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krpalmerThe latest volume of The Complete Peanuts arrived by mail order again, and I took my usual time reading through it. I may have been familiar enough with the strips in it; the comics from 1974 were the first to be rerun, possibly because things had "settled down" with Marcie as Peppermint Patty's foil, Sally conversing with the thinking school building, and Snoopy playing tennis, heading out as the "Beagle Scout," and typing out corny jokes on top of his doghouse (and getting rejection slips for his trouble). The year after that, though, the strips for 1973 were rerun, and so on for a peculiar while...
In one of the first long sequences in the volume, the gang plans to put on a "testimonial dinner" for Charlie Brown, one that Marcie, transitioning from being Peppermint Patty's "friend at camp" to one who can show up whenever, manages to derail by saying that everyone will be hypocritical in their praise. In a sense, it's only speaking the truth, but with Charlie Brown left sitting in the dark with Woodstock left at the table, moaning "I would have enjoyed even a hypocritical dinner," there does seem a certain familiar darkness to all of it. In a Sunday page following some months later that I somehow managed to have seen before, Lucy has been moping around for "almost ten weeks," and finally writes an angry letter that starts "Dear Bobby Riggs, you were lucky!!!" I suppose I had once wondered if this was somehow Charles M. Schulz working to his deadline and somehow wrongly "calling" the famous "Battle of the Sexes" between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, which certainly didn't jibe with the strip mentioning her (and her contributing the introduction to this volume), but a little research proved that Lucy was upset over an earlier game against a different female tennis player Riggs had actually won. Later on that summer, Snoopy is racing Hank Aaron to tie Babe Ruth's home run record (and receiving hate mail for challenging the record himself); unfortunately, with Charlie Brown waiting on base to be brought home things wind up pretty much as you might imagine... (Still, given that Snoopy's career ran for another twenty-five years and he didn't seem quite able to even hold a baseball bat until the mid-1960s, I can imagine him setting a record or two anyway.) Right around the new year, I can still ponder if Schulz really did get tripped up working to his deadline when Snoopy and Woodstock cower under a shared sack with two sets of eye holes, terrified of Comet Kohoutek, which wasn't as bright as expected (although not invisible...)
Later on, there's a sequence where Peppermint Patty, frustrated in school, hangs around on top of Snoopy's dog house (which, in an earlier sequence, she had thought was "Chuck's guest cottage") until Marcie tries to drag her away and pulls the whole structure down. In the process, Peppermint Patty finally realises that Snoopy is a beagle and not "a funny-looking kid with a big nose," which strikes me as a nice example of the strip continuing to evolve.
In one of the first long sequences in the volume, the gang plans to put on a "testimonial dinner" for Charlie Brown, one that Marcie, transitioning from being Peppermint Patty's "friend at camp" to one who can show up whenever, manages to derail by saying that everyone will be hypocritical in their praise. In a sense, it's only speaking the truth, but with Charlie Brown left sitting in the dark with Woodstock left at the table, moaning "I would have enjoyed even a hypocritical dinner," there does seem a certain familiar darkness to all of it. In a Sunday page following some months later that I somehow managed to have seen before, Lucy has been moping around for "almost ten weeks," and finally writes an angry letter that starts "Dear Bobby Riggs, you were lucky!!!" I suppose I had once wondered if this was somehow Charles M. Schulz working to his deadline and somehow wrongly "calling" the famous "Battle of the Sexes" between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, which certainly didn't jibe with the strip mentioning her (and her contributing the introduction to this volume), but a little research proved that Lucy was upset over an earlier game against a different female tennis player Riggs had actually won. Later on that summer, Snoopy is racing Hank Aaron to tie Babe Ruth's home run record (and receiving hate mail for challenging the record himself); unfortunately, with Charlie Brown waiting on base to be brought home things wind up pretty much as you might imagine... (Still, given that Snoopy's career ran for another twenty-five years and he didn't seem quite able to even hold a baseball bat until the mid-1960s, I can imagine him setting a record or two anyway.) Right around the new year, I can still ponder if Schulz really did get tripped up working to his deadline when Snoopy and Woodstock cower under a shared sack with two sets of eye holes, terrified of Comet Kohoutek, which wasn't as bright as expected (although not invisible...)
Later on, there's a sequence where Peppermint Patty, frustrated in school, hangs around on top of Snoopy's dog house (which, in an earlier sequence, she had thought was "Chuck's guest cottage") until Marcie tries to drag her away and pulls the whole structure down. In the process, Peppermint Patty finally realises that Snoopy is a beagle and not "a funny-looking kid with a big nose," which strikes me as a nice example of the strip continuing to evolve.