Product Description: The newest collection of the classic strip.
As we rush toward the end of Peanuts' second full decade, Snoopy finds himself almost completely engrossed in his persona as the World War I Flying Ace—to the point where he goes to camp with Charlie Brown and maintains his persona throughout the entire two-week period (much to Peppermint Patty's bafflement).
Still, Snoopy looms large, so this volume (a particularly Snoopy-heavy one) sees him arm-wrestling Lucy as the "Masked Marvel" and then taking off for Petaluma for the national arm-wrestling championship; impersonating a vulture and a "Cheshire Beagle"; enjoying golf and hockey; attempting a jaunt to France for an ice-skating championship; running for office on the "Paw" ticket; being traded to Peppermint Patty's baseball team, then un-traded and installed as team manager by a guilt-ridden Charlie Brown; as well as dealing with the return of his original owner, Lila. If you're surprised by that last one, imagine how Charlie Brown feels...
Lila makes only a brief appearance (as does Josè Peterson, a short-lived—and short—star member of Charlie Brown's baseball team), but this volume sees the appearance of what would be Schulz's most controversial major character: Franklin. (Yes, in 1968 the introduction of a Black character caused a stir.)
Peppermint Patty, working toward her ascendancy as one of the major Peanuts players in the 1970s and 1980s, also has several major turns, including a storyline in which she's the tent monitor for three little girls (who call her "Sir"—a joke Schulz would pick up later with Peppermint Patty's friend Marcie).
Stories involving other characters include a sequence in which Linus's flippant comment to his Gramma that he'll kick his blanket habit when she kicks her smoking habit backfires; Lucy bullies Linus, pesters Schroeder, and organizes a "crab-in"; plus Charlie Brown copes with Valentine's Day depression, the Little Red-Haired Girl, the increasingly malevolent kite-eating tree, and baseball losses. In other words: Vintage Peanuts!
"Well, there was this ocean, see..." Tongues are stilled to silence. Commentary fails. By 1968, the neurotic and often surreal Peanuts comic strip ruled newspapers' daily fibers. Another decade would roll by before any real competition emerged. Though Ruminations on the 1960s rarely include "Charlie Brown and Snoopy," their utter ubiquitousness in papers, magazines, toy stores, television and, after 1969, film makes that lacuna seem almost irresponsible. The stunted ageless self-conscious Freudian windbags were simply everywhere. Only very recently, following Charles Schulz's passing, the closing of the Mall of America's "Camp Snoopy" and the glacial disappearance of Peanuts reruns, does its grip on popular culture seem at an ebb. Nonetheless, historians of popular culture will doubtless continue to acclaim Peanuts as the pinnacle of the comic medium. Especially as the classic comic strip format fades into history, with the inevitable dissolution of newspapers into web bits, Peanuts represents something that will not likely occur again. Thankfully, Fantagraphic's magnum opus, "The Complete Peanuts," lets readers revisit the strip's colossal 50 year run. Fanatics unite!
This ninth volume includes every strip, including Sundays (though not in color), from 1967 to 1968. By this point the development of the strip's main characters plateaued. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Sally, Peppermint Patty, and the "birds" that would become Woodstock (next volume - try to hold it!) appear in familiar form (though some characters began to appear with less frequency, such as Violet, Frieda, and "Pig-Pen" - Violet's appearance on the cover remains a little enigmatic since she appears only 15 times in minor roles; "Pig-Pen" only appears 3 times). Snoopy's "WWI Flying Ace" transformation (in the previous volume) arguably represents the strip's peak. This level of quality was maintained until the 1980s. Schulz became a multimillionaire in charge of a global empire. Peanuts gradually seeped into every possible crack, including junk food and insurance. Snoopy became as recognizable as Mickey Mouse. This cultural domination did not ruin the comic's self-consciousness or self-deprecating undertone. As profits and honors soared, it kept reflecting on the lives of losers, misfits, and the depressed.
