The Complete Peanuts (Vol. 1)

I forgot to mention one of the more exciting things in comicdom this year: Fantagraphics Books has started publishing The Complete Peanuts, a hardcover project intended to eventually reprint all of the late, great Charles M. Schulz's famed Peanuts comic strip.

I've been a fan of Peanuts since my Mom gave me some of the 1950s and 1960s Holt, Rinehart and Winston paperback collections, which for my money was the best era of the strip. Well, actually I don't know whether she "gave" them to me or "lent" them to me, but most of the books I had as a kid ended up being damaged and drawn all over, and these were not much different. As an adult I've gone back and collected as many of them as I could find, but now I may stop with the Fantagraphics project under way.

At $28.95 each (or less at discount places like Amazon), the collections aren't cheap, but they're in hardcover. Besides, they each contain two or more years of strips, and typical paperback collections today - such as the new Zits and Pickles volumes - run $10.95 each and contain about 9 months of strips in paperback. So it's actually a pretty good deal, considering.

Best of all, the reprints will be complete. Many early Peanuts strips have never been reprinted in any form, so far as I know, but they're all here: Schroeder's first appearance; Lucy's first appearance and strips with her "googly eyes"; Charlie Brown getting his licks in and coming out on top sometimes; Snoopy's first thought balloon, and many more. And Schulz's art changes dramatically during the first two years. I've been waiting for something like this for years, and never really believed it would happen. Now we'll be getting a new volume every 6 months, for 12 years, if all goes as planned. So Monique and other Peanuts freaks take note!

Will I buy the complete set? Hard to say. I think the strip went downhill in the 1970s, especially when it started focusing on Peppermint Patty and Marcy, neither of whom I liked much as characters. (Peppermint Patty in particular I thought was at best a one-joke character.) I much prefer Linus, Lucy, Schroeder and the old gang. But by that time I may figure, in for a penny in for a pound. But I have several years before I have to make that decision.

Volume 1 comes with an introduction by Garrison Keillor (both Keillor and Schulz hail from St. Paul, Minnesota), and a lengthy interview with Schulz from the 1980s in the back. Plus a nifty index pointing out some firsts and lasts and other interesting references from the first two years of the strip - the best bonus of all, actually! All-told, it's a very nice package, and serious and casual fans alike should enjoy the strip.

Although I was a bit disappointed in Fantagraphics' Prince Valiant collections (nice coloring, but spotty print quality and shoddy paperback bindings), they did Pogo right, and Peanuts looks to be their best reprint work yet.

And it couldn't've happened to a better comic strip.