Orignal strip by St. Paul cartoonist published on Oct. 10, 1965, and spawned multi-media success
St. Paul's Charles M. Schulz used to scoff that it was the apex of his career as a cartoonist.
But for many, the story arc of Snoopy versus the Red Baron is an unforgettable part of their daily dives into the funny pages.
And it all started on Oct. 10, 1965.
On that morning 55 years ago, people around the world opened their full-color Sunday comics to the popular Peanuts strip and saw Snoopy the dog wearing a leather pilots cap and goggles, with a scarf flowing around his neck.
He was the World War I Flying Ace, the newest in his long line of alter-egos, and his mission was to go out and shoot down the Red Baron.
In that story-line debut, Snoopy gets shot down and then muses about getting a job with a good commercial airline.
Snoopy was Charlie Brown's dog and among the early characters when Peanuts first came out in 1950, with Schultz basing his creation on a childhood pup named Spike.
The Red Baron was real. Manfred von Richthofen was credited with shooting down 80 planes during World War I air combat before getting shot out of the sky himself in 1918.
According to the Charles Schulz Museum, the cartoonist felt he had a good thing going but few could have predicted how it just, ahem, took off.
Snoopy took to the air frequently in the daily and Sunday strips, coining the phrase "Curse You Red Baron!" as he never managed to defeat his arch-enemy.
The rivalry was part of the storyline in the 1966 television special "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!"
That same year, a singing group from Florida called the Royal Guardsmen came out with the song "Snoopy and the Red Baron," which became a hit worldwide.
Despite winning a lawsuit against the group for not getting permission to use his creation in song, Schulz eventually allowed them to produce more tunes about the dog-and-fighter pilot show in exchange for all publishing revenues from the original.
Among the spin-off songs was "Snoopy's Christmas," where the two sent holiday greetings to each other and vowed to meet again in the skies above Germany.
When "The Peanuts Movie" hit the big screen in 2015, it was no surprise that Snoopy took to the air again. And, just like Lucy always pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, in the end, it turned out that the Red Baron would live to fight another day.
In the book, "Good Grief," Schultz said it reached a point to where war was no longer funny, but he kept revisiting Snoopy as the WWI pilot to battling love instead of enemy planes.
(Source: https://www.radio.com/wccoradio/entertainment/local/snoopy-and-the-red-baron-still-popular)
