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Review: The Complete Peanuts 1955-1956
The Complete Peanuts 1955-1956
Written and Drawn by Charles Schulz
Published by Fantagraphics Books. $28.95 USD
I realize this review comes fairly late--there are 3 or 4 subsequent volumes in print after this one, and I have them. But I'm just getting back into this series. This isn't so much a review--most of us know Peanuts is the greatest comic strip of all time, and I'll get around to writing about that again one of these days--but I did want to get a couple observations down, for myself, before I forget them.
What struck me here was that by this time in the strip's history, five and six years in, it clearly was a hit. That is, very often, Schulz will do a strip that's a callback to the strip just before it, rather than a discrete strip with its own, independent punchline. Probably around half a dozen times, Linus responds to Lucy about something he's doing that she doesn't like, or something she feels he failed to do, that, "In 500 years, who'll know the difference?" a humorous and nicely fatalistic line that Schulz gets maximum mileage from. There are also days' worth of strips that repeat or find subtle variations in the same basic premise or joke, such as Snoopy suffering from "weed claustrophobia," or Lucy going on for days about how much she likes herself. I found this volume had quite a few less laugh-out-loud gags in it, and the repetition caused some draggy pages, but there was also more poignance and pain here. It's pretty hard to laugh at a week's worth of strips where Charlie Brown is depressed at not getting a single Christmas card, nor do his parents receive any, and it all prompts him finally to buy himself one.
I also found there were far fewer strips with more than two characters. Most often it's just two characters playing off each other, Schulz relying more and more on Charlie Brown/Lucy, Lucy/Linus, Linus/Charlie Brown and Lucy/Schroeder, with lighter and more visually comedic gags with Snoopy or Pigpen to relieve what is for longer stretches a pretty painful strip.
Written and Drawn by Charles Schulz
Published by Fantagraphics Books. $28.95 USD
I realize this review comes fairly late--there are 3 or 4 subsequent volumes in print after this one, and I have them. But I'm just getting back into this series. This isn't so much a review--most of us know Peanuts is the greatest comic strip of all time, and I'll get around to writing about that again one of these days--but I did want to get a couple observations down, for myself, before I forget them.
What struck me here was that by this time in the strip's history, five and six years in, it clearly was a hit. That is, very often, Schulz will do a strip that's a callback to the strip just before it, rather than a discrete strip with its own, independent punchline. Probably around half a dozen times, Linus responds to Lucy about something he's doing that she doesn't like, or something she feels he failed to do, that, "In 500 years, who'll know the difference?" a humorous and nicely fatalistic line that Schulz gets maximum mileage from. There are also days' worth of strips that repeat or find subtle variations in the same basic premise or joke, such as Snoopy suffering from "weed claustrophobia," or Lucy going on for days about how much she likes herself. I found this volume had quite a few less laugh-out-loud gags in it, and the repetition caused some draggy pages, but there was also more poignance and pain here. It's pretty hard to laugh at a week's worth of strips where Charlie Brown is depressed at not getting a single Christmas card, nor do his parents receive any, and it all prompts him finally to buy himself one.
I also found there were far fewer strips with more than two characters. Most often it's just two characters playing off each other, Schulz relying more and more on Charlie Brown/Lucy, Lucy/Linus, Linus/Charlie Brown and Lucy/Schroeder, with lighter and more visually comedic gags with Snoopy or Pigpen to relieve what is for longer stretches a pretty painful strip.
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