Li'l Folks
Encyclopedia
Li'l Folks, the first comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 by Peanuts
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...

creator Charles M. Schulz
Charles M. Schulz
Charles Monroe "Sparky" Schulz was an American cartoonist, whose comic strip Peanuts proved one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and is still widely reprinted on a daily basis.-Early life and education:Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Schulz grew up in Saint Paul...

, was a weekly panel that appeared mainly in Schulz's hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press
St. Paul Pioneer Press
The St. Paul Pioneer Press is a newspaper based in St. Paul, Minnesota, primarily serving the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Circulation is heaviest in the eastern metro region, including Ramsey, Dakota, and Washington counties, along with western Wisconsin, eastern Minnesota and Anoka County,...

, from June 22, 1947 to January 22, 1950. The first two panels ran in the Minneapolis Tribune.

Characters and story

Li'l Folks can almost be regarded as an embryonic version of Peanuts, containing characters and themes which were to reappear in the later strip: a well-dressed young man with a fondness for Beethoven a la Schroeder
Schroeder (Peanuts)
Schroeder is a fictional character in the long-running comic strip Peanuts, created by Charles M. Schulz. He is distinguished by his precocious skill at playing the toy piano, as well as by his love of classical music and the composer Ludwig van Beethoven in particular...

, a dog with a striking resemblance to Snoopy
Snoopy
Snoopy is an fictional character in the long-running comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz. He is Charlie Brown's pet beagle. Snoopy began his life in the strip as a fairly conventional dog, but eventually evolved into perhaps the strip's most dynamic character—and among the most recognizable...

 and a boy named Charlie Brown.

Scrapbook

Schulz was 24 at the time he drew Li'l Folks, and he was living with his father in a four-bedroom apartment
Apartment
An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...

 above his father's barber shop. He earned $10 for each submission to the paper, and although the newspaper never returned his original artwork, he clipped each week's strip from the paper and placed it in his scrapbook, which eventually housed over 7,000 pieces of artwork. He quit two years into the strip after the editor turned down his requests for a pay increase and a move of Li'l Folks from the women's section to the comics pages.

Book

In 2004, the complete run of the strip was collected by the Charles M. Schulz Museum
Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center
The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center is a museum dedicated to the works of Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip. The museum opened on August 17, 2002, and is located in Santa Rosa, California....

 (Santa Rosa, California
Santa Rosa, California
Santa Rosa is the county seat of Sonoma County, California, United States. The 2010 census reported a population of 167,815. Santa Rosa is the largest city in California's Wine Country and fifth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area, after San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont and 26th...

) in a book, Li'l Beginnings, by Derrick Bang with a foreword by Jean Schulz. It is available from the Museum and distributed by Fantagraphics Books
Fantagraphics Books
Fantagraphics Books is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, magazines, graphic novels, and the adult-oriented Eros Comix imprint...

.
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