Good Grief!
I’m reading the first volume of The Complete Peanuts. Fantagraphics is publishing the entire strip, in order, in a huge series of classy volumes. Most cover two years of the run, but the first also covers the tail end of 1950, when it began.
And it’s fantastic. Reading the later years of the strip, I forgot how funny it once was. And it’s a joy to see Charles Schulz inventing the characters, one by one. Did you know that Schroeder showed up before Lucy? Fact. And Snoopy is a great character, even better without speaking/thinking. I don’t know if I’ll pick up all of these books, and I’ll certainly look for discounts, but they’re worth keeping an eye on.
Because Charlie Brown is one of our modern myths.
Friday, October 08, 2004
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1 comment:
I'm reading that, too! It's a wonderful way to decompress before going to bed. Peanuts was one of the first things I read when I was a kid, and some of these early strips, though they were long before my time, are vividly familiar to me. I can hear the rhythm of my mom (and later my 3-year-old head-voice) reading the lines.
I agree that they were funnier back then, especially the character of Snoopy. And Charlie Brown started off as someone people actually liked--Patti and Violet fought to see who would be his girlfriend! (Though that usually turned out to be a position of punishment.)
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