Peanuts: Search and Destroy

The Snoopy Festival is the book I grew up with the most, and I totally don't remember it as being all Snoopy strips (though it surely had a few classic Snoopy sequences in it -- I think the riot strips are in there?).

If it's in the last few complete volumes, which it might be, then it'll be easier for me to find it. Yay for indexes.

I memorized the Peanuts Treasury when I was a kid. I am still waiting for the Masked Marvel armwrestling contest, it has not appeared yet. Also the doghouse-burning-down series.

By the way, my mom owns two original strips in frames. Her boyfriend in high school in the 50's wrote Schultz and said his girlfriend loved Peanuts, did he have anything he could give her? He sent two originals. She's thinking about donating them to the archives, since she is an archivist herself.

Jesus, dude, she could put you through college with what those two would bring.

a boy named charlie brown is on the family channel right now.

i mean abc family, if there's a difference (is there?)

If it's in the last few complete volumes, which it might be, then it'll be easier for me to find it. Yay for indexes.

-- Casuistry, Friday, 30 November 2007 02:00 (4 days ago) Link

Bump - in case casuistry has found it.

Oh right! I just looked, and I couldn't find it in 63-64 or in 65-66. Only the first of those two has "rain" as an index entry!

Good lord I need to catch up on the books. Maybe with some Xmas cash...

(And yes I am listening to Vince Guaraldi's music for A Charlie Brown Christmas as I type, thanks.)

Got the biography for Christmas. You guys need to check it out. I'm really enjoying it, and the amount of psych-/contextual analysis of what was going on in the strips vs Schulz's actual life is astounding.

I really don't want to know, honestly. Seems strange but I prefer to deal with the image he projected in the interviews than the truth as such -- I sensed a long time ago there was a lot he preferred not to discuss. I don't need to know every nut and bolt and every cross-correlation.

Well Ned, the thing about that is he was so delightfully inconsistent in interviews over the years, and I don't think the bio really contradicts that inconsistency. The only "gotcha" moments are really those that kingfish mentioned. Overall, you get just a small peek into how different people influenced the characters along the way, and what kind of prompted different eras of the strip. The single vision of becoming a cartoonist, sticking to it, and eventually being such a resounding success never really changed his basic outlook.

There are some details that aren't delved into out of respect to his wishes, although I know the family didn't like that other things were left in. There's only a brief mention about how his cousin was the inspiration for a character named Patty, and then another named Peppermint Patty, but he distanced the character from his cousin after the insinuations of the character's sexuality. Michaelis mentions the cousin a few times, but nicely sidesteps the issue since it's a book about Schulz, not the characters.

some of the revelations are charming - all those famous female athletes snoopy loudly crushes on (peggy fleming et al) are there because schulz had mad crushes on them in real life.

my main problem with the book is that DM appears to have no discernable sense of humor, which leads to him interpreting every single aspect of schulz and "peanuts" in the dourest possible light.

<quote>my main problem with the book is that DM appears to have no discernable sense of humor, which leads to him interpreting every single aspect of schulz and "peanuts" in the dourest possible light.</quote>

It's extra irritating when DM lapses into extended DO YOU SEE moments. The book is great and I'm glad I read it, but Schultz was spot-on when he said that "everything is in the strip." It really is.

I am reading the bio right now and I can relate to this guy SO MUCH it is painful. Except I gave up my childhood dream of being a comics artist. That part is the different part.

I don't like that last part of that post. Try again.

it's about time i gave this a reread. the stuff about the midwest in the first third of the book stuck with me more than anything else.

An excerpt from the comics journal roundtable about the Schulz bio-- http://www.tcj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=836&Itemid=48

The whole issue is great, devoted almost entirely to critique & analysis of the Michaelis book along with personal reminiscence by colleagues & family. Some people reacted very negatively towards the portrayal of Schulz. Highly, highly recommended in addition to the bio. Should still be available from the publisher.

Oily, it's not heresy & I shall not recant.

I've wanted to read this book VERY BADLY since it first came out. I read the first 100 pages in a bookstore this weekend and John finally talked me into buying it. And: I'm really glad I did!

Lately I'm scared of buying things.

