Charlie Brown: The Collection
Katchem_ash
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Anyone seen these?
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1560976322/701-5446721-4295551
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/156097687X/701-5446721-4295551
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1560977744/701-5446721-4295551
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1560978686/701-5446721-4295551
I loved the Peanuts as a kid, so these were like a god's send. I bought all 4 versions so its like 8 books in a nice hard cover case.
I have to be amazed though, I never saw any of the strips except the ones which were published in the 90's. I love the interviews and the thought's on Schulz's life and its impact on them. The strips themselves are totally cool. I mean you get to understand that through him he is either talking about religion, his own sorrows and life in general. I get the feeling one could live off the Peanut sayings.
While his religious leanings is evident in some strips, those are outnumbered by the strips not for religion. I also am reading Schulz and Peanuts and that poor guy had such a sad life but I think he was happying bringing joy to people who read it.
Anyone got this? Anyone love the Peanuts?
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1560976322/701-5446721-4295551
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/156097687X/701-5446721-4295551
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1560977744/701-5446721-4295551
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1560978686/701-5446721-4295551
I loved the Peanuts as a kid, so these were like a god's send. I bought all 4 versions so its like 8 books in a nice hard cover case.
I have to be amazed though, I never saw any of the strips except the ones which were published in the 90's. I love the interviews and the thought's on Schulz's life and its impact on them. The strips themselves are totally cool. I mean you get to understand that through him he is either talking about religion, his own sorrows and life in general. I get the feeling one could live off the Peanut sayings.
While his religious leanings is evident in some strips, those are outnumbered by the strips not for religion. I also am reading Schulz and Peanuts and that poor guy had such a sad life but I think he was happying bringing joy to people who read it.
Anyone got this? Anyone love the Peanuts?
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You want to get nostolgic about something, get this... http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Calvin-Hobbes/dp/0740748475/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-4641069-0810531?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193848198&sr=8-1
Peanuts was awesome. Quiet yourself, Sentry.
Hey, I'm not saying that Peanuts was Ziggy... but even as a kid, I found it pretty banal.
Unfortunately I just bought 2 absolute Sandman volumes, so I'm not getting them anytime soon.
Personally I always preferred Peanuts to C&H, though, but I just have a soft spot for Snoopy.
Never liked Calvin and Hobbes, the "Oh look at me and my wacky adventures as I try to go on with life" never really appealed to me the way Peanuts do.
my god
When you get to hell, tell them your lack of good taste sent you.
Seriously though, C and H was a lot more intellegent then Peanuts. It didn't talk down to kids or try and pander to them (haha, kids don't know what adults are saying, it just comes out as waa waa wa wa). Frankly, that's what I liked about it. Then, as you get older and learn the philosophies of Hobbes and Calvin, it adds a deeper layer of subtext that Snoopy as the Red Baron can't touch.
Spaceman Spiff is still better tho.
Peanuts?! Talk DOWN to kids?! Did you ever actually read the strip? It did none of that - there's a reason no adults are ever shown, it's so that the height difference doesn't make them seem childish in comparison. They're treated as small adults. And the 'waa waa' voices are a product of the cartoons, not the strip.
Peanuts was extremely intelligent. So was Calvin and Hobbes. In the hall of fame of newspaper comic strips, they occupy the top two spots, possibly challenged by Far Side. Whichever you like better is personal preference, but saying that either of them isn't good is about as wrong as you can possibly get.
Maybe because Peanuts had a cast of characters that actually had a backstory and each was developed instead of someone being "Mom" and "Dad" and only focusing on two characters. Do you know Charlie Brown's father was a barber? I may not remember but what was Calvin's fathers job? Charlie Brown's father actually cared about stuff and as Charlie Brown would say "He cried at the editorials when he read all the letters about increasing haircut costs." See thats what I like rather than throwing barbs, Charlie brown's story is in my opinion totally developed.
Edit:
You actually feel sad when he's persuing the Red Haired Girl because at one time or another everyone was at that stage. You feel his need for acceptance, his wanting to kick the ball that Lucy held, he wanted to be liked and had friends. His quests for all of this and his daily life was in my opinion, one of the corner stones of the story.
What was Pig pen's backstory again? And Lucy's? I hardly call being a bitch a backstory.
Look, it does all come down to personal preference... if you got a huge hardon because Charlie Browns dad was a barber (by the way, we never actually see his dad, do we? I don't really think so. At least Calvin's parents were, you know, real.) more power to you. But frankly, I never read a Peanuts comic that made me think. I read plenty of Calvin and Hobbes ones that did. I guess it all depends on what you want to get out of it.
