Mystery Illustration 114

A few years back (whenever I say "a few years back," it always seems to actually be, like, six years ago or some such nonsense), I did a legend partially confirming and partially debunking an old story about some "Peanuts" strips written and drawn by Al Plastino, the famous "Superman" artist who was the co-creator of Supergirl with writer Otto Binder. Plastino recalled the strips being produced in 1981 when Schulz was dealing with a surgery just in case something awful happened while Schulz was in surgery. In reality, they were produced in 1977 at the behest of an executive at United Feature Syndicate as part of a contract negotiation with Schulz. The idea being that if Schulz balked on the contract deal, they would theoretically replace him with Plastino (they likely had no intention of ever having Schulz NOT draw the strip).