Peanuts: Search and Destroy

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Martin, have you read Boondocks?

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 21:35 (twenty-one years ago) link

Non Sequitur (which is the poor man's The Far Side)

and the Dinette Set is the poor man's Non Sequitur

I do like Boondocks.

― felicity (felicity), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 21:48 (twenty-one years ago) link

Boondocks (or at least the week-behind run on the ucomics website) is in another lacklustre Flagee and Ribbon patch, Dan, so shush and ask him again when it finishes. :)

I am having a spectacularly bad hair day here, if Jazmine could see me now then it'd definitely change her preconceptions of European hair.

― Rebecca (reb), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 22:01 (twenty-one years ago) link

Now then, now then! *waves imaginary cigar around*
Must learn to construct proper sentences. Sigh.

― Rebecca (reb), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 22:02 (twenty-one years ago) link

No, I've not seen Boondocks. The British press isn't like the US press, where the top strips are very widely syndicated and appear nearly everywhere. We have about ten national papers, and there is no strip overlap. My paper, The Guardian runs two, Doonesbury and what is something like a much more violent British parallel called If... (three dots, unlike the movie!). I don't know if Boondocks has appeared in any Brit paper. Can anyone give me a URL so I can see some?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 22:17 (twenty-one years ago) link

Boondocks strips

Boondocks site

― felicity (felicity), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 22:47 (twenty-one years ago) link

Yes (thanks felicity) but also remember that the Flagee and Ribbon strips are as far as I'm concerned not as good as the normal character strips. Just an opinion, though, and mine at that.

― Rebecca (reb), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 23:24 (twenty-one years ago) link

yeah, they're not supposed to be. Flagee and Ribbon are the O'Reilly Factor scabs (see 9/21/02)

― felicity (felicity), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 23:32 (twenty-one years ago) link

just need to add: judging Peanuts on the past decade-plus and/or the merch is like judging Chuck Berry on his post-'60s stuff.

― M Matos (M Matos), Thursday, 26 September 2002 02:23 (twenty-one years ago) link

two months pass...

― Tad (llamasfur), Monday, 9 December 2002 05:07 (twenty-one years ago) link

nine months pass...

Fantagraphics has just announced plans to reprint the Complete Peanuts, in order, from the beginning. First volume's due in April 2004.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 27 September 2003 01:17 (twenty years ago) link

and this makes me happier than anything I've heard all week.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 27 September 2003 01:18 (twenty years ago) link

wish i had a scanner, but this peanuts I actually had to cut out and save:

Panel 1:
Charlie Brown, awake in bed, staring at ceiling, snoopy sleeping draped over CB's feet: "Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, can my generation look to the future with hope?"

Panel 2:
Charlie Brown, lying on side with very worried expression, and snoopy is now awake with identical furrowed brow:
"Then, out of the dark, a voice comes to me that says, 'Why, sure... well, I mean... that is... it sort of depends... I mean... if... when... who... we... and..."

October 23, 1995

most of them were bad, but every once in a while... pow.

― (Jon L), Saturday, 27 September 2003 04:05 (twenty years ago) link

Older peanuts + the TV stuff = classic.

Only things I could give 2 seconds to these days is Mutts and Get Fuzzy.

― sucka (sucka), Saturday, 27 September 2003 04:16 (twenty years ago) link

WHAT? WHAT? HOLY FUCKING SHIT. THAT IS UNBELIEVABLE.

A press release about this wondrous event.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Saturday, 27 September 2003 14:23 (twenty years ago) link

It's weird, why didn't I react the way Mike did when I read that earlier! I think I was feeling more a sense of quiet satisfaction and approval. :-) I was just looking at some of my old and very worn small paperbacks the other day...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 27 September 2003 14:32 (twenty years ago) link

I hope this is enough of a cash cow to give Fantagraphics the freedom to reprint all sorts of other classic comics (not to say that I'm not superexcited by this).

