Chip Kidd and Peanuts and Kids

Over at Comics Comics Tim Hodler dislikes the use of cropping in art books devoted to comics.

This probably demonstrates my ignorance, but I don’t like this trend of cutting up images, like an old movie pan ‘n scanned for VHS. (The same thing was done in Blake Bell’s Ditko bio and Chip Kidd’s Peanuts book, among others.) It’s an especially unwelcome practice in a “The Art of ______” book. I want to see ______’s art! I want to see how the artist composed the image, and I don’t really care if it looks good or bad. (Pretty much everything Jaime draws looks good, any way.) That is in fact a big part of my interest in such a book: tracking the artist’s development.

It’s unsettling to agree with Tim…but I agree with Tim. I have a fair number of fine art books in the house, and you know, I don’t see any of them doing this crap. If you have a book about constructivist art posters, say, they show you the whole damn poster, because they figure that’s what you’re there for. Books about Japanese prints show you the lovely Japanese prints. Sometimes they crop to show you close-up details, but it’s a far cry from the aggressive layouts you see in a lot of comics productions.

And you know what? I don’t actually know the names of the designers of any of those art books I own — almost as if everyone involved thought the artist in question was more important than the designer.

Anyway, there’s a long comments thread at Comics Comics, and designer Jacob Covey disagrees strongly with Tim. You can read Jacob’s whole impassioned comment at the link, but there were a couple of revealing remarks. First:

A lot of people bought that book [that is, the Chipp Kidd Peanuts book] precisely because of the design decisions and a lot of those people had a light shined onto the genius of Schulz. (In no small part because it gave some of his “edge” back after decades of sappy marketing.)

Got that? People bought it for Chip Kidd, who introduced a whole new audience to that unknown outsider artist, Charles Schulz. Because, you know, nobody had actually ever heard of Schulz until Kidd unearthed him and made him safe for hipsters (an idea which, among other things, is an insult to hipsters, most of whom are, like everyone else, perfectly capable of loving Schulz without having him spoon fed to them by a indifferently talented curatorial vulture.)

I did agree with this by Covey, though I don’t think it points quite in the direction he seems to think it does.

And, remember, this was a daily strip for the masses. It’s not the property of comics people. Schulz belongs to everybody and there’s a lot of ways to read him.

Schulz does belong to everyone. And you know who he especially belongs to? Kids. The thing I like least about the Chip Kidd Peanuts collection is that, with all the pictures of tschotzkes and all the cropping and all the strips produced at minute sizes, it’s very difficult to read the book to my son. I gave it a try or two because the boy is so obsessed with Peanuts at the moment — but the whole endeavor was an exercise in eye strain and frustration. Eventually I just put the collection back up on the shelf and vowed to stick with the also-overdesigned-but-at-least-user-friendly fanta complete collections.

Basically, if you create a Peanuts book that parents can’t easily read to their kids, I think I’m justified in saying you’ve failed. And I further think I’m justified in suggesting that you’re a pretentious fuck who deserves a swift kick in the pants.

54 thoughts on “Chip Kidd and Peanuts and Kids

  1. I think I disagree in theory. In practice, I’m fine with changing the context of art to get a different effect. It’s fine for comics, it’s fine for Japanese prints, I’m all for sampling, there were a couple years there where I was REALLY into collage.

    Although in specific: (A) I agree that “The Art of Books” should try to reproduce the original art as much as possible, and (B) that Peanuts book was really, really, reallllllly bad.

  2. Collage is great. There’s nothing wrong with cropping or changing the context of art. But if the point is to show us the art of a particular artist, then I think you can be judged on whether you’ve actually done so.

  3. The notion that out of the literally hundreds if not thousands of Peanuts books that have ever been published, that every single one of them must be designed with the intent to appeal to children or be considered a failure, is completely narrow-minded and an insult to the maturity of Schulz’s work. I’m happy to have dozens of Peanuts books in my house that I can read to my daughter, but I’m also happy to have one that is pure eye candy for Dad.

