A short article by Bill Waterson, another cartoonist hero of mine.

As a kid that spent half his waking time daydreaming, and the other half being persecuted for it, Calvin & Hobbes was very important to me as a kid.

It was sort of Peanuts that had grown up a little. More sophisticated, more poignant, and less fixed in the most tender years of childhood. A nominal awakening.

An article, on peanuts no less.

"Drawn Into a Dark But Gentle World
by Bill Watterson
Printed in the LA Times - December 21, 1999

Editor's Note: Bill Watterson, the creator of "Calvin and Hobbes," greatly admires Charles M. Schulz and the influence "Peanuts" has had on the comic strip art form. Before Watterson decided to retire after 10 years, "Calvin and Hobbes" appeared in 2,500 newspapers. --Ed.

Comic-strip cartooning requires such a peculiar combination of talents that there are very few people who are ever successful at it. Of those, Charles M. Schulz is in a league all his own. Schulz reconfigured the comic-strip landscape and dominated it for the last half of its history. One can scarcely overstate the importance of "Peanuts" to the comics, or overstate its influence on all of us who have followed.

Back when the comics were printed large enough that they could accommodate detailed, elaborate drawings, "Peanuts" was launched with an insultingly tiny format, designed so the panels could be stacked vertically if an editor wanted to run it in a single column. Schulz somehow turned this oppressive space restriction to his advantage, and developed a brilliant graphic shorthand and stylistic economy, innovations unrecognizable now that all comics are tiny and Schulz's solutions have been universally imitated.

Graphically, the strip is static and spare. Schulz gave up virtually all the "cinematic" devices that create visual drama: There are no fancy perspectives, no interesting croppings, no shadows and lighting effects, no three- dimensional modeling, few props and few settings. Schulz distilled each subject to its barest essence, and drew it straight-on or in side view, in simple outlines. But while the simplicity of Schulz's drawings made the strip stand out from the rest, it was the expressiveness within the simplicity that made Schulz's artwork so forceful.

By now, "Peanuts" is so thoroughly a part of the popular culture that one loses sight of how different the strip was from anything else 40 and 50 years ago. We can quantify the strip's success in all its various commercial markets, but the real achievement of the strip lies inside the little boxes of funny pictures Schulz draws every day.

Lucy yelling with her head tilted back so her mouth fills her entire face; Linus, horrified, with his hair standing on end; Charlie Brown radiating utter misery with a wiggly, downturned mouth; Snoopy's elastic face pulled up to show large gritted teeth as he fights the Red Baron--these were not just economical drawings, they are funny drawings.

More yet, they are beautiful. Drawn with a crow quill-type pen dipped in ink, Schulz's line work has character in its quirky velocity and pressure, unlike the slick, uniform lines of today's markers and technical pens. "Peanuts" could never be drawn by anonymous assistants, as so many other strips were and are--its line is inimitable. The strip looks simple, but Schulz's sophisticated choices reveal a deep understanding of cartooning's strengths. I studied those drawings endlessly as a kid, and they were an invaluable education in how comics worked.

Indeed, everything about the strip is a reflection of its creator's spirit. "Peanuts" is one of those magical strips that creates its own world. Its world is a distortion of our own, but we enter it on its terms and, in doing so, see our world more clearly. It may seem strange that there are no adults in the world of "Peanuts," but in asking us to identify only with children, Schulz reminds us that our fears and insecurities are not much different when we grow up. We recognize ourselves in Schulz's vividly tragic characters: Charlie Brown's dogged determination in the face of constant defeat, Lucy's self-righteous crabbiness, Linus' need for a security blanket, Peppermint Patty's plain looks and poor grades, Rerun's baffled innocence, Spike's pathetic alienation and loneliness. For a "kid strip" with "gentle humor," it shows a pretty dark world, and I think this is what makes the strip so different from, and so much more significant than, other comics. Only with the inspired surrealism of Snoopy does the strip soar into silliness and fantasy. And even then, the Red Baron shoots the doghouse full of holes.

