Rating: 
Summary: Some people don't realize greatness
Review: I picked this up the other day and can't put it down. No where else can you pick up a classic like this. Myself growing up in the 80's was 30 years late from this comic. But I can say that I love this comic, reading it from the beginning. You have to look at it for what it is, yes it doesn't have color, but that doesn't really matter to me the same. It is a great book and I can't wait for the next one to come out in a few months.Matt
Rating:
Summary: A great start to a major accomplishment!
Review: I think this book is wonderful, here you can see the early development of the strip,savour unknown treasures, and have a taste of a bygone era. Who cares if the sunday's aren't in color?
That would have upped considerably the price, I think. I hope articles and memorials are kept to a minimum...it's the strip we are interested in!
Really, a great book to treasure!
Rating: 
Summary: The Incomplete Peanuts
Review: I was anxious to see all the Peanuts cartoons some day in book form. Too bad the publishers are not being faithful to the reproduction process. They are taking the color out of the Sunday strips. Editing the art of the strip by making it in black & white. I suppose they wanted to save money. There was a Caldecott book winner called Casey At The Bat. This version reprinted the original story as it appeared in the newspapers. They chose to leave in even the errors. Historical accuracy got them the honors. Perhaps the publishers will reconsider on the second printing, and put the color back in where it belongs.
Rating: 
Summary: Sunday Color?
Review: I wonder, did they even have color in the early '50s? If not, then the book would be more faithful to the "original" publication, would it not?
Rating:
Summary: Good Grief this is great!
Review: I've always been a fan of Peanuts, but this book has doubled my enthusiasm for Charles Schultz.
You really get to see the characters as well as his humor and talent evolve as you get to read his strip right from the beginning.
The book looks fantastic, the comics are funny and in chronological order and I can't wait for each new book (released 1 a year I believe) 5 Solid Stars!
Rating:
Summary: The first step in a long journey
Review: If all of the Complete Peanuts volumes are this good, then Fantagraphics will stay in business forever. This first book is beautifully packaged (by semi-famous Canadian cartoonist Seth), with three daily strips per page. Sunday strips fill an entire page. The introduction is short and to-the-point. The essay after the final strip is very good; it explains why Peanuts became the most successful newspaper strip of all time. The books ends with a lengthy interview with Charles Schulz that goes a long way toward explaining what kind of person could create such a wonderfully sweet and sad comic every day for 50 years. Schulz was both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time, and his work reflects that contradiction. But the heart of the book is in the panels, of course. As you read, you get to see the Peanuts world grow. Schroeder and Linus are introduced as toddlers. Snoopy doesn't talk or think until the second year. (He doesn't do much except eat Charlie Brown's candy, either.) Violet pulls the football away from Charlie Brown before Lucy does. And so on. This book captures a comic strip world in its earliest stages, still forming. Even Schulz's drawing style grows from page to page, in very subtle ways. It's going to be hard to top this first volume. The early strips have a lot of historical value, and the extras are great. Five stars.
Rating:
Summary: Here's to 12 years of quality!
Review: It's going to be a long wait to get the final book in this series, but it will be worth it. Peanuts was/is/will always be fondly remembered for the fact that you don't have to swear, kill things or make sweeping political statements to get a laugh. Schulz wrote about real emotions of youth, and did it with an art style that was utterly charming in its simplicity.
7500 strips is an awful lot of material, and whilst there are plenty which are 'filler', the fact is that for 50+ years, the man produced an unparelled amount of classic material, and to my mind there's no better way to remember his talent than these series of books by Fantagraphics.
Beautifully designed, and as other reviewers have mentioned, they haven't scrimped on the paper quality. Added to this in the first book is a small biography of Schulz, and an interview with the man himself by Gary Groth (one of the head honchos of Fantagraphics, and editor of Comics Journal). Hopefully, as the series continues, we'll see more 'extras' like this.
Wonderful - treat yourself, and only let the kids read it when you're watching them closely...you don't want them messing up these lovely books!
