The Complete Peanuts 1953-1954 [Hardcover]

Charles M. Schulz (Author), Gary Groth (Editor), Walter Cronkite (Introduction), Seth (Designer)

Book Description

Series: The Complete Peanuts | Publication Date: October 2004

The second volume in the most eagerly-anticipated publishing project in the history of the American comic strip: the complete reprinting of Charles M. Schulz's 50-year American classic, Peanuts.

The second volume is packed with intriguing developments, as Schulz continues to create his tender and comic universe. It begins with Peanuts' third full year and a cast of eight: Charlie Brown, Shermy, Patty, Violet, Schroeder, Lucy, the recently-born Linus, and Snoopy. By the end of 1954, Pigpen and his dust cloud join the crowd. Linus, who still doesn't speak, begins to emerge as one of the most complex and endearing characters in the strip: garrulous and inquisitive yet gentle and tolerant. And, in this volume, he acquires his security blanket! Charlie Brown is becoming his best-known self, the lovable, perpetually-humiliated round-headed loser, but he hasn't yet abandoned his brasher, prankish behavior from Volume One. And, Lucy, this book's cover girl, has grown up and forcefully elbowed her way to the center of the action, proudly wearing her banner as a troublemaker, or, in Schulz's memorable phrase, a "fussbudget". For readers unfamiliar with the early years of the strip, Snoopy's appearances here may come as the biggest surprise: he behaves, for the most part, like a dog! But, although he doesn't yet walk upright, sleep on top of his doghouse, or possess a fantasy life, Snoopy has started thinking for himself and his evolution continues its fascinating course within these pages. If you watch carefully, you'll catch his very first shark impression. The vast majority of the daily and Sunday strips collected here are not currently available in any in-print Peanuts collection. Dozens of them have not been reprinted since their initial appearance in newspapers over 50 years ago.

2005 Eisner Award Winner, Best Archival Collection/Project; 2005 Eisner Award Winner, Best Publication Design (Seth). 730 black-and-white comic strips

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The second volume of Fantagraphics Books' monumental Complete Peanuts series covers 1953-54, and the visual style and character development is closer to the kids we know and love, as they try to exist in a grown-up world. Charlie Brown is no longer the object of Patty and Violet's affection--derision, more like--and his pattern of losing continues. His misery at checkers hits 5000 (June 1953), 6000 (August), 7000 (November), 8000 (still November), and 10,000 (December) consecutive games, he gets shut out on Valentine's Day (February '53), he wears his first bad Halloween costume (October '54), and he gets a form rejection slip from Santa (December '54). On the baseball diamond, though, he actually has the lead in a game (April '53, but we don't see the final score) and briefly plays catcher. By now Lucy has become the main girl in the strip, and in addition to beating Charlie Brown at checkers, she begins her romantic pursuit of Schroeder (January '53), joins the baseball team (August '54), and wins her third consecutive Miss Fussbudget of the Year title (November '54). Her younger brother, Linus, starts what will become a longstanding feud with Snoopy in the first Sunday strip of '53, shows he's a prodigy in jump rope, blocks, houses of cards, and balloon blowing, and cuddles his security blanket (May '54). Schroeder continues his obsession with Beethoven and reveals the secret to playing great literature on a plastic piano with painted-on black keys (practice and "getting the breaks"). We meet two new characters, the perpetually dirty Pig-Pen (July '54) and the loudmouthed Charlotte Braun, whose funny name wasn't enough to keep her around for long.

Charles M. Schulz, whose own insecurity manifested itself in Charlie Brown (who not coincidentally draws his own cartoons), came up with his first multiple-strip storyline (starting with a four-Sunday series of Lucy joining a golf tournament coached by Charlie Brown, May '54) in this period, and provides us with a glimpse of the 1950s--deco furniture ("What in the world is a rocking chair"? asks CB), 3-D movies, H-bomb testing, and even what in hindsight looks like a prediction of the troubles in Vietnam (May '54). The second volume maintains the high quality of the first volume; even if it doesn't have the same extent of extra materials, it has an introduction by Walter Cronkite, a note on one strip that had to be partially reconstructed, and that handy index of characters and topics. --David Horiuchi

