“Kudos to Fantagraphics for maintaining the incredibly high standard of quality and presentation they established at the outset, with this entry featuring an introduction from cartoonist Lynn Johnston. More!” (Ken Plume -
FRED )
“The strips in this volume of Fantagraphics' series are stronger than ever. If there's a different quality to them it's because
Peanuts is a mature strip now instead of a precocious, sometimes-astonishing one.” (Tom Spurgeon -
The Comics Reporter )
“Reading may be fundamental and all that – but sometimes you just want something funny. Like earlier installments, Charles Schulz's
The Complete Peanuts: 1981-1982 from Fantagraphics is a handsome hardcover collecting two years' worth of Snoopy and that round-headed kid.” (
Electronic Gaming Monthly )
“Charles Schulz's lovable gang bring hilarity to the Reagan era in the latest volume of
The Complete Peanuts… Now up to Volume 16, the comic strip shows no signs of getting stale as the years go by and the antics continue.... As usual, the strip reproduction is flawless…” (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.
Lynn Johnston, CM, OM (born May 28, 1947) is a Canadian cartoonist, well known for her comic strip
For Better or For Worse. She was the first woman and first Canadian to win the National Cartoonist Society's Reuben Award.
