When they introduced their Prime Reading program recently, the folks at Amazon included The Complete Peanuts, Vol. 1: 1950-1952 in their collection of free reading, and I was more than a little curious after reading about how Snoopy killed Peanuts.
I’ll get to that in a moment, but the early strips are jarring in a few ways. First, of course, the art is different. I actually like the early art just fine. Second, the cast is different. Yes, Charlie Brown is the main character, but the other characters are Shermy, Patty, and Violet — none of whom I even remember from the strip’s heydey.
It’s not even clear that Snoopy is Charlie Brown’s dog — but it is clear that Snoopy is a dog.
He doesn’t stick purely to traditional dog stuff though. Even just a few pages into the collection he’s doing people stuff.
I think I can now say, “I only like old Peanuts — before they sold out.”