Product Description

The most eagerly-awaited publishing project in comic strip history. 50 years of art. 25 books. Over 7500 pages of comics. Two books per year for 12 ¼ years. Fantagraphics Books is proud to announce the most exciting and ambitious publishing project in the history of the American comic strip: the complete reprinting of Charles M. Schulz's classic, Peanuts. The most popular comic strip in the history of the world will be, for the first time, collected in its entirety, beginning in 2004. Fantagraphics will launch The Complete Peanuts in a series produced in full cooperation with United Media, Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates, and Mr. Schulz's widow, Jean Schulz. Peanuts is a towering achievement in the history of the American comic strip and represents the apex of Fantagraphics' 27-year publishing history; the strip will be presented in a beautifully designed format that reflects the integrity of the work itself.

Each volume in the series will run approximately 320 pages in a 8 ¾" x 7" hardcover format, presenting two years of strips along with supplementary material. The series will present the entire run in chronological order, including dailies and Sundays, in a three-tier page format that will accommodate three dailies or one Sunday strip per page. The Sundays will be printed in black-and-white.

Acclaimed cartoonist Seth, author of the award-winning graphic novel It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken, and a lifelong Peanuts fan, will be designing the entire 25-volume series, which will emphasize the sophistication of Schulz's work by creating a package that is both austere and direct, reflecting the quiet and melancholy of the strip.

Seth's cover design will feature areas of muted color, with a different main character on each front cover (reflecting the ensemble cast), and a smaller Charlie Brown (reflecting who is, after all, the star of the strip) in the corner. The result will be a tasteful and completely distinctive series, where each individual book will be sharply recognizable and yet clearly part of a consistent series.

Unlike older strips, where publishers have often been forced to shoot the work from decades-old newsprint of variable quality, Peanuts is fortunate enough to boast archival-quality syndicate proofs for virtually every strip in its history. The result will be the best-looking, crispest reproduction for a classic comic strip ever achieved.

This first volume, covering the first two and a quarter years of the strip (October 1950 through December 1952), will be of particular fascination to Peanuts aficionados worldwide: Although there have been literally hundreds of Peanuts books published, many of the strips from the series' first two or three years have never been collected before—in large part because they showed a young Schulz working out the kinks in his new strip and include some characterizations and designs that are quite different from the cast we're all familiar with. (Among other things, three major cast members—Schroeder, Lucy, and Linus—initially show up as infants and only "grow" into their final "mature" selves as the months go by. Even Snoopy debuts as a puppy!) Thus The Complete Peanuts offers a unique chance to see a master of the artform refine his skills and solidify his universe, day by day, week by week, month by month.

Peanuts is the most successful comic strip in the history of the medium as well as one of the most acclaimed strips ever published. (In 1999, a jury of comics scholars and critics voted it the 2nd greatest comic strip of the 20th century—second only to George Herriman's Krazy Kat, a verdict Schulz himself cheerfully endorsed.) Charles Schulz's characters—Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, and so many more—have become American icons. A United Media poll in 2002 found Peanuts to be one of the most recognizable cartoon properties in the world, recognized by 94 percent of the total U.S. consumer market and a close second only to Mickey Mouse (96 percent), and higher than other familiar cartoon properties like Spider-Man (75 percent) or the Simpsons (87 percent). In TV Guide's "Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All-Time" list, Charlie Brown and Snoopy ranked #8.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68225 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-03
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.com
Good grief! The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952 launches the most ambitious and most important project in the comics and cartooning genre: over a period of 12 years, Fantagraphics Books will release every daily and Sunday strip of Charles M. Schulz's "Peanuts," the best-known and best-loved series in the world. Most everyone with an interest in its history has seen the very first strip ("Good ol' Charlie Brown... How I hate him!"), but this first volume follows it up with 287 pages (three daily strips or one Sunday per page) of vintage material in chronological order. "Peanuts" was unique at the time for portraying kids who seemed like real kids, but they also had a wisdom beyond their years, embodied especially by the lovable loser, Charlie Brown, who even in these early years has lost 4000 checker games in a row. We see him don his familiar jagged-stripe shirt for the first time (December 1950) and, at the age of 4, at his peak as a babe magnet. Shermy is the other significant boy, and the girls in their lives are Patty (not to be confused with Peppermint Patty) and Violet. Schroeder is an infant who has learned to sit up in order to play Beethoven on his toy piano. Snoopy is an anthropomorphic dog who plays baseball (April 1952) and has his own thoughts (October 1952). In March 1952 we meet a bug-eyed Lucy, who by November has been designated "Miss Fuss-Budget of 1952" and is pulling the football away from Charlie Brown (Violet had done it a year earlier). Her baby brother Linus arrives in July 1952. The book itself is beautifully packaged, the strips printed large and clear on high-quality paper and accompanied by an in-depth essay by David Michaelis, a 1987 interview with Schulz, an introduction by Garrison Keillor, and even an index of characters and subjects. It's so well-done that any reader will be impatient for the rest of the series, but in the meantime this is a book to savor. --David Horiuchi

