Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

I always take my time reading through new volumes of The Complete Peanuts; with the new Peanuts Every Sunday volumes reprinting the Sunday pages in colour, I might be even more careful rationing them out. With a Christmas vacation coming up I did change my pace just at the end so I wouldn't have to take the latest yearly oversized volume with me, but wound up also taking my own time getting around to writing down my thoughts on it.
( 'A little blue in the sky and a little orange for good flesh tones...' )

I was setting up to set down a pretty long and involved post when a simple anniversary I'd managed to miss for most of the day caught my attention at last. Today just happens to be the sixty-fifth anniversary of the first Peanuts comic strip appearing in newspapers. That might be simple enough to think about, but I did also happen to think it's been over fifteen years since the last comic strip appeared; lasting that long as a complete entity in a medium that in its simplest form might be supposed to be found afresh each day and then just sort of put aside until tomorrow seems sort of impressive.

There are times I've felt down or troubled and pulled forth particular moments of the strip as, indeed, a sort of "security blanket," but also times I've turned back to a collection or two while feeling good. If other people can keep finding the strip to do the same sort of thing, I hope it'll last for a while longer.

One thing I didn't mention when commenting on the previous volume of The Complete Peanuts was that with it, I already had "Peanuts in complete": a few years ago now, five paperback volumes collected "every strip per year" for the final years of the strip, and I wound up getting all of them. While their production values weren't quite as "dignified" as The Complete Peanuts, a thought that did come to me was that one of the final introductions in the three volumes then remaining might yet seem so dismissive of the last years of the strip as to feel unpleasant to me... That thought then returned when I heard the introduction to the latest volume would be provided by "Rifftrax MST3K". While I suppose it's interesting to see the "post-Mystery Science" project placed alongside the other figures who've provided previous introductions, and I at least remembered a MSTing of a "Peanuts fanfic" (among other things), the thought "I'm not interested in them taking cheap shots at current convenient targets I happen to like myself" that's kept me from taking chances on any of it popped up in a new context. I wound up reluctant to pre-order the book, instead waiting to see if it would show up in the local bookstore, where I could at least read its introduction first.

One of the volumes did turn up there. I already knew the introduction inside the book was "by Conor Lastowka and Sean Thomason," names not associated with the "Best Brains" of Mystery Science Theater; I supposed they had joined the Rifftrax writing staff. However, their comments were pleasant and entertaining enough, although they did make a big deal out of "selling the premise of Peanuts would be tough these days," which had me remembering how different and perhaps easily describable the strip had been in its first days. They also, however, brought up Snoopy's brother, the "ugly dog contest" winner Olaf, in a "he's big in Japan" kind of way, which was a bit more fun. The "riffed-on" comic strips also in the introduction, said to have been done by the more recognisable names of Rifftrax, were also quite acceptable, and with that (and the thought that both Charles M. Schulz and Mystery Science Theater were from Minnesota), it was on to the actual comic strips.
( 'Then a voice comes to me that says, 'We can't take your question now..We're all out rollerblading..'' )
( 'Aren't you on the internest?' )

It seems there's going to be one "Peanuts Every Sunday" volume each year to reprint the Sunday pages in colour. I took my time reading through the latest one, managing to finish it just before leaving for Christmas vacation; as it was another large volume, though, I decided to leave it behind and summarize it in the new year. There was a bonus this time around as compared to the first, an extra year's worth of pages; it ought to mean the pages will be divided up a bit more logically going forward. The five years covered in this volume did sort of strike me on reading as the strip's "ramp-up," its transition from a comic strip focusing on precocious kids to the philosophical phenomenon of the 1960s. Then, of course, I did a bit of looking and discovered that Charles M. Schulz had won his first Reuben award, given by his fellow artists, in 1955.
( 'White, gray and black *sigh*' )

I was interested to see The Complete Peanuts enter another decade, with its endpapers and the picture of Charles M. Schulz changing for what I presume will be the last time, and yet there was getting to be an edge of worry to the wondering if this time I wouldn't be able to say anything. The blurb on the back specifically mentioned Snoopy being obsessed with cookies, and I can remember the "cookies" comics being referred to with disdain back when the series was just getting under way. While it couldn't be said Snoopy wasn't a "cookie-hound" going back quite a ways, the certain blandness that he now seemed to treat the subject with might have risked carrying over to everything else. The introduction by cartoonist Tom Tomorrow seemed genuinely respectful, though, and as I read further into the volume other things started to catch my attention.
( 'Well, remember how you recommended the 'transdermal patch'?' )
( 'You said it would cure his craving for cookies... It hasn't worked..' )

With The Complete Peanuts rounding out the 1980s and standing on the threshold of the strip's final decade, I was right back to wondering if this would be the point where I would read through two years of comics I must have seen back when they were coming out, maybe taking them that much more for granted, and find that now I couldn't say anything new. By this point too I'm certain I would have become quite interested in Calvin and Hobbes, although I can remember at some point thinking its Sunday pages (my family's newspaper didn't carry the daily strips) were getting awfully sentimental.

