In this second complete collection of his early Peanuts work, Charles Schulz begins to develop clear ideas about the future personalities his precocious imps will bear.

The prankster Charlie Brown becomes a bit more of a sadsack, the lonely lad who still finds good cheer in any circumstance. He's smart for his age, but rarely wise in his choice of words. His ego knows no bounds. He catches more than he pitches, but his teams still lose. His kites rarely fly.

The wide-eyed toddler Lucy grows a bit more abrasive, taking great pride in her badge of fussbudgetry while developing a pre-kindergarten crush on the musically advanced Schroeder. She's still wide-eyed and cute in her deviltry, however -- a far cry from the perpetually crabby Lucy yet to come. She excels at checkers and, surprisingly, golf.

Linus develops an attachment to his blanket. Pig-Pen appears and, in one strip, takes a bath, while the slightly older Shermy appears less frequently than he did in the 1950-52 collection. (Is his eventual disappearance ever explained? I wonder!)

And Snoopy takes his first anthropomorphic steps, thinking clearly in "human" speak and dancing occasionally on his hind legs.

Schulz exhibits significant growth in this new volume, and his beloved characters have evolved nicely in a short span of years. They are more like the Peanuts I knew in my youth, but they are full of surprises, too. The humor, often subtle, is still sometimes hard to understand five decades later, and yet it's hard not to grin at each strip and every panel.

Fantagraphics, the publishing house responsible for this ongoing series of every Peanuts strip Schulz ever penned, has produced a collection to be treasured. This is second in a series of 25 books, which will span 50 years of creative genius over a 12.5-years publication schedule. If you, like I, have a set of dusty old Peanuts collections from your youth, forget them; this series will reprint every strip Schulz drew, many of which have not been seen since their original publications long ago. And, unlike my well-worn paperback collection, these solid volumes are built to last for generations.

- Rambles
written by Tom Knapp
published 2 October 2004