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What more can I say about these wonderful collections? I’ve enjoyed each one immensely so far; they make me laugh and grin and even smirk a little from time to time. A few of the Sunday pages seemed familiar, and thinking back I realized I started buying a Sunday paper fairly regularly around this time. But I didn’t start reading a daily paper until the early 1990s, so there’s lots of essentially unseen PEANUTS for me to still read and enjoy.
Woodstock and Snoopy get plenty of attention in this book, especially on the Sunday pages, but there’s also room for the rest of the gang, from Sally and Peppermint Patty’s school struggles to Lucy’s tenacious romancing of Schroeder to Charlie Brown’s baseball team. Lots more, too. No new continuing characters this time, though Rerun gets something to do: riding on the back of his mom’s bike…precariously, as she’s not a good rider herself.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned before what a great job the artist known only as Seth is doing on the design of these books. His work shows up mainly on the introductory pages, closing pages, and the covers, but his choice of colors is subtle and smart, and he finds fascinating background elements to play with that have me looking for them as I read through.
The introduction by Billie Jean King was informative and apt this time, as she was a good friend of Schulz, and is even mentioned by name in this collection’s strips.
Top notch book. You can’t have a much better time than reading these collections. Highly recommended.
I don’t know…it’s certainly a good collection and I’m not sorry I bought it, but I think there is a noticeable slight decline in quality. It’s hard to point the finger at just exactly where it is (except maybe for the several strips consisting of “Snoopy writes flash fiction ending in a horrible pun and then giggles over it”) but there’s just generally less of an edge than there was in the 1960s collections. I think there’s a consensus that “Peanuts” was a shadow of itself by the 1980s (and then rebounded a bit in the ’90s) and this collection strikes me as definitely past the peak.
Nice review. I have to say, though, as time goes on and I’m living with these books, I’m liking Seth’s book designs less and less. He latched on to the sad, dreary side of Peanuts, ignoring everything else – which is a lot. Basically, the covers reflect Seth’s own style more than anything (Seth admitted this himself in a recent interview) – especially his “retro” hand-lettering, which really makes no sense to me for this project. I don’t understand what people like about these designs. (For a point of comparison, see Jacob Covey’s brilliant Popeye designs.)