Blue bird in Peanuts?!

[Tim Chow]

Whoever was in charge of colorizing this past Sunday's Peanuts rerun
made a peculiar choice for the color of the bird.

http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2013/05/19

Note that this strip was first published on May 22, 1966, well before
Woodstock was named (June 22, 1970), but still.

---
Tim Chow

[Sneaky O. Possum]

Post by Tim Chow
Whoever was in charge of colorizing this past Sunday's Peanuts rerun
made a peculiar choice for the color of the bird.
http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2013/05/19
Note that this strip was first published on May 22, 1966, well before
Woodstock was named (June 22, 1970), but still.

Presumably the bird was blue when the strip first appeared: AFAIK the
computer colorists only add colors to black-and-white dailies - they don't
change strips that are already in color.

[Heather Kendrick]

Post by Sneaky O. Possum
Presumably the bird was blue when the strip first appeared: AFAIK the
computer colorists only add colors to black-and-white dailies - they don't
change strips that are already in color.

They have been coloring the anonymous pre-Woodstock birds blue all
through the run, actually, but Joseph -- who knows Peanuts far better
than I or most mortals -- tells me this is because, prior to the
eventual establishment of Woodstock as a character and as yellow, the
bird had indeed appeared as blue in the Sundays.

Heather

[Tim Chow]

Post by Heather Kendrick

Post by Sneaky O. Possum
Presumably the bird was blue when the strip first appeared: AFAIK the
computer colorists only add colors to black-and-white dailies - they don't
change strips that are already in color.

The coloration is certainly not original in all cases. For one thing,
I believe that in some cases the original colors have been lost.
Also, color printing technology has changed over the years. The old
comics were colored with lots of little colored dots, and it was not
possible to produce the smoothly varying shades of blue that we see in
the sky in this strip.

Post by Heather Kendrick
They have been coloring the anonymous pre-Woodstock birds blue all
through the run, actually, but Joseph -- who knows Peanuts far better
than I or most mortals -- tells me this is because, prior to the
eventual establishment of Woodstock as a character and as yellow, the
bird had indeed appeared as blue in the Sundays.

I'd be very curious to hear what the evidence is for this statement.
I presume it must be old tear sheets. Book reprints did not, as a
rule, adhere to any notion of the "original" color; we know this
because there are examples of the same strip being colored in
different ways in different books. It's never been clear to me what
the exact process for coloring the old strips was. Did Schulz choose
the colors? Or the syndicate? Or each individual publisher? At some
point Schulz took control but I don't know if that was true from the
beginning. So even a tear sheet might only prove only that that
particular newspaper used those colors for that strip.

---
Tim Chow

[Joseph Nebus]

Post by Tim Chow

Post by Heather Kendrick
They have been coloring the anonymous pre-Woodstock birds blue all
through the run, actually, but Joseph -- who knows Peanuts far better
than I or most mortals -- tells me this is because, prior to the
eventual establishment of Woodstock as a character and as yellow, the
bird had indeed appeared as blue in the Sundays.

I'd be very curious to hear what the evidence is for this statement.
I presume it must be old tear sheets. Book reprints did not, as a
rule, adhere to any notion of the "original" color; we know this
because there are examples of the same strip being colored in
different ways in different books.

Well, it is from the printing in color books; I've got them in
the basement, although I'm away from home at the moment and couldn't
guide Heather to the printing remotely. Come Monday I can at least
give her the evidence.

And I would be inclined to trust the book reprints as reflecting
the coloring notes Schulz left for several reasons, among them:

1. They need to follow *some* rule. Schulz made a coloring
chart for the Sundays. Why redo that work, absent compelling reason
(like the original notes being lost; I'll grant some of them likely
were, but not all of them)?

2. Blue is, after the establishment of Woodstock, a *weird*
choice for the proto-Woodstock characters. Anyone coloring it who
was able to consistently do Snoopy's doghouse in red and Linus's
blanket in blue would make the birds yellow ... unless there were some
compelling reason not to make them yellow, like, notes regarding the
originally intended coloring.

