MORE PEANUTS

The latest in the Fantagraphics Peanuts reprint extravaganza is out, The Complete Peanuts: 1967-1969: The Definitive Collection of Charles M. Schulz’s Comic Strip Masterpiece (340 6x8-inch pages, b/w; hardcover, $28.95), and it, like the previous eight volumes, is a superb example of the book designer’s craft, here, Seth’s. Nothing in the design draws particular attention to itself and therefore away from the book’s chief function, which is to present the comic strip to the best advantage — in this case, three daily strips to each page, uncluttered and therefore unblemished by any of those self-conscious designer-ish gimmicks like drawings screened to gray tone lines thereby destroying the art that you bought the book to look at or blown up so that the lines are raggedy and unattractive — nothing, in other words, Kiddish at all. Only in the book cover, jacket, and front- and back-matter is Seth’s subtle touch on display, its austerity matching that of the cartoonist’s simple but expressive visuals.

Each cover of the series has carried a bold-line close-up of one of the Peanuts cast, accented with gray tone and bathed in a subdued color, a different one for each book. With the faces, Seth aimed, he said, to “create a small moment of recognition/confusion.” At worldfamouscomics.com in November 2004, he explained: “I want the viewer to see the books in a slightly different light than all the other Peanuts books they’ve seen for the last 40 years. That’s why the color scheme is very low key and the overall design scheme is rather sedate. I want to try to ‘re-brand’ (to use a horrible modernism) the Peanuts strip. Or, really, I should say, I want to return Peanuts to the proper branding — which is sophisticated humor aimed at an adult audience. Too many decades of children’s products and marketing has confused the buying audience into thinking that Schulz was writing for kids. I wanted to get away from the bright colors and so forth, usually associated with kids’ books. Also, I really want this series of books to have some feeling for the sadder human moments of the strip, and I hope the overall design of the books (inside and out) will capture some of that.”

In taking the book design assignment, Seth (aka Gregory Gallant), a cartoonist himself (graphic novels like Clyde Fans: Book One and Wimbledon Green and It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken), wanted “a chance to do something beautiful for Sparky [as Schulz preferred to be called]. It is a daunting task in that sense,” he continued: “The only thing that makes it easier is that there have been many many horrible editions of Peanuts, and his work still goes on unharmed. At the very least, I can’t hurt Peanuts.”