Punchlines in Peanuts

August 13 through December 7, 2014
Strip Rotation Gallery

Do you have all-time favorite Peanuts strips that make you laugh out loud? Charles Schulz was a master of comedy, pairing his clean drawing style with carefully crafted punchlines.

Learn about the art of joke-telling and explore how Schulz has kept readers laughing for decades in this exhibition which features 70 original comic strips with some of the most clever punchlines in Peanuts.

The comic strip format provided Schulz a built-in cadence for Peanuts, with fixed pauses between panels creating a controlled reading rhythm. Schulz employed a variety of comedic tools–including sarcasm, idioms, and physical humor– to develop successful one-liners. He also drew on mechanisms that made Peanuts stand out, such as third-panel punchlines, and phrases like “Good Grief!”

Fans of the cartoon find humor in the unexpected. The world of Peanuts exists in a realm which bridges both fantasy and reality, with Snoopy having human aspirations and Charlie Brown and the Peanuts Gang expressing adult concerns.