Post by Tim Chow
It's never been clear to me what
the exact process for coloring the old strips was. Did Schulz choose
the colors? Or the syndicate? Or each individual publisher? At some
point Schulz took control but I don't know if that was true from the
beginning. So even a tear sheet might only prove only that that
particular newspaper used those colors for that strip.

If you'd like, I'll find some afternoon to see if the MSU comic
strip archives has an original from some day with the controversial birds.
If you want to argue that the appearance in the newspapers is not how the
bird was colored, fine, but I would want to see evidence that there were
substantial differences in the birds' coloring for reasons other than
the printing press was faulty that day.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

Post by Tim Chow

Post by Heather Kendrick

Post by Sneaky O. Possum
Presumably the bird was blue when the strip first appeared: AFAIK
the computer colorists only add colors to black-and-white dailies -
they don't change strips that are already in color.

The coloration is certainly not original in all cases. For one thing,
I believe that in some cases the original colors have been lost.

Perhaps, but I don't know of any evidence for that being the case with
the strips the "Classic Peanuts" series has been using.

Post by Tim Chow
Also, color printing technology has changed over the years. The old
comics were colored with lots of little colored dots, and it was not
possible to produce the smoothly varying shades of blue that we see in
the sky in this strip.

I'm well aware that the process by which colors are added to a digital
image is different from the process of offset color printing. The fact
that the blue of the newsprint sky is not an exact match for the
GoComics blue doesn't address the question of whether a yellow bird was
incorrectly changed to a blue one.

Post by Tim Chow

Post by Heather Kendrick
They have been coloring the anonymous pre-Woodstock birds blue all
through the run, actually, but Joseph -- who knows Peanuts far better
than I or most mortals -- tells me this is because, prior to the
eventual establishment of Woodstock as a character and as yellow, the
bird had indeed appeared as blue in the Sundays.

I'd be very curious to hear what the evidence is for this statement.
I presume it must be old tear sheets. Book reprints did not, as a
rule, adhere to any notion of the "original" color; we know this
because there are examples of the same strip being colored in
different ways in different books. It's never been clear to me what
the exact process for coloring the old strips was. Did Schulz choose
the colors? Or the syndicate? Or each individual publisher? At some
point Schulz took control but I don't know if that was true from the
beginning.

The strip in question is from 1966, by which time Schulz had
renegotiated his contract with United Features - see David Michaelis's
biography.

Post by Tim Chow
So even a tear sheet might only prove only that that particular
newspaper used those colors for that strip.

So far you haven't produced any evidence that the bird in the strip in
question /wasn't/ originally blue other than the fact that Woodstock (a
different bird) was yellow.

[Tim Chow]

Post by Sneaky O. Possum
So far you haven't produced any evidence that the bird in the strip in
question /wasn't/ originally blue other than the fact that Woodstock (a
different bird) was yellow.

This is a fair criticism. So, here is some evidence.

There are not that many reprint books with color Sundays. All the
examples of Sunday birds that I've been able to dig up, with one
exception that I'll mention at the end, have been yellow (in a couple
of cases it's not canary yellow but kind of tan). This includes:

U.K. Ravette books (Let's Go, Are Magic, etc.):
1962-10-07
1964-03-08 (tan)
1965-02-28
1965-05-30 (first time we see birds that look sort of like Woodstock)
1966-03-20
1966-05-22 (the strip that I started this thread with)
1967-05-07
1968-02-18
1969-06-29

Peanuts Jubilee
1965-05-23 (tan)
1969-11-23
1970-04-26

Peanuts Classics (the U.S. book by that name, not the series)
1968-01-14
1968-02-18
1969-06-29

Celebrating Peanuts 60 Years
1970-02-15

Snoopy: My Greatest Adventures (Sparkler book)
(In this book, the dailies are also colored)
1967-05-07

The Snoopy Festival
A boatload of strips from 1968 on that I won't bother listing by date
(some postdate Woodstock's christening).

The only exception was 1962-08-26, which in the Ravette books exhibits
a blue bird. I confess that I had not consciously noticed this
before. However, this bird doesn't look at all like Woodstock.