The introduction by Lemony Snicket, though, took what I can suppose to be that author's familiar tone and dwelt on various dark interpretations of the strips in the volume. While I may be just a bit leery of attempts to say that Peanuts was exclusively about suffering (much less going on from there to make the whole thing a disguised autobiography of Charles M. Schulz's own suffering, with the possible codicil that any diminution of that suffering equalled a loss of edge), this did at least counter fearful thoughts of accusations about the strip winding up inoffensive filler, something done out of a singular reluctance to stop. As I started reading the comics themselves in the volume, even with a desk calendar of daily strips from 1963 and the 1966 comics being rerun on the official site, I found myself enjoying it.
( 'It sure is easier writing to you since you got the fax machine.' )
( 'All right, Lucy... what's your excuse this time?' )
( 'Just as the ball got to me, Michael Jackson hit a high note!' )

When "The Complete Peanuts" started, the Sunday pages were in black and white along with everything else. I got used to this before too long, remembering the old collections were all in black and white as well, but did keep up with the coloured versions run on-line.

Then, on a whim, I went to a comics news site I'm not quite in the habit of visiting regularly these days and saw as the very first item an announcement that a color collection of Sunday pages is going to be starting soon. That got my attention in a pleased sort of way, although there was a thought that The Complete Peanuts is entering into a sort of final era, and these somewhat pricy volumes will stretching things out... Still, the thought of getting to contrast the modern colouring of the online Sunday pages with what I'm sure will be a best effort to "get back to the old records" (although I do recall a few comics were hard to come by early on and had to be reproduced from microfilm) does get my attention.

I suppose each volume of "The Complete Peanuts" coming out may now reach me with slight feelings of melancholic uncertainty about whether this time I won't have anything to say about it in the end. With that admitted again, though, on starting with the introduction by Leonard Maltin I was struck by a comment of his about how, while it may have been easy to pass over the strips of the first part of the 1980s then, they still reward attention with their sense of familiarity. That was worth mulling over for me, even if as I started into the volume I had the feeling of being able to remember quite a few of the strips from a reprint volume I got fairly early on (not even as a used book, which was how I saw a good part of the strip). I also had the added impression a good number of jokes had also made it into animation on "The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show," which was being made around that time. (So far as animation goes, Leonard Maltin does manage to bring in one of his interests by referring to the UPA cartoons of the 1950s as having a tangential connection to Charles M. Schulz's deliberate minimalism.)
( 'What did the teacher write on yours, sir?' )
( 'Grody to the max!' )

As I opened up the latest volume of The Complete Peanuts, I was struck not just by the big smug grin Charlie Brown had on the cover, but by how bright the orange behind him looked. I suppose that as the series gets ever further along and takes its first step into another decade, the casual dismissals by some of the later years of the comic strip have begun to concern me, and just perhaps I was wondering if the reprint series was stepping away, or had to step away, from an emphasis on Peanuts as being "about" depression and suffering and "respectable" things like that. Too, the summary on the back cover seemed to concentrate on the storyline where Charlie Brown winds up in the hospital with (just about) everyone else concerned to the slight exception of everything else. As I read through the volume, I continued to take it a bit at a time but at times missed my complete intended reading for the day. However, as I went along I found myself thinking there was indeed melancholy mixed in, but not so much as to be overwhelming. As well, despite being quite familiar with the previous "Peanuts Parade" reprint series for these years, there were still strips I hadn't seen before along the way.
( 'If you don't help me work for women in sports, Marcie, I'll never introduce you to Billie Jean King!' )
( 'I hate it when he brings over his electronic games!' )
( 'I don't know why you wanted to '10 braid' your hair, sir...' )

Along with the uncertain feeling of trying to get used to the number in the year changing (with the old one going away and not coming back) and considering what the perfect sentence to start off my journal could be, another part of getting ready for the new year is wondering what's going to happen to the Peanuts comics being rerun on their official site. After all, for years they would finish one year and then go on to the previous year, until at last they jumped from 1969 to 1959. After that, they started counting up, but when the last few comics of 1963 (which, to be fair, had a few references to 1964 in them) were replaced with ones from the beginning of 1958 I did start to wonder just a little. Now, though, on the basis of one Sunday strip and two daily strips I'm willing to conclude the rest of 1964 is going to be posted (except, of course, for the strips with clear date references in them...)