The latest volume of The Complete Peanuts, the series of hardback collections of the entirety of Charles M. Schulz’s strips, has a very distinguished contributor: President Barack Obama. Fantagraphics Books, publishers of the series, quote POTUS saying: “Like millions of Americans, I grew up with Peanuts. But, I never outgrew it.”
This is the penultimate 25th volume of what Fantagraphis describes as “the definitive collection of the most critically and commercially successful comic strip of the 20th century, reprinting every single one of the almost 18,000 strips created by Schulz between 1950 and 2000.” The following 26th volume, due for release in October 2016, will include “all of Schulz’s non-strip related Peanuts art,” and an afterword by Schulz’s widow Jean Schulz.
With this contribution, POTUS joins an illustrious list of prior contributors, including Diana Krall, Alec Baldwin and Whoopi Goldberg. Exactly what decided President Obama in putting the Peanuts introduction on his priority list isn’t clear, although Fantagraphics’ own efforts to enlist him are described in a New York Times article here. It’s unlikely to influence the outcome of this year’s presidential elections, for one thing. But on the other hand, the thought of a future Peanuts volume with an introduction by President Trump may be horrible enough to sway a few final undecided voters…