I'd say that if you believe that the colors in the reprint books are
original, then this is pretty overwhelming evidence that the birds in
Peanuts, at least those that look at all like Woodstock, have always
been yellow.

However, let me also back up my statement that the colors can't all be
original because they sometimes contradict each other. For anyone who
believes that the current rerun colors are original, I've already
shown that the 1966-05-22 strip exhibited a yellow bird in the Ravette
reprint books, whereas the current rerun uses blue. I went through
another example in detail back in 2000 in alt.comics.peanuts:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.comics.peanuts/browse_thread/thread/f439ba94fdbe73d9/15f29fc59ecc341

A couple more examples of discrepant colors that I noted in passing
while doing the research for this post:

1968-02-18: In Ravette, Snoopy's cap is red and white. In Peanuts
Classics, it's green and pink. Some of the skies are pink in Peanuts
Classics, while all the skies are blue in Ravette.

1967-05-07: The tussle in the penultimate panel is colored differently
in Ravette vs. Snoopy: My Greatest Adventures.

1958-12-21: In "Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz," Charlie
Brown's shirt is red and Patty's dress is green. In Peanuts Jubilee,
Charlie Brown's shirt is yellow and Patty's dress is purple. This
strip has nothing to do with bird colors per se, but I noticed it
while searching "Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz," which I
thought for sure would have some examples (and that would be really
nice since they're photographs of original tear sheets).
Unfortunately, the closest thing I found in the book was an undated TV
Guide cover. By now you should not be surprised that the bird
(Woodstock, perhaps, by this time) was yellow.

Examples of contradictory colors could be multiplied endlessly. This
is just a random selection that didn't take me any extra effort to
assemble.

I'm very curious how Fantagraphics is able to claim that the strips in
their upcoming book are "gloriously re-colored using Charles Schulz's
original palette." In some cases, I'm sure they don't have the
original colors, because they had trouble finding *any copy at all* of
the strip. I'll email them to see if they can tell me.

Finally, for the sake of completeness, let me reproduce the answers I
got from Lisa Monhoff at the Schulz Museum when I asked about this
topic back in 2010. Her first email said:

===
From the first Sunday strip in 1952 until 1999, the process of
coloring the Sunday Peanuts remained relatively the same. After Schulz
completed an original Sunday strip, a copy was made to which he
assigned a color for each area (the colors were based on a printer's
color chart). The copy was then hand-colored, usually by Schulz's
secretary. When Schulz was satisfied with the colors, the hand-colored
copy and the original strip were mailed to United Feature Syndicate
(UFS) in New York for distribution to newspapers nationwide.

In 1999, this process became digital, with coloring done on computers
and the digital files then sent to UFS. Although no new Sunday strips
have been created since February 2000, artists at Schulz's studio
digitally color the older Sunday strips that are reprinted in
newspapers today (the original hand-colored versions are not
available). The strip below demonstrates the steps in coloring a
Sunday strip using a computer software program.

Hopefully, you can make it to the museum to see this exhibit. We also
have a Sunday strip printing plate on display to explain the printing
process. All originals, whether dailies or Sundays, are black ink on
white paper, and only rarely have we displayed a colored Sunday. If
you saw the original artwork for a Sunday colored it was because an
owner of
the strip (or perhaps their creative children!) colored it after the
strip had been printed in newspapers and before it came to the museum.
===

When I specifically asked a followup question about whether the
information about Schulz's color choices was still
around, and if not, how it managed to get lost, she replied:

===
I can not tell you why or what happened to those because we at the
museum don't know. It's not something I've had time or the need to
research before, but I am curious and trying to find out what
happened.

In general, many corporations and businesses didn't (and still don't)
tend to keep stuff that in hindsight we fans and historians find to be
valuable. The color choices are something that, at the time, they just
maybe didn't think was valuable; just as they gave the strips away,
they may've tossed the color choices. Though, you'd think that after
reprinting the first book which incl. colored Sundays, that they
would've realised they should keep them (around 1970).

