Snoopy vs. the Red Baron

Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron collects all of Schulz's beloved strips starring Snoopy as the famous World War I flying ace in his perennial battles with the infamous Red Baron of Germany. "Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more / the bloody Red Baron was rollin' up the score / Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree / of the bloody Red Baron of Germany...In the nick of time, a hero arose / A funny-looking dog with a big black nose" Including both dailies and Sundays, Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron follows the valiant and indefatigable Snoopy as, time after time in his doghouse/Sopwith Camel, he braves the wrath of his unseen aerial foe. The brave little beagle's epic battles are brought to thrilling cartoon life. "He flew into the sky to seek revenge / But the Baron shot him down / "Curses, foiled again!" The Snoopy and Red Baron encounters were some of the most inspired--and most popular--episodes in all of Peanuts and among the stories most beloved by children and adults alike.

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.