  4. Ah, I knew that would come up.

    First of all, it’s not eye candy for me. It’s ugly as sin; a cluttered, crappy design that’s the antithesis of Schulz’s lovely minimal aesthetic.

    Second, Schulz’s genius, in part, was that he managed to create great art that was equally accessible to both adults and kids. I think it’s insulting to believe that “maturity” comes from creating a book that is unreadable to children, frankly. You think Kidd’s book is more adult than those crappy paperback Peanuts’ collections from the 60s and 70s? Because fetishizing mounds of plastic crap and cutting off punchlines is somehow more adult than actually creating great art?

    To put it mildly, I strongly disagree.

  5. Chip Kidd’s Peanuts book is not a reprint, it’s a dissection of what “Peanuts” is, including all of the cultural ephemera that surrounds it. It sounds like you’re arguing that since Peanuts itself crosses boundaries of age/maturity, then so should any artifact or dissertation that comments on or explores it. That doesn’t strike me as very useful, since as an adult, I can engage Peanuts with a greater depth of experience than a child, and find your argument unnecessarily limiting.

  6. “You think Kidd’s book is more adult than those crappy paperback Peanuts’ collections from the 60s and 70s?”

    Not necessarily, but as I say, I’m happy to have THE COMPLETE PEANUTS and a myriad other books that my daughter can read and am not at all concerned that Kidd’s book might not appeal to her. I just think that’s a stupid barometer to judge it by. It’s a wide world out there, and Schulz’s work is transcendental when it comes to the wide range of people and ages it appeals to (he was the Beatles of comics, basically), and as such there’s room for a variety of treatments of his work. I think Kidd’s book is lovely, and the vehemence with which some of Kidd’s critics want to tear it down mystifies me, given how many lazy and poorly-packaged Peanuts books are out there that no one ever takes issue with.

  7. Like those Fawcett paperbacks with the obscene use of zip tone patterns. Shudder.

  8. PEASANTS !!!!!!!!!!! Don’t you know that Cheeep Keed is an ARTISTE , and so , anything that he shheets is platinum ?
    Bah . Jough Ammeerican .

  9. I don’t like the way those books used zip tones. I find that less offensive than Kidd’s extremely unpleasant design sense coupled with claims that he has somehow saved Schulz from saccharine commercialism by larding his book with commercial crap.

  10. You’re mis-paraphrasing Jacob. I just read his original post at Comics Comics and wholeheartedly agree with his position on this subject. I guess I have nothing else to add, especially since this discussion looks like it gonna just be spinning wheels.

  11. He said:

    “A lot of people bought that book [that is, the Chipp Kidd Peanuts book] precisely because of the design decisions and a lot of those people had a light shined onto the genius of Schulz. (In no small part because it gave some of his “edge” back after decades of sappy marketing.)”

    He’s saying that Kidd’s book is an antidote to sappy marketing, right? But the book fetishizes that very marketing. Which makes Covey’s statement appear ridiculous. To me. Is all I’m saying.

  12. As far as crappy Peanuts packaging goes: Schulz gave his approval to such incredible loads of licensed shit that it ain’t even close to funny. I know people who think of Peanuts as a TV cartoon or a collection of toys and stuffed animals and don’t care a fig about the actual comic strip, which to them is just more licensed merchandise.

    Which is to say: when it comes to Peanuts collector crap, Kidd’s book is far from the worst offender. It’s at least about the artist and the strip itself, whereas a stuffed Charlie Brown (blessed by Schulz) is about exactly nothing. If I’m gonna treat a kid to the real version of PEANUTS, I’m gonna grab a collection of strips that is meant to be read as a collection of strips, not just any damn thing with Snoopy on the cover.

    And another thing: say what you want about crappy 70s paperbacks, but at least we could afford them things, whereas a kid today has to depend on a grownup to buy those monstrous Fanta doorstops (which I love, but you get my point). To me, that’s a worse way to treat kids than publishing an arty-farty photo book.

  13. And, oh my god, fix the justification in these blog comments. “Exercise in eyestrain” indeed.

  14. Say what you will about Kidd’s Peanuts book, at least it’s not as ugly as the design on that Art Spiegelman/Jack Cole atrocity he shit out.

