Finally, here's my review of the 2001 rerun strips. As I did last year, I'll discuss only the 1970's reruns, not the 1980's reruns. During the first couple of months of 2001, we saw Peanuts strips from 1973 being reprinted in strict chronological order, starting from January 1 with no gaps. Now 1973 is one of the few years whose strips have been exhaustively reprinted in standard books, so if you're an avid book collector, you may have expected that 2001 would proceed with no surprises. But you would have been wrong. It's not just that some 1973 strips were reprinted out of sequence (4/15 and 4/22 were swapped because Easter 1973 was on a different date from Easter 2001, and the 10/22, 11/10, and 11/12 strips were mysteriously permuted---and on the United Media website, the 11/10/73 strip never appeared and the 11/20/73 strip appeared on both 10/22/01 and 11/20/01!). Several 1973 strips---twenty-seven to be precise---were replaced by 1975 strips. Most of these substitutions involved a 1973 strip with a topical reference that some editor evidently decided was outdated. Specifically: 3/24/73: Snoopy attains the "alpha state." 5/15/73: Snoopy mentions Olga Korbut. 5/27/73: Snoopy adopts the pseudonym "Erich Beagle." 6/07/73: "Jonathan Livingston Woodstock." 7/15/73: Lucy writes a furious letter to Bobby Riggs. 8/08/73 - 8/22/73 (except Sundays): Snoopy tries to hit 714 home runs. 12/29/73, 12/31/73: The comet Kohoutek appears. Such substitutions are understandable, although it is regrettable that the brilliant story of Snoopy trying to beat Hank Aaron to Babe Ruth's home run record didn't survive the chopping block. More interesting, however, are the strips that were apparently censored due to potentially offensive content. 7/30/73 - 8/04/73: Marcie beats up Thibault for his male chauvinist cracks. 12/14/73: Lucy remarks that Beethoven never supported Hitler. (I suppose that 3/24 and 7/15 may have also been judged to be controversial.) I wonder if these strips caused a stir back in 1973? Or is it that social attitudes towards these subjects have changed since then? Or were the editors just being overly paranoid? One nice thing about the substitutions was that several of the 1975 strips were unreprinted in the standard books (specifically the ones that appeared on 3/24/01, 8/01/01, 8/04/01, 8/09/01, 8/13/01 - 8/17/01, 8/20/01, and 12/29/01). I particularly enjoyed the Joe Motocross strips (8/13 - 8/16). In the rest of this article, I will discuss the strips from 1973, including the ones that weren't reprinted, because I think they form a more meaningful unit than the set of 2001 reprints. I begin with the obligatory list of how many times each character appeared. Snoopy 177 Charlie Brown 159 Linus 79 Lucy 72 Woodstock 60 Peppermint Patty 59 Sally 48 Marcie 29 Schroeder 25 Rerun 12 Franklin 6 Thibault 6 Violet 5 Patty 3 Poochie 1 [1/07/73] Frieda (?) 1 [4/22/73] Roy (?) 1 [7/08/73] 5 (?) 1 [7/08/73] (The last three entries are somewhat debatable because it's possible that Schulz just drew a random kid that happened to look like Frieda/Roy/5.) Rerun and Poochie debut this year, although both have already been mentioned in 1972. Other than that, the only thing that jumps out at me from this list is Linus's high ranking. In 1974 Linus will drop to far fewer than 79 appearances, and even in 1973 Linus is not the "star" of any of the major stories (see below). Are we witnessing his decline and fall? In my opinion, of the five years I have reviewed so far, 1973 is the strongest, largely due to the superb stories that Schulz wrote. The "Mr. Sack" saga alone would be enough to give 1973 a high rating. But in addition we have the following classics: 1. Woodstock charges Snoopy $6 for a broken heart. 2. The kids give Charlie Brown a testimonial dinner but cancel it at the last moment for fear of hypocrisy, even though Charlie Brown "would have enjoyed even a hypocritical dinner." 3. Rerun leads Charlie Brown's baseball team to victory but then gets involved in a gambling scandal. 4. Snoopy races Hank Aaron (mentioned above). 5. Peppermint Patty stays in Charlie Brown's "guest cottage." 6. Snowman building becomes a competitive sport. Snoopy's nomination for the Daisy Hill Puppy Cup and Sally's futile attempt to avoid the materialism of Christmas also deserve honorable mention. All of these combine master storytelling with hilarious individual strips. A daily comic strip evolves with time; certain ideas start off small, then burgeon into a major theme, and then peter out in favor of newer ideas. If Linus seems to be on his way out, then Marcie seems to be on her way in. Introduced in 1971 as a minor sidekick of Peppermint Patty, she starts developing her own personality this year. She is the one who unwittingly wrecks poor Charlie Brown's testimonial dinner, who suffers for the stupidity of her friends' idea of a charity baseball game to benefit stomach-aches, and who hates baseball in spite of her enormous natural talent for it. We learn that her parents don't have much time for her and that in spite of her meek appearance she is quite capable of pounding Thibault. And who but Marcie could deflate Linus's zeal for the Great Pumpkin with the innocent remark, "I've heard about you"? Quite a list of accomplishments for only 29 appearances! 1973 is a peak year for puns and malapropisms. Snoopy, whose most prominent alter ego this year is the world-famous novelist, teams up with Sally to generate an endless list of howlers. "My toadstool business is mushrooming!" "Butterflies are free...you can have as many as you want." "I have it on Good Authority." "I think you are grate." "He kept his horse in the horseport." "I am leaving you with Great Reluctance." "Vandals are encouraged by Evandalists!" Relationships between characters contribute as much to the texture of a strip as individual personalities do. The Lucy-Schroeder relationship makes a pretty strong showing this year, yielding such memorable one-liners as "No one has ever died of `heart pop'!" Even more prominent is the Snoopy-Woodstock relationship, with Snoopy acting as our interpreter, helping us see all the absurdities in Woodstock's life. More subtle is the relationship between Linus and Charlie Brown, one of Schulz's vehicles for philosophical reflections on life. When they rest their arms on the famous brick wall and stare into space, we learn that Charlie Brown doesn't take one day at a time---he's down to half-a-day at a time. And when Linus reveals that most people "win a few, and lose a few," Charlie Brown is amazed: "Gee, that'd be neat!" I could go on---as Snoopy said of one of his novels, "I have a hard time ending this"---but let me stop now and just remark that I'm looking forward to another year of strips!