I was reading these Fantagraphics collections in real time as they were released, thinking, "Wow, it'll take 12.5 years to get and read them all." Somewhere toward the end, I fell behind pace, and then, as documented elsewhere, I fell ill. Long story a little shorter, I recently found this partially read volume from at least four years ago, subscription card bookmark still waiting for me to return.
And here's the interesting thing, at least to me. Regularly reading these books from the 1950s through the decades, I felt the magic slowly drain from the strip. It became less dark. It fell into patterns. There were storylines that didn't really go anywhere. And in the 90s, the lines got just a bit shaky.
Wait, that's not the interesting part, *this* is: Upon returning to the strip with fresh eyes, it's still great. I'm happy to see repeated concepts that I haven't seen in a long while. The darkness is still there, you just have to look a little harder. (Often, it's Charlie Brown having an existential crisis awake in bed in the middle of the night.) And there are many funny jokes and concepts.
The rare nod to modern times really stands out: email. The internet. The Macarena.
I know the remaining volumes are around here somewhere. Newly looking forward to cracking them open.