Review: The Complete Peanuts 1987 to 1988

Throughout the later half of the twentieth century, you could often find Snoopy on the funny pages acting out various fantasies, from being a vulture that leapt on oversized heads, to being a Beagle Scoutmaster, to being a World War One Flying Ace that quaffed a few root beers with Bill Mauldin. While these fantasies ran adjacent to the events staged by the other Peanuts cast, the negative consequences–bulletholes in the Sopwith Camel, for instance–were at one point confined to the fantasy. When Snoopy’s fantasies did cross over into “Peanuts reality,” they exhibited a positive influence; for example, he could become a helicopter by twirling his oversized beagle ears and transport the other characters out of danger. In one of the more memorable sequences (3/9 to 3/20, 1987) from The Complete Peanuts 1987-1988, Snoopy’s fantasy life has some negative fallout for Charlie Brown, and this marks a change in the tone of the Peanuts strip that would continue into the nineties.

It begins as usual with Snoopy taking his feathered friends to Fort Zinderneuf. They are apparently Foreign Legionnaires passing through the desert, but Charlie Brown is soon to get a call from a golf pro complaining about the animals running through his sand traps. Charlie Brown then has to spend Monday through Friday of the next week of daily strips raking smooth the sand traps. This is a pretty funny running gag, but you have to admit it yanks the rug out from under Snoopy just as his semi-annual Foreign Legionnaires skit is about to begin. And poor old Charlie Brown. While he has had plenty of footballs pulled away from him, this indignity is quite new. Charlie Brown never got sent a bill for damages from the Red Baron; and while Peppermint Patty gets swept up in Snoopy’s fantasy life, going to the Ace Obedience School or becoming his star figure skater, there are no consequences to her participation.

This seems to constitute a watermark in Snoopy’s fantasy life, as throughout the nineties Snoopy’s fantasies take a backseat. Another influence that may have grounded Snoopy may be that Charles Schulz was soon to have less room for these flights of fantasy.

The 1988 half of this volume marks the transition to steady three panel dailies. It is like a poet master changing from four line stanzas to three line haiku at the peak of his power. No whim here, as this was Schulz adapting to the newspaper market, which had begun its downward trend around this time and many papers had begun to scale down from two pages of dailies to a single page. Schulz maintained his readership while many strips unable to adapt to the changing market, and with a smaller circulation to begin with, floundered, and no longer had a place on the diminished newspaper comic page.

Peanuts survived the downsizing of daily comic pages. The effect on the language of Peanuts is noteworthy, however. With only three panels, Schulz doesn’t have the luxury to spend as many on meditative silences. Linus and Charlie Brown have less time to make their point as they lean on the brick wall. It would have been understandable if Schulz had been unable to adapt to the new form, if what had been left was “Diet Peanuts,” or an unforgivably different tasting “New Peanuts.” Instead what ensued was that Schulz mastered his new instrument as well. He took the opportunity to use more continuity between strips, including running gags with a big payoff, such as Snoopy, Marcie, and Peppermint Patty’s “wintergreen” camping trip (8/17 to 8/27, 1988) or Peppermint Patty’s wig (9/19 to 9/23, 1988). The new form, favoring the bold, direct statement, was effective in political commentary, such as the Velcro praying doll (3/21 to 3/25, 1988), the canceling of the traditional Christmas play for being too controversial (11/29 to 12/9, 1988) or this gun license strip (12/17/1988):

Even if you have dozens of Peanuts paperbacks on your bookshelf, the Fantagraphics volumes remain the best way to experience Schulz, as not only do the strips appear in their entirety without redaction, they also appear in their original chronological format. Each volume is like another couple of tree rings through which we can measure the cartoonist’s growth and adaptation as an artist. Not to mention that each volume has an introduction written by a cartoonist or a celebrity with a story to tell. As Garry Trudeau writes in his introduction, Charles Schulz is one of two cartoonists to change the world. With an endorsement like that, how can you pass this up?

The Complete Peanuts 1987 to 1988 is available at booksellers like Barnes and Noble and can be found on Amazon. You can order it from your local comic shop with the Diamond order code DEC121110. Window shoppers can preview a fifteen page excerpt of the book on the Fantagraphics website.