5 Best Halloween 'Peanuts' Comics That Don't Involve the Great Pumpkin
It's Deliberately Not the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
1. In 1959, Charles Schulz introduced the Great Pumpkin gag in Peanuts, where Linus van Pelt eagerly awaited the mythical creature's arrival every Halloween for nearly four decades without ever seeing it.
2. The Great Pumpkin's origins can be traced back to a comic strip from October 23, 1959, where Charlie Brown complained about not being able to get a Halloween mask because the store had already switched to Christmas decorations.
3. Over time, the Great Pumpkin evolved into a commentary on religious culture and blind faith, with Linus sometimes proselytizing for the creature during his annual pumpkin crusade.
4. Schulz featured the Great Pumpkin in nearly every Peanuts strip from 1959 to 1999, skipping only a few years for various reasons.
5. Here are five of the best Peanuts Halloween strips that don't involve the Great Pumpkin: the first Halloween strip in 1950, Lucy's messy jack-o'-lantern in 1952, Schroeder trying on a jacket over his ghost costume in 1954, Snoopy's ghost story in 1974, and Linus preparing to take Rerun trick-or-treating in 1998.
Written by urgent.news from Polygon's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
