Review by Woodrow Phoenix

In the 22nd volume of The Complete Peanuts, an elated Charlie Brown turns cartwheels in a single-panel daily strip. The reason for this gymnastic feat: “I hit a home run in the ninth inning, and we won! I was the hero!!” “YOU?!” says Sally. Yes, him. Although we don’t see it happen, Schulz finally decides to give Charlie Brown a break and after a 42-year losing streak, he wins a game – off Roy Hobbes’ great-granddaughter, Schulz delivering a sly homage to The Natural. This doesn’t have the shattering effect on the rest of the strip that you might expect. Everything continues as normal and barely twenty pages later he’s back to his losing ways. But wait. There’s a new game starting on page 75. Can he really win another one?

The double-height Sunday splash panels, narrative captions, and single-panel dailies make a few appearances in this volume (the captions go to Spike, Snoopy and Rerun). Linus notices there’s an opening for a judge on the bench of the Supreme Court, so he writes to the President to nominate The World Famous Attorney for the seat. Charlie Brown is not at all surprised that it goes to Ruth Bader Ginsburg instead. “How could you ever think they’d let you be a judge on the Supreme Court?” he asks Snoopy. “You can’t even decide if you’ll have your supper in the red dish or the yellow dish… or your drinking water in the green dish or the blue dish!”