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krpalmerThe "next volume preview" at the back of what I'd supposed the penultimate volume of The Complete Peanuts surprised me a bit by putting Sally on the cover of the collection to come. Some years ago I had seen a seemingly official anticipation on all the cover characters that had said the series would end with Charlie Brown, as it had begun and as it had included a Charlie Brown from each decade, and so far as I can remember the list had seemed accurate up to that point. Some months after that, though, I saw an explanation of sorts in that plans now included a twenty-sixth volume featuring "comics and stories," things Charles M. Schulz had drawn outside of the regular strips. This, of course, would mean an even number of volumes in the series and the opportunity to put the actual final days of the strip in one more consistent-sized boxed set. In the piece I saw the explanation in, though, there was also the comment the introduction to the last regular volume would be by President Obama, and that was in a strange way reassuring. I did wonder all over again about what I'd heard of Schulz's personal politics for all that he'd seemed to have kept them out of the strip (in a collection of interviews with him I once bought, a wide-ranging late interview included him remembering how depressed he'd been when Dewey hadn't defeated Truman after all and criticising Bill Clinton's policies, even if Clinton has provided a back-cover quote for the last several volumes, and in an earlier interview he had been contacted by people associated with Adlai Stevenson's 1956 campaign, supposing anyone writing such an "intellectual" strip would surely support that candidate; Schulz had to turn them down and explain he was an "Eisenhower Republican"), but I could suppose that no matter how careful Obama would be in his comments (his introduction wound up just one page long, and that included the usual page-wide graphic at the top) he wouldn't cluck and sigh that Schulz could have enjoyed his retirement and maintained the respect of those whose opinion counted (just like the commentator's) by having quit long before. Now, I just had to see what my own opinion would be.
"Dear Harry Potter, I am your biggest fan."
The feeling of calm, quiet melancholy I had noted in the previous volume was definitely there in these last months, but there were things to notice (such as appearances by Peggy Jean and Emily, occasional sweethearts for Charlie Brown in the decade just past, along with Pigpen too) and further compensations. The biggest just might be the traditional "football page" in the fall; when Lucy gets called away for lunch just as Charlie Brown is about to try and kick the football, Rerun takes over; afterwards Lucy asks her little brother "What happened?" only for him to say "You'll never know"; she doesn't take this well. This just might contrast with Rerun trying things like becoming an "underground cartoonist," with the Little Pigtailed Girl offering her constant commentary. Even with that, though, I couldn't say there was a feeling of the strip consciously being wrapped up; some drawings of the pitcher's mound in particular look pretty rough but otherwise the artwork somehow seemed better than I had supposed it to be before. It might be said I didn't have the sense I got from a considerable final part of "The Complete Cul de Sac" of difficulties piling up. However, this does remind me of having seen a piece by Schulz's son that touched on his father's final health crisis being a sudden and unpleasant thing; the last two regular daily strips do sort of look as if the lettering was done by replacement methods. One or two of the Sunday pages, including the very last one, do seem to be missing something by using the black-and-white line art only. All in all, though, I do find myself reflecting on Peppermint Patty and Marcie's last appearance with a few Sunday pages still to go, with Patty sitting in the mud and the rain after a football game:
"We had fun, didn't we, Marcie?"
"Yes, sir.. we had fun.."
With that, things wrap all the way around to before the beginning of Peanuts itself. I had once thought the twenty-fifth volume would simply be filled out to regular length with the "comics and stories" it turns out were available in sufficient amounts to create a twenty-sixth volume with, but this volume instead reprints all of "Li'l Folks," the cartoon panel Schulz had published in his home-town newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from 1947 to the beginning of 1950. I had got around some years before to buying a volume from the Charles M. Schulz Museum reprinting these panels, but I was more than willing to suppose other people hadn't had that chance. Just as the first few years of Peanuts itself shows considerable evolution in art style and the kinds of jokes it tells, the art in Li'l Folks changes a great deal from the first, almost "careful" drawings to a perhaps rougher style that, all the same, doesn't look quite as "tiny" and somehow "unfinished" as the earliest Peanuts strips strike me. The dogs in the panels soon start showing Snoopy's black ears and back patch, but it takes longer before they shed a distinct sense of oddness and become the tiny, sharp-nosed puppy Snoopy started as. I was already aware of all the Li'l Folks gags that were recycled for Peanuts (the thorough annotations of the volume I'd bought before do sometimes editorialize to the point of proclaiming whether the gags "work" or not when they need three panels of buildup added before the punchline), although I was surprised to see a gag from one of the very first "Li'l Folks" repeated if redrawn just a few months later; I had to go back to my older volume to see those first few panels had appeared in a different newspaper. It did make for a sort of anticipation of the surprise volume still to come, although I do seem to wish the few dozen or so cartoons Schulz had published in The Saturday Evening Post while he was working on Li'l Folks would be collected.
"Dear Harry Potter, I am your biggest fan."
The feeling of calm, quiet melancholy I had noted in the previous volume was definitely there in these last months, but there were things to notice (such as appearances by Peggy Jean and Emily, occasional sweethearts for Charlie Brown in the decade just past, along with Pigpen too) and further compensations. The biggest just might be the traditional "football page" in the fall; when Lucy gets called away for lunch just as Charlie Brown is about to try and kick the football, Rerun takes over; afterwards Lucy asks her little brother "What happened?" only for him to say "You'll never know"; she doesn't take this well. This just might contrast with Rerun trying things like becoming an "underground cartoonist," with the Little Pigtailed Girl offering her constant commentary. Even with that, though, I couldn't say there was a feeling of the strip consciously being wrapped up; some drawings of the pitcher's mound in particular look pretty rough but otherwise the artwork somehow seemed better than I had supposed it to be before. It might be said I didn't have the sense I got from a considerable final part of "The Complete Cul de Sac" of difficulties piling up. However, this does remind me of having seen a piece by Schulz's son that touched on his father's final health crisis being a sudden and unpleasant thing; the last two regular daily strips do sort of look as if the lettering was done by replacement methods. One or two of the Sunday pages, including the very last one, do seem to be missing something by using the black-and-white line art only. All in all, though, I do find myself reflecting on Peppermint Patty and Marcie's last appearance with a few Sunday pages still to go, with Patty sitting in the mud and the rain after a football game:
"We had fun, didn't we, Marcie?"
"Yes, sir.. we had fun.."
With that, things wrap all the way around to before the beginning of Peanuts itself. I had once thought the twenty-fifth volume would simply be filled out to regular length with the "comics and stories" it turns out were available in sufficient amounts to create a twenty-sixth volume with, but this volume instead reprints all of "Li'l Folks," the cartoon panel Schulz had published in his home-town newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from 1947 to the beginning of 1950. I had got around some years before to buying a volume from the Charles M. Schulz Museum reprinting these panels, but I was more than willing to suppose other people hadn't had that chance. Just as the first few years of Peanuts itself shows considerable evolution in art style and the kinds of jokes it tells, the art in Li'l Folks changes a great deal from the first, almost "careful" drawings to a perhaps rougher style that, all the same, doesn't look quite as "tiny" and somehow "unfinished" as the earliest Peanuts strips strike me. The dogs in the panels soon start showing Snoopy's black ears and back patch, but it takes longer before they shed a distinct sense of oddness and become the tiny, sharp-nosed puppy Snoopy started as. I was already aware of all the Li'l Folks gags that were recycled for Peanuts (the thorough annotations of the volume I'd bought before do sometimes editorialize to the point of proclaiming whether the gags "work" or not when they need three panels of buildup added before the punchline), although I was surprised to see a gag from one of the very first "Li'l Folks" repeated if redrawn just a few months later; I had to go back to my older volume to see those first few panels had appeared in a different newspaper. It did make for a sort of anticipation of the surprise volume still to come, although I do seem to wish the few dozen or so cartoons Schulz had published in The Saturday Evening Post while he was working on Li'l Folks would be collected.