the poor light from the moon.
>At that point in the woods, on the right side of the trail, we heard a noise of twigs breaking, and then a kind of grunt.
>I got goosebumps all over.
>We then slowly took a few more steps, very slowly and carefully towards the sounds.
>It was when looking into the darkness of the forest with the help of torches and lamps, just a few feet ahead, we saw it.
>His eyes were red, looking like lit fires. It looked like a type of two-legged lizard, and was approximately 8 feet tall.
>His body looked like an alligator, only smoother, looking damp.
>Its hands or paws had huge claws, and its teeth looked like those of dinosaurs from the movies, pointy and sharp.
>When we came across the creature, it stared at us and let out a roar so loud I was almost deaf.
>My dad and the others were helpless for a few seconds in fear.
>They were paralyzed.
>We all were.
>When my father managed to react and point the rifle at the creature, it turned and took a leap so big it looked like it had springs in its feet, disappearing into the woods.
>My father, my uncle and Mr. John shot several times towards the creature, but they certainly missed, because with the speed that it disappeared, it wouldn't be possible to hit it.
>We didn't speak for a while, and I started to cry.
>It's a little embarrassing, but I couldn't help it.
>So my father immediately ordered us to go home, as according to him and his beliefs, "it wasn't of this world."
>We quickly returned home, all panicked.
>The scene was so terrifying, that even Mr. John spent the rest of the night at our home afraid to return to his place, fearing he would run into that creature along the way.
>We told our mother what had happened, and that she was appalled by the report.
>We all commented around the region about what had happened, and some did not believe it, and others had the most diverse theories, saying that it could even be the devil that was in the forest.
>After a few weeks, another dead ox was found in our pasture, and some time later another one on Mr. John's farm.
>But my father never wanted to go after the creature again.
>He just looked at what had happened, and lowered his head, swaying from side to side.
>On other nights in the distance, we heard that same roar coming from the forest, and we wondered that it must be the strange creature that was there.
>A few months later we didn't hear anything else.
>No more dead animals and strange noises at night.
>So we figured the creature must have left, perhaps looking for another place to inhabit.
>My father and Mr. John avoided talking about what had happened.
>My uncle did the same.
>I believe I was the most affected by it all.
>I had nightmares for several months, and I panicked to even get close to the forest.
>I always tell this story to anyone who wants to hear it, because it was something real that happened in my life, and I can't just erase it from my mind.
