he Complete Peanuts 1979-1980 : It's 1980, Charlie Brown... and Peppermint Patty is wearing corn-rows! Plus, a strange romance...Charles Schulz enters his fourth decade as the greatest cartoonist of his generation, and Peanuts remains as fresh and lively as it ever was. (How do we know it's 1980? Well, for one thing Peppermint Patty gets herself those Bo-Derek-in-10 cornrows -- Peanuts' timelessness occasionally shows a crack!) That said, The Complete Peanuts 1979-1980 includes a number of classic storylines, including the month-long sequence in which an ill Charlie Brown is hospitalized (including a particularly spooky moment when he wonders if he's died and nobody's told him yet), and an especially eventful trek with Snoopy, Woodstock, and the scout troop (now including a little girl bird, Harriet). And Snoopy is still trying on identities left and right, including the "world-famous surveyor," the "world-famous census taker," and Blackjack Snoopy, the riverboat gambler. In other extended stories, Snoopy launches an ill-fated airline (with Lucy as the agent, Linus as the luggage handler, and Marcie as what it was still OK then to call the stewardess)... Peppermint Patty responds to being leaked upon by a ceiling by hiring a lawyer (unfortunately, she again picks Snoopy)... plus one of the great, forgotten romances of Peanuts that will startle even long-time Peanuts connoisseurs: Peppermint Patty and..." Pig-Pen "?!

The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982 : With this volume, The Complete Peanuts ventures into the lesser-known 1980s, and Peanuts fans are sure to find plenty of surprises. In Snoopy-family news, Spike is drafted into the Infantry (don't worry, it's only Snoopy's imaginary World War I army), and a brand new brother, "Marbles" (with the spotty ears) takes his bow. We also see two major baseball-oriented stories, one in which Charlie Brown joins Peppermint Patty's team, and another in which Charlie Brown and his team lose their baseball field. In other stories, Peppermint Patty witnesses the "butterfly miracle," Linus protests that he is not Sally's "Sweet Babboo," Sally (in an unrelated sequence) gets fat, the Van Pelts get into farming, and two of the most eccentric characters from later Peanuts years, the hyperaggressive Molly Volley and the whiny "Crybaby" Boobie, make a return engagement. Charles Schulz's Peanuts world will never grow old, and Fantagraphics' complete reprinting of this masterpiece, now in its eighth year -- still lovingly designed by world-class cartoonist Seth -- has firmly established itself as one of the very finest archival comic-strip projects ever done.