Using a gift certificate I got for Christmas, I purchased the paperback edition of this book. It just came out, complete with 32 additional pages culled from the newly formed archives of the Charles M. Schulz Museum.

What an INCREDIBLE book!

Every night I have to put it down, lest I stay up waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too late reading page after page of wonderful Peanuts strips. Chip Kidd has crafted an awe-inspiring array of strips, memorabilia, Peanuts comic books as well as interesting quotes and commentary. A few I thought would be of interest to the board:

In 1943 Schulz was drafted and sent to Camp Campbell, Kentucky, where he spent the next two years, eventually shipping out to Germany. Though a true patriot, he hated the realities of military life and kept a sketchbook, called "As We Were," in order to help pass the time. The drawings vary between being realistic and "cartoony."

"Sparky always told me that if you wanted to cartoon well, you first had to be able to draw things in a realistic manner," said Paige Braddock, a senior vice president at Schulz's Creative Associates and a cartoonist in her own right. "He didn't feel realism and cartooning were mutually exclusive, but rather integrated in the final caricature."

Sound familiar?

Schulz on Lucy:

"You have to give her credit," Schulz said in a 1967 interview, "she has a way of cutting right down to the truth. This is one of her good points." And there aren't many. "Lucy is not a favorite [of mine] because I don't especially like her, that's all. But she works, and a central comic-strip character is not only one who fills his role very well, but who will provide ideas by the very nature of his personality. This is why Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy and Lucy appear more than the others. Their personalities are so broad and flexible that they provide more ideas."

I wish more comic book creators thought this way; characters supplying the ideas instead of the other way around.

On his career as a cartoonist:

"I've never known much about art," Schulz said in a 1997 interview. "I've never been a student of art. To me, obtaining a comic strip was just the greatest thing in the world. To me. Because that's what I wanted, and that's what I knew I could do. I didn't think 'Well, a comic strip would be a good way to make a living so that someday I can be a painter.' I had no desire to do anything else."

Another lesson, perhaps, for some of the "hot" and "kewl" creators working in comic books now.

And finally, about POV:

Grown-ups did not interest Schulz. And besides: "There was no room for adults. My strip, when it was given to me, was the size of four air-mail stamps. I just didn't have the room to draw [adults with the] kids." This literally provided Peanuts with a unique point of view. "...I brought the camera right down on level with the kids. I have never drawn the kids from an adult viewpoint, looking down on them."

That last quote is one of the things I loved most about Schulz's work growing up. While almost everything I read had adults in one form or another (thus the "camera" looking down on the kids in the story), PEANUTS never did. That created a world about kids that I fit into.

GREAT book. Do yourself a favor and pick it up. You won't be disappointed.



Matt Reed

How I felt to hear about his death..like something special had been taken away.


And this is the first Peanuts strip I remember reading. Outside of the giant Sandlot Peanuts I had (and still have)

That's the Chip Kidd-designed book, right? It's a fun book! I have the hardcover (The softcover has added pages? Grrr... )

I'm looking forward to Fantagraphics collection of all the "Peanuts" strips (Regardless of my opinion of Gary Groth, the publisher).

This is a fantastic book. I love looking at those great early strips. And Chip Kidd is one of the best book designers working today. He is an awesome designer.

I, too, am on pins and needles waiting for the Fantagraphics Peanuts collections.

Count me in the "can't wait" catagory for the Fantigraphics PEANUTS books.

THE ART OF...is a great primer. Fun to see photos of the strips that are from a fan who cut them out of the newspaper when they originally appeared. I love the old, yellowed tape and the "scrapbook" nature of this collection.



Matt Reed

I just recently got this book as well (in anticipation of the HC Fantagraphics volume coming in April) and I really like it a lot. I'm really looking to Peanuts 1950-1952. It was really neat to see Peanuts (my favourite strip for a long time) in ways it had existed long before I was even born. Charles Shultz was a great cartoonist.

Great book! I love the pictures of the toys as well as the strips.

Chip Kidd is the book design god.

32 more pages? Sigh ... I guess I'll have to get it. But it is such a fun book to look at. Great stuff!

Anybody have Kidd's book on Batman collectibles?

Charles M. Schultz was one of the principle reasons why I ever wanted to become an artist! And I've spoken with soooooo many people who've told me the same thing.

He was a rare gem, and thanks to Chip Kidd for giving Peanuts his personal treatment.

And now, Chip Kidd even has a book about HIM.

The PEANUTS is a very fond childhood memory for me.
i actually started to draw for the first time using
the inside covers of those PEANUTS digests as
a "canvas" to doodle characters from the strips...

-C!

There's a terrific article about Schulz and Peanuts in the recent issue of Comic Art. This is a 'zine I've recommended before on this board, and so I imagine you all have lifetime subscriptions by now, but if you don't, buy it. If you're interested, I'll remember when I go home tonight to get their information for you all: website, editorial address, etc.

This is the zine that's done Herge, post-war Alex Raymond, and many other fascinating subjects with a friendly, but scholarly, appeal.