The Complete Peanuts 1961-1962 [Hardcover]

Charles M. Schulz (Author), Diana Krall (Introduction), Seth (Designer), Charles M. Schulz (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Complete Peanuts | Publication Date: October 2006

The series that launched a comic strip renaissance enters Schulz's second decade.

Launching into the 1960s, Schulz adds another new cast member. Two, in fact: The obnoxious Frieda of "naturally curly hair" fame, and her inert, seemingly boneless cat Faron. The rapidly maturing Sally, who was after all just born in the previous volume, is ready to start kindergarten and not at all happy about it. Lucy and Linus' war over the security blanket escalates, with Lucy burying it, cutting it apart, and, in the longest sequence of the book, turning it into a kite and allowing it to fly away. Aauugh! In fact, Linus' life is particularly turbulent in this volume, as he is forced to wear glasses, sees the unexpected return of his favorite teacher, Miss Othmar, and coaxes Sally into the cult of the Great Pumpkin (with regrettable results).

Snoopy, meanwhile, becomes a compulsive water sprinkler head stander, unhappily befriends a snowman or two, and endures a family crisis involving a little family of birds. (Woodstock—the bird, and the music festival, for that matter—is still a few years away.) And in one of the strangest continuities in the history of Peanuts, the (off-panel) Van Pelt parents acquire a tangerine-colored pool table and become obsessed with it! Plus baseball blowouts (including a rare team victory), Beethoven birthdays, plenty of dubious psychiatric help for a nickel, and an introduction by Diana Krall. 730 black-and-white comic strips

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

By 1961-62, "Peanuts" was truly the comic strip that we all still know and love, with situations and sayings that would cement its place as one of the most memorable literary creations of all time. Linus is firmly center stage, and if not for baseball would probably eclipse Charlie Brown in status. His efforts to defend his blanket are legendary (Lucy buries it and turns it into a kite), he gets glasses, and his favorite teacher, Miss Othmar (now known as Mrs. Hagemeyer) returns, which leads to some consternation when he (1) learns that she's accepting money to teach and (2) tells her he'll give up his blanket if she gives up biting her fingernails. There's a new character, Frieda with the naturally curly hair, and her floppy cat strikes terror throughout the neighborhood. Oh, about that baseball team. Everyone quits when Schroeder gives up baseball for Beethoven (leading CB to take out a personal ad to manage another team), they decide their pep talk is making them hypocrites, and Linus is assigned to scout the opposing team. As much as "Peanuts" is a reflection of its era ("Why couldn't McCovey have hit the ball just three feet higher?"), it also had a self-awareness as a comic strip (Linus: "The most recent criticism is that there is too little action and far too much talking in the modern-day comic strip. What do you think about this?" CB: "Ridiculous!") that proved just how far Charles M. Schulz was ahead of his time. With fellow pianist Schroeder on the cover, Diana Krall wrote this volume's introduction. --David Horiuchi

From Booklist

At the start of the 1960s, Schulz had entered into a satisfying routine of putting his beloved characters through their annual paces. Charlie Brown's baseball team went down to perpetual defeat in the summer, Linus vainly awaited the Great Pumpkin and Lucy pulled the football in the fall, and Schroeder celebrated Beethoven's birthday in the winter. These strips introduce Frieda, the girl with "naturally curly hair," sadly destined to remain a second-stringer, and for a brief period in them, Linus sports eyeglasses. Singer Diana Krall contributes a heartfelt introduction. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 346 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (October 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560976721
• ISBN-13: 978-1560976721
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 8.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #91,291 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #35 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

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Masterwork At Its Height, November 5, 2006

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John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1961-1962 (Hardcover)

Here we have Charles M. Schulz at his height. The Peanuts world is almost complete, with the main caste of characters set: Charlie Brown the neurotic, Linus the philosopher, Lucy the loudmouth, and Snoopy the . . . well, Snoopy. Other characters include the original Shermy, Violet, and Patty, who are beginning to fade away, Schroeder, who is playing Beethoven with ever greater intensity, and little Sally, who must have had one of the fastest infancies in history! The newest character is Frieda with the naturally curly hair. Frieda caused one of Schulz's few missteps, when he had her introduce a cat (which he then realized, too late, that he couldn't draw) which made Snoopy act too much like a real dog. Fortunately Schulz realized the problem right away, and Faron the cat only appears in a few strips.

