I have in my hand a hot-off-the-presses copy of the most eagerly-awaited comic strip collection I can recall. It's Volume One of The Complete Peanuts, reprinting Mr. Schulz's immortal strip from Day One. This is an important project not just because it's an important strip but because it's chronological and complete. Despite the ubiquitous presence of Charlie Brown reprints at one time, a great many Peanuts strips have not been seen since their one, disposable newspaper appearance, and a lot of them are in this first collection which takes us from 1950 through 1952.
Fantagraphics Books has done a splendid job. The physical book is smaller than I guess I was expecting…but then it struck me that they weren't wrong, I was. Peanuts was a small-format strip and the book has the dailies at precisely the size they were meant to be seen. Many strips appear to have been "restored" but the restorers did about as fine a job as anyone could expect. There's an introduction by Garrison Keillor, an afterword/analysis by David Michaelis and an interview with Schulz. I know some have complained about the cover and design, which were done by the cartoonist, Seth. I'd have preferred a bit more Schulz and a bit less Seth in this regard but this is a minor quibble, especially when there is so much to love.
One of the things I love is that you get to see Charles Brown and Charles Schulz mature together. Schulz's strip was professional from its inception and if he'd never advanced beyond what he was doing the first year, it would probably still be well-remembered, occupying a place in Comic Strip History somewhere between Nancy and Family Circus. That he ascended to a high place in American pop-culture had to do with a sensibility that you can just see beginning to blossom in this first edition. The changes are subtle, advancing like the hour hand on a clock, but there is unmistakable movement…and it's fascinating to watch it occur, in large part because it's all Schulz. It isn't so much that he never used assistants on his lettering or backgrounds as that he never used anyone else's sensibilities. You can almost hear the wheels turning as he takes the occasional misstep in developing the characters and hurriedly course-corrects. You can see the art begin to get quirkier as the characters get quirkier and begin to demand more expression. It's going to be fun to collect these books and watch Schulz hit his peak…and of course, we'll all be arguing about just when that occurs. (I have a friend who thinks it occurs about halfway through Volume One, and then it's all downhill from the moment Snoopy learned to think aloud.)
On this page, I have repeatedly urged you to go to this link and order the book directly from Fantagraphics. This has prompted several of you to write and ask why, for the love of God, I want you to do such a fool thing. From the publisher, it's $28.95 and I don't get a commission. If you order from Amazon, it's $20.27 and I do. Why do I want to cost us all money? Well, the answer is that, first of all, you'll get it sooner from the publisher. But more important is that you'll support them directly. I'd like to see this project do well so that…well, you know why. It's so there'll be more collections of more strips, done with the completeness and care of this one.
Nevertheless, if the price makes a difference to you, here's an Amazon link to order this first treasury of Schulz. Better you should get it that way than not get it at all.