In Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz by Luca Debus and Francesco Matteuzzi, the former shows himself to be an uncanny visual mimic. A few Schulzian loops capture wavy hair, and an illustration of young Schulz in a school classroom could be straight out of Peanuts: the boy is sitting at a right-facing desk and looking anxious. Readers of the heart-melting but sobering Funny Things will come to understand that the real Schulz often was the same.
Funny Things largely consists of three- and four-panel black-and-white comic strips that track the life of Schulz (1922-2000) from his beginnings as a sensitive kid raised in Minnesota by his barber father and advice-dispensing mother. Every few pages, these strips are interrupted by longer, Sunday-comics-style color strips featuring "Good ol' Sparky"--usually an elder version of Schulz, who expands on his life story, frequently breaking the fourth wall to do so.
Debus and Matteuzzi succeed valiantly at matching Schulz's sensibility. At critics' accusations that Schulz's strip doesn't keep up with the times, the authors have the aging cartoonist remark, "Presidents come and go... Anxiety is here to stay!"--something one can picture Charlie Brown quipping. (Then again, those may be Schulz's own words: an authors' note explains that while most of the book's dialogue is imagined, some lines are direct quotes.) A wordless and shattering 11-panel color strip in which an ailing Schulz realizes he can no longer draw attests that some of the most powerful moments in Funny Things aren't funny at all. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer