A new Charlie Brown Christmas

In the last years of the Peanuts comic strip, Rerun became a major character, with a lot of focus being placed upon going to school and his want of a dog. Rerun got one of the best strips in the run, when Lucy hands him the football because she can’t be Charlie Brown’s placeholder one day. She asks him what happened, and Rerun’s response was, “You’ll never know.” I found this strip remarkably touching, because it was so ambiguous–like Lucy we would never know whether or not Charlie Brown had finally kicked the football, but in my heart I felt that he did, at last, kick that football.

I grew to like Rerun a lot, and by the end of the run he had become, in many ways, my favorite character. I feel a certain connection to him; he and I both debuted in 1973, he a few months before I. One of the reasons I liked the character so much was that the world just didn’t work the way he thought it should have, and seeing Rerun trying to make the world fit into the mold he’d made for it in his mind was endlessly entertaining.

So, if they’re making a Peanuts Christmas special about Rerun, I’ll watch it gladly. 🙂

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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