The Complete Peanuts 1969-1970

Many memorable stories here:Snoopy on the moon, Lucy feeds Schroeder's piano to the kite-eating tree, the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm scenario of a protest against that stupidest war, Vietnam Bloody War. Alas, from now on the Peanuts Gang shall be progressively more neglected in favour of Snoopy's fancy impersonations and his little bird's friend, Woodstock. Frieda gone, Shermy gone, and scarcely a story that doesn't involve Snoopy and/or Woodstock. But this is still a good book, with many goldies and oldies.

After nine previous volumes, this volume, volume 10, brings Peanuts into my lifetime. It was fun to read my birthday strip which has Linus and Charlie Brown discussing the fact that one more forfeit will put their baseball team in first place. For some reason, I find this comforting.

In any case, for those of us who really enjoy Peanuts, there is plenty to enjoy from 1969 and 1970. Two words: "head beagle." We also finally discover that the name of that bird that can't seem to fly straight is Woodstock.

All it all, it has been a great pleasure to collect these volumes of Peanuts strips. As always, I can't wait for the next one to come.

Another momentous event occurs in this, the tenth volume of what seems like an infinite series. 232 pages in, the various birds that have hung around Snoopy's place since the mid 1960s finally achieve distillation down to a recognizable unit. On June 22nd, 1970, Snoopy addresses the reader: "I finally found out what that stupid bird's name is... you'll never believe it.. Woodstock!" In the tradition of Mutt and Jeff, Batman and Robin, and even Laurel and Hardy, Snoopy and Woodstock became, from that moment on, almost inseparable companions. In this volume Snoopy plays straight man... dog... to Woodstock's fumblings. Most of their interaction at this point follows the same pattern: Woodstock runs into a tree, Snoopy comments, Woodstock takes a raucous birdbath, Snoopy comments, etc. After twenty years of Peanuts, its most famous duo has finally coagulated. A standout volume, indeed.

By this point the Peanuts gang had so settled into their routines, histrionics, and personalities that further comment isn't required. The absences remain more pronounced than the appearances. For instance, Pigpen does not appear once (though his filthy aura graces the spine). Shermy appears twice. When Frieda appears, she almost always goads Snoopy into chasing rabbits and not much more. Franklin's around, but he never plays a leading role. Peppermint Patty's monolithic personality crowds out these lesser characters. And Marcie doesn't even appear until the next volume. The Peanuts stage and cast won't change much for a few decades.

This volume closes out the 1960s. Some consider this decade the strip's absolute peak with the onset of the 1970s signaling the a decline that culminates in the 1990s. Whether true or not, no evidence of decline appears in this volume. Apart from The World War I Flying Ace, Snoopy takes on other personas, including the rather bizarre "World Famous Grocery clerk," first Beagle on the moon ("You can tell I'm returning because I'm facing the other way" (March 8, 10 - 15, 1969), hockey player, aspiring novelist, and a prototype "Joe Cool" complete with shades (June 13, July 24, 1970).

Other highlights include: Lucy throws Schroeder's piano into a kite eating tree (January 20 - 25, 27 - 30, 1969); Lucy looks for the answers to life (March 17 - 21; Linus tells her "5"); a timeout for a bug crossing the infield (May 12, 1969); the little red haired girl moves away (July 14 - 19, 21 - 24, 1969); Snoopy gets "rejection slip shock" (September 12, 1969); Snoopy gets reported to the "Head Beagle" (October 9 - 11, 13 - 18, 20 - 21, 1969); Linus recites "begat" Bible verses (December 21, 1969); Snoopy becomes "Head Beagle" (February 16 - 21, 26 - 28, March 2 - 7, 9 - 13, 1970); a riot breaks out at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm (June 29 - July 4, 6 - 8), "Woodstock is glad that he tastes terrible with cranberry sauce" (November 26, 1970).

"The Complete Peanuts" is now ten volumes strong. Fantagraphics, the publishers of the series, have recently completed the amazing feat of reprinting the complete Krazy Kat Sunday pages. Any company that can accomplish that Herculaen task will very likely finish the entire 50 year run of Peanuts. The single complaint remains the lack of color on the Sunday pages. Still, having even twenty years of complete Peanuts strips more than makes up for the colorless Sundays. Be sure to clear off a few bookshelves to fit the next thirty years in.

This latest PEANUTS collection features an unquestionable "tipping point" -- and you can get a hint as to what it is by checking out the front cover's featured player. No, it's not the high point of the "World War I Flying Ace" era; in fact, the fad that had begun in '66 quietly exited the scene during this period. (The brooding 6/1/69 Sunday strip could be taken as a formal recognition of the fact. When the "Flying Ace" returned to the strip a decade later, the bullets and dogfights were dispensed with in favor of a more wistful, nostalgic approach.) But there's no question that Snoopy becomes the strip's primo star during the height of what Sally memorably mischaracterizes as the "Age of Aquariums." Other characters get memorable moments within these pages, of course, but Snoopy gets far and away the most meaningful "panel time."

