Review
THE COMPLETE PEANUTS: 1953 TO 1954
by Charles M. Schulz
Fantagraphics Books, 325 pp.
There is no denying the impact Charlie Brown and his pals have had on pop culture. There is no loser quite so quintessential as our hero (or as Lucy Van Pelt once put it, "Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you are the Charlie Browniest").
The brainchild of Charles M. Schulz, the Peanuts have been daily newspaper faves, stars of several TV specials and a popular stage musical, and have adorned everything from T-shirts to lunchboxes. This collection from Fantagraphics is the second in a series of exhaustive volumes, each of which contain every Peanuts strip published in a two-year period, and given the age of these comics there are certainly some curios to be found. It’s hard to believe now, but in 1953 Snoopy walked on all fours, Linus didn’t speak, Sally wasn’t born and Peppermint Patty was nowhere to be seen.
But despite the historical significance of these illustrations and the fact that Schulz was able to breathe life into these characters with a few economical strokes of the brush, it doesn’t change the fact that between January 1953 and December 1954 he only managed to pen a total of five funny strips.
|
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.