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krpalmerAlmost before I'd hoped to see it, I found a copy of the latest volume of "The Complete Peanuts," with Violet on a violet cover (and probably just in time for her, before she really turns into an "obscure character"), in a bookstore and bought it. As usual, I tried to "savour" the experience by reading only two months' worth of comic strips from it a day, but at times I didn't even get around to that. For all I know, that serves as a subtle reproach. Even before getting the book, though, I had heard that it's not quite "Complete" in that the May 1, 1967 comic strip ("Someday I'm going to break all the legs on his piano!") is accidentally repeated where the May 3, 1967 comic strip should be... and given some recent experiences, I can wonder if noting this will prompt a comment from a helpful Fantagraphics employee who will somehow find this post and inform me that the missing strip is going to be included as an "errata" page or something in the next volume.
If a declaration from someone "who wasn't there" can be forgiven, to me 1967 is where the mere "go-go" or "pop" gloss on the clean-cut resolve of the Johnson years all cracked and the 1960s became "the Sixties"... nobody changes their clothing or even their hair (beyond, I suppose, the "bird hippie" and Lucy once making some "love beads"), and yet, prompted in good part by John Waters's introduction to this volume, I can sort of sense things going on beyond the strip. Sally (who, to me, is beginning to shed mere struggling in school and a certain anguished desire to just be "a housewife" for what seems a more familiar lazy, self-centred nature) yells at Charlie Brown "I hate your generation!" and "Don't give me any of your middle-class morality!" Lucy (stationed at her psychiatric help booth) gets a "monthly check from the CIA" and screams "Police brutality!" at Charlie Brown while he's a crossing guard. As well, the adventures of the World War I Flying Ace begin to take on certain amount of "Curse this stupid war!"... I'm unsure how either Schulz's politics or his being a World War II veteran may have affected this, but it still got my attention. On a more cheerful note, Linus works his way through what the pressures on the first men on the moon will be (including having "to keep a lot of records" and having "to work hard around the moon-station") before concluding he wants to be the forty-third man on the moon and laments "Little brothers are the New York Mets of life!", and Snoopy tries to go to the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France (before discovering that there's an ocean in the way) and then, perhaps setting his sights a little lower, goes to the World's Wrist Wrestling Championship in Petaluma where he's disqualified because he doesn't have a thumb. He also manages to reflect a certain pop culture craze by becoming "a secret agent," as Linus finds a note from his mother that "will self-destruct in five seconds."
At the same time, Charlie Brown is still being depressingly kneecapped every once in a while by Lucy, and even Peppermint Patty leaves him miserable without really meaning it a few times. I'm tempted to say, after having perhaps been surprised a little by a first glimpse of vulnerability to her character in the previous volume, that Peppermint Patty now seems more what I always thought "her early self" to be, confident and brash and uncomplicated. She goes to summer camp ("For a girl like me, it's the next best thing to being in the infantry!") to be a tent monitor and meets three younger girls, one of who has a first resemblance to Marcie (if with eyes visible behind her glasses and the name "Clara"), and another one, Sophie, who calls Peppermint Patty "sir" once, although this doesn't prompt any sort of special reaction. Towards the very end of the book, though, Peppermint Patty begins to struggle in school ("My education has ground to a halt!")... Earlier on, she continues to be connected to what seems a habit of Schulz of trying to introduce a new character every year by bringing in José Peterson, whose family has lived in New Mexico and North Dakota and whose mother serves "tortillas and Swedish meat-balls". The year after that somewhat "5"-like "the gimmick is the character," Franklin becomes the second minority character in the strip. In a casual yet resonant way, he says his father is in Vietnam (Charlie Brown's father "was in a war, too, but I don't know which one"), and gets to react to the certain peculiarities of Charlie Brown's neighbourhood, the beginning of his sticking around in a colour-blind way.
