As the 1950s close down, "Peanuts" enters its golden age. Linus, who had just learned to speak in the previous volume, becomes downright eloquent. Charlie Brown cascades further down the hill to loserdom. But the rising star is undoubtedly Snoopy. He's at the centre of the most action-packed episodes. Jonathan Franzen, author of "The Corrections" and life-long "Peanuts" fan, introduces the collection.
Reviews
* "Even the most demanding Peanuts fan couldn't ask for more. [Grade:] A+". -- Comics Buyer's Guide
* "as powerful a comic art-piece as anything out today...will delight Peanuts aficionados". - Observer
*" ...these timely re-issues illustrate not only the skill and subtle brilliance of his work but also the origins of the form beyond simple merriment." - The List
* "Beautifully designed ... One of the high-water marks of post-war popular culture." - Daily Telegraph
* "The Complete Peanuts is beautifully bound, a comprehensive resource and, with an index and introduction, a useful contextualisation of a modern legend." - The Skinny
*" What a brilliant, truly modern, totally weird idea it was to create a comic strip about a chronically depressed child." -- Time
*"The best-known, most-beloved "kid strip" is, of course, Peanuts, which graced newspaper comics sections for 50 years until artist Charles Schulz's death in 2000. This volume in Fantagraphics' series reprinting the strip's entire run covers 1957 and 1958, by which time its essentials were well established. The characters are what they would continue to be for four more decades: Lucy, bossy and selfish; Linus, quiet and grave; Snoopy, humbly whimsical; and, most important, Charlie Brown, utterly Charlie Brownish. Take that back a bit about Snoopy, who, as novelist Jonathan Franzen points out in the introduction, here begins his transition from recognizably canine ball fetcher and people licker to a near anthropomorph that impersonates other species and plays the violin atop Schroeder's piano ("Little by little," Charlie Brown observes, "that dog seems to be losing his mind"). Schulz's drawing style here is solider than it would be in later years, when the strip grew visually sparer yet even more expressive. Even these early strips, though, put to shame anything in the funny pages today." Booklist
Author Biography
Charles M. Schulz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1922 and grew up in Saint Paul. He gained a reputation worldwide as a cartoonist for his work on Peanuts. He died in 2000.
