Character Spotlight: Snoopy's Mother

Last week I talked about Snoopy's siblings and how one of them - Andy - originated on tv. But guess what? He's not the only Snoopy family member who did! In fact, the other one appeared in the same tv special: Snoopy's Reunion (May 1991).

As you might imagine, a story about Snoopy reuniting with his siblings might also include an appearance by his parents. And it does: both his mother and father reunite with their kids. But while Snoopy's dad had already appeared in the strip on June 18, 1989...

...Snoopy's mother made her first appearance during this special.

She later had a small storyline in July 1996, with her only actual appearance being on July 26 of that year.

Unfortunately, it's hard to tell if this is meant to be the same character. Her design doesn't exactly match, although we don't get a great look at her. On top of that, her storyline takes place in Snoopy's World War I narrative (she's traveling to visit Spike in the infirmary), so we can't say what she's like in real life. That being said, with lack of evidence to the contrary, I am going to count it.

Character Spotlight: Andy

Of all the comic strips out there, only a handful are household names. Of those, Peanuts is probably the most well-known. And of all the Peanuts characters - and there are quite a few - none is so well known as Charlie Brown's dog, Snoopy. In fact, I'm sure you've heard someone refer to the Peanuts strip or franchise as a whole as "Snoopy" before. It stands to reason, then, that if everyone loves Snoopy, you know what they'd love even more? MORE Snoopy!

With that in mind, we got our first mention of Snoopy's brother, Spike, on August 4, 1975:

And we meet him on August 13, 1975:

After that, Snoopy's other siblings were slowly introduced: Belle in June 1976, Marbles in September 1982, and Olaf in January 1989. But that's only half  of the litter. The other three - Andy, Molly, and Rover - were introduced in the 1991 tv special, Snoopy's Reunion.

Andy then later appeared in the comic strip on February 14, 1994:

Interestingly, Molly and Rover never appeared in the comics. So even though Snoopy does canonically have two siblings we've never met, there's no guarantee they're Molly and Rover.

Andy made several more appearances in the strip, always accompanied by his brother, Olaf. His last appearance was September 27, 1999. about six months before the final strip ran.