A Golden Celebration the Art and the Story of the World's Best-Loved Comic Strip

Description

A Golden Celebration : the Art and the Story of the World's Best-loved Comic Strip Hardcover Book.
Charles Monroe Schulz. … more A Golden Celebration : the Art and the Story of the World's Best-loved Comic Strip Hardcover Book.
Charles Monroe Schulz.
Large Hardcover Comic books, strips.
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Collins Publishers (January 1, 1990).
Language ‏ : ‎ English.
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 255 pages.

This book honors the art of the author & lets readers relive the life & times of the most beloved - & the most widely syndicated - comic strip in history, from its infancy in 1950 right through glorious middle age. Watch as your favorite characters grow into their most popular incarnations - Charlie Brown as tenacious baseball manager; Lucy as psychiatrist; Snoopy as Flying Ace; Linus as acolyte of the Great Pumpkin. One hundred ninety-two pages of two-color strips & 64 pages of four-color Sunday strips (more than 1,000 strips in all) & photographs are rounded out by Schulz's own comments (offering rare insight into the mind behind the mayhem). Annotation. Will Charlie Brown ever get to kick the footballs? Will Schroeder finally return Lucy's love? Will Linus give up his security blanket? Will Peppermint Party ever pass a test? And, most importantly will Snoopy--that canine literary ace--ever be published? "To take a blank piece of paper and draw characters that people love and worry about is extremely satisfying. It really does not matter what you are called or where your work is placed as long as it brings some kind of joy to some person some place."--Charles Schulz.



Charles M. Schulz has been cartooning for an astonishing 50 years (the "Peanuts" strip itself debuted October 2, 1950, but he drew an earlier incarnation called "Li'l Folks" before that). Peanuts: A Golden Celebration is a remarkable collection of strips spanning that time period. Readers get to see the first appearance of Linus, Marcy, Pigpen, and Woodstock, and even the momentous first time Lucy holds a football for Charlie Brown to kick. Schulz comments on the cartoons and his inspirations via notes in the margin, ranging from boyhood stories about his father (a barber, just like Charlie Brown's) to an account of the time the narcolepsy experts at Stanford University expressed concerns over Peppermint Patty's constant sleeping in class. One of the most interesting inclusions is that of several letters of complaint, ranging from readers whose religious sensibilities have been offended to a 1969 missive from Schulz's own syndicate asking him not to depict Franklin in the same school as the white students anymore. Naturally, the much-loved "Peanuts" holiday specials are covered, as is the musical adaptation You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, but it's the strips that really make the book. Readers can follow the evolution of Schulz's drawing style--deliberately less realistic as the years went on--and even check out a few panels drawn by Schulz's own cartooning heroes. This is a terrific compilation that serves well both as a chronicle of popular culture and as just a really funny collection of comic strips. Don't wait for the Great Pumpkin to bring you one. less