― Chris P (Chris P), Saturday, 27 September 2003 15:25 (twenty years ago) link

One thing that's amazing about it is the fact that something like 15% of all the Peanuts strips have never been reprinted. He wasn't very fond of his early work, and IIRC there hasn't been a "book of record" covering the 1950-1952 period in any methodical fashion since the very first reprint book went out of print back in the sixties.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Saturday, 27 September 2003 16:00 (twenty years ago) link

He = Sparky in the above post.

Re-reading the article above, I see that it says over 50% of the first volume consists of stuff that's never been reprinted.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Saturday, 27 September 2003 16:03 (twenty years ago) link

Which is something of a sticky wicket re: authorial intent, of course...

― Chris P (Chris P), Saturday, 27 September 2003 16:18 (twenty years ago) link

I figure it's part of the public domain, it WAS published after all. And just about any comic writer will agree that it can usually take time to fully hit one's stride (Bill Watterson in the ten-year-anniversary Calvin and Hobbes book makes a variety of notes about characters and approaches in early days he didn't pursue later on -- in a parallel case, see also, as I'm sure you two will appreciate, the evolution of MST3K from KTMA to, say, third season).

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 27 September 2003 17:05 (twenty years ago) link

Well, that's an unusual use of the phrase "public domain", but yes. I mean, especially if it's clear to the reader that this is stuff the creator was trying to supress, then it seems OK, especially now that Peanuts is caught between being history and art.

― Chris P (Chris P), Saturday, 27 September 2003 17:39 (twenty years ago) link

And, I mean, Schulz must have known that these strips would be collected and published within a few years of his death -- and hopefully he was OK with it. (I should reread that huge interview in the Comics Journal a few years before he died.)

― Chris P (Chris P), Saturday, 27 September 2003 17:40 (twenty years ago) link

two months pass...

http://www.fantagraphics.com/peanuts/cp_vol1.jpg

Sssexy!

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 19 December 2003 21:48 (twenty years ago) link

Ooh, I must have this.

― El Diablo Robotico (Nicole), Friday, 19 December 2003 21:49 (twenty years ago) link

Hella.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 19 December 2003 22:14 (twenty years ago) link

three months pass...

If you've pre-ordered The Complete Peanuts: 1950-1952 like I have, they'll be shipping it out tomorrow. Meanwhile, Amazon is already taking pre-orders for this, due out in October:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1560976144.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 08:00 (twenty years ago) link

I am a happy man. :-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 13:19 (twenty years ago) link

This makes me exceedingly happy. For years, I carried a well-worn listing of Peanuts books in my wallet to keep track of what I had and didn't should I find myself in a used bookstore. The Peanuts bibliography has been byzantine and completely nonsensical for years -- it'll be wonderful to have everything -- even the sad '90s shaky-handed decline. Though it's a ten-year project or something, right?

I went to the Schulz museum in Santa Rosa last year and it just busted me in two in a wonderful way.

― m.e.a. (m.e.a.), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 13:25 (twenty years ago) link

fckng holy WOW! a series of complete peanuts books?!!!
when did these begin? actually, when did it officially
jump the shark? are they going year by year for, like, 30 books?!

sorry i'm british. no-one i know would give a sh-t over here.

― piscesboy, Tuesday, 30 March 2004 15:54 (twenty years ago) link

*swwwwwwooooooonnnnnnnn*

― stevie (stevie), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 17:01 (twenty years ago) link

wow, you guys don't get peanuts in britain? (actually, i assume you do since there's obv quite a few brits on this thread, but did it just never take off the way it did here?)

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 05:03 (twenty years ago) link

I was sitting here, reading this thread and thinking about how much Sparky and the kids mean to me. I wasn't sure if I had anything to add or if I really deserved to add anything. Then I remembered that I am (always)wearing a necklace shaped like a star with Snoopy in it.
One thing that upset me as a kid but now I understand is that in The Peanuts Collection, Sparky said that Schroeder's piano had a painted cardboad keyboard and all the Beethoven was imagined.
Happiness is a warm puppy.

― Speedy (Speedy Gonzalas), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 09:29 (twenty years ago) link

I don't understand this British stuff. Peanuts is very famous here (i.e. in Britain).