  15. Ah, well…I’d fix the formatting here if I could, believe me. My apologies for the eyestrain; I’m hopeful that TCJ will get to it at some point.

    And I agree with the rest of your points as well. Again, I wouldn’t care about Kidd hardly at all if his book wasn’t touted as some sort of be all, end all of Schulz production.

    One thing I’ve seen pointed out a couple of times, though, is that Schulz was quite careful to keep his own efforts separate from the excesses of marketing. He did green light lots of plastic penauts crap, but he didn’t in general include pictures of plastic peanuts crap in his books. I think Kidd did Schulz and his art a disservice by breaking down that firewall.

  16. Hey Dirk! See, but I can hate both the Peanuts book and the Jack Cole book. It’s America! Why should I limit myself?

    And, hey, I even have some left-over contempt for the way he usurped credit for the Bat-Manga book.

  17. How’s this for a random unsubstantiated claim:

    I don’t think comics can be scary, period. Too small…too quiet…too temporally static. Never been scared by any horror comic I’ve read…not a one. Yet…I can’t watch horror movies–predictable or not–too scary.

    I’m already going through my mental rolodex of horror comics and realizing this isn’t true, probably…but I’ll leave it anyway.

  18. Uh, okay — “Schulz was quite careful to keep his own efforts separate from the excesses of marketing”. Well now, this is true to an extent, in that yes, Schulz did not include photos of plastic Peanuts crap in his books. However, having given the nod to serious amounts of plastic crap meant that Schulz had a heavy hand in creating a version of PEANUTS that existed separately from the strip. Therefore, a book featuring Snoopy comics alongside Snoopy plastic crap is telling a pretty accurate history of PEANUTS, period. So there.

  19. It’s telling an accurate history of peanuts as a marketing phenomena, sure. And if the book were titled: *Peanuts: The Marketing Phenomena* and sold as a kind of cultural history, then I wouldn’t care because I probably would never have heard of it. Instead, though, it was called “The Art of Charles M. Schulz” and people like Covey and Eric R. and many, many others have fallen all over themselves to present it as some sort of great tribute to Schulz’s mature artistry. And I find that irritating and wrong-headed.

  20. Kidd will never do worse to a book than what he did to Minority Report. Ugly and completely unreadable.

  21. “Say what you will about Kidd’s Peanuts book, at least it’s not as ugly as the design on that Art Spiegelman/Jack Cole atrocity he shit out.”

    I’m not sure that’s a value judgement I’d wanna make, but at least Plastic Man was ABOUT chaos and madness. The Peanuts book design ran completely counter to the aesthetics of the strip.

  22. If Covey and Eric (hiya Eric!) are falling over themselves presenting the book as a great tribute to Schulz’s mature artistry (and I don’t think Eric has done so here) then you’re just as bad defending Schulz’s idea of himself as a mature artist, an idea which by all accounts he did not possess. As far as I can tell, he saw himself as a professional craftsman who loved what he did for a living and who loved and respected the comics medium on its own terms. To marry the strip with its plastic crap offshoots probably would have struck him as absurd, had he even conceived of such a thing in the first place. He most likely saw the strip and the merchandise as nothing more than separate areas of business, with his personal preference being the strip. To assert that he had a “firewall” based on a separation of art and commerce reads like made-up shit to me.

  23. Give him his due. Kidd’s a great jacket designer. Click here for a gallery of his best work. When I worked in book-publishing, I wished I had the budget to hire him. He was nice enough to refer some talented up-and-comers, I must say.

    I’m not defending those collage-book horrors he perpetrated using Schulz and Cole’s work, though. People actually paid money for those eyesores? I was surprised bookstore owners even allowed them in the door.

  24. John, Eric R. was the one who brought up the word “mature” and (I think) artistry in reference to Schulz. If I repeated those terms, it was mostly ironically. I think Schulz is probably is a great artist, but I wouldn’t call any artist “mature” unless I was trying to insult them.

