Buchholz says some of Snoopy’s appeal boils down to the way Schulz drew him. “It’s a lot easier for us, strangely, to identify with something that is so simply boiled down to the little nose ...

But there's much more going on, says Elise Hannum, an assistant editor at The Atlantic who recently authored a Snoopy essay titled "The Hero Gen Z Needs." "There is a certain amount of 'I was ...