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent
Review: My grandmother is (still) a great collector of all things Snoopy. Back in the 70's, when I used to visit my grandmother's house, I remember spending a lot of time reading some of those early collections of Peanuts cartoon strips. They are one of the many great memories of my youth. Now, we have a collection of the very first Peanuts strips. Magnificent! How many of us still remember the beginning? So many things would grow and change. Violet and Patty (not Peppermint Patty) were Charlie Brown's "girlfriends" whom he could torment as much as he was tormented by them. Violet was actually the first to pull the football away from Charlie Brown. Snoopy was still a dog with no words. Schroeder is very prominent as a child prodigy with his love of piano and growing love of Beethoven. Charlie Brown is the catcher for the baseball team. Lucy & Linus make there first appearances. And so much more. Still, we can see this wonderful world taking shape and we can see how it will become to be this most beloved of comics. This volume also contains a nice introduction by Garrison Keillor and concludes with an interesting interview of Charles Schultz, enlightening us to some of his own feelings about his strip and what has become of the world of comics. As the first of a projected twenty-five volumes collecting all the Peanuts strips to be released every six months for the next twelve years, all I can say is I can't wait for volume 2.
Rating: 
Summary: I Guess It'll Have To Do...
Review: My rating, which will anger some, is an average of two things: five stars for Charles Schulz' classic work, and one star for the presentation. "Peanuts" is an American masterpiece, and at long last we have the earliest stuff here, in the dawn of its development, with real graphic beauty, a groundbreaking and highly influential look, and just a hint of the eccentric individuality that would impact popular culture so much in the sixties. And the rest is on the way! It's just a shame that since we had to wait so long for this great, essential material they couldn't get it right, and this nice-looking little hardcover misses on at least two counts. I know the argument about "Peanuts" having been designed to be printed small, but that's a spurious, specious, and convenient justification for the tiny presentation here. Exhibit A: Schulz himself did not approve of the shrinking of the comics and said so often; can anyone really believe he would rather have his classic drawings seen and his lettering read at this size than in the more generous space afforded his colleagues, including Walt Kelly ("Pogo") and Al Capp ("Li'l Abner") in recent reprint series? Exhibit B: I can't swear to this, but it's a good bet that these strips are actually printed SMALLER here than they were in 1950! If not, it's probably pretty close. At any rate, there's always only one reason the comics are printed this small, and it's the same this time: it's cheaper. The other blunder is both aesthetic and economic: the Sundays should have gotten separate volumes, and IN COLOR. Those books would have sold very well, the absence of the black and white Sundays would not have hurt sales of the dailies volumes any more than the size-blunder will, and the Sundays do not need to be read in continuity. As a matter of fact, they will interrupt the flow of the stories in later volumes. Will I buy all of these books anyway? Of course, and without hesitation. At this size, it's kind of like being able to take the library microfilm home, and they're in hardcover, and they have nice (though decidedly un-Schulz-like) cover designs. And it's great that this wonderful, indispensable, historic material from a great genius of the comics page is finally available, much of it here for the first time in more than fifty years. But that's why it deserved to be done exactly right. Buy it, because you have to.
Rating:
Summary: I Guess It'll Have To Do...
Review: My rating, which will anger some, is an average of two things: five stars for Charles Schulz' classic work, and one star for the presentation. "Peanuts" is an American masterpiece, and at long last we have the earliest stuff here, in the dawn of its development, with real graphic beauty, a groundbreaking and highly influential look, and just a hint of the eccentric individuality that would impact popular culture so much in the sixties. And the rest is on the way! It's just a shame that since we had to wait so long for this great, essential material they couldn't get it right, and this nice-looking little hardcover misses on at least two counts. I know the argument about "Peanuts" having been designed to be printed small, but that's a spurious, specious, and convenient justification for the tiny presentation here. Exhibit A: Schulz himself did not approve of the shrinking of the comics and said so often; can anyone really believe he would rather have his classic drawings seen and his lettering read at this size than in the more generous space afforded his colleagues, including Walt Kelly ("Pogo") and Al Capp ("Li'l Abner") in recent reprint series? Exhibit B: I can't swear to this, but it's a good bet that these strips are actually printed SMALLER here than they were in 1950! If not, it's probably pretty close. At any rate, there's always only one reason the comics are printed this small, and it's the same this time: it's cheaper. The other blunder is both aesthetic and economic: the Sundays should have gotten separate volumes, and IN COLOR. Those books would have sold very well, the absence of the black and white Sundays would not have hurt sales of the dailies volumes any more than the size-blunder will, and the Sundays do not need to be read in continuity. As a matter of fact, they will interrupt the flow of the stories in later volumes. Will I buy all of these books anyway? Of course, and without hesitation. At this size, it's kind of like being able to take the library microfilm home, and they're in hardcover, and they have nice (though decidedly un-Schulz-like) cover designs. And it's great that this wonderful, indispensable, historic material from a great genius of the comics page is finally available, much of it here for the first time in more than fifty years. But that's why it deserved to be done exactly right. Buy it, because you have to.
| 
