Of the nearly 18,000 Peanuts strips Charles Schulz wrote and drew over a half-century, many were never reprinted in any of the hundreds of book collections. Nearly a third, for example, of the strips from Peanuts’ first decade showed up once in the newspaper then were never seen again. Until, of course, Fantagraphics Books began publishing in 2004 their Complete Peanuts series, now in its eighth volume (1965-66) of 25. Fantagraphics celebrates these “lost” strips in an “Unseen Peanuts” exhibit, featuring Schulz’ original artwork (on loan from the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, CA) for nine strips. Why were these left out of collections? In some early ones, perhaps, Schulz was still working out the details of his drawing technique and of his fictional universe. In others, the joke may have landed off-key; other perfectly good strips just got overlooked for no reason.

Fri., Nov. 23, 6 p.m.; Nov. 23-Dec. 31, 2007