From Publishers Weekly

This second thick volume in The Complete Peanuts makes for a delicious wallow in a nostalgic world that has a lot more bite than readers may recall. Although some feel that Schulz's later work assumed a certain predictability, his early strips are undeniably crackling. Schulz portrays a children's world that's anything but idyllic, complete with fusspots, tortured artists, exclusive clubs, insecurities and kites that refuse to fly. One strip shows Lucy destroying Charlie Brown's puzzle, kicking Schroeder's piano and stomping on Linus's cookies; the final panel shows her fleeing, pursued, moaning, "I'm frustrated and inhibited and nobody understands me." Another strip depicts the harsh reality of unpopularity; the illustration shows section after section of fence scrawled with graffiti that reads "Linus loves Violet. Shermy loves Patty. Lucy loves Schroeder. Charlie Brown loves Charlie Brown." It's said Schulz's work draws on his own experiences, and this becomes especially clear when Charlie Brown himself decides to draw a comic strip and doesn't get the public response he'd hoped for. (His work is about a man who decides to ride across the country on a lawn mower.) The Peanuts landscape is the familiar neighborhood, with trees, sidewalks, sandboxes, ball fields and remarkably generic interiors. As always, the illustrations are a marvel of simplicity and the insights are haunting.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books; First Edition edition (October 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560976144
• ISBN-13: 978-1560976141
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 8.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #224,723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #43 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > History & Price Guides
  • #85 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Publishers > Fantagraphics

More About the Author

Charles M. Schulz was born November 25, 1922 in Minneapolis. His destiny was foreshadowed when an uncle gave him, at the age of two days, the nickname Sparky (after the racehorse Spark Plug in the newspaper strip Barney Google).

In his senior year in high school, his mother noticed an ad in a local newspaper for a correspondence school, Federal Schools (later called Art Instruction Schools). Schulz passed the talent test, completed the course and began trying, unsuccessfully, to sell gag cartoons to magazines. (His first published drawing was of his dog, Spike, and appeared in a 1937 Ripley's Believe It Or Not! installment.) Between 1948 and 1950, he succeeded in selling 17 cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post--as well as, to the local St. Paul Pioneer Press, a weekly comic feature called Li'l Folks. It was run in the women's section and paid $10 a week. After writing and drawing the feature for two years, Schulz asked for a better location in the paper or for daily exposure, as well as a raise. When he was turned down on all three counts, he quit.

He started submitting strips to the newspaper syndicates. In the spring of 1950, he received a letter from the United Feature Syndicate, announcing their interest in his submission, Li'l Folks. Schulz boarded a train in June for New York City; more interested in doing a strip than a panel, he also brought along the first installments of what would become Peanuts--and that was what sold. (The title, which Schulz loathed to his dying day, was imposed by the syndicate). The first Peanuts daily appeared October 2, 1950; the first Sunday, January 6, 1952.

Diagnosed with cancer, Schulz retired from Peanuts at the end of 1999. He died on February 13, 2000, the day before Valentine's Day--and the day before his last strip was published--having completed 17,897 daily and Sunday strips, each and every one fully written, drawn, and lettered entirely by his own hand--an unmatched achievement in comics.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Winner In A Tremendous Series!, November 9, 2004

By 

K. Palmer (Illinois) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1953-1954 (Hardcover)

The second volume of the proposed 25 volume "Complete Peanuts" set contains all of the Peanuts strips from 1953 and 1954. It continues the exploits of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy and Schroeder (the latter two have grown up quite a bit since the first volume from 1950 to 1952) as well as Linus, who although still a baby begins to show the intelligence that would be a large part of his personality for the life of the strip. We see Pig-Pen introduced in this volume as well as what many Peanuts fans consider the "lost character", Charlotte Braun. This character, who appeared for about a two-week stretch in late 1954 and was never heard from again had the fussbudget personality that was later assumed by Lucy. Having only seen one strip with Charlotte before getting this book, I have to say that Charlotte was annoying in her short tenure in the strip and Charles Schulz probably knew it was best to cut his ties with the character. But she still is a fascinating part of Peanuts history.

If you get this book, you will notice that the quality of the reproduction of some of the strips are less than average. There is an explanation in the book that many of the early strips were lost from the Schulz collection and that there are not many copies of newspapers around to pull the strips from (their next best option) and that microfilm (where most newspapers are usually kept) is usually not acceptable for reproduction. So for some strips, they used the best they had. Sure, it would be nice to have pristine copies, but at least I'm glad something is there.

