Peanuts’ memorable “football gag” – in which Lucy pulls the football away from Charlie Brown time and again, just as he is about to kick it, leading to countless humiliating pratfalls – received an unexpectedly dark resolution in a piece of fan art shared online. While most times, when his attempted punt is thwarted, Charlie Brown lands on the ground with a thud, this fan imagined things very differently.
Posting on X, artist @hausofdecline shared a twisted take on the football gag from Peanuts, which starts where most versions of the joke end and goes to a hilariously surprising place. The artist’s homage to Charles Schulz long-running newspaper comic strip is a remarkable recreation of early Peanuts’ visual style.
Were it not for the overtly surreal turn the comic takes, @hausofdecline’s work could be seamlessly inserted into a collection of classic Peanuts strips, and all but the most detail-oriented, die-hard fans of Schulz work would not be able to tell the difference.
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Out Of This World Fan Art Takes Peanuts Football Gag To The Extreme
In @hausofdecline’s vision of Peanuts, the perennial football gag received a definitive ending, when Charlie Brown is sucked up into the sky, rather than falling hard back down to Earth, to be laughed at by Lucy and the rest of the gang. Just as in Charles Schulz’ classic Peanuts versions of the joke, the momentum of the character’s missed kick takes him off his feet – but from there, he zooms straight into the atmosphere. This is amusing, but what makes the strip truly strange is his reaction: Charlie Brown was expecting this, and immediately embraces his fate.
“Ha ha yes, it is finally happening…” Charlie Brown says, spreading his arms and willfully allowing himself to be pulled into the atmosphere, as Lucy looks on in befuddlement. Things get even weirder as Charlie Brown gets higher up, crying out, “I am ascending to the realm of god to to take my fated place at his right hand.” While Peanuts was often more philosophical than people who are only casually familiar with the strip might realize, it was rarely overtly religious, outside of the characters’ observation of Christmas. This fan art football gag radically changes that.
A Loving, If Strange, Tribute To Charles Schulz’ Art
The unexpected revelation of Charlie Brown’s zealotry is a solid escalation of the joke from the previous panel, explaining why the character expected this to happen, while still raising plenty more humorous questions. What makes this a legitimately great execution of the football gag – however out there and unusual a variation as it might be – is the dialogue in the final panel. “This is the reward for my endless suffering! This is my reward!!” Charlie Brown cries out as he disappears in the distance, leaving Lucy to stare up at him in amazement.
With this conclusion, @hausofdecline brings the panel back to an essential Peanuts riff: Charlie Brown’s woes and tribulations, as the often-mopey central character of the strip. The football gag might be the most potent example of Charlie Brown’s perennial “suffering,” but this was a core aspect of many Peanuts jokes over the years. This fan art Peanuts strip encapsulates more than just the visual style of Charles Schulz’ work; it reflects its essence, meaning that as bizarre as its humor might be, it is an appropriately loving tribute to Peanuts, which all fans of the strip can appreicate.
Source: @hausofdecline on X
Peanuts
Created by Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts is a multimedia franchise that began as a comic strip in the 1950s and eventually expanded to include films and a television series. Peanuts follows the daily adventures of the Peanuts gang, with Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy at the center of them. Aside from the film released in 2015, the franchise also has several Holiday specials that air regularly on U.S. Television during their appropriate seasons.
