The Complete Peanuts 1959-1960 [Hardcover]

Charles M. Schulz (Author), Whoopi Goldberg (Introduction), Seth (Designer)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2006 | Series: The Complete Peanuts

Snoopy atop his doghouse, Lucy's five-cent psychiatric booth, the Great Pumpkin, Miss Othmar, and Sally all debut. All this, and "Happiness is a warm puppy." Nearly 200 rare or unseen strips! Introduction by Whoopi Goldberg.

As the first decade of Peanuts closes, it seems only fitting to bid farewell to that halcyon decade with a cover starring Patty, one of the original three Peanuts. Major new additions to classic Peanuts lore come fast and furious here. Snoopy begins to take up residence atop his doghouse, and his repertoire of impressions increases exponentially. Lucy sets up her booth and offers her first five-cent psychiatric counsel. (Her advice to a forlorn Charlie Brown: "Get over it.") For the very first time, Linus spends all night in the pumpkin patch on his lonely vigil for the Great Pumpkin (although he laments that he was a victim of "false doctrine," he's back 12 months later). Linus also gets into repeated, and visually explosive, scuffles with a blanket-stealing Snoopy, suffers the first depredations of his blanket-hating grandmother, and falls in love with his new teacher Miss Othmar. Even more importantly, several years after the last addition to the cast ("Pig-Pen"), Charlie Brown's sister Sally makes her appearance—first as an (off-panel) brand new baby for Charlie to gush over, then as a toddler and eventually a real, talking, thinking cast member. (By the end of this volume, she'll already start developing her crush on Linus.) All this, and one of the most famous Peanuts strips ever: "Happiness is a warm puppy." Almost one hundred of the 731 strips collected in this volume (including many Sundays) have never been collected in any book since their original release, with one hundred more having been collected only once in relatively obscure and now impossible-to-find books; in other words, close to one quarter of the strips have never been seen by anyone but the most avid Peanuts completists.

The introduction is by comedienne extraordinaire Whoopi Goldberg, who reveals which Peanuts character she has tattooed on her body (and where)—as well as telling of her meeting with "Sparky" Schulz, and her fascinating theory on Snoopy's brother Spike. As always, this volume is gorgeously designed by award-winning cartoonist Seth. The Complete Peanuts continues to receive national and international media attention for its sophisticated treatment of one of the 20th Century's defining American classics.

A 2007 Eisner Award winner: Best Archival Collection/Project: Strips; a 2007 Harvey Award winner: Best Domestic Reprint Project. 730 black-and-white comic strips

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The fifth volume in Fantagraphics Books' Complete Peanuts series welcomes a new character: Sally, Charlie Brown's baby sister. It's interesting to see how the perpetually beleaguered CB--criticized for having a "face" face or a "failure face--now takes on the responsibility of worrying about the world his sister will grow up in. His role as manager of the baseball team continues to bring him woe, losing 600-0, losing all 20 games of the season, making a daring attempt to steal home, and having to miss a game to push his sister's stroller. Linus, at first wondering if Sally will someday go out with him, gets his answer in spades: "Isn't he the cutest thing?" But he'd much rather lavish his attention on the new teacher, Miss Othmar ("I'm very fond of the ground on which she walks"), even if his eggshell project doesn't work out as planned. Snoopy, though threatened by a hanging icicle and a possible freeway through his home, still finds joy in being a gopher, the Big Man on Campus, or the Mad Punter. "Peanuts" was well into its classic years in the 1959-60 period, with such signature moments as "Happiness is a warm puppy" and a lot of material that would become familiar staples of the Christmas and Halloween television specials. --David Horiuchi

From Booklist

During 1959-60, Schulz premiered several Peanuts essentials. Snoopy now lounges atop his doghouse rather than in it, Lucy establishes her psychiatric practice, and Linus observes the first of his fruitless Halloween vigils for the Great Pumpkin. Charlie Brown's sister debuts, giving him more to be depressed about ("I thought that having a baby sister would change my whole life, but it hasn't"). What's more, the period includes the famous "Happiness is a warm puppy" strip. Librarians should appreciate a two-week sequence in which Charlie Brown despairs over losing a library book ("You're a dead duck," Lucy tells him). By this point, Schulz's always-appealing artwork has been pared to perfection, and yet he would make it simpler still in decades to come. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 346 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books; 1 edition (May 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560976713
• ISBN-13: 978-1560976714
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 8.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now We're Getting Into The Best of Peanuts!, May 12, 2006

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K. Palmer (Illinois) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1959-1960 (Hardcover)

The fifth volume of the proposed 25 volume Complete Peanuts series finishes off the first decade of the strip by chronicling the years 1959 and 1960. This was about the time that many Peanuts fans (myself included) feel the strip really came into its own. Charles Schulz had established his main characters (Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder) with their own individual personalities and eccentricities. He had relegated the other characters (Patty, Violet, Pig Pen and Shermy) to occasional roles and basically stopped developing them (all eventually became afterthoughts in the strip).

