The Complete Peanuts 1953-1954. Charles M. Schulz

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      THE COMPLETE PEANUTS

       by Charles M. Schulz

      Publishers: Gary Groth & Kim Thompson

       Designer: Seth

      Special thanks to Jeannie Schulz, without whom this project would not have come to fruition. Thanks to Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates, especially Paige Braddock, Heather Orosco, and Kim Towner. Thanks for special support from United Media.

      First published in America in 2004 by Fantagraphics Books, 7563 Lake City Way, Seattle, WA 98115, USA

      First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

      This digital edition first published in 2015 by Canongate Books

       www.canongate.tv

      The Complete Peanuts is copyright © United Feature Syndicate Inc, 2004 Foreword copyright © Walter Cronkite, 2004 ‘Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000’ copyright © Gary Groth, 2004

      All rights reserved

      ISBN 978 1 78211 895 4

      Permission to duplicate materials from Peanuts comic strips must be obtained from United Feature Syndicate. Permission to quote or reproduce for reviews and notices must be obtained from the respective copyright holders. United Feature Syndicate’s Peanuts® web site may be accessed at www.snoopy.com.

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

      Peanuts has caused me almost as much anguish as has been suffered, through vast disappointment or the dastardly doings of fate, by so many of Charles Schulz’s wondrous characters.

      The first of my tales of woe concerns a planned visit with Mr. Schulz in his Santa Rosa home, as arranged by a good friend of his, the noted California newspaper editor and columnist, Neil Morgan. A day in July was set. My anticipation began to grow, like that of a teenager about to meet a rock star. At almost the last moment, a news assignment took me to another corner of the globe. An understanding Schulz agreed to postpone the meeting to another date when I would be back in the States.

      And then, tragedy struck — he suffered the cancer attack from which he would not recover. That huge part of the world’s population that adored him grieved and I, deprived of the opportunity to at least briefly share his company, was a particularly stricken mourner.

      As did others who were luckier and got to know Schulz personally, perhaps I would have assumed the privilege of calling him by his almost onomatopoeic nickname, Sparky.

      Back there in 1922, just a few days after he was born to the wife of a barber in St. Paul, Minnesota, an uncle was so enchanted by his infant nephew he started calling him Sparky — after a horse, Spark Plug, featured in a then-popular comic strip called Barney Google. The nickname stuck, and Charles Schulz was called Sparky the rest of his life.