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 18:02 (twenty years ago) link

one month passes...

I got the "Complete Lil' Folks" book. It's really good, particularly to watch how his artwork becomes more and more minimal and interesting. (And the gags are pretty funny.)

http://www.fantagraphics.com/peanuts/lilfolks.jpg

I always thought "Peanuts" was kind of a dud, until they started rerunning the old strips after Schulz's death, and I realized how hilarious they used to be. I'm looking forward to more of the "Complete Peanuts" books.

― morris pavilion (samjeff), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 20:31 (nineteen years ago) link

I got the first volume of the Complete Peanuts series, and I've been really enjoying it. It's a lot of fun to see just how different the early strips were from the Peanuts strip that we all got to take for granted in later years: Charlie Brown was a meanie sometimes, and played mischievous jokes on his friends; he wasn't the sad sack that everyone hated all the time, and occasionally the girls would claim to LIKE him (and then they'd hate him...which was like kids, really); Violet pulled the football thing on Charlie Brown instead of Lucy, who actually wasn't around at the beginning; Lucy and Schroeder were introduced to the strip as BABIES, not kids the same age; Snoopy was actually a dog most of the time, not a fuzzy kid with the same interests and capabilities as kids might have... I like it a lot. I know that somewhere along the line I'll get to the point where I just start saying "meh" and give up on the series because it's too much like the ponderous and not-very-funny stuff he got into in the 70s, but the early ones are going to be essential.

The other thing I noticed looking at the really early strips is just how much Charlie Brown looks like Calvin...or vice versa, really. Just put a bad haircut on some of those early Charlie Brown drawings, and you'd have Calvin.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:00 (nineteen years ago) link

Don't you get all smooshy inside when you hear the Peanuts theme song? Cannot abide the cartoon.
Family Circus should be inmprisoned in Abu Ghraib and denied contact with other prisoners: For Better Or Worse and Rose is Rose.

― aimurchie, Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:15 (nineteen years ago) link

Not Me! was one of the prison guards.

― El Diablo Robotico (Nicole), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:27 (nineteen years ago) link

One hell of a set of dotted lines tracking things there.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:28 (nineteen years ago) link

OMG The picture of the female guard giving the thumbs-up to prisoner genitalia now features Ida Know in my brain and I can't stop giggling/being ashamed and horrified.

― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:30 (nineteen years ago) link

Dysfunctional Family Circus indeed.

― El Diablo Robotico (Nicole), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:39 (nineteen years ago) link

GOOD GOD if the DFC was still going, IMAGINE THE WAR-RELATED CARNAGE.

― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:40 (nineteen years ago) link

You could always start a thread...

― El Diablo Robotico (Nicole), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:41 (nineteen years ago) link

It would never end. And that might be a good thing.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:43 (nineteen years ago) link

has anyone else seen that new book of MAD parodies of comic strips? "the dysfunctional bush family circus"!!

"who broke into the liquor cabinet and made this mess?" "not me!"

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 22:56 (nineteen years ago) link

the peanuts series will indeed get kinda mundane around 1980 or so (i still stand by most of the 70s stuff), but it'll get good again around 1998 - the last couple of years was really wonderful. snoopy was even acting like a real dog again.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 22:59 (nineteen years ago) link

There's also a definite early eighties landmark when Schulz had to go into the hospital and translated many of his experiences into an extended story of Charlie Brown being sick. One of his best long narratives.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 23:01 (nineteen years ago) link

one month passes...

"Take the Paxil, Charlie Brown"
http://citypages.com/databank/25/1229/article12244.asp

If you guys don't read this, nobody will...

― Pete Scholtes, Thursday, 24 June 2004 21:24 (nineteen years ago) link

Very fine article indeed. :-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 24 June 2004 21:32 (nineteen years ago) link

Or maybe, the owner wants to hypnotise himself into thinking that Marmaduke is a gd and obedient doggy

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Thursday, 24 June 2004 22:17 (nineteen years ago) link

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