| Shermy Plepler | |
|---|---|
| Peanuts character | |
 | |
| First appearance | October 2, 1950 |
| Last appearance | June 15, 1969 (comic strip; official) November 9, 1975 (comic strip; debated) |
| Voiced by | Various voice actors (see below) |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Family | Unnamed sister, Unnamed mother, Unnamed father |
Shermy is a fictional character from the comic strip Peanuts, by Charles Schulz. Schulz named him after a friend from high school.[1] When Peanuts made its debut on October 2, 1950, Shermy sat on the curb with another early character, Patty, and spoke the first lines of dialogue, ending with "Good ol' Charlie Brown ... How I hate him!" which is ironic, considering how he became one of Charlie Brown's closest friends, along with Linus van Pelt and Schroeder.
Shermy famously played a shepherd in the holiday television special, A Charlie Brown Christmas.[2]
As Peanuts matured, however, Shermy became an extraneous character who was used less and less frequently, until his final appearance in 1969.[3] In a television interview, Schulz said that in the 1950 debut of the strip, it was solely Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and a few minor characters, then showed the first strip, in which the "minor characters" he spoke of were clearly Patty and Shermy. Shermy's name first was mentioned on December 18, 1950, making him the last of the original characters to have their name revealed. In Schulz's Peanuts-precursor strip Li'l Folks, a character resembling Shermy went by the name Charlie Brown.
- ^ Peanuts Jubilee: My Life and Art With Charlie Brown and Others, (c)1975 by Ballantine Books
- ^ Chaney, Jan (December 5, 2011). "Shermy in 'A Charlie Brown Christmas': A tribute to an unsung holiday pop culture hero". The Washington Post.
- ^ Lee, Peter W.Y. (2019). "No Room for Normality: Shermy and Postwar Childhood". Peanuts and American Culture: Essays on Charles M. Schulz's Iconic Comic Strip. McFarland & Co. ISBN 978-1476671444.