From Publishers Weekly
With its ambitious plan to reprint all of "Peanuts" in chronological order over the next 12 years, Fantagraphics is making this comics masterpiece available for everyone. The real surprise of this first volume is watching the beloved comic strip develop from its embryonic stage. From the start, Schulz had some of the ground rules in place: the ensemble cast whose faces appeared only in profile or three-quarter views, the sophisticated language from the mouths of babes and the absence of visible adults from their world. But, although "good ol' Charlie Brown" appears in the very first strip, the early protagonist is the rather colorless Shermy. Lucy is a googly-eyed baby in a playpen; Linus and Schroeder are pre-verbal infants; and Snoopy is just a small, affectionate dog without a fantasy life. Even more odd, the strip's unique hilarity hasn't quite developed yet; most of the humor here is very mild and generally stems from the characters being little kids playing with each other and fooling around with grown-up roles. They're archetypes of children, not yet archetypes of humanity. Still, flashes of Schulz's later greatness are evident. All the characters show hints of the personalities they'll grow into, and Schulz's clean, magisterially expressive line falls into position by the end of the strip's second year. Regardless, the chance to see the early "Peanuts"—much of it never before reprinted—is a treat.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Peanuts fans who wanted larger doses of the beloved comic strip than their daily newspaper fix afforded have hitherto had to make do with haphazard paperback collections. Now, however, Peanuts' entire 50-year run is to be reprinted in chronology in uniform hardcover volumes, with two years' worth of daily and Sunday episodes in black-and-white per book. As the inaugural strips in this volume show, Schulz plied his successful formula of having children convey adult thoughts and emotions from the beginning, and the underlying melancholy that set Peanuts apart on the comics page was there from the outset. Still, though Charlie Brown was immediately the everyman heart of the strip, other aspects weren't fully developed; for instance, Schroeder and Linus were at first infants. Of special interest to librarians is the volume's index, featuring such entries as "baseball," "Beethoven," and "blockhead, first use of"; perhaps this is a first in a comic-strip collection. Now that Schulz's classic is finally getting its bibliographic just deserts, consider replacing those tattered old Peanuts paperbacks with this definitive series. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Here comes Good Ol' Charlie Brown, yes, sir!"
This collection features the original Peanuts comics in its first 2 and 1/2 years. Not even the 1st Peanuts book includes all of the cartoons (I have the book and I don't remember it including the 1st cartoon where Shermy introduces Charlie Brown, sarcastically calling him "Good ol' Charlie Brown"). There are also cartoon from Holt's 2nd book More Peanuts. The 1st 5 characters included Charlie Brown (who started out naive and friendly), Patty (not Peppermint, she was just a cute girl with bobbed hair and a plaid dress and matching hairbow), Shermy (Charlie Brown's original buddy), Violet (known for her pigtails and mudpies) and Snoopy (who walked on all fours whose gags were more cute, not yet ingenious). The next year (1951) would mark the debut of Schroeder, who started out as a baby and later became a pint-sized musical genius with a passion for Beethoven (you can see the cartoon where Charlie Brown plants the seeds inside the future musical maestro's head). Violet and Patty would start out as friends to both Charlie Brown and Shermy. Also, Charlie Brown 1st models his trademarked shirt with the jagged stripe at the end of the 1st year. 1952 marks the beginning of the Sunday strip (I believe it's the one they're all playing tag; the trademarked block letters had yet to be introduced). And of course, we see the debut of the Van Pelt family. First introduced is Lucy, a cute little girl (seriously) with saucerlike eyes (she'd later sport a fussbudget attitude)and later, her baby brother, Linus (at 1st, he'd fall down a lot in the strip and had yet to be known for his blanket and his philosophy on life). Classic cartoons include the debut (of course), Charlie Brown getting offended by a rumour of a crush on Patty, Violet reprimanding Snoopy for sitting in the birdbath, the gang playing tag, Lucy mistaking Charlie Brown's record collection for licorice candy and the 1st instance of Charlie Brown getting the football yanked away (1st from Violet, but Lucy would later take on the role ever since). If you're a collector of Peanuts, you'll want this collection!

The seeds of greatness
These are the strips you seldom see reprinted and yet they say so much. The first two years of "Peanuts" introduces you not only to many of the key characters (who look somewhat different than they would in later years) but also to the usually gentle, yet occasionally sharp, humor of Charles M. Schulz, which was splendid from the start but would get even better as the years passed. As a bonus, you get to see Schroder and Linus as babies, and Lucy as a toddler. (In Schulz's comic-strip world, they would age, but only a little.) You see Charlie Brown before he wore his familiar shirt with the zig-zag design, and meet Snoopy when he seemed more dog than human. What's more, there is an excellent introduction by Garrison Keillor, a summary of Schulz's life by David Michaelis, who would go on to write the definitive Schulz biography, and a lengthy interview with the great cartoonist himself. Even the index is helpful in locating such all-important items as when the immortal phrase "Good grief!" was first uttered. A valuable collection indeed.

From one completely new to "Peanuts"
Prior to reading this book, I had only circumstantial knowledge of "Peanuts". I thought this could be a good way to get started on it, and I was right!

That sublime book is hardcover, has a dustjacket, 2 full years of strip-ness, an introduction before the strips, and an essay after them, and also an interview with Schulz.

The whole thing is top-notch. The essay provided enormous insight on what "Peanuts" represented in its context, its public importance, and on Schulz as a person. That essay even made me cry. I swear to God, you'll cry too. Behind Schulz's funny and cute world are some terrible pains and lifelong scars. Schulz was a full of self-doubts and low self-esteem, despite his tremendous success, and all the experience he gained from that shows through his work, and works cathartically by making those moments look fun and funny and outside of ourselves.

I was surprised by "Peanuts" because I did not expect it to be this profound, nor this funny. To be honest, I expected something much more naive and lame, but it was not!

This book is my absolute recommendation for anyone intending to get started on "Peanuts": it is classy, it has perfect paper quality, good intro, amazingly deep and touching essay on Schulz and "Peanuts" - which relates the tragedy of his mother and of his going to war, and his last days - and an interview of the man himself; the whole thing gives you the impression that there was something saintly about Charles M. Schulz, and indeed, I want him canonised.