As with all volumes, this one contains many highlights, including: Lucy sort of meets her arm wrestling match in "The Masked Marvel" ("Succumb you dark-haired fiend!" 2/14/67); Snoopy attempts to compete in the Grenoble Olympics, only to be deterred by an ocean (12/21 - 12/22/67); Snoopy trips over a blighter (5/11/67); Linus pats birds on the head, which many find socially unacceptable; the birds rebel (5/22 - 6/3/67); "Bird Hippies" appear (7/12/67, 7/13/67, and 11/1/67); the baseball team loses again ("Winning isn't everything, Charlie Brown..." "That's true, but losing isn't anything") and Charlie Brown trades Snoopy to Peppermint Patty's team. Guilt ensues (11/8 - 11/20/67); a rare and bizarre front view of Snoopy (1/13/68); "Even stupid questions have answers!" (2/21/68); The "Easter Bunny" (later "Easter Beagle") appears (4/14/68); Snoopy tries to find Petaluma with a globe (4/30 - 5/1/68); a proverbial "sad" strip: "But who cheers up the World War I flying ace?" (5/16/68); Bird chomps on worm, Snoopy gets sick (5/20/68); Lucy serves "Goop" (5/27, 5/28 and 6/1/68); a proto-Marcie, named either "Clara," "Sophie," or "Shirley," appears at Peppermint Patty's camp (6/18/68); Birds carry election signs (7/1 - 7/6/68); Franklin appears, for the first time, on the beach (7/31/68); Charlie Brown finds out the truth about Lila, and Lila appears - a rather bizarre sequence (8/20 - 8/31/68). Here's yet another great collection in a series planned to continue until 2016. That's exhausting even to think about. But please keep them coming!
Simply cannot be praised enough. The Complete Peanuts 1967 to 1968 continues Fantagraphics Books' marvelous definitive compilation of Charles Shulz's iconic newspaper strip, including both daily and Sunday strips (all strips are reproduced in black and white). Featuring an introduction by John Waters - which draws the reader's attention to Shulz's uniquely expressive art style when drawing facial expressions such as a "total-warfare frown", and his starkly accurate portrayal of the crushing humiliation of defeat. In the 1967 to 1968 comics, Peppermint Patty tries to trade Charlie Brown five baseball players for Snoopy the shortstop; Charlie Brown makes a new friend in Franklin (who is initially scared off from the local neighborhood when Linus tells him about the "Great Pumpkin"); and Snoopy (a.k.a. the "Masked Marvel") and Lucy get into a championship arm-wrestling match! Like all previous volumes in the series, The Complete Peanuts 1967 to 1968 is highly recommended for comic lovers of all ages and backgrounds, and simply cannot be praised enough.
Schulz sails through a turbulent era As America careened into the ghastly late 1960s with its pop culture literally fracturing in pieces, "Peanuts" stood virtually alone as the one creation with quite literally something for everyone. As revealed in this latest collection (and many earlier ones - virtually all of the strips in this volume have been reprinted at some time or other), the psychological discourses and keen personality conflicts that had boosted the strip to fame in the late 1950s and early 1960s were still very much a part of the mix, but they now existed cheek-by-jowl with Snoopy's burgeoning fantasy life, the initial introduction of ethnic diversity into the "Peanuts" "universe," and Schulz' first tentative stab at fashioning an entire continuity around Peppermint Patty, his one true breakout character of the decade. While some fans may have chided Schulz for not taking sides in the cultural conflicts rocking the nation, hindsight reveals that he had the right idea all along. The "Peanuts" strips of this era are still eminently fresh and readable in a way that a dog-eared copy of "Crawdaddy" or "Ramparts" is emphatically not.
Fantagraphics' back-cover blurb claims that Snoopy's identity as the "World War I Flying Ace" had "almost entirely taken over" his personality during this time. To the contrary: this era saw ol' Snoop go in so many different directions, both frivolous and un-, that it's a true challenge to list them all. On the serious side, we get the saga of Lila, Snoopy's previous owner, whose letters torment Snoopy (and, by extension, the baffled Charlie Brown) in a couple of powerful continuities. In the sequence that inspired the plot for the movie "Snoopy Come Home" (1972), Snoopy rushes to Lila's aid after his ex-owner goes to the hospital. Granted, Snoopy doesn't temporarily decide to return to Lila for good here, as he did in the movie, but it's easy to see why Schulz latched onto this relatively short sequence as ideal screenplay fodder. Snoopy also seeks psychological help from Lucy after hearing strange noises in the night (and needless to say, Lucy doesn't take kindly to being paid in dog food). After concentrating on "Red Baron"-battling shtick early in the volume, the beagle later kicks into high gear with visits to The Masters, the wrist-wrestling championship in Petaluma, and (at least until an ocean unexpectedly gets in the way) the Olympic skating finals in Grenoble, France. He also finds time to run for political office (don't ask me which one), wield an "iron paw" as the demanding new manager of Charlie Brown's baseball team, track Lucy as a secret agent, and pose as a "Cheshire Beagle." Snoopy hadn't gotten to the point of taking over the strip just yet, but one can sense Schulz beginning to lean ever so slightly in that direction.
