Here's to You, Charlie Brown

Peanuts Coronet #13

by Charles M. Schulz

Selected Cartoons from You Can't Win, Charlie Brown, Vol. 2

Genres: Comics, Humor, Cartoon, Fiction, 20th Century, Graphic Novels Comics, Bande Dessinée

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Charles Monroe Schulz was an American cartoonist, whose comic strip Peanuts proved one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and is still widely reprinted on a daily basis.
Schulz's first regular cartoons, Li'l Folks, were published from 1947 to 1950 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press; he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post; the first of 17 single-panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there. In 1948, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January, 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached the United Feature Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. The strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. He also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip called It's Only a Game (1957–1959), but he abandoned it due to the demands of the successful Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a single-panel strip ("Young Pillars") featuring teenagers to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years, almost without interruption; during the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997. At its peak, Peanuts appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. Schulz stated that his routine every morning consisted of eating a jelly donut and sitting down to write the day's strip. After coming up with an idea (which he said could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours), he began drawing it, which took about an hour for dailies and three hours for Sunday strips. He stubbornly refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that "it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him." In November 1999 Schulz suffered a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized. Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he could not read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999.
Schulz often touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible Luke 2:8-14 to explain "what Christmas is all about." In personal interviews Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side. Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church. In the 1960s, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as being consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations during his lectures about the gospel, as he explained in his bestselling paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, the first of several books he wrote on religion and Peanuts, and other popular culture items. From the late 1980s, however, Schulz described himself in interviews as a "secular humanist": “I do not go to church anymore... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in.”

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this gem in a secondhand store. Grew up with the coloured volumes, so lovely to read an older edition over a sunny lunch break to the Vince Guaraldi Trio soundtrack. Philosophical, charming, funny. Completely holds up. Passing this on to my mum now, who loves Peanuts more than anybody I know.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mean, it's Charles Schulz and Peanuts. Classic stuff.

I gave this one four stars rather than five because it doesn't have any of my favorite sequences, but it's all sort of academic. The full run of Peanuts should get five stars from anyone who loves comics; it's a stone-cold classic. I'd prefer to read the excellent Fantagraphics reprints, but I haven't been able to afford those for my personal library yet, and I found this at a used bookstore for a dollar.

[Tahmid Kabir · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun book that hits hard at home many times despite it being a comic. It's incredible how the author can make childish looking cartoon characters emanate the harsh reality of life in just a few panels and lines of dialogue. Surely makes for a good and quick reality check if you're looking for one.

[Joanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

If your heart bleeds for the Snicker Snack Company, this is the book for you. 😉IYKYK

[Gary Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Pumpkin, Linus' Glasses, Beethoven's Birthday, and the Quest for Peace

Fun stuff! But it's Peanuts, so of course it's gonna be fun, right? A collection of early 1960's strips with a few running plots and themes:

Linus gets glasses, but the darn things keep going MIA. Who's the culprit? That cultured canine and chairman of the board, I suspect.

I thought Lucy was crushing on Schroeder, but in a brief arc herein, ladder-climbing Lucy wants Charlie Brown to run for president so she could parlay being First Lady into being coronated Queen. Hmm, I thought they taught kids Civics back in those halcyon days?

Just in from our "life of quiet desperation" desk, Charlie Brown's efforts to land a gig managing a better baseball team land him back in the frying pan he tried so desperately to escape. But maybe Charlie is an irredeemable blockhead? I mean, his raw recruiting of a "Wrong-Way Corrigan" spy--er, "scout"--results in Linus playing the Boy from B.U.N.G.L.E.

Peace is a recurring theme, which brought back the chill of the Cold War even if these strips predated by several years the escalation of the Vietnam War. Charlie tries to broker peace between the warring Van Pelt siblings and then requests peace-time civilians over wartime soldiers for his Snicker-Snack premium. And Linus, as a harbinger of the hippies, asks, "what color is a peace conference?"

Christmas is coming and several strips reprinted here made their way into the iconic 1965 television special. But in a surprise flip of the script, here it's Linus--our beloved Bible-quoting shepherd who told us what Christmas was really all about--who wants what's coming to him, who wants his fair share, who provides Santa size, color and quantity for each item listed. And it's libertarian Lucy who informs her kid brother that Santa doesn't owe him anything. Talk about a plot twist!

Welcome are the cameos by the early supporting players of Patty, Shermy, and Frieda (she of the naturally curly hair). And it wouldn't be a Peanuts collection without Lucy's psychiatry booth doing a brisk trade and the brick wall for bending an elbow and brooding over one's troubles.

Credit goes to the book's designer who creatively arranged the four-panel strips to prevent each page from becoming a monotonous four-blocks. By overlapping panels and removing some panel borders, adding horizon lines or grass, it really opened up and expanded the pages.

I have a second-hand, banged-around 50-cent Fawcett Crest paperback that would have been a cool collectible except I noticed when reading that more than a few pages were ripped out, tattered paper poking up from the spine a dead giveaway. Grr. Oh, well, I have all the strips in the Fantagraphics collections, but this was such a convenient kick-back-on-the-couch edition.

May all who read this review have the sincerest pumpkin patch of them all (phooey on Freeman in New Jersey!) and for the love of Ludwig, please don't forget December 16 is Beethoven's birthday!

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has the short- lived phase where Linus wears glasses for awhile, and suddenly stops without explanation. No matter, Snoopy's attempts to steal them (and his blanket) make for hilarious, light hearted reading!

[Igor Gligorijevic · Rating 3 out of 5]

5/10

[Bila · Rating 5 out of 5]

classic

[Vincent Darkhelm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great addition to the greatest comic strip of all time. Thank you, Mr Schulz.

[Jeff Crosby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Growing up I read Peanuts daily in the paper—it was everywhere. I also collected many of the paperbacks.

[Rodney Haydon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just recently found out that after an almost two-year hiatus Titan had added a few more facsimile editions to their Peanuts series. This one just arrived today and I immediately started reading it. These are from 1960-62, and I think in the 60's Charles Schulz was really at the top of his game. If you like Peanuts (and who doesn't like Peanuts?) you cannot go wrong with this one.

[Allen Baird · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up at a local bookshop, thinking it would be just an amusing little read. But this book has rekindled my love for the Peanuts characters. Funny and witty. And depressingly mean all at the same time. And Snoopy is just such a mood. I absolutely loved this book.

[Iain Watson]

Here's to You, Charlie Brown (Here's to You, Charlie Brown) by Charles M. Schulz (1986)