Product Description

As they have the previous three holiday seasons, Fantagraphics are offering a boxed set collecting the current (1965-66) and previous (1963-64) volumes, in a new slipcase designed by the award-winning graphic novelist, Seth. It's the perfect gift book item of the season!

In The Complete Peanuts 1963-64: this volume is particularly rich in never-before-reprinted strips: Over 150 (more than one fifth of the book!) have never seen the light of day since their original appearance over 40 years ago, so this will be a trove of undiscovered treasures even for avid Peanuts collectors. These "lost" strips include Linus making a near-successful run for class president that is ultimately derailed by his religious beliefs (two words: "great" and "pumpkin"), and Snoopy getting involved with a group of politically fanatical birds. One wonders: Was it the political edge in these stories that got them consigned to oblivion for so long? Also worthy of note is an extended, never-reprinted sequence in which Snoopy gets ill and heads to the veterinarian hospital...Also in this volume: Lucy's attempts at improving her friends branches out from her increasingly well-visited nickel psychiatry booth to an educational slideshow of Charlie Brown's faults (it's so long there's an intermission!). Also, Snoopy's doghouse begins its conceptual expansion, as Schulz reveals that the dog owns a Van Gogh, and that the ceiling is so huge that Linus can paint a vast (and as it turns out unappreciated) "history of civilization" mural on it.

And baseball continues to be a mainstay: Charlie Brown suffers from pitcher's elbow and is replaced by Linus, who turns out to be a vast improvement; he also blows several more crucial matches through various screw-ups (one with the little red haired girl in attendance); and adding insult to injury, his favorite baseball player is demoted to the minor league. The Complete Peanuts 1963-64 features a new introduction by animator Bill Melendez, producer of over 75 Peanuts animated specials and movies, including the classic A Charlie Brown Christmas.

In The Complete Peanuts 1965-66: We are now in the mid-1960s, one of Schulz's peak periods of creativity (and one third of the way through the strip's life!). Snoopy has become the strip's dominant personality, and this volume marks two milestones for the character: the first of many "dogfights" with the nefarious Red Baron, and the launch of his writing career ("It was a dark and stormy night..."). Two new characters—the first two from outside the strip's regular little neighborhood—make their bows. Roy (who befriends Charlie Brown and then Linus at summer camp) won't have a lasting impact, but upon his return from camp he regales a friend of his with tales of the strange kids he met, and she has to go check them out for herself. Her name? Peppermint Patty. The Complete Peanuts 1965-66 features a new introduction by Hal Hartley, writer/director of acclaimed independent films Trust, Henry Fool, Kimono, Simple Men, The Unbelievable Truth, and Fay Grim.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19345 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-29
• Format: Box set
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 688 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781560978688
• Condition: USED - GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Charles M. Schulz was born November 25, 1922 in Minneapolis. His destiny was foreshadowed when an uncle gave him, at the age of two days, the nickname Sparky (after the racehorse Spark Plug in the newspaper strip Barney Google).

In his senior year in high school, his mother noticed an ad in a local newspaper for a correspondence school, Federal Schools (later called Art Instruction Schools). Schulz passed the talent test, completed the course and began trying, unsuccessfully, to sell gag cartoons to magazines. (His first published drawing was of his dog, Spike, and appeared in a 1937 Ripley's Believe It Or Not! installment.) Between 1948 and 1950, he succeeded in selling 17 cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post—as well as, to the local St. Paul Pioneer Press, a weekly comic feature called Li'l Folks. It was run in the women's section and paid $10 a week. After writing and drawing the feature for two years, Schulz asked for a better location in the paper or for daily exposure, as well as a raise. When he was turned down on all three counts, he quit.

He started submitting strips to the newspaper syndicates. In the spring of 1950, he received a letter from the United Feature Syndicate, announcing their interest in his submission, Li'l Folks. Schulz boarded a train in June for New York City; more interested in doing a strip than a panel, he also brought along the first installments of what would become Peanuts—and that was what sold. (The title, which Schulz loathed to his dying day, was imposed by the syndicate). The first Peanuts daily appeared October 2, 1950; the first Sunday, January 6, 1952.

Diagnosed with cancer, Schulz retired from Peanuts at the end of 1999. He died on February 13, 2000, the day before Valentine's Day—and the day before his last strip was published—having completed 17,897 daily and Sunday strips, each and every one fully written, drawn, and lettered entirely by his own hand—an unmatched achievement in comics.

Customer Reviews

About the whole series of "The Complete Peanuts" books
If you've not seen any of the books from this series and aren't sure about getting them, here's my advice: if you're a fan of the Peanuts comis strips, these books will become treasures to you -- buy them. They are absolutely beautifully made volumes (indeed, there is a certain whimsical, understated elegance about their presentation), and the reproductions of the strips are perfect. The first 4 volumes were a Christmas surprise for me a couple of years ago from my grandmother, and the latest volumes (I believe usually 2 per year) are now the Christmas presents I look forward to most. They are a true joy, and well more than worth the money. There's no need to comment on the strips themselves: they're the wonderful cartoons you remember (plus a whole bunch you may never have seen). For me, one of the greatest delights is being able to read the strips in the order in which they were first published, so as to contextualise them both within the narratives of the strips as a group and within their historical context (since, in the corner of each strip, is the day & month when it originally appeared).

These books are amongst my prized possessions, and will be from now on. I can't recommend them highly enough, and thank the publisher for putting such love and attention into their creation. And, of course (and most of all) thanks to good ol' Charles Schulz for writing them!The Complete Peanuts 1963-1966 Box SetThe Complete Peanuts 1959-1962 Box SetThe Complete Peanuts 1950-1954 Boxed Set

Complete 2-book Set : Identical as the books sold separately only cheaper!
The Complete Peanuts is definitely complete! It's a real collectors' item!

Each book contains 2 complete years of Peanuts - the funniest comic strip of all time (IMHO). So this two-book set contains four complete years of Peanuts - all the strips that were published between 1963-1966.

Note that both books included in the boxed set are exactly the same ones that are sold separately. The books also contain full book jackets (i.e. if desired can be shelved separately). As of this review date it is cheaper to buy the two-book set than to buy them separately at Amazon and we get an added attractive slipcase with the two-book set.

Unfortunately the Sunday strips are in black and white - a minor gripe. However other such comic strip collections (including Calvin and Hobbs) have the Sunday ones in color.

Recommended.

(Note: I have essentially copied my review of the other peanuts sets for this one)

Amazing collection
This collection from Fantagraphics Comics is sooo beautiful! Besides having the whole Peanuts production, the box sets are collector items themselves with brilliant forwards and an overall excellent graphic packaging.
In one of the volume a note from the Editor explains how in the original of certain strip was damaged or lost and they had to reconstruct somehow. One strip out of 700 of that volume alone and it deserved an explanatory note! This just to give you an idea of how much carefulness and passion is behind this Peanuts collection.
A must!