For Volume 25, Obama pays tribute to Peanuts

"Like millions of Americans, I grew up with Peanuts. But I never outgrew it."

So begins the foreword written by President Obama for the 25th volume of "The Complete Peanuts," the latest in a series of hardcover books reprinting every daily and Sunday strip of the iconic series that appeared from 1950 to 2000. The volume, which is scheduled for release in May, covers January 1, 1999, through February 13, 2000, when the final "Peanuts" strip was published the day after the death of its creator, Charles M Schulz.

"For decades, Peanuts was our own daily security blanket," President Obama writes in his introduction. "That's what makes Peanuts an American treasure."

No one would agree with that assessment more than Gary Groth, the president and co-founder of Fantagraphics Books, which has been publishing The Complete Peanuts since 2004. Groth wanted to make sure this volume was special, beginning with the introduction - and who was going to write it. "Obama was inevitably at the top of the list," he said. "Let's just reach for the stars. All he can do is say no."

Jake Tapper of CNN, who wrote the foreword to Volume 22, put Groth in contact with the White House and the request eventually found its way to the president.

"It was a great day when we got the word that he agreed do it," Groth said. The idea for the collected editions came to Groth in 1997, when he interviewed Schulz for The Comics Journal, a trade magazine. "Previously Peanuts had been collected only in sporadic volumes: thematically or randomly," Groth said. "Maybe someone should publish a uniform series," he recalled suggesting to Schulz. "And that someone could be me," he added.

Schulz resisted at first, but eventually gave his consent. Still, the project did not really take shape until after his death, from colon cancer. Groth credits the cartoonist's widow, Jeannie Schulz, for cutting through the red tape involved with securing the publication rights to make the series possible.

Still, a series of hardcover reprints was not a safe bet. Previous collected editions of Prince Valiant, Pogo, Popeye and others "were almost always a hard sell," Groth said. "There was no market for newspaper strip reprints. You were really targeting the hard-core comics and cartoon aficionados." But The Complete Peanuts found an audience. Fantagraphics has produced two volumes a year, each selling around 15,000 to 20,000 copies, Groth said, followed by another 20,000 for a boxed set every holiday season combining the year's releases. While the 25th volume wraps up the daily newspaper strips, it also includes a look back. It reprints "Li'l Folks," the weekly comic from Schulz published from 1947 to 1950, which was a forerunner to "Peanuts."

The final "Complete Peanuts" volume, due in October, will provide something different: a collection of stories and drawings that appeared outside the comic strip.

"It is a real treasure trove of little-seen and never before reprinted work - all drawn by the hand of Charles Schulz," Groth said.

In 2005 The Complete Peanuts won two Eisner Awards, the comic book industry's equivalent of an Oscar, for best archival collection (which it won again in 2007) and for best publication design - no doubt thanks to the evocative covers by the artist known as Seth, each featuring a gray-toned close-up of one of the Peanuts gang as drawn by Schulz. The series also paved the way for other lavish and comprehensive reprint editions including The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson, and The Complete Far Side, by Gary Larson.

But the biggest impact of "The Complete Peanuts" was on Fantagraphics. "We're an independent publisher: We have no backers, no investors. We have only the books we publish and our wits to fall back on," Groth said.

"We found ourselves in periodic financial crises. We published the 'Peanuts' right in the nick of time. It changed the fortunes of the company by allowing the company to continue to exist."

President Obama joins an eclectic group of "Complete Peanuts" foreword writers, including Garrison Keillor, Jonathan Franzen, Diana Krall, John Waters, Billie Jean King, Alec Baldwin and Patton Oswalt. "Whoopi Goldberg was terrific," Groth said. "Some celebrities - especially the ones who turned us down - not so much."

Groth's experience with President Obama was very satisfying, he said: "It's great to tell the president, 'We need it by this date. Don't be late.' "

©2016 The New York Times News Service