That Michaelis book was much too Kitty Kelley. One of the only things I liked about it was finding out how much Schulz despised Garfield and Jim Davis.

do tell! (although I'm going to guess it had something to do with Davis farming out his art to contractors and reusing sketches; I think charles schultz drew every strip by hand by himself until he quit)

It was a library book so I don't have the book to quote from, but basically Schulz thought Davis was a cynical hack and Garfield was this nasty soulless strip created just to sell merch.

"Schulz took every opportunity in private to belittle (Jim) Davis as a cartoonist. Davis's smug cat celebrated laziness and cynicism, and Sparky loathed it; Garfield, he often said in private, was the 'ugliest, most insulting and vicious' character he had ever seen." — Schulz and Peanuts, page 529

Even harsher than I remembered!

That makes Garfield seem like a certain kind of triumph!

FOPP uk selling the complete volumes books for 8 quid a throw. possibly only the first couple/few but hey.

Did Ned ever get his frame I wonder..

wtf@heresy? I just like your drawings and want more.

That makes Garfield seem like a certain kind of triumph!

It is, isn't it?

A triumph over Mondays, amirite? so true.

I have to say Garfield was a big inspiration to me as a kid and I learned to draw cartoons by practicing characters from U.S. Acres and Garfield.

Somehow it seems like Schulz's visual icons are untouchable (the little eye parentheses for disbelief, apostrophe eyes for incredulity, their way of walking, even his squiggly, loose style). Like yes everyone can use exclamation points & question marks, sweat tadpoles, clouds behind them for movement, motion lines, but not anything Schulz invented. I haven't seen his little icons anywhere else, it seems like they're left to him out of reverence & I want to employ some of them but it does feel like lighting a smoke with the Eternal Flame or something.

That's why it was okay to steal from Garfield.

lolz US Acres

How did Schulz feel about "Marvin"?

PEANUTS is some str8 garbage and if you can't admit it then you are lying to yourself and to god

i love how 95 percent of the responses to that are like 'wtf is the matter with you' and then the original dude finally comes around

i'm shocked i took such an extremist BF Skinner/Shakey Mo Collier position on this. i actually like much of it, just have never understood people really, really into Peanuts.

― sanskrit, Tuesday, June 5, 2007 1:33 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wtf I love Peanuts and BF Skinner is a jackass

man i LOVED those "charlie brown super book of questions and answers" books, i probably still have a ton of out-of-date '70s information floating around my brain somewhere because of them.

I have given up on my dream of owning all the Fantagraphics reprints :(
well at least I have the first four volumes.

man i LOVED those "charlie brown super book of questions and answers" books, i probably still have a ton of out-of-date '70s information floating around my brain somewhere because of them.

― J.D., Tuesday, December 2, 2008 3:20 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I threw these away a few months ago as we were moving. :-(

i love how 95 percent of the responses to that are like 'wtf is the matter with you' and then the original dude finally comes around

― J.D., Tuesday, December 2, 2008 4:18 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

eh i am basically back to 'fuk peanuts' now - reading everyone's responses along the lines of 'well it's not supposed to be FUNNY, duh' just piss me off, like how dare i expect the funny pages to be funny/entertaining!@!!!!! well in conclusion eat shit charlie brown.

those motherfuckers got chocolate in your peanut butter!

ignore anyone who says that, that's just the cute hipster line. peanuts at its best was always funny.

just the name "Joe Shlabotnik" makes me laugh

It's the pure misery of human existence that MAKES it funny.

I'm crazy curious about what those Al Plastino Peanuts cartoons look like.

The bio was a good read though I read it being warned not to take everything at face value. Michaelis does make some good points about how the strip reflected Schulz's real life, like how Lucy kinda went docile and getting hit in the head with the baseball all the time after he left his first wife.

And knowing the backstory of Snoopy's obsession with the girl-beagle's "soft paws", well okay then.

Desecration.

I wonder if Mr. Schulz is doing a stylized grave-spin in time to Charlie B.'s sick beats...

Did Ned ever get his frame I wonder..

― MaresNest, Tuesday, 2 December 2008 14:21 (10 months ago) Bookmark

I did! In the post to-day. From The Complete Peanuts 1961-1962 - I give you my favourite-ist (well one of them) strip ever.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2660/4054758489_5cfa97e935_b.jpg

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llrqi1kxkp1qewxco.jpg

http://peanutweeter.com/