The old standbys are here: the Great Pumpkin, Lucy and the football, the hapless baseball team, and Snoopy's rich fantasy life. I also enjoyed the random references to American life in the early 1960s: especially an eerie strip from 1962 in which the kids speculate on the possibility of the Bomb dropping, with Lucy screaming "Don't Say It!" Schulz could not have known that that October the world would come closer than ever before or since to nuclear holocaust, so this is further evidence that Peanuts' popularity stems from its links, conscious and unconscious, to our own inner lives and fears.

Its hard to wait six months or so between volumes in this series, but we can endure it in happy anticipation of the advent of treasures yet to be revealed, such as the first time Snoopy climbs into that Sopwith Camel

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SCHULZ AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS CREATIVE GENIUS!, November 22, 2006

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Tim Janson (Michigan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1961-1962 (Hardcover)

When I was a kid, I used to go with my Mom almost every Saturday to the local Montgomery Ward department store. While she's be looking at clothes, I'd be in the book section checking out the B.C. or Peanuts paperbacks. She bought me one every time we went and I had dozens of them. Now, over 30 years later, I remember these strips like I had just read them last week. It's amazing how much you can recall something you really loved after so many years. To me, this is the beginning of the height of Schulz's work on the strip. The character's looks and personalities have totally matured into what we know them best as today.

Jazz superstar Diana Krall kicks off this volume with her introduction and her reminiscences closely mirror my own, and I suspect many others as well. This volume opens with Lucy burying Linus' blanket in a hidden spot, hoping to cure him of the habit of carrying it around. On one hand, this is monumentally callous of Lucy, and yet it also shows the tough love she has for her little brother. I'm sure I didn't understand this 30 years ago. Snoopy saves the day by digging up the hidden treasure, much to his glee and Lucy's consternation.

The memories flooded back as I read these strips for the first time in over three decades, and yet they were still as fresh, still as funny as ever. No Woodstock yet, but that doesn't stop Snoopy from entertaining many other birds on the roof of his doghouse. And of course Snoopy's imagination is in high gear as he imagines himself as a fierce, jungle prowling cat, a swinging gorilla, and even a cow. There's also a slew of topical references such as Charlie bemoaning that Willy McCovey didn't hit the ball three feet higher. Classic!

Interestingly, it is Linus, and not Charlie Brown who suffers from Pantophobia (the fear of everything) as he visits Lucy's psychiatric help booth. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" uses the strip almost word for word except for Linus being the patient instead of Charlie Brown.

My favorite strips were always the holiday ones and this volume doesn't disappoint with Linus writing to the Great Pumpkin and doing his best to find the most sincere pumpkin patch to wait for his arrival. In the strips from 1962, we again see where these are some of the strips that were used for "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" Specifically where Sally screams at Linus and demands restitution for missing out on trick or treating as she spent the night with him in the pumpkin patch. We again see a character switch from strip to cartoon as it's Lucy and not Sally who asks Santa Claus to bring her "Tens and Twenties".

This was simply a delight for me to read and just serves to prove how good Schulz really was...

Reviewed by Tim Janson

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How consistant can you get?, April 7, 2007

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Johnny Heering "trivia buff" (Bethel, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Complete Peanuts 1961-1962 (Hardcover)

This volume of The Complete Peanuts cover the years 1961 and 1962 in their entireties. The most noteworthy event of this book is the introduction of Frieda, the girl with the "naturally curly hair". Soon after her debut, the running gag where Frieda tries to get Snoopy to chase rabbits is used for the first time. Also introduced at this time was Frieda's cat Faron, who only made a few appearances before disappearing. Many of the jokes from this volume were later used in Peanuts television specials, most notably the Christmas and Halloween specials. Peanuts was one of the greatest comic strips of all time, and 1961 and 1962 are certainly among it's best years. Highly recommended.