The AAUGH blog

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In this issue:
*SNOOPY TOYS!
*PEANUTS: A GOLDEN CELEBRATION BACK IN STOCK
*OTHER BOOKS BACK IN STOCK
*WHAT ARE PEANUTS GANG BOOKS, ANYWAY?
*PEANUTS QUILT TRIBUTE
*"BIG STUFFED DOG" ON VIDEO
*STRANGE PEANUTS BOOKS: LUCY RULES OK?
*AAUGH.com IS GOOD FOR GIFTS
SNOOPY TOYS! For the first time, AAUGH.com is carrying Peanuts toys. We’ve got a new batch of 6" Snoopy figures, with him dressed in outfits from around the world. I’ve already gotten people raving about how CUTE these are. You’ve got to check out Alaskan Snoopy, Texan Snoopy, African Snoopy, and more! Head over to http://AAUGH.com and click on the TOYS link!
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PEANUTS: A GOLDEN CELEBRATION BACK IN STOCK
The most popular book at AAUGH.com is finally back in stock. As I type this, its available for shipping within 24 hours. For those of you who have been avoiding ordering it because of the wait involved, now is the time to order. I cannot promise how long this situation will last (although I expect that supply has now stablized). As I type this, it’s available for 30% off the cover price, which is a substantial savings. This is a hardcover volume released to celebrate the strip’s 50th year, with strips from all eras and commentary by Schulz (although the commentary is a reprint of the commentary from Peanuts Jubilee, the 25th anniversary book.)

Head on over to http://AAUGH.com and click on the picture of the book to order it!
If you have already ordered this book and not yet received it, it should be shipping soon *unless* you ordered other books at the same time and asked that all books be held until the order was complete.
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OTHER BOOKS BACK IN STOCK
At this moment, What Makes You Think Your Happy is back in stock. This is a reprint of a book that was originally called Snoopy, and it’s made entirely of Snoopy strips from the 1950s. This is also available to order from the front page of http://AAUGH.com
See You Later, Litegator, a hardcover gift book of lawyer-themed strips, has also resurfaced. Visit the site and click on Themed Strip Reprints to find this one.

And the shortage of Peanuts Gang books is over. The publisher has gotten the most recent titles back into print. Because the crisis in these is over, I’m no longer listing the in-stock ones on the first page of http://AAUGH.com — head over to the Kids Books page to find them.
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WHAT ARE PEANUTS GANG BOOKS, ANYWAY?
I’m glad you asked. A lot of Peanuts fans have not seen these, because they aren’t found on the humor rack at most book stores. Instead, they’re in among the cheap kids books. Over the years, there have been a number of attempts to publish kids storybooks about Peanuts. In most cases (except for the books which just adapted Peanuts TV cartoons), they involved having kid storybook writers make up tales about the Peanuts characters, and often they didn’t do a very good job of capturing the feel of Peanuts. The are would be either a recycling of Schulz’s characters with new backgrounds, or completely new art by someone else. The quality of these is variable.

Peanuts Gang takes a whole other approach to the problem. They take actual storylines from the comic strip, and reproduce actual Schulz art with actual Schulz dialog. You can’t get more Peanuts-y than that.

These color paperbacks are cheap (the cover price is $3.50, and we generally have a nice discount off of even that). My favorite of the currently available ones is Beware Of The Snoring Ghost, in which Peppermint Patty gets left behind at school, but her snore still haunts her old desk. World War I Flying Ace fans should grab a copy of A Flying Ace Needs A Lot Of Root Beer. Surf on over to http://AAUGH.com and click on the Kids Books links to see what else is available.
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PEANUTS QUILT TRIBUTE
A move is underway for Peanuts fans to make a big quilt in tribute to Schulz. If you’d like to add your own square to this quilt, you can get more information at http://www.thesnoopyroom.net/happiness_quilt/quilt.html
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"BIG STUFFED DOG" ON VIDEO
I’ve just added The Big Stuffed Dog to our video offerings. This isn’t about the Peanuts characters. Instead, it’s a live-action TV special about the big stuffed Snoopy doll that a little boy loses, and the adventures it has once its out of his hands.
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STRANGE PEANUTS BOOKS: LUCY RULES OK?
In my latest foray into the stranger books in my personal Peanuts collection, we find Lucy Rules OK?, a British strip reprint book from the 1970s. This collects various Sunday strips featuring Lucy (and a couple without her) in a large format. What makes this book strange? When you first flip through the book, something doesn’t look quite right. At first you assume it’s just the coloring, which is not the original coloring and is in fact quite poorly done. But even looking past that, something looks wrong. Then it hits you: it’s the lettering! It’s not Schulz’s lettering! It’s a clumsier hand trying to imitate Schulz (and let’s remember that Sparky was an expert letterer, and worked as a comics letterer even before he was working professionally as a cartoonist.) Comparing the strips reprinted here to more reliable sources, you find that all the dialogue has been relettered and many of the balloons have been redrawn. Why? Well, my best guess is that this is an English edition of a previously-existing foreign language Peanuts books. Instead of returning to the original source (which would’ve required laying out and recoloring work), they relettered the foreign edition back into English. This would also explain the weird title, which sounds like a clumsy translation.

