The AAUGH blog

I thought that the earlier post on the Australian Comic Hits comic was, well, actually more than anyone would want to read on it. But a kind note from AAUGH Blog reader and comic shop owner Jim reminds me that prudence dictates I say a wee bit more.

I don’t know how this book was manufactured. It likely comes down to one of three ways:

• The American publisher, Dell, send the films used for making these three comics to Australia, where they were reprinted. There is reason to be leery of this explanation, as Australian reprints from about this era were generally in black-and-white.
• The American publisher printed extra copies of the guts of these three particular issues, and then either bound them in the US or sent them to Australia to be bound. There was a similar set of books done for a newsstand chain in the 1980s, with issues having a specific set of DC Comics guts from the same month.
• The American publisher supplied just a huge pile of whatever guts they had excess of, which were bound together for this market (possibly making sure there was at least some Tom & Jerry in every copy, to match the cover). The American EC Comics Annuals of the 1950s were done that way.

The reason I bring this up is that last possibility. I wouldn’t want some enthusiastic Peanuts collector to go through all the effort of hunting down this issue (and I suspect it would be quite a hunt - I can’t find reference online to any copies of this book besides the one I bought!) only to find that their copy didn’t have any Peanuts content.

Maybe it's the cat next door and, um, the mice next door

The latest addition to the AAUGH.com Reference Library (and one of the few items that is not currently in a moving box marked “Peanuts - Various”… makes it so easy to find things!) is this first issue of Comic Hits.

Haven’t heard of this Peanuts comic book? I’m not surprised. Basically, this takes the internals of Tom & Jerry Comics issue 188, Tip Top Comics issue 221, and the comic book adaptation of the 1960 film The Boy And The Pirates (Four Color 1117), puts them behind a cover with an image taken from Tom & Jerry Comics issue 161. It’s the Tip Top issue that makes this a Peanuts comic, as that issue had the eight-page Peanuts story “Mechanical Maniac” (the kids deal with a robot).

Now, they included all of the contents of the original issues, including the ads, which means that they had mail order ads for things kids might want to buy with their dollars… which would be handy if this were meant for kids in the United States. Alas, this book was aimed at the kids in Australia, with its price in pounds and the one new ad for this edition (the back cover) for a mail order item from New South Wales.

Now, I don’t know what the contents of Comic Hits issue 2 is. It may have Peanuts, it may not. But I’ve found information on issue 3, and not only is there no Peanuts material, it reprints work from a completely different publisher.  Issue 1 is all Dell comics, while issue 3 is all Harvey (Casper, Hot Stuf, and such.) So for now, I’ll assume that I have every issue of Comic Hits that I really need. Perhaps even one more than that…

I’m watching an old Jonathan Winters special from the mid-1960s when suddenly, wham, Peanuts reference. Coming back from commercial, the camera pans across a bunch of stuffed Peanuts dolls piled in and around a toy box. Winters appears, saying “a friend of mine, Charlie Schulz,  wrote a book about a child’s idea of happiness. I love it, I think you would too. Because in it, I think Charles found what I think happiness is all about.” He then goes on to talk about the happiness in his own life with his family.

If anyone’s curious, the DVD of the show (Jonathan Winters: Rare & Riotous) is out of print, but can be rented through Netflix. Better yet, it can be streamed through Netflix streaming. The piece occurs about 32 minutes into the streamed version. (It would be at the end of the original hour-long specal, but this version is missing some material - presumably, the performances of the New Christie Minsterals were left out due to music rights reasons.)