The Complete Peanuts

I've always liked the Peanuts cartoon strip. When I was in third grade we'd get a Scholastic Books catalogue every month and I'd always get the latest collection of Peanuts. Once the order arrived, I'd dash home (I lived right around the corner from the school) and read the entire book in one sitting. Granted, it was just a paperback book of cartoon strips, but it shows you my obssession with Peantus ... and for a time it was Peanuts-this and Peanuts-that with me. Gradually my obsession tempered and like most everyone, I had an affection for the Peantus strips similar to my affection for The Beatles ... it was hard not to like them.

My friend William pulled my coat to The Complete Peanuts project being produced by Fantagraphics in Seattle. He picked up The Complete Peanuts 1950 - 52, the first volume, and was quite taken with it. This week I saw this editiion in a local bookstore window and picked it up myself. I thought it would certainly be interesting and felt that the project fell into the categorey of "Things One Should Own." I had no idea what a nice volume it would turn out to be, how much thought, care and devotion to Charles M. Schulz and Peanuts there would be. The Complete Peanuts sereies is clearly a labor of love for all those involved.

When I began reading Peanuts all those years ago, the characters were established. Charlie Brown's failures, domineering Lucy with her psychological stand, Linus his blanket and his yearly vigil for The Great Pumpkin and Snoopy as the ultimate in cool, his battles with the Red Baron, the exhuberant flights of fancy. When Schulz began the strip, none of Peanuts gang had the characteristics we came to know, love and identify with. Charlie Brown is just typical kid and a bit of a prankster. Snoopy is a minor character and Lucy and Schroeder "grow up" from infants to toddlers. Only Schroeder, his toy piano and his devotion to Beethoven will recognizable ... otherwise, the kids and simply kids, buying candy and comic books, playing in the park or at eachother's homes. Schulz's strong lines are evident from the beginning as is his ability to convey the action and emotion in a scene. But Volume One, and I suspect the next two volumes, is about the characters beginnings and their evolution into the characters we would know.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the lengthy essay by ... which reveals just how much Charles Schulz indentified with Charlie Brown and how, despite the worldwide love and adulation he recieved, he never quite fit in or felt entirely comfortable. It makes you read the cartoons in an entirely different light. I hope future volumes will include equally enlightening essays, though I would not want to see the project become a vehicle for Peanuts Studies.

My friend at the bookstore told me that someone had returned a volume of The Complete Peanuts 1950 - 52 because "it wasn't the complete cartoon series. As in from the very first strip to the very last strip in one volume." That would be the size of a couple of New York City phone books! Good grief!