Just in time for the holidays, designed by the Award-winning graphic novelist, Seth! This collection of books--identical to the individual volumes--ships shrinkwrapped, with two hardcovers containing complete strips from the years 1979-1980 and 1981-1982, packed in a sturdy custom box designed especially for this set. The perfect gift item.
The Complete Peanuts 1979-1980 : It's 1980, Charlie Brown... and Peppermint Patty is wearing corn-rows! Plus, a strange romance...Charles Schulz enters his fourth decade as the greatest cartoonist of his generation, and Peanuts remains as fresh and lively as it ever was. (How do we know it's 1980? Well, for one thing Peppermint Patty gets herself those Bo-Derek-in-10 cornrows -- Peanuts' timelessness occasionally shows a crack!) That said, The Complete Peanuts 1979-1980 includes a number of classic storylines, including the month-long sequence in which an ill Charlie Brown is hospitalized (including a particularly spooky moment when he wonders if he's died and nobody's told him yet), and an especially eventful trek with Snoopy, Woodstock, and the scout troop (now including a little girl bird, Harriet). And Snoopy is still trying on identities left and right, including the "world-famous surveyor," the "world-famous census taker," and Blackjack Snoopy, the riverboat gambler. In other extended stories, Snoopy launches an ill-fated airline (with Lucy as the agent, Linus as the luggage handler, and Marcie as what it was still OK then to call the stewardess)... Peppermint Patty responds to being leaked upon by a ceiling by hiring a lawyer (unfortunately, she again picks Snoopy)... plus one of the great, forgotten romances of Peanuts that will startle even long-time Peanuts connoisseurs: Peppermint Patty and..."Pig-Pen"?!
The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982 : With this volume, The Complete Peanuts ventures into the lesser-known 1980s, and Peanuts fans are sure to find plenty of surprises. In Snoopy-family news, Spike is drafted into the Infantry (don't worry, it's only Snoopy's imaginary World War I army), and a brand new brother, "Marbles" (with the spotty ears) takes his bow. We also see two major baseball-oriented stories, one in which Charlie Brown joins Peppermint Patty's team, and another in which Charlie Brown and his team lose their baseball field. In other stories, Peppermint Patty witnesses the "butterfly miracle," Linus protests that he is not Sally's "Sweet Babboo," Sally (in an unrelated sequence) gets fat, the Van Pelts get into farming, and two of the most eccentric characters from later Peanuts years, the hyperaggressive Molly Volley and the whiny "Crybaby" Boobie, make a return engagement. Charles Schulz's Peanuts world will never grow old, and Fantagraphics' complete reprinting of this masterpiece, now in its eighth year -- still lovingly designed by world-class cartoonist Seth -- has firmly established itself as one of the very finest archival comic-strip projects ever done.
Johnston, Lynn: - Lynn Johnston, CM, OM (born May 28, 1947) is a Canadian cartoonist, well known for her comic strip For Better or For Worse. She was the first woman and first Canadian to win the National Cartoonist Society's Reuben Award.
Roker, Al: - Broadcaster Al Roker is the weather anchor on NBC's The Today Show and co-host of Wake Up with Al on The Weather Channel. He is the author of several books: Al Roker's Big Bad Book of Barbecue, Al Roker's Hassle-Free Holiday Cookbook, Big Shoes: In Celebration of Dads and Fatherhood, Don't Make Me Stop this Car: Adventures in Fatherhood, and two murder mysteries, The Morning Show Murders and The Midnight Show Murders.
Schulz, Charles M.: -
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.
