1 Comments

I never realized how crucial the fourth frame in Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic was to lifting your spirits or at the very least making you chuckle. That is until I stumbled across this 3eanuts Tumblr, which removes the fourth frame from the strip entirely to reveal the absolute misery that engulfs each member of the Peanuts gang's depressing lives. I realize of course that a comic strip follows a certain formula but as the heading of 3eanuts points out:

Charles Schulz's Peanuts comics often conceal the existential despair of their world with a closing joke at the characters' expense. With the last panel omitted, despair pervades all.
That turns out to be unbelievably true. That closing joke is the only thing keeping you from reaching for the Prozac with every read. I've displayed a few of the better examples below. The next time I skim through the funny papers I am going to check and see if this holds up in every weekly strip. I know they are all reruns now, but this is a whole new way to look at this classic comic.