Collectors love sets of things. What they hate is incomplete sets. For Peanuts book collectors, this has been the most true with the The Big Book of Peanuts. This huge hardcovers, each collecting a full decades worth of Peanuts daily strips (i.e., not Sundays) were issued annually from 2013 through 2016. Now, even if you don’t know this book set, you can see the problem if you know Peanuts and a little math. Peanuts was around for five decades, and there are only four annually-released volumes. The books that exist cover the Peanuts strips of the 1950s through the 1980s (although not in that order.) Through the years, I’ve repeatedly faced queries about whether we would ever see that final volume. Given the years that had passed, I did not hold out hope.

But I should have, for today I find a solicitation for The Big Book of Peanuts: All the Daily Strips from the 1990s coming in October. And the solicitation even promises that it will have all the dailies from the 2000s as well (no big deal, as that’s less than a page.) There’s no cover shown yet, but assuming they stick with what has gone before, they will likely match the cover of the European series on which this is based.

Are these the absolute best way to read Peanuts? No, their big and awkward and have the feel of “bulk Peanuts”. But they do make a good reference set, and if you get all five and the complete run of Fantagraphics’ Peanuts Every Sunday, you’ll have all of the Peanuts newspaper strips in just 15 volumes.

I’m gonna have to make a little more room on my “big book” shelf!

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