I didn't grow up with "Peanuts". My local newspaper didn't carry the strip, and when I occasionally read a few strips in other newspapers, I was usually pretty lost because I didn't know the characters, and because the strange dry humour didn't quite connect with me at the time. I think I did bring back a couple of volumes of strips from the library when I was 9 or 10 years old (and was already beginning to seriously appreciate some high level comics book artists like Carl Barks and Hergé) - but they didn't quite connect with me.
Which is why it's nice to now have a girlfriend who's a long time "Peanuts" fan. I can read through her old collections when I visit her, and now that the "Complete Peanuts" collections from Fantagraphics are getting really cheap to order from the British Amazon, I could buy her a couple of volumes for christmas. I even watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on Youtube in december, that legendary TV special which I'd never seen before.
"The Complete Peanuts" is just staggering, and that's even though I've only gotten to volume 3. It starts out somewhat dated and old fashioned in the first volume, but pretty soon Shultz begins to show himself as a modernist genius, injecting that strange dry humour that seems so timeless even today. It's a little bit unsettling to discover exactly HOW much of the good stuff from "Calvin and Hobbes" was copied directly from "Peanuts". "Peanuts" is a fantastic new world for me, and I'm extremely grateful that I can finally experience it. I look forward to reading more of the "Complete" volumes in the next few years.
- Here's a recent article from the New York Times about the use of Beethoven music in "Peanuts". Incredible attention to detail!
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