The introduction of the black character Franklin in early 1968 is often cited as Schulz' acknowledgment of the changing racial climate of America and his need to get with the multicultural program. Schulz did get some flak from bigots who complained about Charlie Brown inviting Franklin home after the pair met at the beach. In retrospect, the flap hardly seems worth the trouble, as Franklin never developed a truly distinctive personality (nor even a "hook," as did the equally bland Schroeder with his Beethoven-mania). Earlier, Schulz essayed a lighter touch in diversifying the cast when Peppermint Patty, making one of her then-regularly-scheduled Summer pilgrimages to the main cast's neighborhood, brought along the pint-sized Mexican/Swedish slugger Jose Peterson. One can almost hear Schulz chuckling to himself, "Let's see how they try to categorize THIS guy!" Alas, Jose never officially appeared again, nor did he speak so much as a word of dialogue.
Peppermint Patty herself is still a fairly minor character at this point, with Schulz still working out some details - PP isn't even calling Charlie Brown "Chuck" consistently yet - but the June 1968 continuity in which she goes to summer camp represents a watershed of sorts. Rather than meeting Charlie Brown, Linus, or any other familiar figure at camp, she shoulders the burden of leading lady all by herself, taking charge of a trio of younger girls, one of whom (Clara) is the proto-Marcie. (For the record, Clara isn't the first one to call PP "Sir"; that honor goes to the freckled, pigtailed Sophie, who complains of homesickness - that is, until she meets Snoopy, who's at the boys' camp across the lake.) From this point on, Schulz permitted PP more and more "screen time" until she became a full-fledged regular. (Just before the camp sequence, PP got star billing in a Father's Day Sunday strip, indicating that she was very much on Schulz' mind at the time.)
John Waters' introduction to the volume is serviceable, but come on, Fantagraphics, isn't it about time to balance the political scales just a bit? Where are the famous right-wing fans of "Peanuts" to give us THEIR views on the strip? Given that Schulz was performing a delicate balancing act at this time, pleasing a mass audience at a time when that was proving harder and harder to do, getting views from all sides would only seem fitting.
Peanuts At Its Peak In this volume of the collected Peanuts strips Charles M. Schulz's world has reached its peak and, just possibly, started to descend. We still enjoy Charlie Brown's neuroses, Lucy's arrogance, Linus' philosophies, and the other inimitable idiosyncracies of the main characters. We laugh at Snoopy's Red Baron, vulture, and other fantasies, but here and there we start to notice a few things that are missing. Shermy, Patty, Violet, and Pigpen rarely show up anymore and when they do, its just as a walk on part to say a few words here and there. Snoopy's imagination is as fascinating as ever, but its beginning to dominate more and more of the strips, to the detriment of some of the other characters. Its a sad foretaste of the later 1970s, when Snoopy and Woodstock (who makes his first appearances, unnamed, in this volume) basically took over the strip!
I don't mean to denigrate this volume, which is full of classic Peanuts humor featuring the characters at their best, like Charlie Brown's encounters with kite-eating trees, Linus' love for the Great Pumpkin, and Lucy's psychiatry booth therapy sessions. I enjoyed the many topical references to life in the 1960s, some of which may puzzle younger readers. How many people know who Twiggy is nowadays? This volume and the two or three preceding it, will probably be regarded as the Peanuts at its best.
MISPRINT: Duplicate/omitted strip Of course all the praise that the other reviewers are giving the strips themselves is entirely deserved. HOWEVER, in at least some copies of this book, there is an error on page 53: the May 1st strip appears twice and the May 3rd strip is left out. This is a small error, of course, but one that should be noted before purchase! I have spoken to the publisher's customer service department (so far I've been the only one to point out the error) and will update when I hear back from them regarding how widespread this error is and what steps will be made to rectify it.
UPDATE: Customer service has acknowledged the error and stated that the comic strip from May 3rd 1967 will appear as a supplement at the end of the next volume. Presumably (but not certainly), future printings of 1967-1968 will include the correct strip.
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