Excerpt: Why Jeff Kinney loves 'Peanuts'

Jeff Kinney, author of the hugely popular Wimpy Kid series for kids, is, like lots of people, a big fan of Peanuts and the comic strip’s creator, Charles M. Schulz.

Kinney has written the introduction to the new book Only What’s Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts,which USA TODAY offers as an exclusive excerpt below. In it, Kinney talks about loving Peanuts as a kid reading the comics page, and how Schulz inspired him to become a cartoonist.

New website lets world be 'Peanut'-ized

The book by designer Chip Kidd, to be published by Abrams ComicArts on Oct. 20, examines Schulz’s art for the famous strip featuring Linus, Lucy, Charlie Brown and pals. Kidd had access to the archives of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, Calif. (Schulz died in 2000). Much of the original art and developmental work included in the book – which celebrates the 65th anniversary of Peanuts - has never been seen before.

As Kinney says in his introduction: “Schulz understood how to make every line count. Nothing extraneous, no waste. Only what’s necessary.”

And for you Wimpy Kid fans, Kinney’s been busy on that front, too. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School, the 10th book in the series starring middle-schooler Greg Heffley, comes out on Nov. 3 from Amulet.

Seven Wimpy Kid books have been No. 1 USA TODAY best sellers, including The Long Haul which entered the list in the top spot last November.

Here’s a description of the new book from the publisher:

“ Life was better in the old days. Or was it?

“That's the question Greg Heffley is asking as his town voluntarily unplugs and goes electronics-free. But modern life has its conveniences, and Greg isn't cut out for an old-fashioned world.

"With tension building inside and outside the Heffley home, will Greg find a way to survive? Or is going 'old school' just too hard for a kid like Greg?”

Read Jeff Kinney's introduction to Only What’s Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts:

It was the clean lines.

Or maybe it was the white space. Whatever it was, something about Peanuts pulled me in every morning for all the mornings that I read the comics growing up.

Some things are self-evident, even to a kid. On the comics pages, there is Peanuts, and then there is everything else.

Charles Schulz couldn’t have known that by agreeing to his syndicate’s request to shrink the size of his comic strips down to a layout-friendly “space saver” format, he would reinvent the art form.

Less space meant making every line count. Every word of dialogue. Every gesture.

By using only what was necessary in his own strip, Schulz transformed people’s understanding of what comics could be. In a time when the comics page was crowded with densely drawn, dialogue-heavy creations, Schulz’s work was a beacon of simplicity and economy.

There’s an oft-told story about a cartoonist who worked in the late 1800s who was once asked by his editor to produce more-detailed drawings like the work of his contemporaries. But the cartoonist’s instincts were to simplify his drawings rather than embellish them. In fact, he said he should be paid more for using half the lines, given the skill it required. That man understood the essence of cartooning, which is efficiency. And nobody got more out of fewer lines than Charles Schulz did with Peanuts.

Schulz economized in other ways, too. It was typical of the day to have multiple creators working on a single comic. A writer, a penciler, an inker, and a letterer. But by insisting on doing it all himself, Schulz created a singular work with a singular voice. A work that ran continuously for fifty years.

In creating Macbeth, William Shakespeare embodied a single character with a full and often contradictory range of human traits — ambition, weakness, gullibility, bravery, fearfulness, tyranny, kindness. A character as complex as Macbeth could only be created by someone with a complete understanding of what it means to be a human being, and suggests that Shakespeare himself shared many traits with his most famous literary character.

In the same way, the characters in Peanuts reflect the multiple dimensions of their creator. Interviewers asked Schulz if he was really Charlie Brown, expecting, perhaps, an uncomplicated confirmation. But Schulz was all the characters in Peanuts — Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Pig-Pen, Franklin, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, even Snoopy. Each character represented a different aspect of Schulz, making Peanuts perhaps the most richly layered autobiography of all time.

As a work, Peanuts outgrew the confines of the comics page to permeate seemingly every imaginable facet of popular culture. From a touring musical to multiple bestselling books, a multitude of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons, a truly unfathomable array of merchandise, and Emmy-winning animated television specials, the characters of Peanuts are perhaps the most recognizable and beloved in the world.

I recently had the chance to speak at a charity event with three other cartoonists who have had success in various literary formats. As the speeches unfolded, we discovered that each one of us had been inspired to become cartoonists by Charles Schulz. And each one of us, in turn, has made a pilgrimage to the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, California, to stand in awe of the artwork of a man we so admire.

There’s Peanuts, and there’s everything that came after it. Virtually every successful comic strip feature that has followed Peanuts owes a huge debt of gratitude to Schulz for getting to the very essence of what makes comics a powerful medium.

Schulz understood how to make every line count. Nothing extraneous, no waste.

Only what’s necessary.

Credit: Introduction by Jeff Kinney

© 2015 Wimpy Kid, Inc.

Excerpt from Only What’s Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts by Chip Kidd (Abrams ComicArts, on sale Oct. 20)