From the same pit of comic-deleting existential misery that brought you Garfield Minus Garfield, the Internet has now coughed up 3eanuts, which has a simple gimmick: Removing the fourth panel from Charles M. Schulz’s daily Peanuts strips. Sound random? It’s not: Schulz typically used the final panel to end on a redemptive note — sometimes wistful, sometimes sarcastic — but it always lessened the sad gravity of the first three panels. Without that redemptive conclusion, we bear witness to the true existential horrors facing the cast of Peanuts. The future is relentlessly grim. Lucy is utterly cruel. Linus is apparently some sort of animal-hating fascist. In general, Charlie Brown lives in a world of relentless sadness and debilitation. 3eanuts is a great monument to Schultz’s delicate balancing act — he somehow made the subject matter of an Ingmar Bergman movie seem really funny for 50 years. 3eanuts will also just make you laugh, if you’re cynical, and you probably grew up reading Peanuts, so you have to be at least a little cynical. Good ol’ Charlie Brown… how we hate him! (Via AV Club)
Mar 28
2011
03:56 PM ET
'3eanuts': Charlie Brown and Snoopy live in sad, chaotic world without meaning, turns out
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Amazing. But surely the most depressing comic strip–and without any editing mind you–has to be Funky Winkerbean. Such a downer.
removal of the LAST panel, not the fourth panel.
Sad. I stopped reading Peanuts a long time ago, cause lucy’s bullying of Charlie brown got to be too much.
’3eanuts’? Is this Russian Charlie Brown?
It’s because it only shows the first 3 panels of what is generally a 4-panel strip. God knows why the 3 is replacing the “P” though…seems like you could get in touch with your 1337 side and just write P3anuts.
I thought maybe the word is pronounced “Threenuts.”
GLORIOUS!!!!!
This. Is. Amazing.
Brilliant. Love it.
I still think Garfield Minus Garfield is better. Jon(?) comes across as completely unhinged in that one.
I have to say this is completely dead-on. (Not exactly a surprise, as Garfield Minus Garfield is already such genius.) When I used to design for Peanuts, we had to read through all the strips many times looking for poses to use on products, and most of the time, the most commercially-viable pose (happiest face, most animated body language) came from the final panel (and sometimes the second) in the daily strips and the first panel in the Sunday strips. (The Sunday title panel usually being some one-off gag to set up the theme of the rest of the strip.) Although the same wasn’t always true of the earlier strips – especially the ’50s strips. There were still depressing themes, but Schulz didn’t have such a simple set-up for the punchline in the early days. (Also the drawings were MUCH more gloriously detailed!)
These are amazing! Peanuts is still my favorite comic strip. And these are just fantastic. Wow.
I guess not too surprising, as “Garfield minus Garfield” was also great.
Garfield minus Garfield will always be legendary in my book, but this 3eanuts is pretty good, too.
I don’t support this.