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Underground > Comic Books >

The Complete Peanuts

03:21 / 10.09.03

From the Comics Journal message board.

Okay, I just talked to Gary, and I have permission to end speculation now. We'll be making the formal announcement later this week, but -- yeah, we're doing the Complete Peanuts series. You would not believe how long this one has been in negotiations... - Dirk Deppey

Though Schulz's modesty prevented him from being enthusiastic about it, Schulz did give Gary his blessing to pursue this with United Media before he passed, and Jeannie Schulz is behind us 100 percent. It's gonna rock. More details soon, we just need a few days to catch up from SPX and prepare our fall Fall-Winter 2003-2004 catalog for W.W. Norton. I appreciate everyone's patience! - Eric Reynolds

Two years per book, 25 books, 12 1/2 years, hardcover but cheap. - Eric Reynolds

$28.95 per book. Subscriptions at reduced rates and/or with special goodies for subscribers will be offered before the year is out. Sundays will be printed in black and white -- by common consensus color brought very little to the strip, and this way every mark on the paper is Schulz's. All the PEANUTS books I loved as a kid were black and white. Source material is beautiful, clean syndicate proofs (or originals) for all but a very few strips. First release April, 2004. - Kim Thompson

According to Kim Thompson, Seth will be the book designer.

I haven't stopped smiling since I heard the news.

03:28 / 10.09.03

His drawings were huge, any idea what size the books will be?

03:30 / 10.09.03

Oh, yeah...

Awesome! I just hope nothing happens over the next 12 1/2 years to prevent the collection from being completed.

03:50 / 10.09.03

They haven't mentioned size yet. I imagine it will come up in their official announcement.

I'm not so worried about them not completing the run as the later stuff isn't as scarce. There are hundreds of strips from the first few years that have never been reprinted. If they make it to volume 5, I will have almost the entire run anyway. But that's me being selfish.

I can't believe I'll be able to get rid of nearly 100 Peanuts books.

10:01 / 10.09.03

Cool. Just cool.

Honestly, I wouldn't cry too hard if the last few volumes don't make it out (unless it's because Fantagraphics died!) because the last few years of Peanuts sucked. But the first twenty have me drooling like Pavlov's dog.

Murray Hamhandler

20:20 / 11.09.03

Wow. That's so awesome. Now my girlfriend never has to listen to me bitch about shitty, randomly collected Peanuts books again (as I was just doing the other day when I saw that Ballantine had abondoned the "One Complete Year!" format w/their latest collection). She will be almost as pleased as I am, I'm sure. Too cool!

11:08 / 12.09.03

The later years were the best! Focusing mostly on Rerun and making jokes about Anna Karenina's suicide! How can you not love it?

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

15:10 / 21.09.03

My problem with Fantagraphics is that they are so bad in keeping their books in print, it could kill the project. Just look at things like The Complete Crumb or Love and Rockets, and how they have not had all of the books in print and available at any time in the past 10 years.

If they pull this kind of stuff with Peanuts, when the big chains like Barnes and Nobel and the like are ordering, they will quickly get dismissed as Bush League. I hope it's different this time, but their track record has been great books that you can't get for years at a time.

17:23 / 19.01.04

There's been a new development in Schulz reprints, one that is the best news to come out of 2004 so far. The Charles Schulz Museum is publishing Charles M. Schulz: Li'l Beginnings, containing all 132 weekly panel cartoons from Schulz' Peanuts-prototype, Lil' Folks, including annotations by Schulz historian Derrick Bangs.

From a lengthier press release.

"The 300-page book also includes the two Just Keep Laughing cartoon panels that Schulz produced for the Catholic comic book Topix; the two Sparky's Li'l Folks panels that ran in the Minneapolis Tribune (and anticipated his series in the St. Paul Pioneer Press); and examples of single-panel cartoons that were published in The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s."

"One of the treasures in the Museum's archives is a fragile scrapbook that contains more than two years' worth of Li'l Folks cartoons clipped from the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Assembled by a young Charles Schulz more than 50 years ago, each page contains a cartoon panel neatly affixed with strips of clear tape. Prior to the publication of Charles M. Schulz: Li'l Beginnings, this scrapbook was the most complete collection of Schulz's first major body of work."

"Charles M. Schulz: Li'l Beginnings will be available through the Museum's Store and Web site (www.SchulzMuseum.org). For further information, call (707) 579-4452."

Thank heaven for Progressive Ruin for bringing it to my attention. If anyone is having trouble thinking of a decent birthday gift for me, look no further.

01:44 / 29.04.04

So anyway I got my Volume One yesterday and it's pretty cool, anybody else get theirs yet?

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

18:48 / 01.05.04

Diamond didn't ship it last week. Did you get your direct from Fantagraphics?

12:44 / 02.05.04

ah yeah I did get it direct. If you ordered it and are a Peanuts/Schulz fan, you won't be dissapointed.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

15:31 / 05.05.04

It has achieved storedom. Got mine today. Good lord they are gorgeous. I don't know how big they were originally but there are four to a page here. The design and overall look of the book is total class.

18:59 / 05.05.04

Did this come out today?