【明報專訊】It felt like the end of an era when the final daily original Peanuts (《花生漫畫》) comic strip was published yesterday in 2000. While comics are an integral part of the popular culture in the US and Japan, in Hong Kong they seem to be struggling to move from the fringe to the mainstream.

Peanuts and Charles Schulz

Peanuts was created by Charles M Schulz (查理斯•舒爾茨), who was born in 1922. He was drafted by the US Army when he was about 21. He began to send his cartoons to newspapers shortly after he had been discharged from the army. It was on 2 October 1950 that Peanuts made its first appearance in a number of newspapers including The Washington Post.

Peanuts revolves around a boy called Charlie Brown, who is nice, not very confident and often unlucky. Other characters include his dog Snoopy, his sister Sally and his friends Lucy, Linus, Pigpen, Peppermint Patty and Schroeder. The first strip, which is four panels long, shows Charlie Brown walking by two other young children, Shermy and Patty. Shermy lauds Charlie Brown as he walks by but tells Patty how he hates him in the final panel.

Peanuts gradually gained popularity. At its height, it appeared daily in 2,600 papers in 75 countries and in 21 languages.

The last issue

Over the nearly 50 years when Peanuts was published, Schulz drew nearly 18,000 strips. In November 1999 Schulz suffered several minor strokes. He was subsequently diagnosed with colon cancer. Because of the chemotherapy (化療) and his poor eyesight, he announced his retirement on 14 December 1999. The final daily Peanuts, published on 3 January 2000, contained his message to his readers and described Peanuts as the fulfilment of his "childhood ambition".

Schulz died of his diseases about a month afterwards.

Hong Kong comics - what is lacking?

Comics in the US and Japan remain immensely popular. Encompassing a wide range of topics, they enjoy a huge readership, and are popular among teenagers but also other people. Peanuts is often compared with Garfield (《加菲貓》), which is similarly light-hearted and is equally popular. Superhero comics like Batman (《蝙蝠俠》) and X-men have been adapted into Hollywood blockbusters. Japanese comics, on the other hand, are known for their imagination. There are adventure stories (such as Fullmetal Alchemist (《鋼之鍊金術師》) ), science fantasies (such as Doraemon (《多啦A夢》) ) ,stories about sports (such as Captain Tsubasa (《足球小將》) ),detective stories (such as Kindaichi Case Files (《金田一少年事件簿》) ) as well as stories full of philosophical meanings (such as Human Crossing (《人生交叉點》) ).

The brilliance of Japanese and US comics is in marked contrast to the stagnation of Hong Kong comics. Though there have been some popular comic series such as Oriental Heroes (《龍虎門》) and Fung Wan (《風雲》), they have never enjoyed the huge readership of their Japanese counterparts. People in the industry believe that, even in the 1990s, when Hong Kong comics were at their height, they were largely formulaic (公式化) and were too restricted to specific topics (such as Chinese Kung Fu) to appeal to a larger readership. Furthermore, typical Hong Kong comics contain too many violent or erotic (色情的) scenes, making parents unwilling to let their children read them.