From the Bookshelf: Peanuts Every Sunday 1981-1985

It’s possible I was a little slow to order a copy of the latest Peanuts Every Sunday colour reprint book, and while I always take my time reading through them my pace did slacken a little every so often with this volume. Getting into the 1980s, while it means reaching Sunday pages I might actually have read as they were being published (although my family’s newspaper colour comic section was in the Saturday edition, where Peanuts was the sole comic always run with the disposable “top tier” panels included), also seems to move undeniably into the “institution years” many commentators (and not always “online”) make a show of dismissing. I did ponder the back cover blurb mentioning Marbles, one of Snoopy’s brothers. Around the middle of the 1980s I glanced through a nearly-new reprint volume in a bookstore and hit on the strips he appeared in, and his spotty design stuck in my mind (although not all of the spots registered at the time), but this might have been a lucky happenstance: Marbles didn’t appear for long, and only in the weekday strips.
( “This doesn’t taste like mint..” )

( “All we had was vanilla...” )

( “but you can do amazing things with a green felt tip pen” )