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krpalmerIt seemed to take a while through however many stages of being published and shipped, but I now have the latest volume of The Complete Peanuts. (As I was reading through it, I also happened on a link to an interesting weblog posting and commenting on Peanuts comic strips, if from decades earlier...) Frieda is on the cover, and just in time perhaps; I had read in the Peanuts FAQ that her last appearance in the comic strip was in the years this volume would cover. In fact, in reading through the book I did see her make some appearances a little later than the FAQ's last definite date, but it was just sticking her head out the front door among other strips for the week that had Charlie Brown going door to door. Charlie Brown himself is on the spine of the book, and that made me think of how this volume is right in the middle of the strip's run, and then wonder if in the volumes to follow the characters on the spine will be walking the opposite direction from the ones before, so that everybody is headed away from him.
I had seen it mentioned before my copy of the book arrived that the introduction commented on something I'd thought myself, that with the comic strip continuing to change things are becoming more a matter of strange jokes than of "heavy" discussions and suffering; however, the introduction just comments on this rather than seeming to make value judgments. The introduction does speculate that having remarried, Charles M. Schulz now had a better outlook on life, and I can admit that thought has occurred to me before, but I do also find myself thinking ever since the controversy over the recent biography of Schulz that there are subtle dangers in seeing every comic strip as a reflection of his mental state, particularly when seeming to start with a particular thesis. Just thinking that is one thing, though; I have to admit it seemed that all of a sudden, the characters are talking about their "grandparents" a lot, and that made me wonder about Schulz's family at that time... Still, at one point Marcie comments that her "grandfather plays left-wing in the World Hockey Association," which could give a new perspective on thoughts about "getting older." (It also makes me wonder if Marcie is indeed related to the obvious example...) So far as other "new developments" in this volume go, I also managed to take notice of some soccer balls appearing.
For the last volume, I had taken particular notice of a story in which Peppermint Patty finally realises Snoopy isn't a "funny-looking kid with a big nose," but with that change made this time around there's an amusing storyline (also commented on in the introduction) where she and Marcie enter the "Powder Puff Derby" air race using a very familiar "Sopwith Camel," with the same mechanic waiting for them at every stop... I also have to admit that, for all that I'm not particularly impressed by all the nudging and winking and smirking of commentators of a certain outlook about Peppermint Patty and Marcie, I wondered a little bit about one storyline where Marcie keeps thinking a boy at summer camp is calling her names and she retaliates with strong measures. ("No, I hit him with my lunch!" "I pushed him off the dock!" "I pushed him into the poison oak!") It finally turns out that the boy, named "Floyd," has been calling Marcie "lambcake" because he has a crush on her, and Peppermint Patty tells Marcie once it's all over that people "call each other lots of strange things without being really serious," such as "noodleneck or cementhead," whereupon Marcie calls Peppermint Patty "noodleneck"...
In a development I'd been aware of before, one which did leave me thinking in some peculiar fashion of the pop culture references of the "FoxTrot" comic strip, Snoopy makes a reference to "King Kong" being remade (although he keeps referring to the actors in the original movie). In thinking about that, I kept thinking how Schulz might have been at a very impressionable age when the original movie first came out... and then, of course, reminding myself of that thought I've already mentioned and also thinking that Schulz had shown an interest in older movies in general. Before that, there's also a strange yet amusing reference at Snoopy's "Pawpet Theater" to a big summer movie from the year before... (I'll never go swimming in the ocean again!")
I had seen it mentioned before my copy of the book arrived that the introduction commented on something I'd thought myself, that with the comic strip continuing to change things are becoming more a matter of strange jokes than of "heavy" discussions and suffering; however, the introduction just comments on this rather than seeming to make value judgments. The introduction does speculate that having remarried, Charles M. Schulz now had a better outlook on life, and I can admit that thought has occurred to me before, but I do also find myself thinking ever since the controversy over the recent biography of Schulz that there are subtle dangers in seeing every comic strip as a reflection of his mental state, particularly when seeming to start with a particular thesis. Just thinking that is one thing, though; I have to admit it seemed that all of a sudden, the characters are talking about their "grandparents" a lot, and that made me wonder about Schulz's family at that time... Still, at one point Marcie comments that her "grandfather plays left-wing in the World Hockey Association," which could give a new perspective on thoughts about "getting older." (It also makes me wonder if Marcie is indeed related to the obvious example...) So far as other "new developments" in this volume go, I also managed to take notice of some soccer balls appearing.
For the last volume, I had taken particular notice of a story in which Peppermint Patty finally realises Snoopy isn't a "funny-looking kid with a big nose," but with that change made this time around there's an amusing storyline (also commented on in the introduction) where she and Marcie enter the "Powder Puff Derby" air race using a very familiar "Sopwith Camel," with the same mechanic waiting for them at every stop... I also have to admit that, for all that I'm not particularly impressed by all the nudging and winking and smirking of commentators of a certain outlook about Peppermint Patty and Marcie, I wondered a little bit about one storyline where Marcie keeps thinking a boy at summer camp is calling her names and she retaliates with strong measures. ("No, I hit him with my lunch!" "I pushed him off the dock!" "I pushed him into the poison oak!") It finally turns out that the boy, named "Floyd," has been calling Marcie "lambcake" because he has a crush on her, and Peppermint Patty tells Marcie once it's all over that people "call each other lots of strange things without being really serious," such as "noodleneck or cementhead," whereupon Marcie calls Peppermint Patty "noodleneck"...
In a development I'd been aware of before, one which did leave me thinking in some peculiar fashion of the pop culture references of the "FoxTrot" comic strip, Snoopy makes a reference to "King Kong" being remade (although he keeps referring to the actors in the original movie). In thinking about that, I kept thinking how Schulz might have been at a very impressionable age when the original movie first came out... and then, of course, reminding myself of that thought I've already mentioned and also thinking that Schulz had shown an interest in older movies in general. Before that, there's also a strange yet amusing reference at Snoopy's "Pawpet Theater" to a big summer movie from the year before... (I'll never go swimming in the ocean again!")