Melonpool

This dedication, featuring Mayberry and Sam, appeared in the comic's second collection, Melonpool II: The Voyage Home.

Melonpool is a newspaper-style webcomic created by Steve Troop. The strip focuses on a crew of aliens who are frequently stranded on Earth with their constantly-breaking-down ship, the Steel Duck. The strip frequently updated with continuing story arcs from its start in 1996 through November 2005, but has updated sporadically in the years since.

Steve Troop was a big fan of Peanuts, and as such, frequently referenced or parodied Peanuts within the Melonpool strip. A dedication to Charles Schulz, pictured on the right, was included in the strip's second book collection, Melonpool II: The Voyage Home.

The webcomic was given a continuity reboot in October 2014; as a result, the strips listed below are no longer available to read on the website, but can still be read within the book collections.

References to Peanuts

• May 15, 1996 - Mayberry suggests to Ralph that they dress up as a baseball team to blend in to human culture. Ralph makes a sarcastic remark about the uniforms, which resemble Charlie Brown's shirt.
• June 27, 1996 - Ralph, annoyed with the Duck, demands it start saying something other than "quack." The Duck responds by chirping like Woodstock.
• July 10, 1996 - As part of a week of strips where the strip is drawing in the styles of famous newspaper comics, the strip is drawn looking like Peanuts. In particular, Ralph is drawn as Schroeder, Sammy is drawn as Woodstock, Mayberry is Charlie Brown, and Sam is Snoopy.
  • It bares worth noting that the particular strip was a remake of a Melonpool strip Steve originally drew as part of an April Fool's Day installment of his college's paper, The Palomar College Telescope. The original version of the strip also included Roberta as Lucy.
• October 18, 1996 - Sam, in the process of writing a novel, tries to think of the first line when it suddenly becomes dark and stormy outside, but he dismisses the idea.
• October 28, 1996 - When Ralph asks what Halloween is, Sam answers, "I think I remember seeing a Snoopy special about it last year."
• November 4-9, 1996 - A week-long storyline has Sam, as a result of mistranslating a twilight bark, thinking that Snoopy is retiring, and practices to become his replacement.
• February 12, 1997 - At the end of a time-travel storyline, Ralphie, noticing how Roberta is weirded out about the presence of another version of herself, and says he knows how she feels, due to how different he is from Ralph. Sam replies, "Now you know what I go through with Snoopy."
• October 8, 1997 - In a flashback about how the original members of the crew all met, Sam recounts how he used to be a test pilot for his home planet's space program. As noted in Troop's commentary in Melonpool II: The Voyage Home, Sam's pilot helmet is meant to resemble that of the World War I Flying Ace.
• April 17-18, 1998 - As part of a week-long storyline about the crew becoming a softball team, they play a game against Charlie Brown's baseball team and end up losing 37-0.
• October 31, 1999 - Charlie Brown and Snoopy, along with many other famous newspaper comic characters, make cameos in this strip.
• November 28, 1999 - This Sunday strip features the crew mimicking typical scenes from Peanuts, ending with Mayberry saying that they all wish Charles Schulz the speediest recovery.
• January 3, 2000 - This strip, published the day that the final daily Peanuts strip ran, shows Mayberry and Sam seeing Charlie Brown's face on the moon. The next day's strip featured a drawing of the Peanuts gang with their creator, giving Schulz best wishes on his retirement.
• January 9, 2000 - The throwaway panels for this Sunday strip show Ralph getting hit on the head by a football coming from off-panel, and then yelling, "What's wrong, Lucy? Retired one week and already you forget how to hold a football?!", implying that Charlie Brown finally kicked Lucy's football offscreen. The main strip itself also has Mayberry expressing sorrow that "all the best cartoonists keep retiring... first Watterson, Breathed, and Larson... and now Schulz."
• September 28, 2003 - When Sam seemingly dies, he is shown arriving in Heaven, where he is greeted by Snoopy, alongside Farley from For Better or For Worse.
• July 3, 2011 - This Sunday strip parodies Peanuts as Night of the Living Peanuts, in which Snoopy gets bitten by a zombified Woodstock and proceeds to infect the rest of the Peanuts gang.

External links

• Official website