OUTSIDE THE FRAME
SHOWING AT THE CHARLES M. SCHULZ MUSEUM—
March 19 through July 14, 2008

While the Cat Next Door is a part of many strips, he never appears inside the comic strip frame
Peanuts ~ June 22, 1984

February 15, 2008—Santa Rosa, CA.

Outside the Frame
March 19 through July 13, 2008
Upstairs Changing Gallery

There are several well-known characters in Peanuts that never actually appear in the strip, including the Little Red-Haired Girl and the Red Baron. Outside the Frame, which runs from March 19 through July 13, 2008, exhibits those strips in which Schulz believed that the appearance of certain characters was best left to his readers’ imaginations.

Schulz deliberately kept adults out of the strip—parents, principals, teachers, storekeepers, and even the Red Baron were never drawn.  During his career he offered a couple of reasons for keeping the strip an adult-free zone. First and foremost, the appearance of adults would bring a certain gravitas to the proceedings: “As soon as an adult is in the strip,” Schulz remarked, “bang, the whole thing collapses. Because adults bring everything back to reality. And it just spoils it.” Another reason Schulz offered was more mundane: it was a matter of the size of the strip, “There’s just no room for adults...”

Throughout the run of Peanuts other things are also left to readers’ imaginations: the Little Red-Haired Girl’s appearance, the inside of Snoopy’s doghouse (quite well appointed from all we read!), and even Snoopy’s nemesis, that nefarious rascal the Cat Next Door. Outside the Frame exhibits strips that include (or rather, don’t include) these unseen inhabitants of the Gang’s neighborhood.

The Little Red-Haired Girl is always outside the frame in Peanuts.
Peanuts ~ January 23, 1990