On `Peanuts' and the Franklin factor
`JumpStart' creator Robb Armstrong will discuss comics, Charles Schulz and a symbol of inclusion at Comic-Con International
Cartoonist Robb Armstrong says his earliest childhood memories revolve around his love of the “Peanuts” comic strip, and such characters as Charlie Brown and Snoopy that he learned to draw as a preschooler.
“I don't really have many memories that precede it,” says Armstrong, whose strip “JumpStart” has run in syndication since 1989. “I just have always connected it to the love and approval and getting a reaction from my mom, which was very, very important to me as a kid.”
But “Peanuts” took on an even bigger role in Armstrong's life in 1968 when he was 6 years old and the world around him descended into despair.
“There was a confluence of events that really shaped me,” Armstrong says from his Burbank studio. “One was the assassination of Dr. King, which was traumatizing for the whole community.
“My mother was very active in the civil rights movement,” he says. “She was at marches and things, and my sister actually shook Dr. King's hand at one point — I was very jealous I wasn't at that rally.
“So his death was like a death in the family,” Armstrong says. “And then later that year there was a death in my family. My brother was killed that year. The world was in turmoil.”
Then into that world of trauma and fear, “Peanuts” creator Charles M. Schulz introduced a new character, Franklin, a boy who not only was about the same age as Armstrong but was a Black person like him, too.
“I was like, wow, look at the `Peanuts' strip,” Armstrong says. “They just put a Black character into `Peanuts.'
“So when I saw that `Peanuts' had changed, I changed. I wasn't a morbid child. I wasn't morose. I was just very hopeful and upbeat, actually.
“I was on my way,” Armstrong says. “I thought, this is my green light.”
He was on his way: “JumpStart,” which debuted when Armstrong was just 27, led to him meeting his idol Schulz a few years later. That, in turn, led Schulz to ask Armstrong if he could use his surname for Franklin, who'd been created without one.
Now, as the centennial of Schulz's birth is set for celebrations at Comic-Con International: San Diego this week, Armstrong will appear on several panels there to talk about his career, Schulz and “Peanuts,” and Black creators in the comics business.
And he'll also spread the word of the Armstrong Project, a new initiative by Peanuts Worldwide to help Black college students with scholarships and mentorships as they seek to find their own way into the kind of work that Comic-Con celebrates each summer.
`A wild story'
Armstrong laughs when asked how he first met Schulz. “It's a wild story,” he says, and he's not wrong.
When United Feature Syndicate signed Armstrong for “JumpStart” in 1989, his editor Sarah Gillespie was also Schulz's editor for “Peanuts.” That was all a confident young man like Armstrong needed to see a pathway to meeting his idol.
“When I signed my contract, literally the ink wasn't even dry on it, I leaned in to Sarah and said, `Hey, do me a favor and introduce me to Charles Schulz,' ” Armstrong says, laughing at his youthful hubris. “She said, `You know I'm not here for that, right?'
“She's like, `I don't do a lot of picking up the phone with Charles Schulz, believe it or not,' ” he says. “Honestly, if you just sent him one of your comic strips, I think that's the best way to go. He does like that.'”
Armstrong did and waited for his next opportunity, which came not long after when he met and befriended Mark Cohen, a broker of original comics art, and eventually realized that Cohen was close to Schulz.
“He would bring up a man he called Sparky Schulz a lot,” Armstrong says, at the time unaware that Sparky was Charles Schulz's nickname. “Finally, it dawned on me — `Are you talking about being friends with Charles Schulz?'
“He says, `Yeah, I bet you would really get along with him,' ” Armstrong says. “I say, `Mark, of course, I would get along with him!' He said, `I'll make that happen.' ”
A few weeks later, Armstrong was standing at the foot of the stairs leading to Schulz's office in Santa Rosa when the man himself stepped out.
“He pokes his head out and goes, `You're here! Robb Armstrong, `JumpStart.' Wow, come on in.'
“I don't know what anyone else can compare to that. I guess if you're an actor and you've got a Marlon Brando story or something. But I had nothing to compare it to. Just incredible.”
And it was about to get even more so: As Armstrong stepped into Schulz's office, he saw that within the mostly spartan workspace, Schulz had framed the “JumpStart” art he'd sent and hung it on the wall.
“I'm already shaking in complete stunned disbelief,” Armstrong says. “When I saw it, I said, `Oh, wow, I see what you did.' He says, `What do you mean?' I said, `Well, you knew I was coming, and that thing I sent you, you had it framed real quick and put up on your wall.'