Through having made a habit of saving the online Peanuts strips every day, I now have a nearly complete collection from 1969 to 1973. At the same time, though, I can feel a sort of Charlie Brown-like melancholy, suspecting that people are going from now on to ramp up finding reasons to say that "The Complete Peanuts" isn't what it once was and therefore isn't as good as it once was... although there are probably already those complaining that Snoopy should have stayed "more a dog" and Charlie Brown should have been uninterruptedly miserable, which I can at least use as a counterexample of sorts.
If a declaration from someone "who wasn't there" can be forgiven, to me 1967 is where the mere "go-go" or "pop" gloss on the clean-cut resolve of the Johnson years all cracked and the 1960s became "the Sixties"... nobody changes their clothing or even their hair (beyond, I suppose, the "bird hippie" and Lucy once making some "love beads"), and yet, prompted in good part by John Waters's introduction to this volume, I can sort of sense things going on beyond the strip. Sally (who, to me, is beginning to shed mere struggling in school and a certain anguished desire to just be "a housewife" for what seems a more familiar lazy, self-centred nature) yells at Charlie Brown "I hate your generation!" and "Don't give me any of your middle-class morality!" Lucy (stationed at her psychiatric help booth) gets a "monthly check from the CIA" and screams "Police brutality!" at Charlie Brown while he's a crossing guard. As well, the adventures of the World War I Flying Ace begin to take on certain amount of "Curse this stupid war!"... I'm unsure how either Schulz's politics or his being a World War II veteran may have affected this, but it still got my attention. On a more cheerful note, Linus works his way through what the pressures on the first men on the moon will be (including having "to keep a lot of records" and having "to work hard around the moon-station") before concluding he wants to be the forty-third man on the moon and laments "Little brothers are the New York Mets of life!", and Snoopy tries to go to the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France (before discovering that there's an ocean in the way) and then, perhaps setting his sights a little lower, goes to the World's Wrist Wrestling Championship in Petaluma where he's disqualified because he doesn't have a thumb. He also manages to reflect a certain pop culture craze by becoming "a secret agent," as Linus finds a note from his mother that "will self-destruct in five seconds."
At the same time, Charlie Brown is still being depressingly kneecapped every once in a while by Lucy, and even Peppermint Patty leaves him miserable without really meaning it a few times. I'm tempted to say, after having perhaps been surprised a little by a first glimpse of vulnerability to her character in the previous volume, that Peppermint Patty now seems more what I always thought "her early self" to be, confident and brash and uncomplicated. She goes to summer camp ("For a girl like me, it's the next best thing to being in the infantry!") to be a tent monitor and meets three younger girls, one of who has a first resemblance to Marcie (if with eyes visible behind her glasses and the name "Clara"), and another one, Sophie, who calls Peppermint Patty "sir" once, although this doesn't prompt any sort of special reaction. Towards the very end of the book, though, Peppermint Patty begins to struggle in school ("My education has ground to a halt!")... Earlier on, she continues to be connected to what seems a habit of Schulz of trying to introduce a new character every year by bringing in José Peterson, whose family has lived in New Mexico and North Dakota and whose mother serves "tortillas and Swedish meat-balls". The year after that somewhat "5"-like "the gimmick is the character," Franklin becomes the second minority character in the strip. In a casual yet resonant way, he says his father is in Vietnam (Charlie Brown's father "was in a war, too, but I don't know which one"), and gets to react to the certain peculiarities of Charlie Brown's neighbourhood, the beginning of his sticking around in a colour-blind way.
Through having made a habit of saving the online Peanuts strips every day, I now have a nearly complete collection from 1969 to 1973. At the same time, though, I can feel a sort of Charlie Brown-like melancholy, suspecting that people are going from now on to ramp up finding reasons to say that "The Complete Peanuts" isn't what it once was and therefore isn't as good as it once was... although there are probably already those complaining that Snoopy should have stayed "more a dog" and Charlie Brown should have been uninterruptedly miserable, which I can at least use as a counterexample of sorts.