Charles M. Schulz

A comic strip, Charlie Brown ()

Charles Schulz was born the 26th of November, 1922, and was an American cartoonist best known worldwide for his Peanuts comic strip. Charles was born in Minneapolis, in the United States’ Minnesota, and grew up in Saint Paul. He was the only child of Carl Schulz, who was German, and Dena Halverson, who was Norwegian.

His uncle nicknamed agreeable him "Sparky", like the horse Spark Plug of the Barney Google comic strip. Schulz loved drawing and sometimes drew his family dog, Spike (that unlike Snoopy the beagle, was a pointer). Spike ate unusual things. Schulz drew a picture of Spike and sent it to an important comics publisher; winning a competition, his drawing appeared in a comic, titled "A hunting dog that eats pins, tacks, and razor blades is owned by C. F. Schulz, St. Paul, Minn."

the horse Spark Plug of the Barney Google comics (http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/classics_barney_google_sheetmusic.jpg)

from Wikipedia:

" The first regular cartoons that Schulz did, Li'l Folks, were published from 1947 to 1950; he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he used the name in four strips to three different characters. The series also had a dog that was similar to Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to the Saturday Evening Post; the first of seventeen single-panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there. In 1948, Schulz tried to have 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 the deal fell through. Li'l Folks was dropped in January, 1950. Later that year, Schulz approached the “United Feature Syndicate” with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. The strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years without interruption and appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. In November 1999 Schulz suffered a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized. He announced his retirement on December 14, 1999. Schulz died in Santa Rosa of complications from colon cancer at 9:45 p.m. on February 12, 2000. He was buried in Sebastopol's Pleasant Hills Cemetery."

A comic strip, after Schulz's death ()

We chose this character ‘cause we admire his skill in drawing sharp and bright strips, mirroring the modern society, for his irony and because of the gargantuan liking of his best character, Charlie Brown.