I'll let you know more when I'm able to research this further.
===

That was the last I heard from her on the topic so I assume she wasn't
able to find any more information.

Hopefully, you're now satisfied that I had some idea what I was
talking about in my earlier contributions to this thread.

---
Tim Chow

[D.D.Degg]

Post by Tim Chow
from Lisa Monhoff at the Schulz Museum
===
After Schulz
completed an original Sunday strip, a copy was made to which he
assigned a color for each area (the colors were based on a printer's
color chart). The copy was then hand-colored, usually by Schulz's
secretary.

This is why I have doubts about the originality
of the Sunday colors in the rerun strips.

The background and landscape colors in any
given GoComics Sunday Peanuts strip (which,
as far as I can tell, are also the colors used in
that day's comics section) are too consistent.

The original Sunday strips, as they appeared in
the funny pages, had panels with varying colors
even though the scene remained the same.
The current Peanuts Sunday colorer doesn't
change the colors as Schulz did back in the day.

Here are a few samples of Sunday strips scanned
from the Sunday comics of 1967 and 1969.
You can even see the bleed-through from the comics
(Pogo and Prince Valiant) on the other side of the page,
attesting to their origin.

http://home.ilovecomix.operaunite.com/ilovecomixarchive/content/P/Peanuts/Peanuts%20-%201967/
http://home.ilovecomix.operaunite.com/ilovecomixarchive/content/P/Peanuts/Peanuts%20-%201969/

Notice that the background and landscape colors
change regularly, not consistent like the current
GoComics Sundays.

D.D.Degg

[Tim Chow]

Post by D.D.Degg
The background and landscape colors in any
given GoComics Sunday Peanuts strip (which,
as far as I can tell, are also the colors used in
that day's comics section) are too consistent.

Good point.

I want to clarify something I said earlier. Someone might be
wondering how I can still doubt whether the colors that appeared in a
particular newspaper were Schulz's colors when Lisa Monhoff said
explicitly that Schulz chose colors for the Sundays even in the old
days. What I still don't feel sure about was whether Schulz's color
choices were just suggestions or whether all newspapers followed his
choices religiously. Though I admit it seems unlikely, I would not be
too shocked if someone managed to turn up two different original
newspaper clippings from two different newspapers on the same day that
had different color choices.

---
Tim Chow

[Jim Ellwanger]

In article

Post by Tim Chow
Unfortunately, the closest thing I found in the book was an undated TV
Guide cover. By now you should not be surprised that the bird
(Woodstock, perhaps, by this time) was yellow.

This one? The year is 1972, so that's Woodstock.

Loading Image...

Example is from my TV Guide collection. The "Another Charlie Brown
Special" mentioned on the cover is "You're Elected, Charlie Brown"
(later retitled with the more accurate "You're Not Elected, Charlie
Brown").

[Tim Chow]

I don't check this newsgroup as frequently as I used to...

Post by Jim Ellwanger
In article

Post by Tim Chow
Unfortunately, the closest thing I found in the book was an undated TV
Guide cover.  By now you should not be surprised that the bird
(Woodstock, perhaps, by this time) was yellow.

This one? The year is 1972, so that's Woodstock.
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2045/1898047379_42e15c5bbd_o.jpg

Yes, that's the one!

---
Tim Chow

[n***@yahoo.com]

Post by Tim Chow

Post by Heather Kendrick

Post by Sneaky O. Possum
Presumably the bird was blue when the strip first appeared: AFAIK the
computer colorists only add colors to black-and-white dailies - they don't
change strips that are already in color.

The coloration is certainly not original in all cases. For one thing,
I believe that in some cases the original colors have been lost.
Also, color printing technology has changed over the years. The old
comics were colored with lots of little colored dots, and it was not
possible to produce the smoothly varying shades of blue that we see in
the sky in this strip.

Post by Heather Kendrick
They have been coloring the anonymous pre-Woodstock birds blue all
through the run, actually, but Joseph -- who knows Peanuts far better
than I or most mortals -- tells me this is because, prior to the
eventual establishment of Woodstock as a character and as yellow, the
bird had indeed appeared as blue in the Sundays.

