Which Is Your Favourite Peanuts Strip Of All?

There was a series sometime in the seventies, I guess, in which Charlie Brown keeps on seeing the image of a baseball wherever he looks - an ice cream cone, a sunrise, and finally the back of his head begins to show a rash that looks like baseball stitching. It's decided he needs some time away, so he goes to a summer camp where he wears a sack over his head, earning the name "Sack" or "Mr. Sack." As "Sack," he becomes extremely popular, and is elected camp President. Kids come to him for advice and wisdom. Finally, after some time goes by, he removes the sack (shocking his new followers) and goes to watch the sunrise to see if he's been cured or not. When the sun rises, there's this tension: what will he see? When the sun does rise, he sees it's...the face of Alfred E. Neuman from MAD Magazine, complete with the catchphrase "What, me worry?" written above it.

It was easily the most surreal Peanuts series of strips ever. I actually read it in a paperback, not in the newspaper, so I'm not certain of its actual publication date.

I do know I was about eight or nine, and had just started reading MAD religiously. This was the first time I'd ever seen a cross-reference to another media item this way, and it was mind-bending: Peanuts was cute and sweet (and more than a little cerebral at times) while MAD was angry and edgy. And the ways he was hallucinating and seeing a baseball everywhere bordered on the absurd. I remember reading it early one morning before school, and having to stifle my laughs so as not to wake up the house. Brilliant.

There was a series of strips in the late sixties or early seventies where Snoopy had a feud with the Head Beagle, and then became the Head Beagle for a short time, and had to deal with all of the frustrations of the job. I remember reading that and feeling a lot of empathy for him, and seeing a lot of parallels between a rising star in politics suddenly saddled with the reality of governing.

And then of course there's "It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly a pirate ship appeared on the horizon..."

And any strips having to do with Lucy's crabbiness, Linus's philosophizing, or their blanket-hating grandmother.

Really most of the strips were really good. I tend to like the extended arcs more than the one-offs, but I think that's normal.

March 13 1960 when the kite explodes