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Peanuts Creator Goes Crazy After Placing Second on Dead Celebrity List
Charles Schulz, the soft-spoken creator of the Peanuts comic strip, blew a gasket in the Great Beyond when he learned he made only $28 million last year, finishing second to Elvis Presley's $37 million in Forbes magazine's Top Earning Dead Celebrities list for 2003.
"It's outrageous and incomprehensible. Charles Schulz never finishes second to anyone - especially a bloated, drug-addled tub of goo like Elvis," Schulz said, lapsing into the third person, which was something he'd never done his entire time on Earth.
"How did Charles Schulz only earn $28 million? He ought to make that much on Snoopy dolls alone. Get my agent and lawyers in here so they can explain why they all shouldn't be fired."
Schulz died in February 2000, just hours before his final Peanuts strip appeared in newspapers across the United States and the world. "If that doesn't show connections with the afterlife, I don't know what does," Schulz said. "Elvis hasn't even made it here yet. Even after almost 30 years, he's still in purgatory paying for the prescription drug thing and that 'Silly Love Songs' train wreck. No, wait, that was Paul McCartney, and he's not dead yet.
"But my point's the same - no way should I be making less than Elvis, Graceland or no Graceland."
Schulz was mildly pleased to have earned more than others on the list - including J.R.R. Tolkien, John Lennon, Bob Marley, George Harrison and Marilyn Monroe.
"Monroe? What a joke," Schulz said. "She's been dead forty-something years and the only thing she's had since is that insipid song by Elton John. What's the fuss with that?"
Schulz said he'd ordered his estate to begin an intensified push to sell more Peanuts memorabilia, so he can overtake Elvis next year.
"And what's really important," Schuilz said, "is for people like PauI McCartney, Elton John, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey to live long, healthy, less productive lives. They should take the new Snoopy II vitamins, and stop every now and then to smell the roses," Schulz said. "No need for more competition for me, not at all."
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