“Peanuts” (Dec 5, 1980)
by Charles M Schulz (1922-2000)
27 x 5.5 in., ink on paper
Coppola Collection

Charles Schulz died one year ago (Feb 12, 2000). I was a huge peanuts fan as a kid, and was thrilled to be able to pick up some of these originals from Mark Cohen, before he died.

Mark, who was one of the first internet art dealers and represented a large group of strip artists, had stacks and stacks of really awesome original art sitting in his realtor’s office in Santa Rosa. He was a close friend to Schulz, and I was thrilled when Mark took me over to the Snoopy Ice Arena and introduced me to Schulz in 1997 – a memorable hour or so that I just spent blathering like the idiot fan-boy I was. Could there be a single question that Schulz had not heard about 5000 times before?

Me and Charles M Schulz at lunch in Santa Rosa, August 1997