Okay, this is a cheat. This was a picture I meant to take yesterday, this very picture. I went to bed thinking I'd taken it. The new Peanuts volume (up to 1964) was just released by Fantagraphics, and I usually get the latest edition for my birthday or Christmas. It will take 12 1/2 years to release all the volumes, which wil include, I'm told, every Peanuts strip ever written. The completist in me must have them. I also must have the unabridged Calvin and Hobbes, and the unabridged Far Side, but those are sold in single massive box sets. Not as much fun to acquire, I'm afraid.
5 comments:
You'll even aquire the last 20 or so years, when Schultz started just dialing it in?
Completist.
So, yes.
Although, to his credit, the daily strip seemed to have some strength until a decade or so before he died. Or at least, this is how I remember it. I could be wrong.
Unlike Calvin/Hobbes, Schultz licensed the ever-loving hell out of his work, which along with the constant television specials, seriously took away from his work. To his credit, until the end, Schultz did the strip on his own.
I'm not entirely sure it was ever THAT funny, though I'm willing to be proven wrong. It may be that our perception of his 'dialing it in' has more to do with our increasing level of sophistication rather than a decrease in relative quality.
Again, my recollections of the daily strip are dim at best and so I may be casting aspersions unfairly.
I have positive memories of the Snoopy parts, both for the fantasies he had fighting in WWI and because he was the only character to stick it to the dicks in CB's crowd.
What a great collection. Wow!
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