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For their services, the syndicates demand a high price: 50% of the strip's sales and usually a copyright, so that if the creator quits or dies, another cartoonist can be hired to carry on the work. On top of that, the syndicates exercise a censorship that is breathtaking. When Dale Messick included a Negro girl among a group of teenagers in Brenda Starr, the syndicate rubbed her out for fear of offending Southern readers. When Milt Caniff used the Air Force slang word abort (to cancel) in Steve Canyon, the syndicate figured it came too close to abortion and changed it. In their own defense, the syndicates claim that newspaper editors are extremely touchy about reader reaction and demand immaculate strips. But as one indignant cartoonist puts it: "A syndicate editor reminds me of my mother's maidenhair fern—you touch it and it'll cringe. It literally shrieks."
"Some of the more spirited cartoonists buck, kick and squirm," says a syndicate editor, and Charles Schulz bucks as much as any. He complained about his second strip when United Feature sketched in a black eye Patty gave Charlie. Recently, United objected to the Peanuts sequence in which Linus' blanket attacks the other Peanuts. "That's monster stuff," complained United Feature's President Laurence Rutman, who prevailed on Schulz to abandon eight strips. "It's not the real you." In retaliation, Schulz bought a baby blanket, drew a monster on it saying "Boo!" and sent it to Rutman. Replied Rutman in a thank-you note: "It's chasing me around the office."
Schulz fights for his strip with vehemence because he puts so much of himself into Peanuts' world. So vivid have his strip characters become to him that he talks of them as if they were members of the household. (They are as real to readers, who have sent blankets to Linus, valentines to Charlie, and a variety of clothes to Snoopy.) The psychiatry Schulz includes in Peanuts comes from his own intuition; he seldom reads any weighty tomes. "I try to remember that basically cartooning is drawing funny pictures. So I just draw some kind of wild action, or a kid with a funny expression on his face, and then try to think of an idea to fit."
Schulz arranges his own life in the interests of his strip. He can rarely be enticed to leave home for fear of losing touch with what he calls the "ordinary way of life." What the ordinary way of life means for Schulz is a 28-acre estate in Sebastopol, north of San Francisco, where he and Joyce and their five children live in uncommon luxury. Artificial waterfall, tennis court, riding ring, park, baseball diamond, barbecue pit, pool, all testify to Sparky's determination to give his children everything he lacked as a boy. Keeping the family company are five cats, four horses, three dogs, two turtles and a mouse. In true Peanuts fashion, the dogs, says Joyce, are "watchdogs in the sense that a burglar might trip over them in the dark." "Things are too easy for children nowadays," says Schulz. But things also remain the same. At least one of his sons, Monte, 13, is an avid ballplayer who expects to play this summer in the Pony League.