Lynn Johnston on her grandfather and Peanuts

TOM HEINTJES: You've mentioned in the past that your grandfather would sort of pontificate on each of the Sunday comics, and you differed with him over Peanuts.
LYNN JOHNSTON: Well, when I was a kid, my grandfather was not a nice guy. If you talked to other people who knew him, he was a great guy with a sense of humor, and he was somebody they enjoyed knowing. But to me, he was a sadistic, black, haughty, unattainable ogre. I always felt his disappointment in me... I wanted his approval. I would do anything for his approval, because as a grandparent I saw him every other weekend. No child wants to be out in the cold. My grandfather loved the comics, and he would analyze the Sunday comics. This was something between him and me, because my brother never cared for the comics, He would analyze Pogo, and he would analyze Momma and Miss Peach. He would talk about why they were drawn that way and what the artist really meant. I was into this, because it was attention from him. I remember thinking that nothing could be worse than Henry. It was boring to read, it was drawn so boring, his tongue would appear out of his chin when he was eating an ice cream cone. I remember thinking, "I could do better than that." That's the sort of thing that really spurs you on to try it.
The one strip my grandfather really didn't like was Peanuts. Now, I remember when Peanuts first appeared in our paper. It was in the mid-'50s. I was sitting next to my grandfather on the couch, really enjoying the fact that I was close to him, it was warm, and he wasn't pushing me away. He was going through the comics, and I always tried to agree with him, just to make him happy. He finally came to Peanuts, and it was a strip where Charlie Brown talks about how depressed he is, and Lucy comes out with a smart remark, and my grandfather said, “No child talks like that. No child has these thoughts. This is ridiculous.” And I thought, “You're wrong. We may not use the same words, but we have the same thoughts and the same feelings." Everything about that strip seemed right. And what appealed to me about it more than anything is that all the women were strong! Lucy was a crank, but she was strong! Peppermint Patty could go out there and play ice hockey and win! One thing I know about Charles Schulz is that he really likes strong women. Many women in his life have been strong. He's encouraged his daughters lo be strong, as well. I think he was taking little risks in the strip. You know, there's a formula to comic art, a formula to the gag. It's not predictable necessarily, but there is nevertheless a formula. I think Charles Schulz was willing to forgo that formula with punchlines like “Whatever...” and the psychiatrist's 5-cent booth.
TOM HEINTJES: The characters would cast their eyes upward in response to a remark-that was all new.
LYNN JOHNSTON: Right!