Shermy (Peanuts)
| Shermy Plepler | |
|---|---|
| Peanuts character | |
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| First appearance | October 2, 1950 (comic strip) |
| Last appearance |
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| Voiced by |
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| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Family | Unnamed sister |
Shermy is a fictional character from the comic strip Peanuts, by Charles Schulz. Schulz named him after a friend from high school. When Peanuts made its debut on October 2, 1950, Shermy had the first lines of dialogue in the series, ending with "Good ol' Charlie Brown . . . How I hate him!"
As Peanuts matured, however, Shermy became an extraneous character who was used less and less frequently, until his final appearance in 1969. In a television interview, Schulz said that in the 1950 debut of the strip, it was solely Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and a few minor characters, then showed the first strip, in which the "minor characters" he spoke of were clearly Patty and Shermy. Shermy's name was first mentioned on December 18, 1950, making him the last of the original characters to have the name revealed. In Schulz's Peanuts-precursor strip Li'l Folks, a character resembling Shermy went by the name "Charlie Brown".
Shermy was often portrayed as Charlie Brown's superior at the things that mattered to Charlie Brown, especially athletics. Shermy's first line in the strip was commenting to Patty "good ol' Charlie Brown... how I hate him!". The relationship between Shermy and Charlie Brown became more neutral, and often even friendly, as the strip progressed and Shermy's role declined in prominence; Shermy, by default, served as Charlie Brown's closest friend until Linus grew old enough to fill that role. Shermy's major physical characteristic was his short, dark hair, which he had styled in a crew cut on April 18, 1953, and kept that way permanently thereafter. Shermy would sometimes make reference to the fact he seemed doomed to have that look; he complained to Charlie Brown he got a new hairstyle one weekend only to shortly come down with an illness that kept him from attending school. By the time the illness subsided, Shermy's hair had returned to its normal look, to which Shermy exclaims "I wasted a good haircut!" in not getting to model it at school. Apparently Schulz himself was not a big fan of this look, as he once commented that he "disliked" the way he drew Shermy's hair, a possible reason for the character being removed. Shermy was sometimes said to play the position of first base on Charlie Brown's baseball team. In at least one early strip (September 29, 1951), Shermy is implied to be the original owner of Snoopy, several years before Charlie Brown was established as the dog's owner in 1958.
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