In this volume, Schulz adds his first major character in several years by adding Charlie Brown's baby sister Sally, which ended up being a great decision as Sally later became the poster child for unrequited love (with Linus - you actually see the beginnings of it in this volume) and school anxiety. But even this early on, she makes her mark to the strip.

The surprise for me is that even though I was familiar with many more of the strips published in this volume than in any of the previous four volumes, there were probably 1/4th to 1/5th of the collection that I don't recall having read before in my life. That is, for me, what makes these volumes fun for me, the 40+ year old strips that are really new to me. I know that the percentage of strips I will have never seen will probably decrease with each new volume that is issued, just reading 700+ strips in a few days will bring back many great memories.

My only gripe in this volume is that the introduction by Whoopi Goldberg was not an essay as the previous volumes have had, but merely a transcript of an interview conducted with her. I think there are enough famous people who probably were affected by Schulz and his work who could make the effort to pen a few pages. Whoopi is a bright woman, but the interview left me with a feeling of "blahdom".

Anyway, another great volume in a great series!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "You never acted like that when I was born!", May 9, 2006

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take403 - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1959-1960 (Hardcover)

Our patience is about to be paid off on May 19th. This will feature a quite transitional period in Peanuts. Snoopy will start resting on the top of his doghouse (he'll continue using his wild imagination, much to the chagrin of his master Charlie Brown). Blanket toting Linus has developed a crush on his teacher, Miss Othmar ("The teacher, the subject of schoolboy's fantasy...") and every Halloween awaits the arrival of the Great Pumpkin, hoping he'll choose the Van Pelts' pumpkin patch. Lucy finds a part-time job giving advice and "psychiatric help" for 5 cents (she seems to have a regular customer with Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown is about to be a brother and is ecstatic about it (he passes out chocolate cigars). His new baby sister's name is Sally. She starts out very cute and innocent, but will later become a consumate whiner (Charlie Brown taught her everything he knows!). She'll also develop a crush on Linus, who's too preoccupied with his crush on Miss Othmar. Meanwhile, Charlie Brown has a crush of his own on one little red-haired girl (we never get to see her in the cartoon strip, let alone know her name, but a few of the Charlie Brown specials would be a different story). And of course, Lucy is crazy about Schroeder, who's only crazy about Beethoven. Patty, who makes the cover of this Complete Peanuts, remains in the shadows of Lucy and, to a lesser extent, her friend Violet. Whoopi Goldberg has some poignant words in the introduction which I've read here on this website and she understands that part of the charm of Peanuts is that it tapped in on the things that make each of us sad or angry.

Comics (which appeared in Holt Rhinehart and Winston anthologies like But We Love You, Charlie Brown, Peanuts Every Sunday, Go Fly a Kite, Charlie Brown and It's a Dog's Life, Charlie Brown) include Charlie Brown trying hard to fly a kite, kick the football from Lucy and win a baseball game. Lucy insults Linus when Charlie Brown awaits Sally's arrival "I wanted to be the only child but you spoiled it for me!" Snoopy becomes a boxer fighting with a boxing glove on his nose. Charlie Brown is asked about his opinion about dogs. When he praises them, Snoopy embraces him and won't let go! Charlie Brown composes a typically wishy washy poem ("Somedays you think you know everything, somedays you don't think you know anything.."). Linus, Lucy and Charlie Brown look up in the sky and share what pictures the clouds seem to paint for each of them. Lucy and Linus see their father driving off and think he's going to the store, thus beg him for comic books and candy. Charlie Brown gets insulted by Violet and Patty and says "I'm sort of a spiritual scratching post for them to sharpen their claws!" Above Snoopy's doghouse is a big icicle. Charlie Brown tries to get the timid Snoopy away from the endangered doghouse with a pizza (and it works like a charm as soon as Snoopy smells the aroma!). Even the crabby Lucy shows a little compassion for a change as she observes: "Happiness is a warm puppy!"

