Rerun Van Pelt - Story Arcs

Story Arcs

The first storyline in which Rerun is featured involves a still pre-verbal Rerun becoming a player on Charlie Brown's baseball team and being involved in a gambling scandal (he bet a nickel with Snoopy that Charlie Brown's team would win) that ends in the team having to forfeit one of their rare victories.

Occasional appearances in the 1970s and 1980s have him verbalizing in thought balloons and feature him as a nervous passenger on the back of his mother's bicycle.

Rerun was rarely used in the 1980s; by that time, Schulz had run out of ideas about how to use him. However, in the early 1990s, he resurfaces, having grown to where he is almost equal in height to his siblings and the other kids. To distinguish him, Schulz added overalls and a flattened hair style.

Re-introduced through a number of appearances in 1993 and 1994, Rerun is shown being taught how to tie his shoes by Lucy, being introduced to basketball by Linus, and playing cards with Snoopy. Beginning in 1994, Rerun is regularly shown on Charlie Brown's doorstep, asking to borrow Snoopy.

Schulz made Rerun into a main character in the strip's final years, and much of the focus during this time is from Rerun's perspective; Schulz admitted in a 1997 interview with Gary Groth that the character virtually "took over" the comic. In the 2009 documentary, "Sibling Rivalry: Growing Up Van Pelt," included on the "I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown" DVD, Schulz's widow, Jean Schulz, speculated that Rerun's expanded presence in the comic strip may have resulted from the presence of grandchildren in Schulz's life. Most of his story lines involve his anxieties and struggles with being a "little kid" among big kids, and his desire to play with Snoopy and have a dog of his own.

As the other Peanuts kids were older than Rerun, he was usually excluded from their squabbles and rivalries, and several of them were shown as protective or mentoring towards him. On different occasions, Charlie Brown was shown teaching Rerun how to deliver newspapers, and winning back Rerun's marbles from the bully, Joe Agate. Even Sally Brown, herself younger than the other children, was shown giving Rerun a tour of the bus stop and school just weeks before he started kindergarten.

After having his age advanced to five years old in 1996, a running gag in the strip has Rerun hiding under his bed in an attempt to get out of going to school, a ploy that usually does not work. Though intelligent, Rerun displays a rebellious streak in school, always drawing "underground comics" (usually referring to them as "basement comics") instead of painting flowers, as his teacher instructs. Rerun is also often shown flirting with an unnamed pigtailed girl in his kindergarten class. On one occasion he jokes about taking her away to Paris, and is suspended from school for harassment.