The Complete Peanuts 1985-1986: Vol. 18 Paperback Edition (Paperback)
As Peanuts hits the mid-'80s, Charles M. Schulz hilariously satirizes the rampant consumerism and litigious nature of the era.
This volume of The Complete Peanuts reaches the middle of the go-go 1980s: a time of "mallies" (mallgoers), "punkers" (behold the sight of Snoopy with a mohawk), and endless litigation about the most trivial matters. Also in this volume: Peppermint Patty wins her school's essay contest, but snatches defeat from the jaws of victory with a disastrous acceptance speech; Lucy talks Charlie Brown into posing for their school's "Swimsuit issue"; Snoopy accidentally destroys his doghouse with a cannon; Sally gives Santa Claus a heart attack (literally!); and Snoopy's brother Spike pops up in various deadpan vignettes set in the desert.
The Complete Peanuts is the publishing project that launched a renaissance in comic strip publishing and the only place Charles M. Schulz's classic has ever been collected in its entirety. Featuring impeccable production values, each volume of this series features two successive years of newspaper strips (dailies and Sundays), plus bonus material such as celebrity introductions, interviews, and a brief biography of Schulz himself.
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.
Patton Oswalt is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and screenwriter.