Li'l Folks Li'l Folks 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 22, 1947, to January 22, 1950. Schulz's first regular cartoon, "Li'l Folks" can be regarded as an embryonic version of "Peanuts", containing characters and themes which were to reappear in the later strip: a well-dressed young boy with a fondness for Beethoven, à la Schroeder; a dog with a resemblance to Snoopy; and a boy named Charlie Brown. Schulz was 24 at the time he drew "Li'l Folks",
Peanuts strip as one panel, partly for experimentation, but also to combat the dwindling size of the comics page. Later in the '90s, Schulz abandoned the characters Patty, Violet, Pigpen and Franklin. Schulz drew the strip for nearly 50 years, with no assistants, even in the lettering and coloring process. In the late 1970s, during Schulz's negotiations with United Feature Syndicate over a new contract, syndicate president William C. Payette hired superhero comic artist Al Plastino to draw a backlog of "Peanuts" strips to hold in reserve in case Schulz left the strip. When Schulz and the syndicate reached a successful