The Last Original Peanuts Strip
On this day · 13 February 2000
On February 13, 2000, Snoopy typed a farewell as the final Peanuts ran one day after Charles Schulz died.
For nearly fifty years, Charles M. Schulz drew every line of Peanuts himself, never handing the work to an assistant. By the time it ended, the strip had appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers across 75 countries, making Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the gang among the most widely read characters on Earth.
Ill health forced Schulz to retire late in 1999. His last new daily ran on January 3, 2000, and his final full-color Sunday strip was published on February 13, 2000. In it, Snoopy sat atop his doghouse at the typewriter while Schulz signed off with a handwritten thank-you to his readers.
The farewell carried a painful coincidence. Schulz died at home in Santa Rosa, California, on February 12, 2000 — just hours before that final Sunday strip reached newsstands.
After 17,897 hand-drawn installments, the world’s most famous comic page went quiet on the very day its creator’s words said goodbye.
Sources & references
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