Review - Complete Peanuts 1967 to 1968
I went through that phase, the one I imagine many others do, where you begin to believe that Charles Schulz and his comic strip “Peanuts” is trite. The funny thing is that it’s not the comic strip that actually brings you to this conclusion — it’s the over exposure. You trudge through life being mentally bludgeoned by greeting cards and notebooks and Dolly Madison snack cakes all using Charlie Brown and his friends to bring up sales and they begin to obscure your vision to the comic strip itself.
But then you hit a certain point in life where two things happen — you really get Sinatra and you really get Charles Schulz. You know what it is? Everyone walks under dark clouds and a few of those clouds manage to get just close to ground level and obscure your way. When you’re young, you revel in the darkness, but when you’re older, it becomes so much fodder for other aspects. Sinatra becomes someone to love because he’s been there, too — he’s the poster boy for dark times, but he still comes out ring-a-ding-dinging. Schulz, however, offers something more important — the ability to look into the abyss and laugh at it.
Charles Schulz, as it happens, is deep.
This becomes very apparent when you sit down and read many, many “Peanuts” strips in succession — it becomes the sum of very unassuming little parts and you begin to see the other reason you ever thought it was trite at all. At a rate of three panels, once a day(six on Sundays!), it becomes something you read and walk away from, you give a little chuckle, you move along. But it quietly builds up in your subconscious and a collection like Fantagraphics’ “The Complete Peanuts” — with its current edition covering 1967 and 1968 — provides a precise road map to what it sneaks inside of you.
A recent biography revealed that Schulz suffered from some level of depression, but I didn’t need a book to tell me that other than a collection of his work — that fact is as plain as the zig-zag on Charlie Brown’s shirt. It’s not the depression that’s important about Schulz, though, it’s the fact that the guy expressed it artistically within a popular venue. He dealt with it and provided something many of us could latch onto, a little drip that amassed itself into a flood of reassurance that someone out there understood.
While Schulz crafts his strips with punch lines, he just as often draws them out with despair — some of them are little more than several panels of kids having panic attacks or plunging into depression. Schulz is just as likely to offer four panels of a kid being insulted and humiliated as he is to give you something to chuckle about. Cruelty is the staple in the “Peanuts” universe — and the twist in the knife is the total honesty about any given character’s failures.
Think about it — Charlie Brown frets about his baseball team, about his dog, about the little red-haired girl, about his pen pal, about his kite, about winter, stomach aches, about anything you can think of. He even worries about worrying. He is pushed around by his dog and his sister. He is constantly seeking the advice of an abusive girl who charges him for her insults. Even his so-called friends make sure that they remind him that he is a loser. It would be heart wrenching if it wasn’t so absurdly funny — and it wasn’t something you could identify with.
“My anxieties have anxieties,” explains Charlie Brown.
It doesn’t end with Charlie Brown. His best friend Linus puts his faith in a giant pumpkin that never shows up, his grandmother hides his security blanket, his sister constantly bosses him around — he is constantly being pecked at until he blows up. His sister Lucy walks around with a grand ego, pushes other people around so much that she has no real friend, is obsessed with a piano player who will not return her affections and actually treats her with disdain and is fixated with anger on the antics of Snoopy to the point that it drives her to explosive fits of anger. It’s all very funny, and when piled up day after day, tragically funny.
In other words, “Peanuts” is a very special comic strip — and Fantagraphics gives it a presentation that such a special work deserves. The design of the book pulls out small bits of Schulz’s world to create a real eye-pleaser, from the manipulated image of Violet on the cover to the minimalist end papers with beautiful mono-color shading.
Even better, Fantagraphics offers an index to the book. This means that you can look up the really important things – a quick scan through reveals listings for “Aaugh,” “depression,” “Minnesota Fats,” “wishy washy” and “Zorba the Greek.” This is certainly the most indispensible index ever.
The packaging reflects the ultimate message of Schulz’s work — there is hope, in fact, there is joy despite everything. You have problems but if you can laugh in the face of despair, then you’re doing okay. It’s obviously what Schulz did in his life and through “Peanuts,” he invites us all to indulge along with him.
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