It’s about time! 56 years after his Peanuts debut, Franklin, the comic strip’s first Black character, is finally getting his own animated special. Welcome Home, Franklin, which is streaming on Apple+, tells Franklin’s origin story as the new kid in town, giving viewers long-overdue insight into the character’s personality and history. It also follows the story of him bonding with Charlie Brown and becoming a member of the Peanuts gang.
Franklin’s comic strip original story is actually quite special. After the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, school teacher Harriet Glickman reached out to creator Charles Schulz about adding a Black character to his popular comic strip, believing that doing so would help “in shaping the unconscious attitudes” of Americans on race. Schulz agreed and in July 1968, Franklin made his debut. His first appearance showed him meeting and playing together with Charlie Brown on a beach, which was controversial because many beaches were still segregated. While the character has always been around in Peanuts stories and specials, we really haven’t gotten to know him properly until now.
“A Franklin special is really overdue,” Craig Schulz, who co-wrote the special and is the son of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, told NPR. “We get to go back and really find out where Franklin came from and really tell the whole story of this kid.”
Franklin first appeared in a Peanuts comic in the summer of 1968, after Los Angeles school teacher Harriet Glickman wrote to Charles Schulz and urged him to integrate his comics. According to correspondence shared by the Schulz museum, Glickman believed Peanuts comics could help shape attitudes about race in America after the death of Martin Luther King Jr.
In Franklin’s comic debut, he and Charlie Brown were shown playing on the beach together during a time when many beaches were still segregated. The new special nods to that scene and others in Franklin’s history.
“Franklin is a culturally significant character, and he means a lot of things to different people,” the special’s director Raymond Persi told Animation Magazine. “It was important to include ideas that came up in discussions with my crew in a way that felt organic and served the story.”
Franklin at first struggles to make friends with the Peanuts kids as the new kid in town, but over the course of the special he connects with Charlie Brown through a soap box derby.
“We don’t always know what other people are going through, but what we do know is everyone is trying to connect and find friendship in this world,” Persi said.
I want to say that I can’t believe it took this long to get Franklin’s backstory, but I guess I can. I’m glad it’s finally happening, though, and am really excited to watch Welcome Home, Franklin with my kids this weekend. I do hope they truly do him justice. It would also be nice if they give Franklin and the special the whole merch treatment, too, like shirts and toys featuring him, Charlie B and their soap box derby car. My kids love those kinds of toys and would absolutely play with something like that.
The special also attempts to correct the final scene from 1973’s A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which has the gang sitting together on one side of the Thanksgiving table and Franklin sitting by himself on the other side. Craig Schulz said doing so was important to him and his family. There’s a really good article in The Daily Beast that goes into more detail about Franklin’s origins, the controversies, how this special came about, and more.
Photos are screenshots from YouTube