Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang have always been there. Since childhood, they were on every newspaper comics page I read and, when I was sick, I could usually look forward to a new paperback Peanuts collection from my parents to cheer my day. Even since the death of Charles M. Schulz in February 2000 -- just hours before his final strip was printed before his dreaded retirement -- strip reruns have continued to appear in many newspapers.

But the Peanuts gang at its inception was a very different beast than the familiar characters of the last few decades. Now, Fantagraphics is reissuing the entire, 50-year series in new, high-quality volumes starting with the initial collection of strips from 1950-52.

The characters are instantly recognizable, but are still notably distinct from their more recent incarnations. For one thing, they're younger. Charlie himself is just 4 years old, Lucy is a toddler and Linus is still in diapers (and has not yet discovered his addictions to blankets and thumbs). Patty is much less tomboyish and has no "Peppermint" prefix to her name. Pig-Pen, Marcy, Franklin, Sally and others have not yet appeared in the neighborhood, while Shermy, who dominates many of these early strips, would later disappear.

Snoopy is a little more puppyish, lacking the two-legged walk, doghouse and flights of fancy (Joe Cool, World War I flying Ace, etc.) that would come to distinguish his character. In fact, it's never really clear just whose dog he is; he seems to be a collectively owned pup.

As for Charlie, he isn't yet the born loser he grew to be. He's the object of neighborhood affection as much as derision, he sometimes gets the girl and he frequently gets the better of his peers.

These early strips also launch several timeless Peanuts traditions, including baby Schroeder's love of Beethoven, Charlie Brown's signature shirt and his inability to kick a football (although his first mishap was orchestrated by Violet, not Lucy). At the same time, the humor of some of these strips will baffle some readers; the 1950s mindset was, we are sharply reminded, quite different than the mindset of today.

The collection ends with a detailed biography of Schulz, as well as an insightful interview conducted in 1987.

Newspaper comic strips are not the usual grist for the Rambles mill, even in these pages devoted to the graphic arts. But this tremendous project, spanning five decades of ground-breaking artistry, deserves notice, and Fantagraphics should be lauded for tackling such an impressive body of work. I look forward to future additions and the further development of the Peanuts gang!

- Rambles
written by Tom Knapp
published 24 January 2004