The Complete Peanuts, 1973-1974 [Hardcover]

Charles M. Schulz (Author), Billie Jean King (Introduction), Seth (Cover Design)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2009

Tennis, anyone? Billie Jean King serves up an introduction... and we celebrate Woodstock!

The twelfth volume of Peanuts features a number of tennis strips and several extended sequences involving Peppermint Patty’s friend Marcie (including a riotous, rarely seen sequence in which Marcie’s costume-making and hairstyling skills utterly spoil a skating competition for PP), so it seems only right that this volume’s introduction should be served up by Schulz’s longtime friend, tennis champion Billie Jean King.

This volume also picks up on a few loose threads from the previous year, as the mysterious “Poochie” shows up in the flesh; Linus and Lucy’s new kid brother “Rerun” makes his first appearance, is almost immediately drafted onto the baseball team (where, thanks to his tiny strike zone, he wins a game), and embarks on his first terrifying journey on the back of his mom’s bike; and, in one of Peanuts’ oddest recurring storylines, the schoolhouse Sally used to talk to starts talking, or at least thinking, back at her!

The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974 also includes one of the all-time classic Peanuts sequences, in which Charlie Brown’s baseball-oriented hallucinations finally manifest themselves in a baseball-shaped rash on his head. Forced to conceal the embarrassing discoloration with a bag worn over his head, Charlie Brown goes to camp as “Mister Sack” and discovers that, shorn of his identity, he’s suddenly well liked and successful. 730 b/w comic strips

Editorial Reviews

Review

Peanuts was an amazing comic. Charles Schulz was an amazing artist. Fantagraphics' Complete Peanuts series are great and [1973-1974] is the best one yet. The humor is unparalleled and the stories are great. ... Charles Schulz was a sad and funny guy and this book features him at his saddest and funniest. If you bought some of the earlier volumes in this series and then forgot about it, then it's time to catch up. (Nick Gazin - Vice )

Fantagraphics Books continues its series devoted to chronologically packaging the strip and has not missed a step along the way. ... I’m pleased to inform that the latest edition, the twelfth in the series, is as lovingly curated as the first. (Dw. Dunphy - Popdose )

Reading [The Complete Peanuts 1971-72 and 1973-74] in one fell swoop, I've kind of come to the conclusion that this period is really the apex of Schulz's career. ...he was never as consistently hilarious or as poignant as he was in the early to mid-70s. If you're only buying two volumes of this series, it should be these two. (Chris Mautner - Robot 6 )

Schulz had gone from a fairly grounded sense of consensus reality to Snoopy's flights of fancy to outright weirdness... That seems to be the essence of Sparky Schulz to me: even with the pressure of the daily grind and his position as the linchpin of what had become a vast empire, Schulz wrote to amuse himself... At his best in this volume, Schulz gave the readers some of the best stories of his career. (Rob Clough - High-Low )

Most comic strips today, especially those that are humor strips, often avoid topical subjects. Schulz embraced the topics of the era. They may date the strip, but it never leaves them outdated. ... Schulz was also not afraid to carry on-going storylines for several days or in some cases, even a couple of weeks. ... [The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974] also features all the favorite subjects like Linus’ annual wait for the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’s trip to Summer camp, and Sally’s letters to Santa Claus. This is why Peanuts is the greatest strip ever! (Tim Janson - Newsarama )

Even though Woodstock casts a large shadow on the cover of Fantagraphics’ The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974, it’s Peppermint Patty who should get star billing. Not to take anything away from Snoopy’s yellow-feathered avian sidekick—who does make several appearances through the hardcover tome—it’s just that Patty eventually gets the brunt of character development attention, while Woodstock exists as the perfect foil for Snoopy. ... Also of note is Schulz’s repeated use of standard gags (Lucy pulling the football from Charlie) along with a few new ones, including the consoling 'Poor, sweet baby.' Because of his tendency to keep running gags contained within a year’s span, it makes a trade collection work better than with most comic strips. (Christopher Irving - Graphic NYC )

[S]hows Schulz's staggering talent in the prime of his career. (Jonathan Kuehlein - Toronto Star )

It’s impossible to think of another popular art form that reaches across generations the way the daily comic strip does…at the pinnacle of that long tradition, there was Charles Schulz. (Seattle Times )

Really strong stuff here, including the "Charlie Brown wears a sack on his head to summer camp" sequence, surely the "Poison River" of Peanuts. (Patrick Markfort, - Articulate Nerd )

Charles M. Schulz is my favorite cartoonist, so I was excited to see that the twelfth volume in the series has an introduction by the legendary Billie Jean King... This is a important series of books which I give an ‘A Plus’ and I think it would be the ultimate part of a Peanuts fan’s collection! (The Catgirl Critics )

The best way to celebrate Schulz and his work is the ongoing series being published by Fantagraphics. The latest volume—The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974—is a lovingly produced volume that includes every strip from those two years in a handsome hardcover book designed by Seth. Like earlier editions, it's a thrill to read the strip chronologically and in one fell swoop. (Michael Giltz - The Huffington Post )

These hardcover editions are produced with such love and reverence that it's fun to just pick them up and page through them, at least for a bibliophile like myself. Not to be missed. (Greg Hatcher - Comic Book Resources )

Where most American gag strips were about the silly things that happen every day, Peanuts was about how to keep on living when you don't get what you want. It was still vital and true at this point, even if more and more of the stories focused on Snoopy quaffing root beers with Bill Mauldin, or writing bad novels, or playing tennis. (Andrew Wheeler - The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent. )

