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The Complete Peanuts 1957-1958: Vol. 4 Hardcover Edition
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About The Complete Peanuts 1957-1958: Vol. 4 Hardcover
Product Description Peanuts definitively enters its golden age. Linus becomes more eloquent, and more neurotic; Charlie Brown cascades further down the hill to loserdom; but the rising star is master mimic and blanket thief Snoopy. As the 1950s close down, Peanuts definitively enters its golden age. Linus, who had just learned to speak in the previous volume, becomes downright eloquent and even begins to fend off Lucy's bullying; even so, his security neurosis becomes more pronounced, including a harrowing two-week "Lost Weekend" sequence of blanketlessness. Charlie Brown cascades further down the hill to loserdom, with spectacularly lost kites, humiliating baseball losses (including one where he becomes "the Goat" and is driven from the field in a chorus of BAAAAHs); at least his newly acquired "pencil pal" affords him some comfort. Pig-Pen, Shermy, Violet, and Patty are also around, as is an increasingly Beethoven-fixated Schroeder. But the rising star is undoubtedly Snoopy. He's at the center of the most graphically dynamic and action-packed episodes (the ones in which he attempts to grab Linus's blanket at a dead run). He even tentatively tries to sleep on the crest of his doghouse roof once or twice, with mixed results. And his imitations continue apace, including penguins, anteaters, sea monsters, vultures and (much to her chagrin) Lucy. No wonder the beagle is the cover star of this volume. 730 b/w comic strips Amazon.com Review In the fourth volume in Fantagraphics Books' , Snoopy continues to develop as a character, and the worm--Linus--turns against his fussbudget sister, Lucy. Sure, she's still a fierce intimidator of her little brother and Charlie Brown, but he's learned to strike back with a deft pair of pliers, a huge sand castle or snow dinosaur, or merely the will to walk up and change the channel. Lucy also continues her pursuit of the oblivious musician, Schroeder (contrary to the advice of Dear Agnes). Snoopy continues his impersonations (vulture, penguin, etc.), plays baseball and football, angsts over being called "fuzzy-face or "dime a dozen," and dances gleefully on Schroeder's piano. Charlie Brown, of course, has very little glee, especially when he has to manage a dysfunctional baseball team that only wins if he's sick or when the championship is riding on his catching a simple pop fly. But at least he has his pencil pal. Charles M. Schulz by this time was comfortably in his routine of multi-day stories, and there's a bit of foreshadowing when Schroeder, wildly inventing names of imaginary pianists, comes up with "Joseph Schlabotnik," which would later become the name of CB's baseball hero. The volume has an introduction by author Jonathan Franzen and a Sunday strip from May 3, 1953, which was discovered after the 1953-54 volume was printed. --David Horiuchi From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. In this fourth volume of Fantagraphics' wildly successful chronological reprinting of Peanuts, the comic strip begins to slide into its most popular form. In these pages, Snoopy is becoming most Snoopy-like, with a wondrously funny vulture sequence; Charlie Brown is hapless and often hopeless while his war with Lucy moves into high gear, and of course Pig-Pen, Patty, and Schroeder are all kicking around. Schulz evolved his characters from week to week, letting their idiosyncratic musings, pratfalls and jokes accumulate. It's possible to flip back a few dozen pages and understand Charlie Brown's emotional evolution. The humanity of both the characters and their creator is the subject of Jonathan Franzen's insightful introduction—certainly the best yet published in the series. Deftly putting to rest the rather trendy theory that Schulz's inner torment gave vent to the psychological dramas in Peanuts, Franzen convincingly makes the case that Schulz was able to accomplish what he did because of a surfeit of love and family. After one has read these pages, full of well-rounded, humane characters, Franzen'
