There’s a weekend in 1988 when Charles Schulz changed the way he put tone on Franklin’s face from cross-hatching to a dot pattern. Why? No one is quite certain. I’ll be looking into the representation and reproduction of non-racist portrayals of people of color in my book, How Comics Were Made, currently in crowdfunding. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glennf/how-comics-were-made
I've spoken to cartoonists about how they draw themselves and characters of color as well as historians and academics.
@pborenstein It was part of the language, so I don’t think it was interpreted that way for the 20 years that Schulz drew him that way. And it was not uncommon for Black characters to receive that treatment in other strips (though sometimes much more racistly.)
The change may have come for several reasons. Working with the Charles M Schulz Museum & Research Center, I should be able to show excerpts from letters, original drawings, and other elements that show this evolution. Schulz always penciled and inked 100% of his comics—but when he started using Zipatone for tinting, that was where assistants were involved in applying the tone he specific. It may have become a workload issue for him.
Many Black newspaper cartoonists told me that Schulz’s tinting to show Franklin as Black affected or directed how they indicated race and other characteristics in their own work. Schulz, by using his economic power to forge a role for a Black character helped define the nature of that success.
Before Schulz introduced Franklin in 1968, there were many pioneering Black cartoonists, like Brumsic Brandon. Newspaper editors might run 1 Black-created strip and tell a syndicate “we already have one.”
For book, I also had a lovely conversation with Robb Armstrong, possibly the youngest person to ever get nationally syndicated with JumpStart in 1989. He was eager to meet Charles Schulz (“Sparky”), and managed to not long after starting. Schulz loved his work and became a mentor and friend. Armstrong gave his last name to Franklin (who previously had none) and co-wrote the recent Apple TV+ Franklin-focused animated special. (Not “Franklin” but “Welcome Home, Franklin!” https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/welcome-home-franklin/umc.cmc.yy12locz1vttqczsnlnwtei3
Robb and I talked about his art, about the representation in his strip, about multi-year plot arcs, about the system he developed to do his lettering more flexibly, and a lot more. He’s 35 years in syndication and still obviously excited every day!
(Robb is also a board member of the Charles M Schulz Museum.)
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