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The Complete Peanuts 1953-1954

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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!

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.

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.

The Complete Peanuts 1953 To 1954 is the latest in a series of anthologies created to collect the entire Peanuts comic strip series, including daily and Sunday strips. Featuring an introduction by Walter Cronkite - who expresses wistful reminiscence at losing his one and only chance to meet Schulz before his unfortunate passing - The Complete Peanuts 1953 To 1954 continues its early years of the strip by introducing the staple character of Pig Pen to the cast of Charlie Brown, Shermy, Violet, Schroeder, Patty, Lucy, Linus, and Snoopy. Mirthful, whetted, keenly observant of childhood disappointments and cruelties, The Complete Peanuts 1953 To 1954 also offers some key insights into the early days of the strip before it settled into conventions more familiar to later readers. Snoopy still walks on all fours; Linus is too young to talk yet; adults occasionally speak off-panel and can even be seen (from a three-year old's point of view that is). Observe Lucy's amazing golf prodigy talents, and a fascinating strip that may well be genesis of why she torments Charlie Brown every year by yanking away a football before he can kick it - for Charlie Brown himself has mercilessly yelled at her for being personally unable to kick a football further than a few inches! A classic masterpiece, and member of a series that is an absolute must-have for true fans of Schulz's genius.

It is such a pleasure to read through these early Peanuts comic strips. There are so many things to discover: the first appearance of Linus, Lucy as a champion golfer, the brief first appearance of the security blanket.

Admittedly, some of the discoveries are real surprises: adults speak, Snoopy verbalizes (albeit in his head) and Charlie Brown does always lose. Still, it is a joy to see how Schultz developed in these early years and began to find his voice.

This series of books is turning into one of the great collections of all time.

This book is really funny. Lucy is the most funniest in this book. There are 380 lost comics shown in here. As it says in the front flap of the book we also meet the one-joke but hardy Pig-Pen, and the no-joke, forgotten Charlotte Braun. A really great book.

I've always loved Peanuts. As a kid, I especially enjoyed the TV shows, but of course everyone loves Snoopy, and the other characters, Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Peppermint Patty, and Pigpen, are all very fun. As a result, when my wife got this for me for my birthday, I was fascinated to see how far what we know as Peanuts had evolved from what it started out as. Charlie Brown still has that shirt with the stupid stripe on it, Lucy has her hair with the two little bobs at the sides below her ears, and Pigpen (who makes his debut here) is followed by a cloud of dust (most of the time). But Snoopy is very very different from what we're used to, spending all of his time on all fours except when he's begging, and being much more dog-like than he was in later strips. He's even drawn differently, with a sharper nose and a more dog-like body. There's another girl (named Violet) who I don't remember from the more recent cartoons, and Patty (no Peppermint) is a pretty straightforward girl, not the tomboy who called Charlie Brown "Chuck" all the time. Linus can't even talk yet! This was one of the biggest surprises: to me, the Peanuts kids were always frozen in time, but apparently Schulz aged them in the first years.

I enjoyed this collection immensely, and I'm now determined to buy more of this collection.

This is the second book in the series and my 12 year old daughter loves both. Once she was reading the first book she wanted the next one too. Seeing how the characters began is fun as well as the old drawings. And seeing them evolve in personality and age is great. Snoopy's antics get more and more animated, Linus is a baby, and there is the introduction of Pig Pen! He actually cleans himself up, but then decides he likes himself the way he was. I got the book for my daughter at Christmas. We've read several pages each night and are now almost done. I guess we'll be getting the next one in the series. If you are a Peanuts fan, these classic comics are definately worth collecting!

In this second volume of the Peanuts collection, we continue to see Schulz's world as it evolved towards what became its glory years (late 1950s to late 1960s). Charlie Brown is still a smart aleck, but gradually his professional victimhood is taking form. Lucy is still sweet and babyish at the beginning of this volume, but by the end she is definitely moving towards her loud mouth, abrasive, loveable self. Snoopy is becoming less doggy and more human (we get to imagine the inside of his doghouse for the first time), and Linus is showing signs of genius even though he can't speak yet. We also see some favorite characters for the first time, noteably Pig Pen, and get to see some failed experiments, such as Charlotte Braun, a loud mouth who moved into the neighborhood for awhile but obviously didn't work out.

I was also interested to see some indirect allusions to the real world of the mid 1950s in these early strips, such as one character's refusing to incriminate himself (he must have been watching the McCarthy hearings on those old TV sets!).

This is a fun volume which presages some of the finest Peanut moments, which we'll be able to see again in coming years, thanks to this series' creators.

Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy Van Pelt. Snoopy, Schroder, Violet and the curly-haired Patty. Some of the most well-known members of the Peanuts gang are here in this, volume II of the collected works of Charles M. Schulz.

Peanuts is, of course, one of the widest-read and most visually recognizable comic strips of all time. Charles Schulz began drawing the Peanuts strip in 1952 after an initial success of Peanuts-like characters in a strip called "Lil' Folks," and continuted to draw each and every strip himself, by hand, until his death in the year 2000. By my calculation, that makes something over 17,500 comic strips drawn by one man (Schulz refused to hire any assistants to help him with the daily strip and insisted on drawing, lettering and inventing the story line for each day). This is the second book cataloguing and celebrating each and every one of those strips from the very beginning to the very end. A new volume of strips will be published twice a year until the year 2010 or so.

It's fascinating to see the slow evolution of a favorite character, especially one as popular as Charlie Brown whom I grew up with and consider a personal (albeit fictional) friend. In this second volume Charlie begins to take on his infamous wishy-washy personality, though not directly and not in all situations. Charlie can get angry and argumentative, and on occasion even haughty and overbearing, which may strike younger readers as a bit incongrous.

Also, as this is only the 2nd year that Schulz was drawing the strip, there's a lot of things that are different in 1953 than modern audiences are used to. Snoopy, for example, still walks on all 4's and has not begun sleeping on top of his doghouse yet. Indeed, in a few strips you can see the FRONT of his doghouse, which is a rarity (in no animated films, for exaple, do you ever see the front of his house), and Woodstock the bird has not made his appearance.

Pig-Pen makes his grand debut about 1/2 of the way through this volume and in the early years there are a few appearences of him actually cleaned up and looking nice (for all of 1-2 frames before getting filthy again).

Schroder was introduced early in 1952 and was a Beethoven-obsessed, toy-piano player since the very beginning, but it wasn't until 1953 that Lucy (who is still younger than Charlie Brown) began showing interest in him.

Linus appeared late 1952 as well, and is still a bit of a baby in '53 & '54, not talking much though still funny. It isn't until late '54 that he begins his life-long association with his blue security blanket, but when he DOES, readers know instinctively that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

there is a character named Patty, though it's not the tomboyish, D-earning, sandal wearing Peppermint Patty who shall appear in the mid 50's (if I've got my Peanuts history correct). The bespectacled Marcie and Franklin (who would earn Schulz bags of HATE MAIL for incorporating a Black character into the strip) also are still years away.

To read Schulz is to see a master storyteller at work. One of the things that made Peanuts so popular (and, indeed, unusual) was how wise-beyond-their-years the characters were and the total lack of adults "on camera." Prior to Peanuts, the only children featured in comics were wiseacre kids like Little Iodine. Charlie's philsophical, but amusing, observations on life caught the hearts and imaginations of readers back then and will do so again for modern audiences.

For anyone who is a Peanuts fan, this is a great time to be alive as each and every one of those 17,000+ strips shall be bound between covers and preserved forever. And I... I shall read each and every one!!