Li'l Folks

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Li'l Folks, the first comic strip by Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, was a weekly panel that appeared mainly in Schulz's hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from June 22nd, 1947 to January 22nd, 1949. (Apparently, the first two panels ran in the Minneapolis Tribune). Li'l Folks can almost be regarded as an embryonic version of Peanuts, containing characters and themes which were to reappear in the later strip: a well-dressed young man with a fondness for Beethoven a la Schroeder, a dog with a striking resemblance to Snoopy, and even a boy named Charlie Brown.

Schulz was 24 at the time he drew Li'l Folks, and was living with his father in a four-bedroom apartment above his father's barber shop. He earned $10 for each submission to the paper, and although the newspaper never returned his original artwork, he clipped each week's strip from the paper and placed it in his scrapbook, which eventually housed over 7,000 pieces of artwork. He quit two years into the strip after the editor turned down his requests: both a pay increase and to bring Li'l Folks from the women's section to the comics pages.

In 2003 the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California published a book, Li'l Beginnings, collecting the strip's complete run. The book is not expected to be sold in stores, but can be ordered from the publisher, Fantagraphics.