The Complete Peanuts Vol. 26: 1950-2000

by Charles M. Schulz, Jean Schulz (Afterword)

Overview

The final volume of this game-changing series collects Peanuts rarities and other Schulz-created ephemera, much of which has never before been reprinted.

This book collects all of Schulz’s rare, non-strip Peanuts art: storybooks, comic book stories, single-panel gags, advertising art, book illustrations, photographs—even a recipe! With close to 1000 Peanuts images included, all created by Schulz himself, no true Peanuts library would be complete without this final volume. As a fitting end to The Complete Peanuts series, Jean Schulz, who was instrumental in putting this beloved series together, provides an emotional introduction to the volume.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781606999578
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	11/22/2016
Series:	The Complete Peanuts , #26
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	325,373
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 16.40(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

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. 

Jean Schulz is the widow of Charles Schulz and President of the Board of Directors at the Charles M. Schulz Museum.

Editorial Reviews

11/15/2016
This 26th and final volume of the "Complete Peanuts" series presents selected examples of Schulz's Peanuts work outside of newspapers, some of it quite rare. Opening with a real treasure, the first-ever complete reprint of the 17 pre-Peanuts cartoons that Schulz (1922–2000) sold to the Saturday Evening Post, it continues with work from comic books, women's magazines, and several long-out-of-print storybooks and gag cartoon collections, including two delightful tomes spotlighting Snoopy's writing career. Also featured is some of Schulz's advertising work, including his 1960s ads for the Ford Falcon showcasing genuine (and funny) four-panel Peanuts strips not available elsewhere. And while the gang's gushing praise for the car can certainly be seen as uncomfortable commercialism, it's too bad that the selection of these strips here is not complete. Schulz's widow, Jean, provides a very personal afterword about their life together. VERDICT The dreary and uninviting covers of the hardcover "Complete Peanuts" books do not adequately reflect the fun within. But Fantagraphics deserves much thanks for publishing a complete collection of the world's most popular comic strip. Libraries collecting the set shouldn't miss this fine extra volume.—SR

Library Journal