The Complete Peanuts

 

It’s 60 years since the first publication of the Peanuts cartoons by Charles M Schulz, and the adventures of lonesome Charlie Brown, his peers and the family dog Snoopy retain much of their charm in these latest additions to this definitive 'Complete' collection, with the daily and Sunday strips from 1963-64/1965-66. Derived presumably from the original artwork, these editions confirm the unparalleled quality of Schulz‘s draughtsmanship which, by this time, was unmatched in its confident simplicity. There’s more than the art, though; time and again, Schulz also proves himself a consummate jokes man, master of not just the simple daily four (occasionally three) panel cartoon, but also in the longer humorous narratives that would have originally run across a week’s worth of cartoons. Of course, adults are never seen in the Peanuts cartoons and, by and large, nor do so-called grown-up concerns, with the possible exception of the occasional baseball references that now require a quick Google to confirm. Considering that these strips were originally published during increasingly turbulent times in the US – including the assassination of JFK – there is a remarkably timeless quality to this particularly American – and yet universal – world. [Paul F Cockburn]