Many longstanding Snoopy-related themes that would carry PEANUTS through the next decade and beyond are first introduced here. The horde of identical birds that had long interacted with Snoopy is finally pared down to a single companion, Woodstock, who henceforth will serve as ol' Snoop's "Bird Friday" and silent (apart from the occasional outburst of crooked vertical lines) partner in countless strips. Snoopy's persistent efforts to wade through those infamously "dark and stormy" opening sentences and gain fame as the "world's greatest novelist" also begin during this time. Most symbolic of all are the trio of continuities that I'll call "The Head Beagle Trilogy." In round one, Frieda, making her last valiant effort to get Snoopy to chase rabbits, commits a fatal faux pas by reporting his lax attitude to "The Head Beagle." She thereby becomes a pariah (perhaps it wasn't a coincidence that the naturally curly one dropped out of the main cast soon thereafter!) as Schulz builds the "fear factor" up to comically grotesque proportions. A most unsatisfying concluding strip, however, leaves the reader with a sense of letdown. Ditto the second series of strips, in which the H.B. assigns Snoopy to a "secret mission" on the playground. Schulz again drops the ball by allowing Snoopy to linger there for only two days' worth of strips before getting chased away. Finally, Schulz decides to cut to the chase and make Snoopy HIMSELF the Head Beagle. This works out much better, though it does seem rather strange that the H.B. is apparently responsible for the activities of all dogs throughout the world (!). The not-yet-named Woodstock has his most memorable "anonymous" role as Snoopy's secretary; that gig would linger beyond the end of the continuity (not to mention be featured in the feature film "Snoopy Come Home" several years later). After Snoopy gets stripped of his title (for cracking under the strain and seeking asylum with Peppermint Patty), Schulz mines a few more continuities out of the situation. The most memorable of these finds the deposed kingpin invited to speak (?) at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, only to be caught in the middle of a riot protesting the plight of Vietnam "war dogs." Readers of David Michaelis' SCHULZ AND PEANUTS will recognize this as the story in which Schulz was supposedly "mirroring" his concurrent affair. (I won't comment on that here, but does anyone remember that Snoopy had been ready to get married to that "skating/beach beagle" a few years before? And I don't even want to think about what Snoopy's fling with "three airline stewardesses" might represent.) Perhaps in reaction to all this overheated material, Snoopy's next major "role" after the "Daisy Hill Riot"/"love affair" sequence was the far more prosaic one of a "world-famous grocery clerk."

Snoopy's "journeys to places unknown" also result in several memorable continuities in this volume. First, the beagle goes on an unsuccessful journey to find his mother. Snoopy would meet plenty of relatives -- too many, in fact -- in the years just ahead, but the time for doing so was not quite ripe. Then, in late 1970, Snoopy helps Woodstock walk (note the verb) south so that the bird "won't upset the ecology." The pair get only two blocks from home, but Snoopy's kidnapping by an over-eager little girl would be used again during "Snoopy Come Home". (The girl isn't quite as wacky here as she is on screen; in fact, she goes nameless and only appears in two panels.)

Snoopy dominates the proceedings, but Charlie Brown and Linus get to star in what is undoubtedly the volume's most inexpressibly sad continuity: the sudden departure of the Little Red-Haired Girl from the neighborhood. Tragically, Charlie can't bring himself to speak to his icon, even at this juncture, and the angry Linus flips out, screaming his frustration at his tongue-tied friend and even threatening Lucy when she happens to get in the way. Linus gets in one final lick, too, kicking Charlie in the butt a few days later after the wishy-washy one begins mooning over "what might have been" yet again. Was this continuity ever reprinted in books? If so, I never saw it. I can understand cutting out the gags in which Charlie falls headfirst out of a ski-run chair lift and jumps headfirst off a baseball backstop, but if the book publishers really did ignore this sequence out of some misguided sense of sensitivity for Charlie (or for Linus' reputation), then they missed a trick.

Several stand-alone gags illustrate the conservative vision at the heart of Schulz' work, even as he tried to understand -- and, in certain instances, co-opt -- the rebellious spirit of this famously turbulent time. The "Love Balloon" gag of 4/19/69 could almost be taken as a veiled rebuke of the hippie-ish sentiment that "love is all you need." Even more memorable is the strip of 7/30/70 in which Schulz ever so delicately skirts the issue of abortion. "Your ignorance of theology and medicine is appalling!" snorts Lucy after Linus wonders aloud what would happen if a couple decided not to have a baby "waiting to be born" in heaven. "I still think it's a good question," muses Linus, and the question still bedevils our society to this day.

Fantagraphics' presentation is the same as it ever was, including the obligatory introduction by Mo Willems (uh, who?). It's substance over style all the way, only now the substance comes packaged in black-and-white spotted fur, for the most part. Essential, as always.

Another wild, great year in the world of Peanuts. While no new characters were added in (and The WWI Fighting Ace only showed up in single strips), there were interesting developments:

1: Linus finally showed a temper, twice turning on Charlie Brown for his wishy-washiness. He even throws Lucy for a loop once.

2: The Red-Haired girl moves out. After watching her move out to the soundtrack of Linus's hissy fit, CB spends the rest of the book occasionally missing her.

3: Lucy goes through an especially bitter period early on (even once throwing Schroeder's piano to the (kite-)eating tree) that peters out halfway through the first year. After that, she's more a vocal threat (except when she has the football and CB wants to kick it).

4: Freida plays a bigger part, not only causing changes to Snoopy's life but also interacts with the other characters (including a couple of appearances besides Lucy at Schroeder's Piano).

5: Snoopy's deals with (and for a while is) The Head Beagle, has a love affair that drives him to overt rebellion against CB, starts work on his novel and takes Woodstock on as a secretary/companion. In short, we're watching the beginning of Snoopy's final emancipation into his own world. Snoopy also kisses Lucy (and other characters) liberally, to a variety of effects.

6: And finally, Peppermint Patty is starting to develop her weaknesses. She starts interacting with the "Funny Looking Kid (Snoopy)" and starts asking Charlie Brown questions that he is hardly prepared to answer. No crush as of yet, but there are pointers (and the Sunday Strip with the Roses makes one wonder about PP's relationship with her father).

In short, an active strip during this two year period.