The Complete Peanuts 1957-1958 [Hardcover]

Charles M. Schulz (Author), Jonathan Franzen (Introduction, Designer), Seth (Designer)

Book Description

Series: The Complete Peanuts | Publication Date: October 2005

Peanuts definitively enters its golden age. Linus becomes more eloquent, and more neurotic; Charlie Brown cascades further down the hill to loserdom; but the rising star is master mimic and blanket thief Snoopy.

As the 1950s close down, Peanuts definitively enters its golden age. Linus, who had just learned to speak in the previous volume, becomes downright eloquent and even begins to fend off Lucy's bullying; even so, his security neurosis becomes more pronounced, including a harrowing two-week "Lost Weekend" sequence of blanketlessness. Charlie Brown cascades further down the hill to loserdom, with spectacularly lost kites, humiliating baseball losses (including one where he becomes "the Goat" and is driven from the field in a chorus of BAAAAHs); at least his newly acquired "pencil pal" affords him some comfort. Pig-Pen, Shermy, Violet, and Patty are also around, as is an increasingly Beethoven-fixated Schroeder. But the rising star is undoubtedly Snoopy. He's at the center of the most graphically dynamic and action-packed episodes (the ones in which he attempts to grab Linus's blanket at a dead run). He even tentatively tries to sleep on the crest of his doghouse roof once or twice, with mixed results. And his imitations continue apace, including penguins, anteaters, sea monsters, vultures and (much to her chagrin) Lucy. No wonder the beagle is the cover star of this volume. 730 b/w comic strips

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the fourth volume in Fantagraphics Books' Complete Peanuts series, Snoopy continues to develop as a character, and the worm--Linus--turns against his fussbudget sister, Lucy. Sure, she's still a fierce intimidator of her little brother and Charlie Brown, but he's learned to strike back with a deft pair of pliers, a huge sand castle or snow dinosaur, or merely the will to walk up and change the channel. Lucy also continues her pursuit of the oblivious musician, Schroeder (contrary to the advice of Dear Agnes). Snoopy continues his impersonations (vulture, penguin, etc.), plays baseball and football, angsts over being called "fuzzy-face or "dime a dozen," and dances gleefully on Schroeder's piano. Charlie Brown, of course, has very little glee, especially when he has to manage a dysfunctional baseball team that only wins if he's sick or when the championship is riding on his catching a simple pop fly. But at least he has his pencil pal. Charles M. Schulz by this time was comfortably in his routine of multi-day stories, and there's a bit of foreshadowing when Schroeder, wildly inventing names of imaginary pianists, comes up with "Joseph Schlabotnik," which would later become the name of CB's baseball hero. The volume has an introduction by author Jonathan Franzen and a Sunday strip from May 3, 1953, which was discovered after the 1953-54 volume was printed. --David Horiuchi

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this fourth volume of Fantagraphics' wildly successful chronological reprinting of Peanuts, the comic strip begins to slide into its most popular form. In these pages, Snoopy is becoming most Snoopy-like, with a wondrously funny vulture sequence; Charlie Brown is hapless and often hopeless while his war with Lucy moves into high gear, and of course Pig-Pen, Patty, and Schroeder are all kicking around. Schulz evolved his characters from week to week, letting their idiosyncratic musings, pratfalls and jokes accumulate. It's possible to flip back a few dozen pages and understand Charlie Brown's emotional evolution. The humanity of both the characters and their creator is the subject of Jonathan Franzen's insightful introduction—certainly the best yet published in the series. Deftly putting to rest the rather trendy theory that Schulz's inner torment gave vent to the psychological dramas in Peanuts, Franzen convincingly makes the case that Schulz was able to accomplish what he did because of a surfeit of love and family. After one has read these pages, full of well-rounded, humane characters, Franzen's theory seems just about right: to create characters so essential and so loveable, Schulz could only have emerged from just such a milieu. (Oct.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 346 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books; First Edition edition (October 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560976705
• ISBN-13: 978-1560976707
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 8.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,457 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Publishers > Fantagraphics
  • #61 in Books > Arts & Photography > Individual Artists
  • #77 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Comic Strips

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

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Snoopy rises..., November 9, 2005

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ewomack "ewomack" (MN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1957-1958 (Hardcover)

This fourth volume shows Peanuts keeping the stride it slowly established over the first six years of its existence. Here the characters pretty much look as they will look for decades to come. The cast also becomes more solidified with Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Pig Pen, and of course Snoopy. Shermy, Violet, and Patty show up far less frequently than earlier. Schulz would add more characters later (most notably Woodstock, Peppermint Patty, and Marcie), but here he established his core cast.

