"The Complete Peanuts" to be published

[guy incognito]

WOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO!!!

:love: :love: :love: :love: :love:
:goodie: :goodie: :goodie: :goodie:
:agree: :agree: :agree: :agree: :agree:

The entire run of the strip will be collected in chronological order, in a series of hardcover volumes featuring two years' worth of strips each. In all the campaign will take more than 12 years, encompass 25 volumes, and doubtless cost a fortune to collect, but dammit, I don't care!! :D

Complete information available at www.fantagraphics.com.

[Beatlelennon65]

cool! I may pick up Vol. 1

[Dave]

:goodie: :righton: I will be getting these as they surface up here. :thumbsup:

[guy incognito]

I'm especially pleased that the Fantagraphics people are handling these. They've done a superlative job with their Krazy Kat (http://www.fantagraphics.com/classic/krazykat/krazy.html) and Pogo (http://www.fantagraphics.com/classic/pogo/pogo.html) reissues.

[Matt]

mid-50's to late 60's are prime material. Before that, still coming together, after that, a long, downhill ride.

Pretty cool they're doing this, though. Far Side's getting it's own complete collection in a few weeks, but it's a $100 for the whole 10+ year package.

[Evan L]

It would be especially interesting to see the material from the '50's, to see how the strip evolved in it's earliest years. The '60's were the prime period for this strip, the years it was in the collective consciousness of America.

Evan

[bartels76]

Originally posted by Matt
mid-50's to late 60's are prime material. Before that, still coming together, after that, a long, downhill ride.

Pretty cool they're doing this, though. Far Side's getting it's own complete collection in a few weeks, but it's a $100 for the whole 10+ year package.

I just saw the cover art for the Far Side book and looks like a book for Harry Potter. It has rainbows and unicorns on it. I wish I could post it but I can't right now. Horrible cover art but it is the best comic strip ever!

[Evan L]

I disagree, as great as Peanuts was, the best strip is a tie between Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County.

Evan

[Matt]

Tough call with Peanuts. If Schulz retired, say, in the early 70's, and it would've been a near-perfect run. The influence that strip is so massive, and considering how 'primitive' the drawing was compared to Krazy Kat or Pogo, it had a huge handicap to overcome, which it did in spades.

I'd have to go with Calvin & Hobbes. It did drop off in quality towards the end, but for the most part, it quit while it was still ahead. It's almost a perfect fusion between Peanuts and Pogo. I love Bloom County, too, but it didn't have the same universal appeal. I'd peg Far Side in the top 5, maybe 3.

[czeskleba]

I think it's unfair to dismiss all Schulz's post-60s stuff. The first half of the 70s in particular had some really great stuff, where Schulz experimented with extended continuity and some quite long stories, like "Snoopy almost breaking Babe Ruth's record" sequence, and perhaps my personal favorite ever, the "Mr. Sack" storyline. The 80s are not my favorite, but his final decade also was something of a resurgence in quality. Schulz deserves credit for continuing to try new things and introduce new characters throughout the entire 50 years he was doing the strip. He was never coasting, like some older strips do.

The whole notion that a strip is somehow superior if it ends before it goes downhill does not make sense to me. Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes may not have stayed around to decline, but at their best they were never as good as Peanuts at its peak. The fact that Peanuts went downhill somewhat doesn't diminish the greatness of the best stuff. Do the Stones' late 60s/early 70s albums become less good somehow because they keep putting out new stuff that's inferior?

I liked Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes, but they weren't in the same league as Peanuts. Even as much as I love Pogo, I have to give the nod to Peanuts as the greatest strip ever.

[Kym]

Didn't Garry Trudeau of "Doonesbury" think that "Bloom County" was a rip-off of his strip? There were a lot of similarities, like the way they were drawn (and how Steve Dallas was essentially a younger Duke).

I liked "Bloom County" when I was young, but then again, I liked "Funky Winkerbean"... :sigh:

[b&w]

12 half years..yikes..they could do something faster then that. Thats a significant amount of time.

[Matt]

Yeah, the home run series was funny (especially how Charlie Brown ruins it by getting tagged out), and there were good moments throughout the 70's, but I really think there was a decline that started around the late 60's or early 70's. Now, it's not like the strip just fell apart immediately, it was a decline that started at a very high point, but I really feel there was a steady drop-off in quality. Some of the extended storylines were pretty poor, too, often running a bad joke into the ground (like Peppermint Patti trying different hairdo's at school). When I was a kid in the 80's, I recall most of the jokes being the old gags, like the football gag with Lucy, or Lucy's crush on Schroeder, but they weren't funny. It wasn't just the fact that they were done so often, either, because I never read the older stuff until later, it was because these weren't funny versions of the same joke.

When I got to high school, I gave up. I can't remember any specific strips, but I remember a bunch where there was no joke. You can see that Schulz was doing something he thought was amusing, and kudos to comedians/cartoonists who try to do something that's funny/amusing rather than do straight gags (like the cartoon "What's Opera, Doc?"), but what Schulz did wasn't amusing, funny, or interesting, it was almost nothing.

