An alarmingly atypical Peanuts Sunday strip I found in We're Right Behind You, Charlie Brown, one of the great old Holt, Rinehart and Winston Peanuts paperbacks from when I was a tiny stuffed bull. (As this book was published in 1964, I'm sure it's reprinted in one of the recent Fantagraphics Complete Peanuts volumes, but I'm not certain which one.)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQenrY-T9_-EUVG2XBTW-ZiSnvw_V3JFU-8tiFlhrdgKCUBaE56ekbiILucymY9gA-xa4zdGy_z1Njojw78Z-YnlUiN4PIRRurK7GzqoEg3B-PmXl2RJaS1ZaVKVCEHP-m-WVr2xjqailLu1jlzylysiBGc3sVXLXNMFDzAURyrHhKBfcqyO4/s1600/button-libertybellmarch.jpg" "It's...")
11 comments:
That is...deeply weird, yeah. Can just about see the outlines of what Schulz might've been going for, but it doesn't work at all.
Never mind that; I'm too busy being utterly charmed by Linus' little traveling cap. (How's he getting to Charlie Brown's house, anyway? Via the Orient Express?)
Gotta disagree strongly with km here; it was reprint pb's from this era that I loved the most as a kid. When they announced after Schultz's death that the reprints syndicated to the papers would be from the "peak" in the 70s, and they mentioned deliberately avoiding the supposedly "inadvisedly overreaching and surreal" stuff from the 60s, I was bitterly disappointed.
I loved the 50's/60's stuff. I found the 70's rather dull and the 80's unreadable.
How many times was his Sopwith Camel bullet-ridden?
***Gotta disagree strongly with km here; it was reprint pb's from this era that I loved the most as a kid.***
We seem to be having two different conversations, here. :) I am probably one of the biggest Peanuts fans going, and love it unconditionally from the earliest years all the way up through the late 70's, after which there are a few conditions.
It's just *this strip* I felt was off-key. No, Schulz wasn't a pacifist, but the level of competence/confidence suggested by a submachine gun is way out of whack with the Peanuts norm. (The bullet-riddling Red Baron sequences, please note, involved Snoopy as the victim, not the shooter.)
Of all the places to find a Zevon reference! Warren Zevon, P.G. Wodehouse, and superhero comics. Man. I didn't think there were others like me out there.
This would be found in The Complete Peanuts Vol. 7 (1963-1964), the one with Linus on the cover. :) And yeah, it startled me the first time I saw it, too.
Zevon reference for the win...
I always wonder if anyone notices my IMG tags and I'm pleased when they do!
And thanks for the identification of which book it's in, Mike!
Sorry about that; I guess I've just been spoiling for the chance to speak up for the over the top 60s stuff and bitch about the estate's reprint decision for years, and kind of jumped the gun...
You know that Schulz could have drawn that machine gun from memory, right?
Post a Comment