Snoopy completely comes into his own here, and his image on the cover couldn't be more appropriate. He appears with startingly more frequency throughout 1957 and 1958. By the end of this volume his top spot gets nearly set in stone. And it's not hard to see why. Here the long transformation from the "real" pet dog of the early 1950s to an almost surreal fantasm of a dog nears fruition (he still hasn't put on his WWI goggles or quaffed root beer yet, though). The imitations that began in the last volume continue inexorably here. He becomes a polar bear, a pouncing wild animal, a sea monster, he imitates Lucy, he gets called "ol' Dime a Dozen" and "Fuzzy Face", he imitates a penguin, and, best of all, a vulture. He also begins to really appreciate classical music (he even accompanies Schroeder on violin), sleeps with his head in his dog dish, and violently whips Linus around by his blanket. The extent of his transformation shows on the January 7th, 1958 strip where Charlie Brown says "The teacher told us to make a drawing of a real dog." Snoopy has truly come into his own. And later on, he became the most recognizable character of the Twentieth Century apart from Mickey Mouse.

Charlie Brown continues his quest for something meaningful and positive. But, as usual, some snags occur. He singlehandedly loses the baseball championship, is absent for his team's first win, gets tangled up in a truss of kite strings, and says "rats!" an awful lot. The strip on September 4th, 1957 shows Charlie Brown acquiesing in the very depths of his misery. Linus asks him "Doesn't looking at all these stars make you feel sort of insignificant, Charlie Brown?" He answers, "No, I'm so insignificant already it doesn't bother me." Like most of Peanuts, Schulz brilliantly mixes the sad with the funny.

Some of Schulz's legacy also shows in this volume. At least two cartoons appear here that must have provided some inspiration for Bill Watterson, creator of the incredible "Calvin And Hobbes". A Sunday strip from Jaunary 26, 1958 shows Linus vengefully sculpting a hideous snow monster to devour Lucy's "snow bunnies".
And, on January 18th, 1958 Linus and Charlie Brown wax historical while wiping out on a snowsled. These remind us that Schulz had great influence on more or less all late twentieth century comic strip art. No one yet has emerged from the enormous shadow that "Peanuts" cast on the medium.

One of the volume's absolute highlights is the Feburary 23rd, 1959 Sunday strip. Charlie Brown walks through the neighborhood while the other children scorn, mock, and laugh at him. when he finally arrives home he switches on a radio to hear "...and what, in this world, is more delightful than the gay wonderful laughter of little children?" He gives the radio a good boot. This masterpiece of a strip encapsulates the entire story of Charlie Brown. And this volume helps encapsulate the legacy left by one of the greatest comic strips ever created. Not only that, "Peanuts" not only influenced its own medium, but in the 1960s it influenced television, music, Broadway, and humor in general (especially of the self-deprecating sort). As each volume of this great series by Fantagraphics appears, that influence becomes easier and easier to appreciate.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't They Issue These Books Any Faster!, November 4, 2005

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K. Palmer (Illinois) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1957-1958 (Hardcover)

This is the fourth book in a proposed 25 book series that will publish all of the nearly 18,000 strips in Charles Schulz' Peanuts catalog. And again, it is a terrific tribute to two years of the man's work, this time chronicling the years 1957 and 1958. Of the four books published to date, this book had many more strips which I was familiar with than the other three. But there were still quite a few strips that I have never seen before, making it another fun reading experience. The strip quality is better in general in this volume as it appears the publishers had access to quality masters to provide reproductions than they had in previous versions (I only noticed one strip that looked a little blurred in this book). Obviously if you have the other three books, you'll be getting this one and you can expect more of the same great quality.

It was also nice to see that the publishers have kept their word where they said that if they found better or more complete strips that they would republish them in future books. In this book, they republish a strip from the second volume where they didn't have a complete strip (they actually had to have an artist draw the missing panels). But somebody out there had the complete strip and it has been republished here and is fully documented.

My only complaint about the books is that 2 books a year just isn't fast enough! The year 2016 is a long time to wait for the entire 25 volumes to be complete!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece Reaching Full Flower, November 6, 2005

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John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1957-1958 (Hardcover)

In this installment of the Peanuts comic strips from 1957-1958, Charles M. Schulz's world is taking recognizeable shape. Raders who like me were born in the 1950s will begin to recognize the strip as they first read it in the newspapers or in those little 50 cent paperbacks Dell used to put out. Since we now have all the strips instead of just selections, we can see storylines taking complete shape and gags developing and sometimes repeating themselves with new characters and new slants.

Charlie Brown has now evolved into the chronically depressed loser we all love, Lucy is the sometimes sadistic fussbudget, Linus the budding philosopher, Schroeder the Beethoven fanatic, and Snoopy is . . . Snoopy. Familiar themes show up for the first time: Snoopy climbs atop his doghouse (in three-quarter view),Charlie Brown crashes kite after kite and loses one ballgame after another (except when he's home sick!), and Lucy pines away for Schroeder, who's obliviously pounding away at his toy piano.

There are some tremendously hilarious sequences, such as Snoopy pretending to be a vulture, and some intriguing reminders of the late 1950s in which these strips were created: hula hoops, hi-fis, fears of fall-out and bombs from space. These volumes are appearing six months apart, which is far too long to wait, especially since this one promises that the Great Pumpkin will appear in the next installment. Buy this one now and hope that April will come soon!