    In any case, from the Schulz interviews and analysis I’ve read, I think his sense of himself as an artist is a good bit stronger than you’re suggesting.

    “To marry the strip with its plastic crap offshoots probably would have struck him as absurd, had he even conceived of such a thing in the first place.”

    I think that’s likely.

    “He most likely saw the strip and the merchandise as nothing more than separate areas of business, with his personal preference being the strip.”

    I think that’s wrong. If he saw the strip as simply a business, he would have wanted to have a family member do it after his death, which he didn’t (but which many strip creators do.) If it was simply a business, it’s hard to understand why he was bitter for his whole life about the fact that he didn’t get to name it what he wanted. Nor does the “just a business” theory explain his very hands on approach to the TV specials, where he pushed for some unusual aesthetic decisions (having children do the voices, for example) despite what sounds like a certain amount of corporate opposition.

    I mean, obviously he wasn’t Chris Ware or James Joyce; artist as besieged genius wasn’t where he was coming from. But he wasn’t exactly Mort Walker or Stan Lee either. He did have strong aesthetic preferences in regard to the strip and his work. If he’d seen the Chip Kidd book, he might have liked it and he might not have liked it, but he wouldn’t have just said, “ah, what the hell, it’s selling copies, who cares.”

  25. Hey Robert. Thanks for the link to his jacket work; I hadn’t realized he did many of those. None of them really send me…but they don’t make me want to gouge my eyes out the way his art books do, either.

  26. Noah,

    You keep putting the term “just business” in quotes, as if I said any such thing. I did not. And never in a million years would I describe Schulz as being on the level of Mort Walker or Stan Lee. Schulz most certainly WAS an artist, one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century, and that is not a claim I make lightly. (The other great American artist is, of course, Jon Bon Jovi.)

    So let’s parse out what I said. I said I believed Schulz did not think of himself as a great American artist, and one basis for that is his Journal interview, where he stated that his standard for great artistry was Andrew Wyeth. He was wrong about himself, as I’m sure you agree.

    Next, I described my guess at how he DID see himself: “a professional craftsman who loved what he did for a living and who loved and respected the comics medium on its own terms”. Now, that’s a lot deeper than Lee and Walker’s huckster-ish, nearly contemptuous view of the form.

    Lastly — and here’s where you went a little wild — I took a shot at how Schulz probably saw his work AS COMPARED TO how YOU thought he saw his work. You seem to be saying that he kept the comic strip apart from the crappy merchandise for artistic reasons, to prevent one from being sullied by the other. My assertion is that there is no evidence I know of that he thought that way, and that while his preference and love and lifeblood was the comic strip, he probably saw it and the merchandising as separate areas of business (not “just” business) and THAT is why he kept them separate.

    So, whew.

  27. “Schulz did not think of himself as a great American artist, and one basis for that is his Journal interview, where he stated that his standard for great artistry was Andrew Wyeth”

    There’s a difference between not considering yourself a great artist and having a sense of yourself as an artist. You don’t need to think you’re a great artist in order to think that you’re an artist, or that your art is worthwhile and worth thinking of as art, or worth treating as aesthetically coherent or meaningful. Or, to put it more briefly, just because he didn’t think his art was as good as Andrew Wyeth’s doesn’t mean he thought his art wasn’t art.

    In fact, his relationship to Andrew Wyeth really does suggest a consciousness of himself as an artist in a lot of ways, right? He admired and envied Wyeth, I think. Stan Lee didn’t admire and envy other writers in that way, I don’t think (I mean, I don’t hate Stan Lee, but that wasn’t where he was coming from.)

    “You seem to be saying that he kept the comic strip apart from the crappy merchandise for artistic reasons, to prevent one from being sullied by the other. My assertion is that there is no evidence I know of that he thought that way, and that while his preference and love and lifeblood was the comic strip, he probably saw it and the merchandising as separate areas of business (not “just” business) and THAT is why he kept them separate.”