If you’re a Peanuts book geek like I am, make sure you check out the Peanuts book collector’s guide on our site. Head over to http://AAUGH.com and click on Collector’s Guide in the left-hand margin.
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AAUGH.com IS GOOD FOR GIFTS
If you’re looking for a gift for a friend, ordering through AAUGH.com makes a lot of sense. You can have any order shipped to any address. If you’re ordering through our main store, you can even have your item gift-wrapped before shipping, and include a note to the recipient (gift-wrapping and note are not available on orders through the Ultra-Discount shop, sorry). This can save you a lot of effort in getting a gift out to a friend on the other side of the country. Various shipping options are available to help assure that your friend gets their gift in a timely fashion. So just order your books in the normal fashion; when you check out, you will be allowed the option to send your order as gifts.

(Speaking of gifts: if anyone has given you an Amazon.com gift certificate, you can indeed use those on orders through the main store!)
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So what do you think? I’m always looking for feedback on the newsletter, or to hear what people’s favorite Peanuts books are, or for any comments about AAUGH.com. Drop me a line by responding to this message!
–Nat Gertler proprietor http://AAUGH.com

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SCHULZ MEMORIAL
Thousands attended a memorial service for Sparky today, and untold more watched it over the Internet. Memories were shared by members of Schulz’s family and his friends. For those of you who didn’t catch it, you can view segments of reminisces by Sparky’s wife and cartoonist Cathy Guisewite online (using RealVideo) at: http://www.pressdemo.com/evergreen/schulz/schulz_video.html
This isn’t the final time people will say goodbye. As I noted last newsletter, expect your comic pages to be stuffed with Schulz-honoring cartoons on May 27th. But we should never say goodbye to his fine work. Perhaps we should each share our books with our kids and young friends, so they can say "hello" to this moving and entertaining body of work.

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BOOK STATUS
Alas, more books have sold out since the last newsletter, and we’re waiting for them to come back in print. The shortage has now hit the Peanuts Gang storybooks as well, although some are still available. But there have been some books reappearing. Each of the Peanuts Treasury books have been at least briefly available, in some cases quite briefly. At the moment, we can offer you I Told You So, You Blockhead. This book contains most of the strips from 1992. I’ve been updating the front page of the site daily, to make sure that there are always available books listed there, so head on over to http://AAUGH.com if you want to order I Told You So, You Blockhead (or anything else!)

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PEANUTS TREASURY BOOKS
I Told You So, You Blockhead is part of the Peanuts Treasury, a line of books which many of you may not have seen. They were released last year, and folks who were not looking for new Peanuts books may have missed them. These books are in landscape format, about 5 inches tall and eight inches wide. Each page reprints two dailies; Sunday strips get drawn out over two pages. Each book reprints most of the daily cartoons from a single year (missing about 12 of them) and about a dozen Sunday strips from that year (in black and white), making up 176 pages. There are four volumes released so far: 1991: Now That’s Profound, Charlie Brown 1992: I Told You So, You Blockhead 1993: Dogs Are Worth It 1994: The World is Full of Mondays After years of there being no new sequential Peanuts books (only themed gift books), these were great to see. The cover price is $7.95, but when we have them we usually have them at a discount, of course!
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ULTRA-DISCOUNT STORE
Just a reminder that if you’re looking for books available for immediate shipment, you should check out our second shop. At this point, we have a handful of different gift books and kids story books (plus one of Rabbi Twerski’s self-help books illustrated with Schulz cartoons), all ready to ship and heavily discounted. Head over to http://AAUGH.com and click on ULTRA-Discount Shop toward the lower left.

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NEW LOOK AT THE SITE
Well, not a major new look, but it was time to end the black memorial background, as Peanuts books should be a happy thing. Rather than returning to that rather garish yellow background that the site used to have, I’ve changed it to an easier-on-the-eyes beige. I’ve done a few other minor clean-ups that won’t be important to anyone but me. And I’m always open to suggestions.

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U.S. GOVERNMENT PEANUTS
I’m a big Peanuts book collecting nut, with around 600 different volumes in my collection. In each of these newsletters, I’ll be showcasing one of the rarer or weirder pieces in my collection. This issue, I have a particularly strange one: the only comic strip reprint book that I know of to have been issued by the U.S. Government! SECURITY IS AN EYE PATCH is a booklet reprinting a series of strips from the 1960s in which Sally was dealing with "lazy eye" (amblyopia) by wearing an eye patch. First printed in 1968 and reprinted in 1969, this was made available by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare through the U.S. Government Printing Office. It was distributed through pharmacies, opthalmologist, and other health sources, and was also available via mail order for fifteen cents. The printing is nicely crisp and has held up well.

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AS LONG AS YOUR ORDERING THROUGH AAUGH.com…

…why not order some non-Peanuts books as well? After all, the first book is the most expensive one to ship, so this is a good time to take advantage of the discounts of our suppliers. (This is true of both our main AAUGH.com shop and our Ultra-Discount Shop.) There are all sorts of search boxes and links on the pages that you get when you click on any book title. If you’re ordering through the main store, you can order more than just books, so this is a good time to get that software you need, that video you want, that new DVD player, or all sorts of other things. (And by ordering at the same time as your AAUGH.com order, AAUGH.com gets a cut of the money, at no increased charge to you. This may not matter to you, but it sure makes me happy!)

