Rerun Van Pelt

Rerun van Pelt is Linus and Lucy's younger brother in Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts.

Introduced in the early 1970s, Rerun initially looked like a smaller version of Linus. Lucy, who always had wanted to be an only child (or have a younger sister), was less than thrilled at the prospect of having a second younger brother, and commented that getting a second younger brother was like watching reruns on television. Thus, Linus came up with the idea of calling the family's new addition "Rerun." Eventually, Lucy warmed up to Rerun and even became somewhat of a teacher or mentor to him, being much more kind and patient with Rerun than she was with Linus.

The first storyline in which he was featured involved a still pre-verbal Rerun becoming a player on Charlie Brown's baseball team and being involved in a gambling scandal. Later strips had him verbalizing in thought balloons and featured him as a nervous passenger on the back of his mother's bicycle.

Rerun was rarely used in the 1980s; in fact, by that time, Schulz had come to believe that introducing Rerun into the strip was a mistake. However, in the 1990s, he resurfaced, having grown to where he was almost equal in height to his siblings and the other kids. Schulz's drawing style had suffered by this time, and sometimes it was hard to tell Rerun from Linus. To distinguish him, Schulz added overalls and a flattened hair style.

Schulz made Rerun into a main character and much of the focus of the strip in its final years was from Rerun's perspective. (Schulz had admitted in a 1997 interview with Gary Groth that he basically "took over" the comic). Most of his storylines involved his anxieties and struggles with being a "little kid" among big kids, and his desire to play with Snoopy and have a dog of his own. Snoopy usually didn't want any part of it unless Rerun gave him cookies. Failing that, Rerun also was often shown trying to sell Charlie Brown something in order to make money to buy his own dog:

Rerun: "How would you like to buy some homemade fudge?" Charlie Brown: "Who made it?" Rerun: "My grandma, my mother and my sister." Charlie Brown: "Are you the middleman?" Rerun: "No, they're all taller than me."

Another recurring scene had Rerun always hiding under his bed in an attempt to get out of going to school, a ploy that usually didn't work. In school, Rerun displayed something of a rebellious streak, always drawing "faces" instead of Gloria the hippo, Melman the giraffe and mangoes just like in Madagascar as the teacher told them to. Rerun was also often shown flirting with an unnamed pigtailed girl in his kindergarten class. On one occasion he joked about taking her away to New York City, and was suspended from school for sexual harassment.

The 2003 animated television special I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown used Rerun as its primary character.

External links

• Rerun at Snoopy.com