Customer Reviews

Its Only A Game

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In late 1957, as he was beginning to see the success that his strip "Peanuts" was generating, Charles Schulz began another strip called "It's Only A Game", which was a strip geared for adults with primarily adult characters. The strip ran for a little over a year in just a handful of newspapers (around 30, if I recall correctly). Unlike his "Peanuts" work where he did not enlist the help of others, he did employ a friend of his from Minnesota named Jim Sasseville to collaborate on this new strip. Sasseville provides comments throughout this fairly small book about his experiences with Schulz and I think that you are left with the impression that Schulz quickly lost interest in the concept of "It's Only A Game" as he appeared to turn over most of the drawing and inking duties to Sasseville, with Schulz's major contribution being the strip ideas (with crude sketches). Sasseville even seems to imply that he came up with some of the strip ideas as well (but always got Schulz' approval before submission).

The strips are a little more detailed than those from Peanuts. The topics focus a lot on sports like bowling with the biggest focus on the card game Bridge (in fact, the word "Bridge" is placed in the corner of each of these particular strips to let the reader know what the heck the characters were talking about). I have never played Bridge, so the lingo goes over my head.

I'm glad that the Schulz estate is allowing the release of these non-Peanuts related projects because it lets us see another side of Charles Schulz' creativity. But "It's Only A Game" is not a remarkable collection as was the "Lil' Folks" collection that was released about a year ago, but it's fun to see nonetheless.

Between November, 1957 and January, 1959, "Peanuts" creator Charles M. Schulz drew -- first by himself and later with collaborator Jim Sasseville -- a one-panel, sports-themed comic strip. For Schulz fans who, whetted by the Fantagraphics "Complete Peanuts" series, are inspired to find and read most everything Schulz ever drew, this little book makes an interesting addition to get hold of.

However, its interest -- to me as I suppose for most readers -- has far more to do with the creator than with the creation. These one-panel strips just aren't as interesting as "Peanuts." There are no recurring characters, no storyline, and no particular topic apart from the sports themes themselves. Of course, just as in "Peanuts," there's an underlying sense of people beset by the human condition, and a few sighs, wails, and cries of despair that will be familiar to any "Peanuts" fan.

What made this collection most interesting to me was to imagine it as a peek into what the "Peanuts" characters would have been like had they ever grown up. And in fact, in the commentary that is interspersed with the art, Sasseville writes that "it's not accidental that some of the adults look like grown-up Peanuts kids. It was harder to emulate Sparky's adults than the kids." And so it's easy to see a middle-aged Charlie Brown seated at a table, looking at a deck of cards and saying (as a young Charlie Brown might have said on his pitcher's mound) "How can a good player like me lose all the time?" (p. 15) or, before his collection of little-bitty trophies, "Oh, I've won my share of tournaments all right, but I'm afraid none of them was very important" (p. 22). The chess-playing grandpa on page 45, however, has to be Linus. There's no other explanation.

This collection has its laughs, but it doesn't have the magic of "Peanuts." It is interesting to see the familiar lettering and drawing style applied to unfamiliar art, and even more interesting to see this corner of Sparky's mind. But I can understand why Schulz tired of "It's Only a Game" -- and more to the point, I can be thankful for the energy and creativity that were invested back into "Peanuts."

This books encompasses all sports. It is notyour normal Charles Shlutlz book. It makes light of all sports in a adult way and is funny and very enjoyable.

The book was great -- We'd been looking for that collection for 40 years!. Shipping -- Very Questionable. We ordered 7 copies, we received 5 packages, over the period of a week, with shipping charged on each. Why they couldn't have all come at one time is beyond me. And, each was billed separately on the credit card. Who says computers are more efficient?

A lot of folks don't know it, but "Peanuts" was not the only comic strip ever done by the great Charles M. Schulz. In the early 50s, he launched "It's Only a Game," a one-panel cartoon about the world of sports, games and hobbies. He was soon joined by cartoonist Jim Sasseville, who did a lot of the "Peanuts" comic books published by Dell. (Schulz did every "Peanuts" comic strip himself, but employed ghost cartoonists for the comic book). Sasseville sketched out Schulz's ideas and occasionally came up with his own strip. About Comics recently reprinted the entire run of this strip (it was only a little more than a year) in one volume. Is it any good? Well, it's not "Peanuts," but what is? A lot of the humor is kind of dated, such as the frequent Bridge strips that drop the name of a card game guru that contemporary audiences may never have even heard of. It's cute, and some of it is really good - the baseball, golf and fishing gags, for instance. I don't think it's a coincidence that an awful lot of the characters look like Charlie Brown and the gang all grown up, and the few cartoons in this collection that feature children could easily have been printed as Peanuts comics without people noticing the difference. It's not a must-have for the casual reader, but for the Schulz fan or for someone interested in the history of cartooning, it's a really clever and enjoyable volume.