We are now in the mid-1960s, one of Schulz's peak periods of creativity (and one third of the way through the strip's life!). Snoopy has become the strip's dominant personality, and this volume marks two milestones for the character: the first of many "dogfights" with the nefarious Red Baron, and the launch of his writing career ("It was a dark and stormy night..."). Two new characters - the first two from outside the strip's regular little neighborhood - make their bows. Roy (who befriends Charlie Brown and then Linus at summer camp) won't have a lasting impact, but upon his return from camp he regales a friend of his with tales of the strange kids he met, and she has to go check them out for herself. Her name? Peppermint Patty. The latest chronological Peanuts volume includes the debut of one of the strip's most beloved recurring devices, Snoopy donning the goggles of a World War I fighting ace and battling the Red Baron, thereby putting his canine nature quite behind him. Here, too, is the maiden appearance of the strip's most successful "second generation" cast member, brash tomboy Peppermint Patty, who lives across town but would become an integral member of the troupe. Flagg, Gordon By this point, Schulz's always-appealing artwork has been pared to perfection, and yet he would make it simpler still in decades to come. -- Booklist One can scarcely overstate the importance of Peanuts to the comics, or overstate its influence on all of us. -- Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes Charles M. Schulz  was born November 25, 1922, in Minneapolis. His destiny was foreshadowed when an uncle gave him, at the age of two days, the nickname Sparky (after the racehorse Spark Plug in the newspaper strip  Barney Google ). His ambition from a young age was to be a cartoonist and his first success was selling 17 cartoons to the  Saturday Evening Post  between 1948 and 1950. He also sold a weekly comic feature called  Li'l Folks  to the local  St. Paul Pioneer Press . After writing and drawing the feature for two years, Schulz asked for a better location in the paper or for daily exposure, as well as a raise. When he was turned down on all three counts, he quit. He started submitting strips to the newspaper syndicates and in the spring of 1950, United Feature Syndicate expressed interest in  Li'l Folks . They bought the strip, renaming it Peanuts , a title Schulz always loathed. The first  Peanuts  daily appeared October 2, 1950; the first Sunday, January 6, 1952. Diagnosed with cancer, Schulz retired from Peanuts at the end of 1999. He died on February 13, 2000, the day before Valentine's Day-and the day before his last strip was published, having completed 17,897 daily and Sunday strips, each and every one fully written, drawn, and lettered entirely by his own hand ― an unmatched achievement in comics.  The multi-talented, Hal Hartley is a key figure in the American indpendent film movement. His credits include Henry Fool , The Book of Life , and No Such Thing . Used Book in Good Condition