Peanuts Every Sunday Vol. 1: 1952–1955

Charles Schulz

des. 2013 · Fantagraphics Books

Um þessa rafbók

Since their original publication, Peanuts Sundays have almost always been collected and reprinted in black and white, and generations of Peanuts fans have grown up enjoying this iteration of these strips. But many who read Peanuts in their original Sunday papers remain fond of the striking coloring, which makes for a surprisingly different reading experience. It is for these fans (and for Peanuts fans in general who want to experience this alternate/original version) that we now present a series of larger, Sundays-only Peanuts reprints. As with most strips, Peanuts showed by far the quickest and richest development in its first decade, and Peanuts Every Sunday: 1952-1955, by compiling every strip from the first four years, offers a fascinating peek at Schulz's evolving creative process. Not only does the graphic side of the strips change drastically, from the strip's initial stiff, ultra-simple stylizations through a period of uncommonly lush, detailed drawings to something close to the final, elegant Peanuts style we've all come to know and love, but several main characters are gradually introduced ― oddly enough, usually as infants who would then grow up to full, articulate Peanut-hood! ― and then refined: Schroeder, Lucy, and Linus.

Um höfundinn

Charles M. Schulz was born November 25, 1922, in Minneapolis. His destiny was foreshadowed when an uncle gave him, at the age of two days, the nickname Sparky (after the racehorse Spark Plug in the newspaper strip Barney Google). His ambition from a young age was to be a cartoonist and his first success was selling 17 cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post between 1948 and 1950. He also sold a weekly comic feature called Li'l Folks to the local St. Paul Pioneer Press. After writing and drawing the feature for two years, Schulz asked for a better location in the paper or for daily exposure, as well as a raise. When he was turned down on all three counts, he quit.He started submitting strips to the newspaper syndicates and in the spring of 1950, United Feature Syndicate expressed interest in Li'l Folks. They bought the strip, renaming it Peanuts, a title Schulz always loathed. The first Peanuts daily appeared October 2, 1950; the first Sunday, January 6, 1952. Diagnosed with cancer, Schulz retired from Peanuts at the end of 1999. He died on February 13, 2000, the day before Valentine's Day-and the day before his last strip was published, having completed 17,897 daily and Sunday strips, each and every one fully written, drawn, and lettered entirely by his own hand -- an unmatched achievement in comics.