On Peanuts

My post here:

The "Generational thing" is correct. If you're eight years old in the year 1988 and looking at the comics page, you'll snatch onto Calvin and Hobbes and view Peanuts as just... well, at least it's better than "The Wizard of Id", which is better than other strips. Actually, the placement of Peanuts would be after Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County, and the Far Side. Age yourself a few more years to a stage where you can follow politics a bit better, and Doonsebury. A bit more sentimental than I was, For Better or for Worse. You'll have to be exposed to Peanuts of an earlier stripe to "get" it, and move it beyond the Snoopy blimp and greeting cards, and the non-stop calvacade of ever-lamer Peanuts specials on television. (Here I'd throw you to Jonathan Frazen's article about Peanuts. Google it and find it.)
Peanuts would be a non-stop parade of Snoopy's relatives and that whole "Ha ha. Charlie Brown said 'Good Grief'. I didn't see that coming." Not to say you can't toss out a single comic strip from the decade of the eighties as being above par, and cubicles and refrigerators are always able to attract this "aha" strip or that one.

There's not a precise point where Charles Schulz redeemed himself in the nineties. The effect here is that of a hall of fame pitcher, late in his career and having a number of years ago fallen from the "ace" pitching slot, who picks up a new pitching technique because he can't rely on 100 mile per hour fast balls anymore -- and thus being an all-star pitcher again... if that makes any sense.