All-in-all, it is another masterpiece and I can't wait for the next volume, which will be the strips of 1955 and 1956!

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars These kids were NASTY!!!!, November 11, 2004

By 

ewomack "ewomack" (MN USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1953-1954 (Hardcover)

Maybe in its latter days Peanuts became more of a cute kids strip, but in its early days it epitomized childhood cruelty. Sandcastles are cheerfully kicked and smashed to the ground, kids constantly discuss why they hate each other, they manipulate each other for personal gain, they yell, scream, throw things, hit each other, kick other people's possessions and on and on. It's an onslaught of bare raw human nature in the form of little human blobs. Pure Id reigns in this domain.

Lucy comes of age in this volume. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the January 24th, 1954 Sunday page (pg. 167). She kicks everyone's prized possessions across the room while yelling "That's what I think of your 'ol stamp collection!!" and "That's what I think of your ol' stupid marbles!!" The last panel has all of the kids running after her mob-style as she pleads "I'm frustrated and inhibited. And nobody understands me." Another strip has Lucy whacking poor baby Linus on the head. When Charlie Brown pleads "What did you hit him for?" Lucy replies "Because he was there!" (May 24th, 1954, pg. 219). She's pretty nasty throughout to pretty much everyone. But she also has a whimsical side such as when she's counting stars or raindrops.

Charlie Brown's metamorphosis into the loser we all know starts to gain momentum. Early on he could be defiant, obnoxious, loud, or cunning. By the end of the volume he's more depressive and shunned than ever.

Linus is still a baby throughout, but some words emerge, usually in defiance of Lucy's nasty schemes to get him in trouble. The security blanket shows up also for the first time. Even Charlie Brown experiments with it.

Schulz also took some risks in May, 1954. He introduced visible adults into the strip for the first (and probably the last) time. A series of Sunday strips finds Charlie Brown and Lucy playing in a golf tournament. They are surrounded by adults. The juxtaposition of very realistically drawn adults and little abstract circular kids makes for a disorientating visual experience.

Pig-Pen appears for the first time in 1954. He's more of a one-gag character and not as strong as the rest of the crew. The same can be said for Charlotte Braun. She appeared then disappeared forever in late 1954. Her gag? She talks too loud.

And of course Snoopy. There's loads of great Snoopy strips in this volume. Many are purely sight gags, but Snoopy does begin to "talk" around this time. One of the best Snoopy strips is October 11th, 1954 (pg. 279) where Charlie Brown tries to take Snoopy's picture. It's purely visual but a sure sign of things to come.

It's amazing that strips featuring old cathedral televisions and radios, and Brownie-style cameras can still evoke outloud laughter. The humor strikes at many different places, and works on many levels, from the physical to the intellectual and thus appeals to many kinds of people. Something lurks here for almost everyone. Some people could even find parts of the strip depressing. After all, kids get socially shamed, shunned, physically hurt, abused, and abandoned over and over. But depicting the entire cast as cute children somehow turns these situations into comedy. They all seem innocent, but they are anything but. In fact, part of Schulz's contribution was revealing the underside of the cute and innocent. These strips seem to tell us: just because something IS cute doesn't mean that it's incapable of cruelty. He helped expand the possibilities of the cute 'lil cartoon character.

Even though the strip later fell headfirst into rampant commercialism, these early strips reveal an energy and edge unmatched in most mainstream comics (even today, especially today). When the golden age of newspaper comics gets a historical review sometime in the future, Peanuts will likely stand out as the exemplar of the medium.

Lastly, Fantagraphics comes through again as the champion of classic comics. This volume continues the great design and layout of the first volume (though arguably the strips could be bigger and the Sunday strips could be in color). Walter Cronkite introduces and a short Schulz biography closes. Keep them coming.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where have you gone, Charlotte Braun?, January 3, 2005

By 

Johnny Heering "trivia buff" (Bethel, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1953-1954 (Hardcover)

This second volume in the Complete Peanuts series is even better than the first one. Charles Schulz really started to come into his own by this point. The characters are closer to the Peanuts characters we all came to know and love, although they are all younger at this point. Two new characters were introduced in 1954, they being the legendary Pig Pen and the soon-to-be-forgotten Charlotte Braun. Pig Pen of course is famous for being the dirtiest kid in the world. Charlotte Braun is obscure for being a girl who talks too loud. This is great stuff, and all Peanuts fans should get this book.