Overview

The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974, the 12th volume, picks up on a few loose threads from the previous year: meanwhile, Rerun embarks on his first terrifying journey on the back of his mom's bike and the schoolhouse Sally used to talk to starts talking, or at least thinking, back at her! This collection also includes one of the all-time classic Peanuts sequences, in which Charlie Brown's baseball-oriented hallucinations finally manifest themselves in a baseball-shaped rash on his head. Forced to conceal the embarrassing discoloration with a bag worn over his head, Charlie Brown goes to camp as ""Mister Sack"" and discovers that, shorn of his identity, he's suddenly well-liked and successful. Since the volume features a number of tennis strips as well as extended sequences involving Peppermint Patty's friend Marcie (including a riotous, rarely seen sequence in which Marcie's costume-making and hairstyling skills utterly spoil a skating competition for PP), it seems only right that this volume's introduction should be served up by Schulz's longtime friend, tennis champion Billie Jean King.

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9781606992869

Table of Contents

Reviews

Fantagraphics Books continues its series devoted to chronologically packaging the strip and has not missed a step along the way. ... I'm pleased to inform that the latest edition, the twelfth in the series, is as lovingly curated as the first.--Dw. Dunphy - Popdose It's impossible to think of another popular art form that reaches across generations the way the daily comic strip does...at the pinnacle of that long tradition, there was Charles Schulz.--Seattle Times What more can I say about these wonderful collections? I've enjoyed each one immensely so far; they make me laugh and grin and even smirk a little from time to time... Top notch book. You can't have a much better time than reading these collections. Highly recommended.--Todd Klein, comic book letterer, designer, and writer

Peanuts was an amazing comic. Charles Schulz was an amazing artist. Fantagraphics' Complete Peanuts series are great and [1973-1974] is the best one yet. The humor is unparalleled and the stories are great. ... Charles Schulz was a sad and funny guy and this book features him at his saddest and funniest. If you bought some of the earlier volumes in this series and then forgot about it, then it's time to catch up. --Nick Gazin Schulz had gone from a fairly grounded sense of consensus reality to Snoopy's flights of fancy to outright weirdness... That seems to be the essence of Sparky Schulz to me: even with the pressure of the daily grind and his position as the linchpin of what had become a vast empire, Schulz wrote to amuse himself... At his best in this volume, Schulz gave the readers some of the best stories of his career. --Rob Clough Most comic strips today, especially those that are humor strips, often avoid topical subjects. Schulz embraced the topics of the era. They may date the strip, but it never leaves them outdated. ... Schulz was also not afraid to carry on-going storylines for several days or in some cases, even a couple of weeks. ... [The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974] also features all the favorite subjects like Linus annual wait for the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown s trip to Summer camp, and Sally s letters to Santa Claus. This is why Peanuts is the greatest strip ever! --Tim Janson Even though Woodstock casts a large shadow on the cover of Fantagraphics The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974, it s Peppermint Patty who should get star billing. Not to take anything away from Snoopy s yellow-feathered avian sidekick who does make several appearances through the hardcover tome it s just that Patty eventually gets the brunt of character development attention, while Woodstock exists as the perfect foil for Snoopy. ... Also of note is Schulz s repeated use of standard gags (Lucy pulling the football from Charlie) along with a few new ones, including the consoling 'Poor, sweet baby.' Because of his tendency to keep running gags contained within a year s span, it makes a trade collection work better than with most comic strips. --Christopher Irving The best way to celebrate Schulz and his work is the ongoing series being published by Fantagraphics. The latest volume The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974 is a lovingly produced volume that includes every strip from those two years in a handsome hardcover book designed by Seth. Like earlier editions, it's a thrill to read the strip chronologically and in one fell swoop. --Michael Giltz Where most American gag strips were about the silly things that happen every day, Peanuts was about how to keep on living when you don't get what you want. It was still vital and true at this point, even if more and more of the stories focused on Snoopy quaffing root beers with Bill Mauldin, or writing bad novels, or playing tennis. --Andrew Wheeler Reading [The Complete Peanuts 1971-72 and 1973-74] in one fell swoop, I've kind of come to the conclusion that this period is really the apex of Schulz's career. ...he was never as consistently hilarious or as poignant as he was in the early to mid-70s. If you're only buying two volumes of this series, it should be these two. --Chris Mautner [S]hows Schulz's staggering talent in the prime of his career. --Jonathan Kuehlein Really strong stuff here, including the Charlie Brown wears a sack on his head to summer camp sequence, surely the Poison River of Peanuts. --Patrick Markfort, These hardcover editions are produced with such love and reverence that it's fun to just pick them up and page through them, at least for a bibliophile like myself. Not to be missed. --Greg Hatcher It s impossible to think of another popular art form that reaches across generations the way the daily comic strip does at the pinnacle of that long tradition, there was Charles Schulz. What more can I say about these wonderful collections? I've enjoyed each one immensely so far; they make me laugh and grin and even smirk a little from time to time... Top notch book. You can't have a much better time than reading these collections. Highly recommended.--Todd Klein, comic book letterer, designer, and writer Fantagraphics Books continues its series devoted to chronologically packaging the strip and has not missed a step along the way. ... I'm pleased to inform that the latest edition, the twelfth in the series, is as lovingly curated as the first.--Dw. Dunphy It's impossible to think of another popular art form that reaches across generations the way the daily comic strip does...at the pinnacle of that long tradition, there was Charles Schulz.

What more can I say about these wonderful collections? I ve enjoyed each one immensely so far; they make me laugh and grin and even smirk a little from time to time... Top notch book. You can t have a much better time than reading these collections. Highly recommended.--Todd Klein, comic book letterer, designer, and writer

Reading [The Complete Peanuts 1971-72 and 1973-74] in one fell swoop, I've kind of come to the conclusion that this period is really the apex of Schulz's career. ...he was never as consistently hilarious or as poignant as he was in the early to mid-70s. If you're only buying two volumes of this series, it should be these two. -- Chris Mautner

What more can I say about these wonderful collections? I ve enjoyed each one immensely so far; they make me laugh and grin and even smirk a little from time to time... Top notch book. You can t have a much better time than reading these collections. Highly recommended. --Todd Klein, comic book letterer, designer, and wri

What more can I say about these wonderful collections? I ve enjoyed each one immensely so far; they make me laugh and grin and even smirk a little from time to time... Top notch book. You can t have a much better time than reading these collections. Highly recommended. --Todd Klein, comic book letterer, designer, and writer

Author Information

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.

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