Written and Illustrated by
Luca Debus and Francesco Matteuzzi
Published by Top Shelf Productions
Charles Schulz died in early 2000 and as time goes on his legend grows. Peanuts, more than any other classic comic strip, has become a major part of our culture, not just our pop culture. There have been numerous books out about the cartoonist himself, the man behind Charlie Brown and Snoopy and the others.
One of them even won this year’s Eisner Award. What more is there to say about Schulz? Well…Funny Things, actually! To be specific, Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles Schulz.
Luca Debus and Francesco Matteuzzi have presented us with this wonderfully clever book which tells the Schulz story in the exact same format as Schulz created his legend in the first place! Right down to the font on the title of the Sunday strips.
That’s right. There are Sunday strips and daily strips, pretend ones at least, and there are more than 400 pages of them! This book, like Good Ol’ Sparky’s life, is long. It’s also very detailed, though, as we follow the man from birth to death with old Schulz popping up from time to time early on, looking back, and young Schulz popping up a lot later, being looked back on.
Although at its heart, this is a book about Peanuts, I don’t believe we actually ever see Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy, Lucy, or any of the rest, despite the increasingly important role they play in the cartoonist’s life.
Instead, we’re asked to see that life itself in strip format, and, surprisingly, it works! I was worried going in because, once you get past the ingenious concept, the two Italian creators simply aren’t the great man himself. Would they be able to make the strips funny, relatable, pithy, quotable, philosophical, and actually touch the readers’ hearts? Schulz himself made it look effortless but, despite their best efforts, hundreds of other cartoonists weren’t able to do it.
I’m happy to report that my fears, although logical, were completely unfounded.
Our creators here succeed admirably! I admit that I teared up at this book more so than I have at any book in a long time. Seeing the highlights of Schulz’s life rather than just reading about them goes a long way toward humanizing the legend. We see his fears, his insecurities, and his sometimes deeply emotional losses as much as his more familiar successes, triumphs in multiple media, and astonishing successes.
As we near the inevitable end, of both the book and Schulz himself, Luca and Matteuzzi manage to never lose the humor, the punchlines, in spite of the declining health of their subject.
I’ve probably read a hundred or more Peanuts books, seen all but the most recent TV specials multiple times and all of the feature length movies, hung onto toys, stickers, and other ephemera for decades, and read biographies of the man since the 1970s. This book, Funny Things, dealing as it does with Charles Schulz and his ambitions, his hobbies, his romances, his spiritualism and more, in unique ways no other book has ever even tried, won me over big time.
After this, I really will never be able to see any Peanuts collector as having any kind of complete collection unless Funny Things, A Comic Strip Biography of Charles Schulz, is on the shelf right next to every other Peanuts book.
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if next year we saw Funny Things also take home an Eisner.
Booksteve recommends.
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