Comic Strip Review – Charles M Schulz – The Complete Peanuts 1967-1968

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I always loved the Peanuts strips I read in syndication and in various anthology collections. This collection is part of the most comprehensive set of all, and from the strip at its height of inventiveness and originality. This was the peak of Snoopy’s conviction that he was a WW1 fighter ace taking on the Red Baron, Charlie Brown’s resentment of Jose Peterson, the new baseball pitcher who is actually good at the game, Woodstock’s efforts to build a nest on Snoopy while he sleeps, and Snoopy’s first revelation that he can impersonate Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat. Delightful strips throughout, especially with Linus’s logical pre-Neil Armstrong conclusion that it would be best not to be the first man on the Moon but the forty-third. A postscript reveals that Schulz hated the strip title of Peanuts which was chosen by the publishers – he was stuck with it, but he gave the World many of the greatest cartoon panels and characters of all time. The death of Schulz in 2000 felt like losing so many friends at once, but reading this collection, I realize they are truly immortal. Arthur Chappell