7 Greatest ‘Peanuts’ Comic Strips of the 1990s, Ranked

Image via Apple TV+ Published Oct 31, 2026, 11:39 PM EDT Shawn Van Horn is a Senior Author for Collider. He's watched way too many slasher movies over the decades, which makes him an aficionado on all things Halloween and Friday the 13th. Don't ask him to choose between Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees because he can't do it. He grew up in the 90s, when Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, and TGIF were his life, and still watches them religiously to this day. Larry David is his spirit animal. His love for entertainment spreads to the written word as well. He has written two novels and is neck deep in the querying trenches. He is also a short story maker upper and poet with a dozen publishing credits to his name. He lives in small town Ohio, where he likes to watch professional wrestling and movies. Sign in to your Collider account There has never been another newspaper comic strip as influential as Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts. Charlie Brown and his friends and family became household names passed down through the generations, not just through popular TV specials but through a whopping 50 years' worth of comics. Peanuts began in October 1950 and lasted all the way until February 2000. The 1990s were pretty much the last decade for Peanuts, but despite thousands of strips already created and Schulz advancing in age, the most popular strip of them all was still better than ever. 7 "A Lonely Person Who Knows How To Dance" Image via Charles M. Schulz Charlie Brown is always going to Lucy for advice, which is good for her, since she loves to give it to anyone who will take it. At five cents a pop, she'll listen to Charlie's incessant worrying. While her advice isn't always so great, it's at least better than all the times she held a football for her friend to kick, only to pull it away from him at the last moment. In this strip, Lucy actually has some good advice for Charlie. Here, he's worrying about how lonely he is. Lucy, her hands on her face, is genuinely taking in his words, telling him to take dance lessons. The negative Charlie, of course, has anxiety about that, too. What if no one will dance with him? Her reply isn't meant to be mean — it's actually pretty deep. Charlie shouldn't be so focused on seeking out the attention of others. True happiness is found when you take a chance on yourself and let go. 6 "I Might As Well Go Back To Sleep" Image via Charles M. Schulz Lucy really shouldn't be a therapist for anyone, as she shows in this strip when she goes up to Snoopy's doghouse with some rather bleak commentary. Telling a sleeping dog who's minding his own business that he's of no importance is harsh. Imagine if she said the same thing to Charlie Brown? He'd never go outside again! Snoopy, however, isn't his owner. He's a dog, and he has no true worries. Snoopy takes life as it comes, playing it with cool confidence. He's Joe Cool, after all, and he's got a bit of a crush on Lucy when she's not being such a pessimist. If he's so insignificant, what good will worrying do? Might as well go back to sleeping his life away as dogs do. 5 "Dear Sweetheart, Merry Christmas" Image via Charles M. Schulz Snoopy imagines himself as a great writer. If he's not sleeping on his doghouse, he's often tapping at his typewriter. Charlie Brown's pup is also a born romantic, a Beagle infatuated with every girl he meets. Lucy is among them, but as this strip shows, she's not the only one. Snoopy has met someone important enough to him that he decides to send her a Christmas card. Although Lucy thinks it's inappropriate to call a girl "sweetheart," it might not be if Snoopy were writing to a girlfriend or someone who at least had an interest in him, too. This isn't the case. Whoever this girl is, he can't even remember her name. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Fandom Should You Join? Harry Potter · Lord of the Rings · Star Wars · Star Trek Eight honest questions about how you actually are: what you put on when you need cheering up, how deep you go into the things you love, what you argue about, what you keep on your shelf. Answer them and we will tell you where you belong. Four of the biggest fandoms on earth are taking new members, and they could not be more different from one another. ⚡Harry Potter(Wizarding World) 💍Lord of the Rings(Middle-earth) ⚔️Star Wars(A Galaxy Far Away) 🖖Star Trek(The Final Frontier) FIND YOUR PEOPLE → 01 What do you put on when you need cheering up? Nobody is brave about this one. AThe same thing I have watched a hundred times. BSomething long, slow and beautiful. CSomething big and loud with a great score. DOne clever episode of something hopeful. NEXT QUESTION → 02 How deep do you go into something you love? There is no shallow end here, only different deep ends. AI know every character and all the gossip. BI have read the appendices and studied the maps. CI have a ranked opinion on every instalment. DI want to know how the world actually works. NEXT QUESTION → 03 What do you and your friends actually argue about? Every fandom has one argument it has been having for years. AWhich one of us is which type. BWhether the adaptation got it right. CWhether the new stuff ruined the old stuff. DWhether the right thing was actually done. NEXT QUESTION → 04 How do you feel about a room full of strangers? Every one of these comes with a very big room. AGreat, and I will know everybody by the end. BFine, as long as they take it seriously. CBrilliant, especially if there is something to dress up for. DHappy, provided the conversation is interesting. NEXT QUESTION → 05 Where would you rather spend a week? Pick on instinct rather than on budget. AAn old castle somewhere rainy. BMountains, long walks, no phone signal. CA desert with an unbelievable night sky. DA city built around a university. NEXT QUESTION → 06 What do you believe about people, mostly? All four of these stories have an answer, and they disagree. AMost of them turn out better than expected. BThe smallest ones decide the biggest things. CAnybody can change, even very late on. DWe work it out if we keep talking. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What is actually on your shelf? Look over at it before you answer. AEverything I owned when I was twelve. BHardbacks, in order, read more than once. CFigures, posters, and a few things still boxed. DBooks about how things work, plus a model or two. NEXT QUESTION → 08 What do you actually want from a story? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your fandom. AA place I can go back to whenever I need it. BA world complete enough to get lost in. CSomething huge I can share with everybody. DAn idea that changes how I think. REVEAL MY FANDOM → Membership Confirmed Your Fandom Is…Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you would be having within a week. Harry PotterYou belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting you. You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within about five minutes and has never stopped. This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every single person in your life would be. The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you do with things you love. The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the arguments are about to start all over again. Lord of the RingsYou belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture. You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it. This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly alarming, and it has good reasons for that. Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all, which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes. Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make that argument. Star WarsYou belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity. You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that. Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly 1980 with no sign of resolution. The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score and the look of a used and dented galaxy. You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good time. Star TrekYou belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done. You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major franchise still willing to say the future might be better. The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else. Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar. You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you will always find somebody willing to have it. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 4 "Why Is Barney Purple?" Image via Charles M. Schulz This Peanuts strip is pretty standard stuff in the first three panels. In it, Sally is parked in front of the television set when her brother walks in to ask her what she's watching. For his sister to say that she doesn't understand what she's watching could be a commentary on how TV has rotted the minds of children and given them a short attention span. This sounds like something you'd find right out of Calvin and Hobbes, but that's not where Schulz is going. The last panel brings it home with the perfect joke. Sally is watching Barney, and she doesn't get why the dinosaur is purple. Barney was huge in the early '90s and no one above five years old understood what the heck was happening on that bizarre show. Peanuts lives in its own world, with little commentary about specific real-life pop culture, but even Schulz couldn't escape the annoyance of the singing dino. 3 "How Do You Spell 'Watching'?" Image via Charles M. Schulz Linus and Sally have a complicated sibling relationship. The brother is often living in his own dream world of his making, while Sally is the know-it-all. Here, though, the two are having a healthy interaction. When she goes to Linus about everyone in the family having their own specific job they do to help out, she's not telling him what to do. It's up to him. And Linus has an answer ready. Linus wants to watch TV and nothing more. Forget chores — he'd rather escape. It's more social commentary from Schulz about the state of culture and children in the '90s. There's a little sadness wrapped in the humor as well. Linus has a vivid imagination as the boy who believes wholeheartedly in the Great Pumpkin and who often philosophizes about the wonders of life. Now he'd rather give his mind to the tube. 2 "Just Lie There and Worry" Image via Charles M. Schulz Schulz's real-life anxieties come to life through Peanuts, most notably with Charlie Brown. Just as young Calvin thinks like a grown-up in Calvin and Hobbes, Charlie worries about everything even though he's too young to be focused on the negatives of life. Still, in this strip, that's what he's doing as we find him lying awake at night. And it looks like he's passed on his woes to someone else. When Sally comes to her brother about not being able to sleep, he doesn't have any great advice about counting sheep or finding a similar way to relax. He tells her to worry about anything and everything, not as a way to mock her, but because it's what he does. One step ahead, Sally has already tried this. How do you get to sleep when you've already done that? 1 "You Have a Dog... Be Happy" Image via Charles M. Schulz Worrying Charlie Brown is back in this beautiful strip. More color brings the details to life, and the extra panels allow for more time to sit with the message of the story. As always, it's the middle of the night, and Charlie is wide awake, thinking, wondering, and worrying about everything. We see that he's really not alone as he might feel. Right there, sleeping on top of him, is Snoopy. Every single time Charlie's mind starts to wander, his anxious thoughts are interrupted by Snoopy simply scratching himself, walking around, or barking at nothing. As Snoopy crawls under the covers with him, Charlie is hit with the thought that happiness is Snoopy. If you have a dog who loves you, how bad can it be? But is this a happy strip or a sad one? The final line is a sweet realization any dog owner can relate to. Take a closer look at Charlie's face in the final panel, though, and you see a little kid still wide awake and unconvinced. Release Date 1965 - 2005 Directors Phil Roman Cast Ann Altieri Violet (voice) Cathy Steinberg Sally Brown (voice) Christopher DeFaria Peppermint Patty (voice) Christopher Shea Linus van Pelt (voice) Creator(s) Bill Melendez, Charles M. Schulz