I can see your other point, though. To go back to the Stones argument, Jimmy Guterman argues that the Stones were greater partly because they stuck around so long, which I think is bologna if the work isn't that good. The reason I hold it against the Peanuts or the Stones, though, isn't in a way that diminishes the best work. I still think "Exile On Main Street" is the greatest rock album ever made, even if I like Dylan and the Beatles more than the Stones. I just feel that when an artist or a body of work is being critiqued as a whole, everything should be considered. The 80's, the first half of the 90's (I quit reading around 94 or 95), I remember the being pretty bad, and that's a pretty long stretch, longer than the lifespans of many comic strips.

Regardless, it is still one of the greats. If we weren't arguing which one or two strips were the greatest, I wouldn't be putting it down like that.

ADDED:

I'm just trying to respond to different posts, hence the multiple posts.

[Dave]

Matt, please use the think twice, post once, logic in this thread as it's getting pretty crappy. Thx.

[Kym]

Originally posted by Dave
Matt, please use the think twice, post once, logic in this thread as it's getting pretty crappy. Thx.

I apologize too for going off on Bloom County, Doonesbury, Funky Winkerbean...

I have to say, Peanuts is my favorite strip of all time! :D

[Joel Cairo]

The "Peanuts" series that stuck with me the longest was the string of "hi-fi" jokes that snuck in during the 50's (I think), which culminated with Lucy wanting to show Charlie Brown her "hi-fi jump rope", which causes him to wonder the classic thought:

"How can a jump rope be hi-fi??"

Don't know exactly why..., it just struck me funny both then and now... :)

-Kevin

[MagicAlex]

Originally posted by guy incognito
I'm especially pleased that the Fantagraphics people are handling these. They've done a superlative job with their Krazy Kat (http://www.fantagraphics.com/classic/krazykat/krazy.html) and Pogo (http://www.fantagraphics.com/classic/pogo/pogo.html) reissues.

I agree. They've been around for many years and are known for their good work. Good choice!

[guy incognito]

I think my favorite ongoing "Peanuts" storyline (apart from the Mr. Sack episode already mentioned by czeskleba) was the one where Snoopy woke up to find a gigantic icicle dangling precariously over his doghouse. "I'm doomed!" :laugh:

[Beatlelennon65]

To me, Peanuts has always been about as funny as Blondie, that is to say not very. That doesnt mean it isnt good though. It had its moments early on but I almost never read it in the 80's and 90's because when I did read it, it was bad. I have some of the old books that collect the old strips and they are entertaining. Berk Breathed is bringing Bloom County back next month in a strip called Opus. I always liked Bloom County, but Calvin and Hobbes is the absolute best.
I dont know how long Zits has been around but that guy has teenage life down perfect.

[Dave]

For further criticism of Peanuts start your own thread as this thread is not about that, being that this thread was started out of the love of them.

[Beatlelennon65]

Right, I said it was not funny but it was still good. Something doesnt have to be funny to be good. While the early strips were good, the later strips were not so good, as has been said earlier by others.

[Andrew]

I had all the paperback books of "Peanuts" in the early 70's , but bailed on the strip when Five came along.

[guy incognito]

The "Peanuts" of the '80s and '90s was more whimsical than funny, but IMO if you look at the strip in its prime (late '50s-early '70s) it was *very* funny, and quite cerebral to boot.

It's all subjective, of course.

[czeskleba]

And Peanuts was so influential. Before Peanuts, if a child appeared in a comic strip, they talked and acted like, I don't know, Dennis the Menace. Schulz's characters were the first comic strip kids to display complex thoughts and emotions. And he invented the conceit of having an animal character "think" his lines rather than speak them or be nonverbal, something virtually every animal character does these days. Without Peanuts, there would be no Calvin and Hobbes, as I'm sure Watterson would be the first to admit. Charles Schulz was the Beatles of comic strips.

[-=Rudy=-]

I liked the way the early Peanuts characters were drawn...even Snoopy looked like a Pup, and Linus was a toddler. :D Our household was BIG on Peanuts when I was growing up. I do think the strips weren't quite the same as the 80's and 90's wore on, but it was still nice seeing a familiar strip in the local paper, compared to the newer ones. Depending on what these volumes cost, I may buy a few of them. I'm glad it's in serial fashion too. I have many of the small paperback Peanuts books back from the 70's...used to get one every few weeks when we went shopping at Kresge's. :)

I can think of one reason why I thought Peanuts got repetitive: a lot of those earlier characters were either forgotten or rarely used! Pigpen was always a favorite (anyone remember the rare "clean" Pigpen cartoon? :D ), and then there was Violet, Franklin, and a few others that fell by the wayside. Seemed like it whittled down to a core cast of characters. Granted some of them were marginal, but that's what the phrase "character development" is for. In recent years, Rerun seemed a little redundant, but I always liked Snoopy's kin...sister Belle and her teenaged son, and his desert-dwelling brother Spike. I have a Snoopy tie...which might give away my favorite character. :)

I am not big on much of anything newer than Peanuts--about the only ones I ever liked (and really followed) were Overboard, Foxtrot and The Far Side. Nowadays, I barely recognize the comic section of the paper.