June 22, 2004
March 23, 2004
The Complete Peanuts (25 volumes!)
Fantagraphics are bringing out a 25 volume collection of every Peanuts cartoon next month. They're banging on about how Peanuts isn't just a cartoon strip, it's art. At nearly $30 for Vol 1 it's not for fans, it's for poncey clueless show-offs with more money than sense.
At least Sparky's not around to legitimize them with personalised signatures.
Report from Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/ny-p2cover3718116mar23,0,7916204.story?coll=ny-features-headlines
The early yearsVolume I, which covers the years 1950 to 1952, will come as a surprise to those familiar only with the strips of recent decades. In the early years, Schulz was still working out exactly who these sophisticated children were, graphically - the shape of Charlie Brown's head evolves; Snoopy walks on all fours - as well as characterwise. "Charlie Brown moves from being an impish little child to someone who is a good vehicle for Schulz to pour all his disappointments into," explains Seth. "And Lucy is just a cute little character in the beginning, but probably within two or three years, she started to become quite cruel."
Perhaps because of their work-in-progress quality, Schulz never collected these first strips in book form, and they have have rarely been seen since their initial publication half a century ago.
For Kidd, who also included many of these early strips in his book, revisiting the origins of "Peanuts" helps put a long career in perspective. "There were some Schulz purists out there who said that he didn't collect a lot of those [early strips] for a reason - he didn't like 'em! But, OK, now if we are really to look at the career - it's like these are the scenes that were cut from 'Citizen Kane'! Here's the 'Jitterbug' scene from 'The Wizard of Oz'! I know that sounds overly dramatic, but that's how I look at it. They're historically important."
The artist himself was famously unassuming about his own accomplishments. Born in Minneapolis in 1922, Schulz (nicknamed "Sparky" after a horse in the popular "Barney Google" cartoon) came from German and Norwegian stock and exuded a typically Midwestern unpretentiousness. "I've been trying to figure out whether I'm smart or dumb," he once told an interviewer, "and I've come to the conclusion that I'm just sharp. It doesn't require intelligence to do the strip, but it does take a certain sharpness."
Charlie Brown's archetype
An indifferent student ("I managed to flunk at least one subject a year," he said), Schulz didn't even show great promise as an artist - the high school yearbook rejected a series of his proposed sketches. At 136 pounds and plagued with acne, the teenage boy certainly didn't have much self-confidence. "It took me a long time to become a human being," he once reflected. "I never regarded myself as being much and I never regarded myself as good-looking and I never had a date in high school, because I thought, who'd want to date me?" Here is Charlie Brown's archetypal insecurity, in tangible, human form.