…[
Congress of the Animals] continually tries to outdo itself in its pure unpredictability. These misshapen figures recall a combination of Maurice Sendak, Terry Gilliam, and R. Crumb, blending the loopy and the nightmarish in a way that is both unsettling and inspiring. (Max Winter -
Boston Globe )
…
The Complete Peanuts: 1979 To 1980… features a touching intro by Al Roker — who conducted the one of the last interviews with Schulz — along with two years’ worth of strips that find Schulz still going strong as a documentarian of life’s simple pleasures and overwhelming anxieties. (Noel Murray -
The A.V. Club )
Frank is no longer simply the prototypical funny-animal; he has now become the everyman, too. It is in this capacity that we root for the rascal: his struggles against the workaday world are our own, as are his temptations, his trials, his longing for home and for some kind of domestic bliss. (Sean Rogers -
The Comics Journal )
Fantagraphics has won numerous awards for this series and they deserve them all for creating such a wonderful archive of this American treasure. This series is a must have for any Peanuts fan and can be enjoyed by the whole family. I wouldn’t miss a volume. …Fantagraphics takes creating a permanent archive of this beloved humor strip very seriously. Children of all ages should all get their hands on this American treasure. (Rich Clabaugh -
The Christian Science Monitor )
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.
Broadcaster
Al Roker is the weather anchor on NBC's
The Today Show and co-host of
Wake Up with Al on The Weather Channel. He is the author of several books:
Al Roker's Big Bad Book of Barbecue, Al Roker's Hassle-Free Holiday Cookbook, Big Shoes: In Celebration of Dads and Fatherhood, Don't Make Me Stop this Car: Adventures in Fatherhood, and two murder mysteries,
The Morning Show Murders and
The Midnight Show Murders.
