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La storia dei Peanuts
Era una notte buia e tempestosa (o così ci piace immaginare) quando Charles Monroe Schulz , un giovane fumettista originario del Minnesota, si recò negli uffici della United Features per vendere i diritti della sua striscia. Ciò che nessuno poteva immaginare è che quella striscia, all'apparenza tanto semplice, avrebbe rivoluzionato il panorama del fumetto mondiale, introducendo concetti come depressione e crisi di identità a un pubblico che era abituato a gag più o meno riuscite e battute costruite per strappare una facile risata.
Questo libro raccoglie oltre 1.300 strisce , selezionate con cura all'interno della produzione completa dell’autore, con l’obiettivo di ricostruire La Storia dei Peanuts attraverso un percorso rigoroso ma a sua volta originale. L’ampia parte introduttiva ci avvicina al mondo creato da Schulz con un approccio unico, attraverso una presentazione dettagliata dei personaggi e tabelle cronologiche. Charlie Brown è sempre stato il padrone di Snoopy ? Quando compare la coperta di Linus ? Come ha iniziato Schroeder a suonare il pianoforte? Chi ha presentato Piperita Patty a Charlie Brown? Le risposte a queste e a decine di altre domande soddisferanno la curiosità di milioni di appassionati, sperando di far innamorare dei Peanuts anche un solo lettore in più.
Questo libro raccoglie oltre 1.300 strisce , selezionate con cura all'interno della produzione completa dell’autore, con l’obiettivo di ricostruire La Storia dei Peanuts attraverso un percorso rigoroso ma a sua volta originale. L’ampia parte introduttiva ci avvicina al mondo creato da Schulz con un approccio unico, attraverso una presentazione dettagliata dei personaggi e tabelle cronologiche. Charlie Brown è sempre stato il padrone di Snoopy ? Quando compare la coperta di Linus ? Come ha iniziato Schroeder a suonare il pianoforte? Chi ha presentato Piperita Patty a Charlie Brown? Le risposte a queste e a decine di altre domande soddisferanno la curiosità di milioni di appassionati, sperando di far innamorare dei Peanuts anche un solo lettore in più.
Hardcover
Published March 17, 2023
About the author
Charles M. Schulz
3,014 books1,660 followersCharles Monroe Schulz was an American cartoonist, whose comic strip Peanuts proved one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and is still widely reprinted on a daily basis.
Schulz's first regular cartoons, Li'l Folks, were published from 1947 to 1950 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press; he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post; the first of 17 single-panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there. In 1948, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January, 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached the United Feature Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. The strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. He also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip called It's Only a Game (1957–1959), but he abandoned it due to the demands of the successful Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a single-panel strip ("Young Pillars") featuring teenagers to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years, almost without interruption; during the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997. At its peak, Peanuts appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. Schulz stated that his routine every morning consisted of eating a jelly donut and sitting down to write the day's strip. After coming up with an idea (which he said could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours), he began drawing it, which took about an hour for dailies and three hours for Sunday strips. He stubbornly refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that "it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him." In November 1999 Schulz suffered a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized. Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he could not read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999.
Schulz often touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible Luke 2:8-14 to explain "what Christmas is all about." In personal interviews Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side. Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church. In the 1960s, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as being consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations during his lectures about the gospel, as he explained in his bestselling paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, the first of several books he wrote on religion and Peanuts, and other popular culture items. From the late 1980s, however, Schulz described himself in interviews as a "secular humanist": “I do not go to church anymore... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in.”
Schulz's first regular cartoons, Li'l Folks, were published from 1947 to 1950 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press; he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post; the first of 17 single-panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there. In 1948, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January, 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached the United Feature Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. The strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. He also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip called It's Only a Game (1957–1959), but he abandoned it due to the demands of the successful Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a single-panel strip ("Young Pillars") featuring teenagers to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years, almost without interruption; during the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997. At its peak, Peanuts appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. Schulz stated that his routine every morning consisted of eating a jelly donut and sitting down to write the day's strip. After coming up with an idea (which he said could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours), he began drawing it, which took about an hour for dailies and three hours for Sunday strips. He stubbornly refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that "it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him." In November 1999 Schulz suffered a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized. Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he could not read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999.
Schulz often touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible Luke 2:8-14 to explain "what Christmas is all about." In personal interviews Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side. Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church. In the 1960s, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as being consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations during his lectures about the gospel, as he explained in his bestselling paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, the first of several books he wrote on religion and Peanuts, and other popular culture items. From the late 1980s, however, Schulz described himself in interviews as a "secular humanist": “I do not go to church anymore... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in.”
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 17, 2021
Una splendida lettura. Son più profonde 4 vignette in una striscia di Schulz, che certi romanzi da centinaia di pagine.
June 24, 2026
Non saprò mai come quest’edizione digitale sia riuscita ad avere le autorizzazioni alla vendita.
Non ho potuto leggere le schede di presentazione dei personaggi, il testo non s’ingrandiva allo scopo. Aveva l’aria di un grossolano travaso da PDF.
Con la lettura del fumetto, andavo a fortuna, almeno nella prima metà del libro: vignette con testo tagliato sulla parte superiore, pagine di fumetto intere che rimanevano bianche, il fumetto che riappariva quando voleva.
Carattere che cambiava da una decade di strisce all’altra, e non a beneficio di chiarezza di lettura.
Tradizione buona in momenti rari, per la maggior parte un tonfo clamoroso, che contemplava anche errori da scuola primaria.
Meno male che si tratta di un acquisto in offerta lampo, non merita il prezzo di listino.
Indubbiamente un’occasione persa su tutta la linea, ed una mossa da manuale su come frustrare il pubblico e persuaderlo a non continuare ad acquistare e leggere.
Il danno è a monte: ad un fumetto notoriamente molto gradevole e profondo in molte occasioni, che va conosciuto però ad adolescenza iniziata. Non è infantile.
Non ho potuto leggere le schede di presentazione dei personaggi, il testo non s’ingrandiva allo scopo. Aveva l’aria di un grossolano travaso da PDF.
Con la lettura del fumetto, andavo a fortuna, almeno nella prima metà del libro: vignette con testo tagliato sulla parte superiore, pagine di fumetto intere che rimanevano bianche, il fumetto che riappariva quando voleva.
Carattere che cambiava da una decade di strisce all’altra, e non a beneficio di chiarezza di lettura.
Tradizione buona in momenti rari, per la maggior parte un tonfo clamoroso, che contemplava anche errori da scuola primaria.
Meno male che si tratta di un acquisto in offerta lampo, non merita il prezzo di listino.
Indubbiamente un’occasione persa su tutta la linea, ed una mossa da manuale su come frustrare il pubblico e persuaderlo a non continuare ad acquistare e leggere.
Il danno è a monte: ad un fumetto notoriamente molto gradevole e profondo in molte occasioni, che va conosciuto però ad adolescenza iniziata. Non è infantile.
January 8, 2026
Ogni sera, prima di andare a letto qualche vignetta. Non posso più farne a meno. Stupendo sempre.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews