The Complete Peanuts

Which is actually kind of frustrating for me because my usual comp copy has not yet arrived. So now I have to figure out if it’s just running late (in which case I must be patient), or its gone missing (in which case I’ve got to buy a copy), or if I’ve been dropped from the comp list (I was on in the beginning because I was helping find source for strips that were missing or didn’t have adequate source), but they’ve haven’t needed me in a while) and will thus have to start buying them all….

What I’m saying in: my review of this will be later than usual. But you shouldn’t need a review to want this!

Suddenly, I can hear a few of you attentive folks sharpening your pencils to write me a corrective email, letting me know that I obviously meant Ford Falcon, as that was the car the Peanuts characters advertised. So let me cut you off by pointing out two things: 1) pencils are a really lousy way to write email, and 2) no, I actually mean Mustang. I was surprised by this one myself when we found it in the Schulz Museum archives.

But this full-color ad piece for the 1965 Mustang serves a double purpose – it’s also a pocket. Reach into it and you can pull out a reduced reproduction of A Scrapbook about Your Falcon, which you have seen discussed previously on this blog and in my online Museum of Odd Peanuts Books.

The next spread is on Snoopy, filled with the history of everyone’s favorite well-eventually-they-decided-he-was-a-beagle. And this spread has a reduced reproduction of the educational Snoopy’s First Code Book tipped in (”tipped in” being publishing talk for “glued to the page”.)

Then there’s a spread on Peanuts in animation, and immediately after that (and very much linked to it), a spread on Peanuts and Christmas. The text talks a lot about A Charlie Brown Christmas, of course, but the pictures bring in not only that, but Peanuts ornaments, a single cartoon from Charlie Brown’s Christmas Stocking (a 1963 insert in Good Housekeeping magazine), and a removable greeting card. Now, this isn’t the reproduction of some high-print-run Hallmark card; this was a card which Schulz designed custom for the actor who played Schroeder in the San Francisco cast of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown – so if you don’t have one of its original print run of 100, here’s your change to have it.

We’re not halfway through the book yet, but I best get on to other things. But first, since I’ve been talking about removable items, let me bring up a related topic. I’ve already been facing the question coming in via email “if I buy this book, and send it to you, will you sign it and send it back?” Now, I don’t want people sending whole books through the mail – it’s both too much of a chance of getting damaged, and too much of a hassle on this end. With previous books, I’ve been willing to send out signed bookplates – stickers that you stick on the inside front cover (excuse me, “tip in”), and voila, it becomes a signed copy! But for this book with its removable items, I think it might make more sense for people to send me the removable item and a SASE, and I’d sign it and send it back. The first removable item on page 9 should fit easily into a standard envelope, and that would keep things simple. You can let me know what you think of this suggestion by emailing questions@AAUGH.com .

(It is possible I will be doing some signing appearances for this book, but it is not yet definite. If any are scheduled, I will announce it here.)

If you have a favorite bookstore and want to preorder, the ISBN is 978-0316086103 (US edition), 978-1741730685 (Australian edition), or 978-1-84773-827-1 (UK edition.) For those who like to order from your favorite online sites, here are the links:

• Amazon
• Indybound
• Borders
• B&N

One thing I don’t quickly find is whether this five year deal starts with this year, or whether this year’s showings are simply covered by a previous deal. The reason that becomes a particularly interesting question is that that decides whether ABC has A Charlie Brown Christmas booked up for 2015 – the special’s 50th anniversary, and an opportunity for much hoopla.

Hallmark edition

Last year I took a look at a “Special Hallmark Edition” book adaptation of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. As I theorized then, this year’s Running Press edition appears to be the same adaptation, but with some of the differences which we saw between the Hallmark and Running Press editions of A Charlie Brown Christmas - the Running Press edition is larger, and has a larger (and in this case different) cover image.

As to whether there’s any change in the art, or if there is better paper as there was for the Christmas book, I really cannot say. I’m cheating here, I’m just going off of the info on the Amazon entry for the book. While the book is now shipping, I try to buy every Peanuts book, but not every edition. (And by the way, don’t bother trying to use Amazon’s Look Inside This Book feature to figure out if it’s using the same art – that feature will pop up a copy of the 2001 paperback edition instead.) When I do get a copy in my hands, I’ll check if there’s any basic change in the art.

Is it just me, or does the Running Press edition star Linus The Raccoon?

We were about to turn to page 10, where we find a page just about Charlie Brown – the first of a series of character-focused pages scattered through the book. On this spread, there are plenty of images, with pictures of Charlie Brown through the years, of Schulz drawing the character, of the character in animated and doll form. And hey, there’s a 1956 letter from the famed Dr. Spock (no, not the Star Trek guy, he was Mr. Spock) to Mr. Schulz (addressed simply as that) about Charlie Brown. But the big thing on this spread is the latest removable reproduction – a Schulz sketch of Charlie Brown, reproduced down to the torn corners of the paper.

Flip the page, and we’re on to a spread about how Peanuts fill lives at playtime… with another removable reproduction, this an 8-page version of a Saalfield coloring book, one of those done using versions of the original strips, with the filled-in blacks hollowed out, as discussed here (although it’s not the same volume.)

As the AAUGH Blogger, I get a fair number of “how can I find such-and-such old Peanuts item?” questions. The one item that I get the most requests for is The Peanuts Book of Pumpkin Carols, a greeting card booklet issued by Hallmark, filled with Halloween parodies of Christmas songs. A reproduction of that is the take-out item on the next spread, which is about Peanuts and Halloween. And for those of you who know that Pumpkin Carols was released in a number of formats over the years, you shold be glad to know we picked a pumpkin-shaped format over one of the more mundane formats.

To wrap up this look, we get to the next character-oriented spread. In this case, Lucy and Linus have to share a spread, which you know isn’t making either of them happy.  To me, the nice surprise image here is a letter to Schulz from Lucy. No, not that Lucy… it’s from that other famous Lucy, the I Love Lucy Lucy.

And then on the next page…. oh, wait, I said I’d stop there. But there is some cool stuff on the next page. I’ll get to that next time.

Those of you who want to buy this book from your local comic book store should let them know now. They can find the book in the current Previews catalog, page 344, item AUG10 1289. If you have a bookstore and want to preorder, the ISBN is 978-0316086103 (US edition), 978-1741730685 (Australian edition), or 978-1-84773-827-1 (UK edition.) For those who like to order from your favorite online sites, here are the links:

• Amazon
• Indybound
• Borders
• B&N