The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952, by Charles Schulz

A couple of years ago I went to an Art Spiegelman (creator of Maus) talk at UCLA. He made a comment about Peanuts that struck me. He said all the kids in Peanuts are actually adults, and that Snoopy is the only real kid in the strip. It really is true.

But it wasn't quite as true in 1950, when Schulz started Peanuts. I'd never seen his early Peanuts comics, because most of them hadn't been reprinted until this month, when Fantagraphics published The Complete Peanuts: 1950-1952.

The reason these early comics hadn't been reprinted is because the characters hardly look like the Peanuts everyone knows. Schroeder and Linus are infants who can't talk, and Snoopy is a puppy who acts like a puppy. All the characters are much more childlike. It would have been too confusing for readers used to the fully-developed characters.

But in this book we get to see that the Peanuts looked like when they were still evolving, and what a treat it is! The artwork is delicate and cheery, and the kids run around doing kidlike things – pretending to be spacemen, or cowboys and Indians. The stories are funny without resorting to gags (which has always been a strength of Schulz's).

I really think this book shows Schulz at his best. The book itself is lovingly designed by Seth (creator of the comic Palookaville), and Fantagraphics promises that it is the first of a seried of 25 Peanuts books, reprinting every strip from 1950 to 2000. I'm not sure what year Snoopy changed from a quadruped to a biped but that's when I'll stop buying the books.

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