    I’d guess that there were elements of both of your choices in his thinking. I don’t think he saw the marketing stuff as evil or anything — but he didn’t want them mixing with the strip (I think)…and not just to keep the money strands separate, or because he thought it was good for business. Rather, as you say, he saw the strip as his love and his lifeblood — he believed it had some spark that the pure marketing stuff didn’t. To me, that seems like a consciousness of his art as art, though he might not necessarily have put it in quite those words.

    To be honest, I don’t even know if he kept his art and marketing deliberately apart; I read something once that suggested he did, but I can’t remember where or when, so it’s not very solid evidence. I don’t particularly think it matters. Chip Kidd’s book is an overrated piece of shit either way. His merging of the marketing stuff with the strips and his busy, glutted aesthetic are ugly in their own right, and opposed to everything Schulz did with the strip throughout his life, whether for reasons of craft or art or business.

  28. Well, fair enough. And for all we know, Schulz might not only have been appalled by the Kidd book but also by the grandiosity of the Fantagraphics series. Or maybe not. Probably, neither of us knows enough about the way Schulz thought to even make a guess.

  29. John; certainly. Or he could have been really flattered by both. The one prediction I would make is that, if he saw those books, he would have had something interesting to say about them. He could be relied on fairly consistently for that.

    Uland, I’m afraid we’re done. I will remove anything you post on this blog for the forseeable future.

  30. You know how Chip Kidd sometimes designs books so that the title comes on a little paper band wrapped around the cover? When I notice these editions on the shelves of bookshops, the little paper band is often torn and hanging from the book, or it’s been entirely removed by some irritated browser and is sitting on the shelf a few volumes away from its mama.

    I like design to be, at least, functional.

  31. It’s unsettling to agree with Noah…but I agree with Noah.

    Well, only partially… What Kidd was after was an entirely different thing than every other “Peanuts” collection; therefore, to criticize it for not doing what all of those books did effortlessly is wrong-headed.

    On some TCJ message board post, I’d pointed out that what Kidd did in his books about Schulz and Cole (I have both) was to emphasize the physicality of the comics themselves.

    Rather than perfect-quality strips and comic pages floating in a pristine space, Kidd chose photos which highlighted pulp paper textures, creases, taped-over tears.

    In other words – as, to a degree, happens with framing and displaying original comics pages – the work as object, rather than narrative, is what is brought to the forefront.

    Looking at what Jacob Covey wrote, I disagree with much, but this I think is spot-on:

    ——————-
    It was a way to make people see the work differently and it worked. A lot of people bought that book precisely because of the design decisions…It wasn’t about the strips, per se, so what does it matter if some of the strips are cropped? It was about the effect of the work as it plays on an intuitive level– the level of Art…The book isn’t just a collection of Peanuts strips and it’s not a ton of original art– it’s an exploration of themes and rhythms and of the simple beauty inherent in Schulz’s body of work. It’s also an exploration of cultural nostalgia, brilliantly done.

    …graphic designers who dare to assume a curatorial voice…add to the dialogue [about an artist]…
    ——————-
    http://comicscomicsmag.com/2010/02/bridges-aflame.html/comment-page-1#comment-4722

  32. ” it’s an exploration of themes and rhythms and of the simple beauty inherent in Schulz’s body of work.”

    Which is a nice argument….but the aesthetic is so antithetical to
    Schulz’s I have trouble taking it seriously.

  33. There are some interesting ideas here. But I really dislike how crass the level of discourse gets. And I have a high tolerance for crass. Maybe I’m just a gentle soul. As to the subject at hand–I don’t know anyone who thought Kidd’s book was the be-all, end-all of anything. Most people I talked to saw it as a new point of view on Peanuts and Schultz; but certainly not authoritative. There are parts of the book I return to a lot.

  34. Chris…the coarseness may have caused you to cut and run, but if you’re still about, I’d be interested to hear what parts of the book you return to.

  35. “If he saw the strip as simply a business, he would have wanted to have a family member do it after his death, which he didn’t (but which many strip creators do.)”

