Charlie Brown him. On June 1 of the same year, Charlie Brown stated that he felt like a father to Schroeder; in fact, for quite some time, he sometimes acted like a father to him, trying to teach him words and reading stories to him, and on September 24 of that year, he taught Schroeder how to play the piano, thus allowing Schroeder to become the prodigy he is known by "Peanuts" readers. Then on that year's October 10, he told Schroeder the story of Beethoven and set the piano player's obsession with the composer. Charlie Brown placed the Beethoven bust on
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