Unlock The Secrets Of Its Only A Game Created By Charles M. Schulz Provided As Publication Copy

M. Schulz beginning. In the lates, amidst the surging popularity of Peanuts and during a strongly creative period, Charles M.
Schulz created his only other syndicated newspaper comic, It's Only a Game focused on the fun and foibles of people and their pastimes: golf, bowling, bridge, fishing, and more.
This bouncy material, full of Schulz's signature wit, has for decades been considered one of the lost treasures of the comics field.
Now, almost half a century later, this material is collected into book form for the first time! Commentary and insight is provided by artist and cartoonist Jim Sasseville, who worked with Schulz on the feature.
Charming panel cartoons written by Jim Sasserville and illustrated by Charles M, Schulz. The panels do not use the Peanuts characters and are not as great as that strip, but they are still worth your time.
I freely admit I didn't get all the jokes not being into bridge, but I've always found Schulz's non"Peanuts" work interesting.
Nice little read. There are probably a million books by Charles Schulz, published throughout his long and productive career, and posthumously.
And I am desperately, as far as my communist cash flow will stretch, trying to get them all.
At least a reasonable or is that unreasonable number,
I am buying The Complete Peanuts faster than they're being published, but coming across Schulz' Youth randomly in a comic book store, I couldn't leave that either.
So I also had to get his other, standalone strip, a collaboration with Jim Sasseville It's Only A Game.
It details the big role games and sports play in our lives it's a big deal, and sometimes takes over completely.


As someone who has never played a sport I was into animals and the arts even when growing up horses and jazz dance, and now I'm an actress in an amateur theatre troupe, the most I got into sports was soccer with the neighbour boy Magnus, and the odd sport we were forced to participate in at school, but I have to say, I am rather a fanatic ski jumping fan, it's the only sport I follow and have never had much of a winner instinct, these are entertaining comics I look at them with a shrewd eye, and go "how silly it can be!" And it is, sometimes.
Competition plays a huge part in our lives, and makes us do the strangest things sometimes, observing jocks around me, I can't help but think that it makes us primitive somehow, it takes all the culture right out of us it makes us yell and scream and makes fat guys pull their shirts off for no apparent reason.
Mostly, sports cause joy team spirit, energy and the feeling of being part of something but sometimes it causes fights too at the meeting of opposing teams, when it invades family life and puts friends against one another, and it's both these factors we look into in this charming, little collection of onepanel comics.


But is it as good as my beloved Peanuts No,
I think I pretty much said the same thing when I reviewed Youth with Peanuts, you get to know the characters over time, and the beauty of that is that you come to see them as your imaginary friends this is not the case with It's Only A Game.
Partly because the comic was shortlived, partly because it features random people,
I love the fact that I can relate to Charlie Brown, he shares many of my troubles and worries and insecurities.
I also happen to have my own Little Red Haired Girl, who in my case is a big, grown man, but the "godhe'swaytoogoodforme"feeling is the same.
Charlie Brown knows the blues, That having been said, I have enough of Lucille van Pelt in me to mostly be able to yell the Charlie Brown into submission and take charge, saying "get over it! Five cents, please!" to end the selfpity.


Relating like that doesn't happen with this comic, but is it filled with Charles Schulz' usual great ideas, sure pen stroke and subtle humour Yes.
Some of the headline art from this comic that the newspapers that printed it usually threw away what the hell! has been reprinted here, and many are of the itgoeswithoutsaying variety.
Sparky knew very well that a picture can do more than a thousand words, and that sometimes, you don't need words these little illustration gems make you smile all on their own.


It also includes short anecdotes by Jim Sasseville, who worked with Schulz on this comic it gives us Sparky aficionados valuable insight into how he worked and what kind of an artist he was.


So, to conclude: This is a must for hardcore Schulz fans, but Peanuts is still the king.
Charles Monroe Schulz was an American cartoonist, whose comic strip Peanuts proved one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and is still widely reprinted on a daily basis.
Schulzs first regular cartoons, Lil Folks, were published fromtoby the St, Paul Pioneer Press he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand.
The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy, In, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post the first ofsingle panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there.
In, Schulz tried to have Lil Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Associatio Charles Monroe Schulz was an American cartoonist, whose comic strip Peanuts proved one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and is still widely reprinted on a daily basis.
Schulz's first regular cartoons, Li'l Folks, were published fromtoby the St, Paul Pioneer Press he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand.
The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy, In, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post the first ofsingle panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there.
In, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the

Newspaper Enterprise Association, Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in thes, but the deal fell through.
Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January,, Later that year, Schulz approached the United Feature Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October,.
The strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time, He also had a short lived sports oriented comic strip called It's Only a Game, but he abandoned it due to the demands of the successful Peanuts.
Fromtohe contributed a single panel strip "Young Pillars" featuring teenagers to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
Peanuts ran for nearlyyears, almost without interruption during the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five week break in late.
At its peak, Peanuts appeared in than,newspapers incountries, Schulz stated that his routine every morning consisted of eating a jelly donut and sitting down to write the day's strip.
After coming up with an idea which he said could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, he began drawing it, which took about an hour for dailies and three hours for Sunday strips.
He stubbornly refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that "it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him.
" In NovemberSchulz suffered a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized.
Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he could not read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December,.
Schulz often touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas, which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible Luke:to explain "what Christmas is all about.
" In personal interviews Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side, Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church.
In thes, Robert L, Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as being consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations during his lectures about the gospel, as he explained in his bestselling paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, the first of several books he wrote on religion and Peanuts, and other popular culture items.
From the lates, however, Schulz described himself in interviews as a "secular humanist": “I do not go to church any I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in.
” sitelink.