To answer the last reviewer's question, I seriously doubt the Sunday cartoons are in color (though, that would be nice). Nevertheless, assuming you're as big a fan of Peanuts as I am, you're going to want a copy of this volume as soon as it comes out!

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The neurotic saga continues..., May 13, 2006

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ewomack "ewomack" (MN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1959-1960 (Hardcover)

Charles Schulz's inexorable neurotic parade of children as adults continues in this great series by Fantagraphics (also known for reprinting such staples as Krazy Kat, Pogo, Dennis the Menace, and countless others). Somehow depicting adult miseries, disappointments, and conflicts with children greatly de-fangs the somewhat less than skippy happy subthemes that permeate this incredible strip. And it hasn't lost its bite some forty years later. If anything, this series has slowly revealed the true timelessness of "Peanuts".

Charlie Brown remains downright pitiable. No one likes him, no one ever did, and likely no one ever will. He demonstrates his "depressed stance" (October 19, 1960) after an onslaught of failure and ridicule. But he does manage to show up Lucy when she dons his shirt (February 22, 1959), though only in a self-deprecating manner. Any early signs of self-confidence (see Volume One) have nearly vanished by this point. But he never gives up even when faced with utter defeat (by this time the famous baseball games populated a lot of strip time). And then there's his struggles with inanimate objects. When he finally gets his kite into the air, it simply explodes (March 13, 1960).

Lucy stands fast in her deep dominating neuroses, but she's a little tamed down from her earlier maniacal appearances (see Volume Two). Right off the bat in January 1959 she takes great pride in pointing out the faults of others. Why? "I want to make this a better world for me to live in!" And she continues her futile quest for Schroeder; whose piano continues to symbolically separate them. What's better than unrequited love? Hopelessly futile unrequited love, of course. Schulz depicts this brilliantly.

Linus still faces the world with a lamb's innocence, only to get beaten down mercilessly by reality. This volume includes the first appearance of the Great Pumpkin (known by many from the Dolly Madison sponsored Halloween TV special that played in solid rotation for decades). But in 1960, Linus's attempt at a new popular mythology met with a bitter end.

Snoopy continues as the fantastic centerpiece of the strip. He dances, imitates others, begs for food, and remains a little surreal. He even gets downright existential. On October 24, 1959 he sits in his dog house wondering about life: "Sometimes I lay awake at night wondering why I was born... Why was I put on this earth? What am I doing here? ..And then suddenly it hits me... I haven't got the slightest idea!" This very strip defies the entire traditional notion that a comic strip should deliver yuks alone. It actually inspires deep thought as well as laughter.

And of course Charlie Brown's little sister Sally enters the scene. She's a baby in these strips, but she still falls hard for Linus (though he's not yet her "Sweet Baboo"). One depressing strip (August 31, 1960) shows her sighing behind a tree after overhearing Linus yell "I don't even LIKE little girls!" The very next strip shows her sobbing outright after giving Linus a good "Blah!" Sally's first major life lesson? Welcome to the club.

Some of the strips further demonstrate Schulz's great sense of the absurd: Snoopy's head bulges with thirty-three marshmallows (February 28, 1959); the "Mad Punter" mysteriously punts footballs while little children lay asleep (December 12 - December 23, 1960); Snoopy boxes Linus, Charlie Brown, and Lucy with a single boxing glove over his enormous nose (July 31, November 6, 13, and 20, 1960); Snoopy gets saved from a killer icicle by pizza (February 8 - 13, 1960).

By its tenth year "Peanuts" had its stride solidly set. This collection probably looks and feels familiar to anyone who grew up with the strip, because it remained more or less in this mode until its end in the year 2000. Most of the development of the main focal characters took place from 1950 to 1958 (of course some big additions are yet to come, like Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Franklin). This book contains the culmination of that slow evolution. From this point on the series will show "Peanuts" at its peak (though some argue that the quality dropped in the 1990s). And though many of the strips will look very familiar to longtime fans, many of them will not. Those small but immensely popular Fawcett paperbacks from the 1970s and 1980s apparently didn't include all of the strips. So familiarity and surprise sit side by side when reading this series.

"Peanuts" still remains one of the greatest comic strips ever printed. This series will simply reinforce that. And though the Sunday panels sadly don't appear in color, the effort likely remains much appreciated by the hordes of "Peanuts" fans out there. Continue on, Fantagraphics.