Abrams ComicArts has just released a huge new prestige book celebrating the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. The Essential Peanuts is 336 pages, and filled with comics, but also packed with commentary from author Mark Evanier; essays, introductions, and quotes from cartoonists, experts, celebrities, and people from the Peanuts orbit; and photos of Schulz and the Peanuts world. It also comes with a sleeve filled with tons of bonus materials, such as a Peanuts comic book reproduction, prints, stickers, postcards, and even an iron-on patch.
Evanier's text expertly guides the reader through essential strips from Peanuts' 50-year run. He does a great job of explaining the evolution of Peanuts, from a cute-kids strip (although Peanuts could never be typical nor merely cute, even if Schulz did try), to a psychologically complex and sophisticated meditation on the human experience, to a joyful Snoopy-starring humor vehicle.
I regard the very first Peanuts strip as one of the best in the history of cartooning. Schulz has drawn these cute kids with huge heads, and it proceeds as innocuously as possible for three panels, but ends on a discontinuous gut punch. What a way to start.
As someone who was born in the 60s and grew up in 70s, it's hard to explain to people who weren't there what a pop culture phenomenon Peanuts was at that time. Every kid loved Snoopy, had Peanuts paperbacks on their shelves, and could recite the TV specials by heart. And yet, especially at that time, at the height of its popularity among children, it's remarkable that it was a comic mostly about a sad and lonely boy who couldn't do anything right: Good ol' Charlie Brown.
As cleverly implied by the book's cover, it's fitting that the term "goat" meant loser in Charlie Brown's time, but it now means the Greatest Of All Time.
I especially liked the essay by astronaut Mike Massimino, exactly my age, who in 1969 became a NASA, New York Mets, and Peanuts fanatic at exactly the same time I did. He went to make NASA his career, and I followed Peanuts into cartooning. Massimino even had the same Snoopy astronaut doll I did as a kid. I have a specific memory of taking mine to McDonalds once. He was able to take his with him on the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2009 on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
This book is a beautiful and fitting commemoration of a profound and hugely important part of American art. It's great fun to read, and it's a wonderful memento for the bookshelf or coffee table of any Peanuts fan.
Below is the slipcase cover. You can purchase the book at this link.
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