Over the last century, there have been only a handful of truly great comic strips, comics that pushed the boundaries of the medium and tried to do more than tell little jokes as a relief from the atrocities described in the rest of the newspaper. Schulz does it all: He draws a beautiful comic strip, a funny comic strip, and a thoughtful, serious comic strip. For that, "Peanuts" has achieved a level of commercial success the comics had never seen before. We should understand, as Schulz did, that the merchandising empire "Peanuts" created would never have worked had the strip not been so consistently good. How a cartoonist maintains this level of quality decade upon decade, I have no insight, but I'm guessing that Schulz is a driven perfectionist who truly loved drawing cartoons more than anything else.

I've never met Schulz, but long ago his work introduced me to what a comic strip could be and made me want to be a cartoonist myself. He was a hero to me as a kid, and his influence on my work and life is long and deep. I suspect most cartoonists would say something similar. Schulz has given all his readers a great gift, and my gratitude for that tempers my disappointment at the strip's cessation. May there someday be a writer-artist-philosopher-humorist who can fill even a part of the void "Peanuts" leaves behind."

Saw a parody of Peanuts on Robot Chicken, was struck by a wave of nostalgia. Headed to wikipedia and surfed Charlie Brown.

It's on of those strange epiphanies that you get, when you run into something that you used to do or watch so long ago that you've totally forgotten about it, but in retrospect has shaped your life.

I think watching Charlie Brown struggle through adversity hardly winning any at all gave me whatever tolerance I have for the less able and less successful.

And watching Snoopy fantasize about being a World War I ace, or Joe Cool was a cue for me to retreat into my own fantasy worlds.

Above all, Snoopy and Woodstock and Charlie Brown taught me the value of love, friendship and brotherhood. Things which are sometimes scarce in younger years in this hard country.

Excerpt from wiki:

"
The Stormtrooper effect

The Stormtrooper effect, also called Stormtrooper syndrome, is a cliché in works of fiction where minor characters are unrealistically ineffective in combat against more important characters. The name originated with the Imperial Stormtroopers in the original Star Wars trilogy, who, despite their considerable advantages of close range, overwhelming numbers, professional military training, full armor, military-grade firepower, and noticeable combat effectiveness against non-speaking characters, were incapable of seriously harming or indeed even hitting the films' protagonists.

The Stormtrooper effect is, in fact, much older than the Star Wars trilogy, and is common in cowboy films, action movies, martial arts films, and comics. It is often a source of mockery by critics, satirists and fandom, but it is generally recognized as quickly and effectively heightening the dramatic tension of a story.




The Inverse Ninja Law
The Inverse Ninja Law is a similar phenomenon that occurs frequently in martial arts movies, and role playing games. It is also sometimes called the Anime Ninja Effect, the Rule of One, or less frequently the Inverse Ninja Effectiveness Principle.

The Inverse Ninja Law states that the effectiveness of a group of villains is inversely proportional to the number of villains in the group. While a single enemy is often portrayed as a significant threat to the protagonists, a large group of enemies are significantly less of a threat, and as such are easily defeated.

Some shows tend to explicitly illustrate the Inverse Ninja Law. Often the heroes' first battle is against a small group or even a single member of the villains' basic foot soldiers, who will often give the entire group problems, often to the point that they have to use their signature finishing move to defeat them. In most of their subsequent appearances, however, the heroes will usually easily defeat a large group of the enemy, who are typically all wearing the same outfit. Sometimes this is inexplicable; other times, however, the heroes receive a power-up, or simply find the opponent's Achilles' heel. A noteworthy example is Power Rangers, which played out that scenario for nearly every revamp of the series.

The film "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" shows both effects of this law: multiple times in the film, the turtles defeat dozens of Foot Ninja, but are defeated at the end of the film by the lone Shredder, even when they assault him together. As well, one Foot Ninja is able to track the turtles to their lair and spy on them undetected, despite the ninjitsu skills of the turtles and their master, proving this lone ninja was more effective on his own than in a group.

In the Naruto series, where all the main characters are ninja, they are usually in groups of only three. However, they have stated that a larger group generally has a genuine tactical disadvantage to having so many people in one place.


[edit] Manifestations
The Stormtrooper effect may manifest in several different forms.

