By Thomas Hindmarch Published Oct 1, 2026, 12:00 AM EDT Analysis "Let's not play lover's games, Chuck!
Patty and "Chuck" in A Charlie Brown Valentine (2002) Source: Charles M. Schulz/Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions Add Us Jump links Jump Links "It's a well-known fact" Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap If you're at all interested in Charles Schulz's Peanuts , it's a good idea to invest in Fantagraphics' The Complete Peanuts . It's a 26-volume set that contains every strip that saw publication, with around two years of strips per book. There's a Kindle version if you're strapped for shelf space, but if you're shelling out for 26 volumes of anything, you may as well go for the physical edition.
Reading through Peanuts as a single unbroken run is a unique experience for anyone who's a fan of the strip or the medium. You get to watch the characters and art evolve day by day, from the early gags featuring now-little-known characters like Violet to the slow appearance of what becomes the established crew. It's also a useful way to start developing strong opinions about all these 75-year-old comic strip characters, like how Peppermint Patty doesn't get nearly enough credit for being the best friend Charlie Brown ever had.
Friendship in Peanuts is one of its more incidental themes. As with a number of other subjects, the strip itself doesn't often have that much to explicitly say on the topic, but there's official merchandise that does. For example, there are at least two Peanuts collections based around it, such as 2016's The Peanuts Guide to Friendship . The strip itself never makes a concrete statement about it... unless, arguably, Peppermint Patty is involved.
Peanuts for July 22, 1979 Source: Charles M. Schulz/United Feature Syndicate When Patty appears in Peanuts , it's often to star in strips about her academic underachievement, but sometimes it's about her unrequited, poorly-expressed crush on Charlie Brown. He, of course, has no idea. As far as he can tell, as a frequently-distracted eight-year-old, Patty's just ridiculously friendly.
If you read enough of Peanuts , however, especially once it hits the 1970s or so, you start to get the impression that the core cast mostly drive each other crazy. They're all eccentrics in their own childlike ways, and while Charlie Brown's got his buddies like Linus and Franklin, Peanuts' core drive to keep Charlie Brown miserable means that he's more often sharing panel time with frenemies like Lucy. Even Snoopy has a more weirdly adversarial relationship with Charlie Brown than you'd think.
Patty, on the other hand, has Chuck's back like a jacket whenever she's around. She's as eccentric as any other member of the core Peanuts cast, but her eccentricity isn't there to make Charlie Brown's life difficult. Most of the time.
Peanuts for March 14 through 16, 1974 Source: Charles M. Schulz/United Feature Syndicate A good example comes from a month-long storyline in 1979 where Charlie Brown ends up in the hospital. It's never established why, aside from that he's sick, but much of what makes the storyline remarkable is how it affects Charlie Brown's friends and family. Lucy admits that she's actually his friend, although naturally not to him. Snoopy belatedly gets to wondering where the round-headed kid went, because S…