“I said, `It's a nice gesture; I get it.' He says, `No, no, you don't get it.' He says, and I quote, `Your comic strip is great, Robb. It's got great characters — and great characters, that's the whole thing.' ”
Franklin and Robb
Four years later, Schulz called Armstrong one night and asked his permission to use his last name as Franklin's surname.
“I thought I was hearing things,” Armstrong says, laughing.
Schulz was working on a “Peanuts” DVD project at the time and decided it was time that Franklin had a last name like most of the other characters. Charlie was Brown, Lucy and Linus were Van Pelts, maybe Franklin could be Armstrong, he thought.
Armstrong says Schulz's modest Midwestern manner had a powerful effect upon him.
“I hung up the phone and realized what just happened,” he says. “I went, `Wait a sec!' But because he's so humble, he imparted upon me this desire to be humble like that. So after that phone call, I wouldn't tell anyone. I thought if I tell anyone, that's not humble. So I never did.”
Years later, during a 2007 speech at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Armstrong casually told an audience that included Schulz's widow, Jean, the story of how Franklin got his last name.
“She walked up to me and said, `Are you kidding me? He named Franklin after you?' ” Armstrong says. “I was like, `Yeah, you know, I forgot to mention it.'
“She's like, `That's incredible news; we have to let people know.' ”
The Armstrong Project
Armstrong says that as a child and young cartoonist, he never fully understood just how hard it was for Black artists, writers and animators to break into the comics business.
He says this was partly due to the confidence his mother instilled in him as a boy, enrolling him in art classes from an early age where he was often the only child and only Black person in a room full of White adults.
It just seemed kind of normal, Armstrong says, though as he later learned it was not. Asked about the state of Black creators in the industry, Armstrong said his fellow Black cartoonists helped him better understand the barriers that most face.
“I'm friends with a lot of other cartoonists in this business, Black and White,” he says. “But I'm friends with every other Black cartoonist, and yes, they seem hypersensitive to what you're talking about.
“I know for certain that what you say needs to be addressed,” Armstrong says. “There aren't many Black people in my industry, and I mean my industry as a cartoonist, my industry as an author, my industry as a writer, my industry in television.
“So I had to ask myself, `What can I do to help?' ” he says. “And the people at Peanuts Worldwide felt exactly the same way — `What can we do to help?' ”
The Peanuts people called with an idea not long ago that led to the creation of the Armstrong Project, an initiative that established $100,000 endowments at two historically Black universities, Howard in Washington, D.C., and Hampton in Hampton, Virginia.
Hailey Cartwright of Howard University and Promise Robinson of Hampton University are the first recipients of $10,000 scholarships for students who want to enter the same industries where Armstrong has found success. Both will be working with Peanuts Worldwide at Comic-Con this week.
While the money will help fund their educations, Armstrong says, there's more to the project than just that.
“You still have a long way to go if you don't have a mentor, if you don't have an internship available or something like that,” he says. “Somebody who says, `Here's how you must do this.' And this is what I'm going to do.”
Schulz at 100
Peanuts Worldwide has a host of panels and presentations planned to celebrate the 100 birthday of Schulz at San Diego Comic-Con. (And Franklin will be the subject of 50th anniversary honors, too.)
It's more than two decades since Schulz's death in 2000, yet he and the whole “Peanuts” gang are still as beloved as they were during his life, a fact that Armstrong isn't sure how to explain.
“If there was a magic formula, believe me, I'd write it down somewhere and sell it,” he laughs. “But he's created an enduring legacy because `Peanuts' is bigger than just the comic strip. It's bigger than just the characters.
“He was able to tap into the psyche, and at the same time, wrap it around the zeitgeist of the times he was living in. And he was able to make everyone feel included and to receive `Peanuts' emotionally.
“He did a great job of creating a very believable cast of characters who weren't perfect,” Armstrong says. “They weren't silly or sophomoric. They were just figuring out big things in these little bodies.”
And they were complex, too. Take, for instance, Charlie Brown, who on the surface is a lovable loser, forever doomed to kick at the football only to have Lucy yank it away at the last moment.
But that doesn't make Charlie Brown or anyone who's ever missed a kick unworthy of love or admiration, Armstrong says.
“I've had many a football yanked away from me,” Armstrong says. “I don't want anybody looking at my life and going, `You've been one lucky SOB.' OK, that's cool if you think that. I would love to sit you down with my footballs. These are the ones I didn't get to kick.'”
He's currently working on a pilot for a live-action “JumpStart” television show, the latest in a string of TV projects, none of which has yet come to fruition.
“This isn't my first time kicking at this football,” Armstrong says. “I've had it yanked away. But now somebody might say, `I'm gonna hold it for you and we'll see how far you can kick it.' ”