When combined with the Inverse Ninja Law, the Stormtrooper effect takes on the meaning of "The accuracy of the attacker is inversely proportional to the number of attackers". While two or three attackers pose a serious threat, a room full of them all firing at once is almost never a serious threat. An example is found in Star Wars: A New Hope where the protagonists take great pains to avoid small patrols of only two to three Stormtroopers, yet rounding a corner and finding a room filled with them is used more for comedic effect than it is a threat.
Cannon fodder are extremely poor combatants who, regardless of their supposed training or weapons, cannot inflict harm upon the protagonists. They are extremely easy to defeat despite any armor or protective cover, each one typically requiring only a single shot or blow to defeat. This is used in the official Star Wars D20 RPG, and the Mutants and Masterminds RPG, where Stormtroopers and other thugs do not possess "Vitality Points", which mimics the "character shield". As in M&M, they die in one hit, as well as the Foot Soldiers from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Cannon fodder can only be effective when the plot requires it, such as in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when they are unable to hit Indy while he runs vulnerably on elevated scaffolding with no cover, but are able to hit a rail switch from a fast-moving minecart.
Cannon fodder can sometimes be defeated by simply knocking them down, or throwing them to the ground. This will render them unconscious or dazed, unable to get up for the remainder of that scene. This is for example seen in the Power Rangers series.
When an important character is injured, the wound is usually trivial and not life-threatening; as seen in Predator, where the predator's plasma caster kills Blaine (Jesse Ventura) but, glancing off his rifle, merely injures Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Common locations for injury are the shoulder and upper arm, thigh, and the lower side torso, where the risks of paralysis and damage to vital organs are minimized.
Even if an important character's wound is severe, it only enhances the dramatic effect of the scene and is rarely incapacitating. If it is incapacitating, he or she can still get CPR and survive, in the style of Jack Bauer from 24. Maybe the best parody is in the final scenes of the The Last Action Hero where Jack Slater is mortally wounded in the real world, but when he's brought back into his movie, the fatal injury becomes just a flesh wound.
Cannon fodder can accomplish something against comparable numbers of other cannon fodder to demonstrate their combat prowess, but not against the underwhelmingly smaller numbers of main characters. This has given rise to the notion that when protagonists are present, the fodders' combat skills degrade. An example would be the destruction of the Jawa Sandcrawler (where the blaster hits were described by Obi-Wan Kenobi as being "too precise" for Sandpeople and thus must be from stormtroopers) and subsequent death of Luke's family.
Cannon fodder can sometimes be seen "waiting their turns" when fighting protagonists. A closer look some scenes of a fighting sequence may show parts of the group of cannon fodder doing nothing while waiting for their comrades to be defeated first (Although, such as in the ninja attack in Kill Bill, this may be attributed to a fear of "going first").
This concept is notably seen in certain episodes of Walker: Texas Ranger, when Walker (Chuck Norris) stands in the middle of a ring of thugs, who run at Walker, one at a time and are each soundly defeated in turn.
The Stormtrooper effect also applies in many video games, in which most enemies only pose a threat to inexperienced players, or when the player already has some factors going against them (such as difficult terrain). An example is in games like Knights of the Old Republic; although the assassins and thugs have advantages like double-bladed swords and active camouflage, they are easily killed by the protagonist.
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series the effect is known as "the Lore". It is one of the laws of physics on the fictional world, that the smaller the number of heroes and the larger the number of fodder, the more likely the heroes are to win. In The Last Hero, the handful of heroes, who were normally the outnumbered ones, realize that they are up against a single man — Carrot Ironfoundersson — and therefore are wary of attacking him.
In the martial arts movie The One, a form of the Inverse Ninja Law is an actual law of nature and a critical plot point. In it, the villain attempts to eliminate the alternate-universe versions of himself, thus redistributing their combined strength, speed, and durability among the ones that remain. By the time there are only two left, they are both superhuman.
In the original cartoon version of Aeon Flux, the Stormtrooper effect is actually exaggerated, when the main character runs between two walls with enemy soldiers on top firing at her, and manages to hit every last one of them without herself being hit."

Plot point.

Father hazardous job, makes video will every year.

This is revealed later in story, or at beginning to show snapshots of person.

Different from cancer video in that each one is meant to cancel the last one out, and just show how he wanted to remembered and where he was at different times and in different seasons.