What more can I say about these wonderful collections? I’ve enjoyed each one immensely so far; they make me laugh and grin and even smirk a little from time to time... Top notch book. You can’t have a much better time than reading these collections. Highly recommended. (Todd Klein, comic book letterer, designer, and writer )

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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 344 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (September 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1606992864
• ISBN-13: 978-1606992869
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 7.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 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: #481,648 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

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great collection -- but does the decline begin here?, October 9, 2009

By 

Christopher Barat (Owings Mills, MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Peanuts, 1973-1974 (Hardcover)

This latest collection's cover (Woodstock's tiny head casting a far-too-large shadow) and introduction (by Billie Jean King, who, unlike a number of the folks whom Fantagraphics has dragooned into providing PEANUTS-related musings, actually knew and was good friends with Charles Schulz) are first-rate, and several of this volume's continuities are among the most ambitious and/or outlandish "Sparky" ever concocted, but one could reasonably argue that Schulz' creation reached a "tipping point" in the mid-70s. Whether it was due to the overuse of Snoopy and Woodstock, the introduction of several less-than-stellar long-running gag themes, or an increasing amount of reliance on what one might call "the PEANUTS of the absurd," one can detect a certain coarsening of the master's touch. For sure, the intelligentsia of the era had moved on to new favorites, particularly DOONESBURY, perhaps reacting to Schulz' refusal to touch upon the partisan rancor and ugliness of the Watergate era. Schulz, who'd made frequent references to Vietnam, hippie culture, space travel, feminism, and the like just a few short years before, completely eschews topical material here, apart from one stand-alone gag in which Sally worries that her school desk has been "bugged." Instead, he indulges in such transient personal passions as running Snoopy through a large number of gags involving tennis, the artist's latest pastime. PEANUTS was never truly about "relevance," but Schulz' decision to shrink the borders of his "universe" marked a definite shift in his thinking. Many later references to pop culture in the strip would be much more exploitative in nature, in the manner of a "hit-and-run" late-night comedian, and lack the cleverness and subtlety of Schulz' work of the mid-50s to the early 70s.

The "rare gems" (you're welcome, Patty) in this collection are a trio of legitimately memorable, and even touching, continuities. The most famous of these is probably "Mr. Sack," in which Charlie Brown begins to envision every round object he discovers as a baseball. He even picks up a seamed rash on his head. Sent off to summer camp as a palliative, the embarrassed Charlie, wearing a sack over his head to hide his rash, quickly becomes the most popular kid in camp! "A prophet is without honor save in his own country," a bemused Charlie sighs regarding his improbable apotheosis. This story is most famous for its completely unexpected ending gag, which, though it resolves nothing insofar as Charlie's malady is concerned, drags in a familiar media figure to provide what, for Schulz, was "shock value." In a sense, however, this story may have ultimately sent Schulz down the wrong path. Charlie's problem is so weird that it might as well have happened to Snoopy, who's long since carved out his own little fantasy-laden "sub-universe" in the PEANUTS gang's neighborhood. There's the rub: what makes "sense" for Snoopy may not work quite as well for the "real" kids. It was soon after this that Schulz introduced one of his zanier notions, the "talking" school building that drops bricks on people it dislikes. More were to follow.

Much more conventional, but every bit as well executed, is the five-week story of Peppermint Patty preparing to enter a "skating competition." Patty is assisted (and, sometimes, hindered) in this project by Marcie and Snoopy, both of whose relationships to the peppy one change dramatically during this era. Marcie is still rather obsequious and still makes with the "Sir"s, but she's far more willing to confront her flighty friend on issues of importance -- none more important than when she forces Patty to realize that Snoopy is actually a dog. Marcie also learns that Patty doesn't have a mother, which leads to a warm moment when, following a botched attempt at making Patty a skating dress, she has her own mother fix the problem. Finally learning that Snoopy is a beagle doesn't prevent Patty from turning to "coach" Snoopy for help in getting ready for the "skating competition" -- which, needless to say, has a funny twist that knocks Patty for a loop.

Finally, there's the "Guest of Honor" continuity from early 1973, in which the gang, wonder of wonders, decides to give Charlie Brown a testimonial dinner in honor of his efforts as a baseball manager. The affair (complete with master(?) of ceremonies Joe Shlabotnik -- who, no surprise, gets lost on the way) ultimately falls apart after everyone realizes that pretending that Charlie is a figure worthy of honor is hypocrisy. There's a real bite to this story, one almost duplicated by the late-1974 tale in which neighborhood snowman-building is "organized" to the point of having leagues, referees, and parental support groups. In between, however, there are rather too many gags about novelist Snoopy's bad puns, Peppermint Patty's classroom denseness, Rerun's near-death experiences on his mom's bike, and, of course, Snoopy's tennis-playing. It's still great reading, of course, but a few cracks in the foundation are now apparent.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!, August 23, 2009

By 

Jeegisha Panchal (cerritos, ca United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Peanuts, 1973-1974 (Hardcover)

I love this volume. My favorite stories are when Rerun gets involved in a betting scandal and Mr. Sack sequence. Classic! If you are a fan of Peanuts, get this volume. You won't be sorry.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He's a funny looking kid, but he sure can type., February 11, 2010

By 

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

This review is from: The Complete Peanuts, 1973-1974 (Hardcover)

This book contains all the Peanuts comic strips from 1973 and 1974. Peanuts was one of the greatest comic strips of all time. Arguably, the strip peaked sometime in the 1960s, but it was still great during this time period. In fact, one of the greatest storylines of all time, "Mr. Sack", occured at this time. And my sister's favorite character, Rerun, makes his first appearance here. Highly recommended to fans of classic comic strips.