    This isn’t entirely true, from what I know. From what I understand having to got to know members of the family is that Schulz actually left this decision to his children. His primary concern regarding the strip after he died was that his family would be taken care of; in that sense, the strip *was* a business. He was willing to let the strip continue if the children decided that’s what they wanted. The children decided that their father was the strip and voted as a group to end the strip when their father passed. I’m not sure that’s ever been talked about publicly before, but that’s what I’ve been told.

  36. Hey Eric. I saw an account similar to that, though I can’t remember where. That account did say that Schulz was pleased with his children’s decision though — which suggests that he was glad that his kids were willing to see it as an aesthetic expression rather than just as a business.

    Though, obviously, not knowing the people involved, it’s all very speculative on my part.

  37. I think that’s true, actually — I don’t think there’s any doubt that it was the decision he was hoping for. But it’s worth pointing out that he viewed his art as a means of supporting his family at the same time it was as an aesthetic expression. It was art and commerce, and he navigated it better than most of his generation. But it was a complicated relationship and I don’t think any of us can fully understand how he reconciled all of it.

    To each his own, but I think Kidd’s book is a wonderful perspective, a precursor to The Complete Peanuts in the way that it was trying to reposition the art of Schulz within the context of the remarkable commerce of Peanuts (which all too often overwhelmed the quiet beauty of the strip).

    I don’t get how calling Schulz’s work “mature” is a bad thing, that’s your own cross to bear. Would you prefer “immature”? It certainly wasn’t that. I suppose you would also bristle at “sophisticated” also and for all I know Schulz might have as well, but that’s what it was.

  38. “Mature” is just kind of spoiled for me by its use in literary criticism — the books it’s often used to describe depress me. I think immaturity often gets a bad rap; Chesterton would probably have preferred to have his own writing called immature for example.

    The truth is that I’m pretty much okay with anyone who wants to say positive things about Peanuts, though. I’d grudgingly have to even let Kidd off the hook to some extent on those grounds; he did what he did out of affection for the strip, even if, to my eyes, the results weren’t pretty.

  39. I find that Kidd’s aesthetic choices actually fit quite well with Schultz’s style – unlike Seth’s Complete Peanuts designs…yikes. Don’t get me wrong, Eric or anyone else who works at Fanta – you are all my heroes for publishing the complete Peanuts. But I just happen to hate the covers. I’ve contemplated tossing the dust covers in the recycling bin, and if it weren’t for my “collector” mentality, I just might do it.

  40. The subject of Kidd’s Peanuts and Bat-Manga! books is not the strips themselves, but Chip Kidd’s relationship with and reaction to these things as objects, much like his Batman: Collected book.

    That explains the missing credits on Bat-Manga!, the book is not intended as a collection of comics, but a collection of THINGS Chip Kidd likes in a package Chip Kidd thinks is cool.

  41. Hey Jeffrey. I agree with that…I just think it’s fairly damning. Kidd’s really fairly pedestrian collectior’s fetishization issues are much, much less interesting than (for example) Schulz’s own art. The books as they are seem to argue the contrary, which is both irritating and depressing.

  42. FWIW, I think immaturity gets a bad rap, too, and I’m not saying mature is better than immature. I’m simply saying Peanuts was mature work, in the best possible way.

  43. This argument inspired me to check the book out from the library. I’ve always passed on it since, as a Peanuts nerd from infancy, I’ve always taken the accessibility of the material for granted, and I was put off by the complexity of Kidd’s presentation. I’ve only just started on the book, but I’m liking it. Mostly I’m just grooving on old Peanuts strips, but the format isn’t as off-putting as I initially found it once I accept it as Kidd’s way of emphasizing whatever he’s trying to emphasize. As a kid if I’d found this on the shelf I probably would have waited until I’d read all the more conventional Peanuts books before moving to this one, but the siren call of Peanuts would have lead me to read this with, I imagine, a blend of confusion and pleasure.

  44. Good luck, Noah, becoming the new Gary Groth. You seriously are such a fucking prick. Congratulations: Here’s the response you were hoping for. Why on Earth do you get off on being smarter than blog comment threads?

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