These panels from the February 14, 1967 strip have a certain manic energy to them that contrasts with Schulz’s usually calm images. Even images such as Charlie Brown getting knocked out of his clothes by another well hit baseball does not have the energy of these two panels: the flying sweat drops, Lucy’s wild hair, and Snoopy’s improbably frayed ears. It looks like something out of a contemporary art comic.

An unusual use of text by Schulz in this strip from March 22, 1967. The batting averages placed inside the little explosion of Jose’s swings act as an effective shorthand to show his hitting skill. Instead of reading a narration of Peppermint Patty telling us he’s great, or having a series of panels showing him hitting balls (Schulz’s baseball scenes are never that involved), we “see” his skill through an abstraction of numbers and statistics.

I never did follow up my series on baseball comics with a post on baseball in Peanuts. Thinking about it just now as I scanned this last image, it occurred to me how Schulz’s baseball is as two dimensional as his settings. In Peanuts baseball is primarily pitcher, catcher, and outfielder, with the batter off-panel for the most part (that panel above is a rare case I’ve seen of hitting being shown). The focus is on Charlie Brown (pitcher) with the most frequent other fielders being Schroeder (catcher) and Lucy (outfield, I imagine her in center field creating a straight line through Charlie from Schroeder to her). Snoopy (shortstop) is also a more central position (particular when compared with first or third).

Yesterday, Craig Yoe noted the 56th anniversary of the first Sunday Peanuts page. What a wonderful, simple use of composition and page layouts. Schulz uses a basic nine panel grid altered by 2 symmetrically placed wide panels: at the beginning for the title (which is seen in all the Sundays) and at the end. Charlie Brown is centered in all but the first panel, isolated in those minimalist Schulz settings (a little less minimalist here than in later years, but showing all the same visual tropes: wall, fence, tree, part of a house). He faces left (twice) then right (twice) then back to the left again. He’s looking around in the most basic way. The penultimate panel increases the isolation with that empty background of a grass horizon. The single sound effect is made more prominent and “loud” by being the only word (other than the never absent title and signature) on the page. The transition from the small almost empty panel to the long crowded panel (even the grass is more detailed) increases the impact of the gag.

Yes, that is a talking wall. Awesome.

In other news, I’m expecting a slow down in posting here for at least the next two weeks. I’ve got a wedding coming up and I’m working on figuring out my new webcomic, so I’m going to pace out the reviews here. I should have reviews of Frank Santoro’s Storeyville and Cold Heat #1 up this week.

Seth’s design of Fantagraphics’ Complete Peanuts series is beautifully done beginning with a paired down simplicity (compare to the busy covers of Ware’s Krazy & Ignatz design) and ending with slight variations in each volume (one character is featured on each volume), a lasting design that retains its worth even after five volumes. In this sense the design mirrors the content: Peanuts is a minimalist strip that traffics in endless variation.

The endpapers are my favorite part of the design. They feature a montage of background objects from the strip–houses, trees, fences, a car, a snowman–shorn of any accompanying characters. I could read a whole comic of just Schulz’s minimal backgrounds. Those backgrounds mark the boundaries of the Peanuts gang’s world: streets, yards, fields, living rooms, and bedrooms. Their whole world, as we see it, plays out in those areas. This is really driven home when you read a lot of strips at once (like a whole book). These places are like the Coconino County desert in Krazy Kat, endlessly varied, yet somehow always the same.

These backgrounds are alwaya partial. We never see a whole house, just one end. We never seem to even see a whole couch or tree, just ends and trunks. A few examples, including a rare look at a mailbox.

Two pages in (after a series title page) is a spread that features a simple grassy horizon line, green beneath, blue above. The next spread is completely filled by a stone wall. These two horizons are two of the most common Peanuts settings, where much of the conversation takes place. Here they are (again, like the endpapers) empty of characters. These empty landscapes and backgrounds are kind of sad, as if the characters have all grown up and moved on.

After reading five volumes (that’s over 10 years of daily strips) Schulz’s variations become ever more prominent. Variations that are familiar to anyone who’s read Peanuts: Charlie Brown and his kite, Linus and Snoopy fighting over the blanket, losing baseball games, Charlie Brown getting insulted by his friends, Lucy and Schroeder at the piano, and more. I find some of these situations always amusing and inventive, others I quickly tire of. I can’t quite place why one would fall in either category. Perhaps it is just the quality and inventiveness of the variation or the comfort in the identical ending to each variation. One’s almost tempted to do some kind of side-by-side study.

Over the course of the series one also notices the shifting cast of characters and their prominence. By this volume Shermie and Violet, two characters introduced from the beginning, have lost any real prominence. Neither ever developed much of a personality and I get the idea that Schulz just threw them into a strip occasionally because he felt he had to. Their lack of prominence is relative to the rising of other characters like Snoopy (as he becomes more a character than just a dog), Linus, and (in this volume) Sally.

One last comment about this series: the index. An index in each volume is such a boon to the reader. I love being able to look through the index and refer back to strips, or to look up the number of times “baseball” or “vocabulary/spelling” have appeared. For a definitve edition of a world famous strip, an index is invaluable. I can only hope that some combined index might appear in a future volume (please?).