Today, what is regarded as the most beloved comic strip ever returns to The Providence Journal’s comics pages.

Peanuts, the venerable strip that transformed comics and reshaped American humor, is returning in classic form.

Charles Schulz, Peanuts’ creator, died of colon cancer in 2000, but his strip lives on in reruns that appear in 2,200 newspapers worldwide.

In The Journal, Peanuts will replace Spot the Frog, which is ending syndication after a nearly five-year run. (By comparison, Spot, created by former Providence resident Mark Heath, appeared in about 40 papers.)

The Sunday Journal will publish Peanuts strips from the 1960s. Today’s strip, for example, was drawn in 1961 and captures a typical confrontation between Linus, the afflicted intellectual of the Charlie Brown crew, and Lucy, his insensitive big sister.

Starting tomorrow in Lifebeat, we’ll begin publishing strips from the 1990s which were drawn in a slightly taller format that conforms to the size of contemporary strips.

According to United Features Syndicate, the Sunday and daily strips should appear in about the same sequence that they were originally published. The only exception comes on holiday weeks when the sequence is altered so that a strip that was originally published on a holiday falls on that same holiday today, though the day of the week may be different.

There is an enormous reservoir of material to draw upon. Schulz drew nearly 18,000 strips over five decades — most of them never seen by today’s younger comics readers.

Peanuts debuted in seven newspapers on Oct. 2, 1950. Schulz’s spare drawing of big-headed children with adult angst and foibles quickly developed a national following. The Providence Evening Bulletin began running the strip on Feb. 4, 1954, followed later that year by The Sunday Journal. The Providence Journal picked it up in 1958. (At the time, the two newspapers aimed at different audiences and had different features.)

The Journal ran the strip until a few months after Schulz’s death in early 2000 when it was replaced by Red and Rover.

By the time of Schulz’s death, Peanuts had blossomed into a media and merchandising conglomerate. Peanuts spawned TV specials, a Broadway musical, commercials, greeting cards, lunch boxes, calendars, games, movies, toys, a postage stamp, hit rock songs and even a museum in Santa Rosa, Calif.

The strip earned Schulz many artistic honors, including five Emmy and two Peabody Awards, and made many millions of dollars for him and his syndicate and his heirs. Forbes magazine last fall rated Schulz third among top-earning dead celebrities, behind Elvis Presley and John Lennon.

His cultural contribution was also considerable. Schulz is credited with coining the term “security blanket” and with popularizing catchphrases like “Good Grief!”

Most importantly, Peanuts soothed the public psyche by offering a daily dose of commiseration and redemptive laughter for life’s disappointments. “You can’t create humor out of happiness,” Schulz once observed.

It’ll be good to have you back, Charlie Brown. We need you these days.

Phil Kukielski — Managing Editor, Features