Lucy was fussy because it got things done. Wanna stop Linus from watch TV? Fuss. Wanna change Channels? Fuss. Wanna have Charlie Brown do things for her? Fuss. It got things done. Aside from Fussiness, you can see her being stubborn by dipping her hands in Charlie Browns milk when asked not to, doing things she wanted when people told her not to. She also was caring in her own way by giving candy to Linus while he was sitting in the pumpkin patch, being talented by going all the way to the golf tournament and almost winning until she had to go home for lunch or being scared of the blanket when Linus was out.
Pig Pen's story was he was dirty. He didn't care what people thought of him and he chose to do things his own way because in his own words "Girls need to accept me for who I am". He was dirty, attracted dirt as he walked down the street. Of course he wasn't dirty all the time as evidenced by his clean clothes and self at the birthday party and being rejected cause they didn't recognized him. He also got hurt by the constant poking by everyone. He also had a little mean streak by taking a high pile of sand when Charlie Brown told him only one bucket full.
Should I further describe Linus, Patty, Peppermint Patty, Violet and 555 to you?
Peanuts was around for... what, 60 years, and those are the backstories? My, how deep and involved. In other news, your knowledge of this makes me sad inside.
In my opinion its much better than the tripe of C and H.
Anyway, back on topic. The next book is set to come out on 2008 I think in May or such. How is Fantagraphics with releases and such? Are they generally on time?
Peanuts I've never read more than one or two strips, and while I recall it being mildly entertaining I'm not about to buy half a dozen massive hardbacks.
Peanuts was beautiful. The best Peanuts strips resembled and far improved upon the themes of C&H's final strip. I used to find Peanuts extremely dull as a child, but nowadays, I'll read classic Peanuts and there will be weeks where the strip is so existentially beautiful and painful. Like C&H's dead bird storyline, but moreso. If I had to choose between the best five years of Peanuts or C&H, I'd have to pick Peanuts. The way I think of it, is that Peanuts is like The Simpsons, where as C&H is like (pre-uncancellation) Futurama. Both are of many degrees of awesome, but there's so many years of Peanuts that not all of it is bound to be mind-shattering brilliant.
Exactly, I think that's what most people are remembering here, as opposed to all of the bittersweetness, pain and heartbreak.
And the reason you don't remember the 'last' peanuts, is because Schultz kept making them on up to his death. He didn't plan for a final one.
The legacy of Peanuts would have been much better served if Schulz had retired in the late 70's/early 80's. The strips became very maudlin, very quickly after that point.
No he shouldn't. He loved the strips and people loved to read it. I haven't read any because I'm still on the 60's, but I heard it evolved into something else with Charlie Brown becoming secondary. Now thats evolving.
I would recommend you read The Spirit if that is something that interests you. It does that in spades.
But C&H gets boiled down to Spaceman Spiff, Philosophy while hurtling down the hill in a sled/cart, playing in the snow and calvinball.
It isn't all they are in either case, but you do something for that long and you tend to retread old ground.
I have read them. They get worse. He still occasionally would show flashes of his earlier genius, but for the most part, it kind of did turn into The Family Circus.
What the...? No. Even if you believe that his later work is bad, which I don't, it's still leagues better than Family Fucking Circus. They became calmer and less biting in a lot of the interactions, but they also became more introspective and thoughtful, which would make sense as someone grows older.
this is essentially the last strip in peanuts (which [i think] was published the day before he died. probably wrong about that though).
I like peanuts more than Calvin and Hobbes, but thats because I have more personal history with Peanuts than C & H.
C & H is awesome, artistic and entertaining, no doubts about that, but peanuts is just waaay more of personal thing for me. I've seen like every damn video and cartoon and read most of the strips.
I plan on getting that treasury as soon as I can.
(also, that peanuts presents The Thing is fucking hilarious, thanks for posting that).
Look at that. The very first Peanuts strip, and it's just some kid being a dick. I don't really even know if that qualifies as a joke, but it's still funny.
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At any rate, I definitely think the quality of the strip faltered in the last couple decades, although in retrospect that Spike in the desert arc about ten years ago was quite haunting. But K_A's right, these collections are solid gold and really belong in any serious comic scholar's library.
There are more coming, I believe, with 2 books being released each year.
according to this interview
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E0D71E3DF935A35756C0A9629C8B63&fta=y
the entire collection would take 12 1/2 years to be released, so that would be 25 books in total.
Yeah, they have the next book coming around may in 2008. Anyone know if they meet deadlines or not?
Yeah, it shouldn't be a problem. They're more of a book publisher-style operation than a comic-book publisher: soliciting things that don't exist yet isn't really their style, and they work with a long lead-in time, sometimes years long. If the next book is coming out in May they may well be working on the one beyond that right now.
And to be perfectly honest with you, I don't think that Calvin and Hobbes even exists without Peanuts.