I'd be very curious to hear what the evidence is for this statement.
I presume it must be old tear sheets. Book reprints did not, as a
rule, adhere to any notion of the "original" color; we know this
because there are examples of the same strip being colored in
different ways in different books. It's never been clear to me what
the exact process for coloring the old strips was. Did Schulz choose
the colors? Or the syndicate? Or each individual publisher? At some
point Schulz took control but I don't know if that was true from the
beginning. So even a tear sheet might only prove only that that
particular newspaper used those colors for that strip.
---
Tim Chow

I have an odd assortment of clipped Sunday strips from 1962-9, and
i'm sorry to say there's a dearth of pre-1966 birds. The only one I
have, 8-26-1962, is from the "Your brother pats birds on the head"
series, and the bird is actually 2-colors - red back, yellow belly.

Coloring is fairly, but not totally, consistent. Snoopy's house is the same
shade of light orange (also used for wood items like Charlie Brown's
dresser) in almost all, but red in one and yellow in another, both later
in the '60's. Likewise Lucy's booth, usually light orange, sometimes
yellow.

[D.D.Degg]

Post by Tim Chow
Whoever was in charge of colorizing this past Sunday's Peanuts rerun
made a peculiar choice for the color of the bird.

http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2013/05/19

Post by Tim Chow
Note that this strip was first published on May 22, 1966, well before
Woodstock was named (June 22, 1970), but still.

Post by Sneaky O. Possum
Presumably the bird was blue when the strip first appeared: AFAIK the
computer colorists only add colors to black-and-white dailies - they don't
change strips that are already in color.

I have an odd assortment of clipped Sunday strips from 1962-9...
Coloring is fairly, but not totally, consistent.  Snoopy's house is the same
shade of light orange (also used for wood items like Charlie Brown's
dresser) in almost all, but red in one and yellow in another, both later
in the '60's.  Likewise Lucy's booth, usually light orange, sometimes
yellow.

I sorry to be of no help here,
any comic sections I may have of the time period
are buried in some unmarked box.

The only online scan, which I assume is of the original colors,
that I find is from 1967 and is of a yellow, still unnamed Woodstock.
Loading Image...

Unless someone can dig into their archives
I guess we'll have to wait until Fantagraphics
get their Sunday Peanuts into the Sixties.
http://www.fantagraphics.com/fantagraphics-news/peanuts-every-sunday-full-color-comics-by-schulz.html
"gloriously re-colored using Charles Schulz's original palette."

I do note that a few weeks ago GoComics used
the same color blue for Linus' flock of birds.
http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2013/03/17

D.D.Degg

[t***@gmail.com]

My son has an original Charles Schulz drawing of Snoopy and Woodstock. Woodstock was originally intended to be RED. And the drawing (I'd say the size of the drawing in ink is approximately 18x18? I'm just guessing) has a stamp from I believe United Artists Features.

My son wrote to Mrs. Schulz at the museum and states that she believes (in seeing the photographs my son sent, front and back), that it is indeed Mr. Schulz's original drawing.

And that the reason Woodstock went to the color yellow for publication was because Mr. Schulz felt that with the coloring of the doghouse having to be red for when Snoopy became the Red Baron, Woodstock would get lost in translation.

I have not been able to find any documentation of this. The artwork is original, aged appropriately, and was logged and registered with (I believe) United Artists Features.

Is this possibly the only existence of Woodstock drawn in red?

Thanks.

[Tim Chow]

Post by t***@gmail.com
My son has an original Charles Schulz drawing of Snoopy and Woodstock.
Woodstock was originally intended to be RED. And the drawing (I'd say the
size of the drawing in ink is approximately 18x18? I'm just guessing) has
a stamp from I believe United Artists Features.

Boy, I really haven't been checking this newsgroup! This is very interesting. I'm wondering if posting a photo of the drawing online would be a copyright violation? If not, it would be very interesting to see this.

---
Tim Chow