I always love seeing what our Peanuts customers order as long as they’re in the shop. There are a lot of religious books, mainly Christian and Buddhist. Other ordered items include:
*a copy of Microsoft Windows 2000
*Beanie Babies Collectors Journal and Display Case
*How To Read Egyptian Hieroglyphics
*a CD of songs from Ally McBeal
*Lamaze Discovery Book
*The Big Sleep on DVD
*a Sony digital spread spectrum phone
(What’s our best-selling item? Peanuts: A Golden Celebration, of course!)

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WHAT DO YOU THINK?
I’m always interested in hearing what AAUGH.com visitors think. What are your favorite Peanuts books? What disappointed you? Is there something I can do to improve the collector’s guide, the store, or the newsletter? Let me know! Send it to nat@aaugh.com!
–Nat Gertler Proprietor http://AAUGH.com

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IN THIS EDITION:
*Honoring Schulz
*Peanuts: A Golden Celebration available and discounted
*The big comic page tribute
*Books added
*AAUGH.com reorganized
*Featured item: A Charlie Brown Celebration
*Strange Peanuts book
HONORING SCHULZ: The public response to the passing of Charles Schulz has been heart-warming. People are finding many venues to talk about this man and what his work has meant to them.

I’ve been contacted by someone close to the family, who wanted me to let everyone know that the family knows that the support for them is out there at this trying time. He also wanted me to say that, while they understand the instinct to send flowers and gifts, the family would prefer that the money be donated to one of Schulz’s favorite charities: The National D-Day Memorial Foundation P.O. Box 77 Bedford, VA 24523 Mark the envelope "In Memory of Charles Schulz." (For those who want another charity to support, Schulz also backed Canine Companions For Indepence, an organization that provides helper dogs for people with disabilities. Donations can be mailed directly to any of CCI’s locations or charged over the phone by credit card by calling (800) 572-BARK.)

PEANUTS: A GOLDEN CELEBRATION IS BACK Apparently, someone is on the ball, as supplies of Peanuts: A Golden Celebration, which ran out earlier today, were quickly replenished. As I type this, copies are available for ordering at 30% off the cover price. I CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT THIS WILL CONTINUE. Availability of this book was disrupted by the unexpected retirement announcement months ago, and now have been disrupted again. My suggestion: if you want one of these, head over to http://AAUGH.com *right now*. Click on the picture of the cover to order the book; if the book is out again, the next page that appears will tell you so. (Peanuts: A Golden Celebration is the 50th anniversary book, a big thick retrospective of almost the entire run of the strip. It has commentary from Schulz…
although if you have the 25th anniversary book Peanuts Jubilee, you already have the same commentary. This book is a great one for the coffee table, and makes a fine gift. Buy lots!)

THE BIG COMIC PAGE TRIBUTE Mark May 27th on your calendar, and pick up all the different newspapers you can on that day. (Okay, you can skip the New York Times.) Almost every syndicated cartoonist in the country will be doing a tribute to Peanuts in their strip that day. This has been planned for a while, and was meant to be a surprise, to coincide with the National Cartoonist Society honoring Schulz. This is something worth looking forward to.

BOOKS ADDED There hasn’t been any truly new books out lately, except for the price guides I talked of last time (both available on the Books About Peanuts page.) However, I have added Cartooning Basics, a guide to drawing characters that Schulz wrote a foreword for. It’s on the Schulz Illustrations page. And I corrected the faulty link for the Cathy book Another Saturday Night Of Wild And Reckless Abandon, also with a Schulz foreword. (This same foreword was reused in The New Collected Cathy
AAUGH.com REORGANIZED If you head to the site today, you might see that a few things have changed. The front page is in black at the moment. That will only be for a week, because I think a Peanuts site should be about joy, not sorrow. There are some other changes as well. I’ve eliminated the Coming Soon page, the Foreign Books page and the Original Books page; available books from those pages have been integrated into other pages. The Buy Books Now link has been replaced with one marked Check Out, to make it clearer what it does. And I’ve added a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list for the site (separate from the FAQ for the collector’s guide), to handle some questions that I commonly get (and a few which I suspect people may be thinking but not asking.) If you have any ideas for ways to improve AAUGH.com, let me know.

FEATURED ITEM: A CHARLIE BROWN CELEBRATION
This issue’s featured item is an interesting video called A Charlie Brown Celebration. This is the tape of an animated special which first aired in 1982. On it, Schulz talks about the characters, leading to animated sequences based directly on strip sequences. The special was originally an hour long, but that includes commercials, so the videotape version is about 48 minutes long. You can find this video tape on the front page of http://AAUGH.com , in the little area on Video Retrospectives.

STRANGE PEANUTS BOOK
For the Peanuts book collectors out there, I thought I’d start sharing information about the stranger items in my own 600 piece collection. This time, I’m taking a look at an uncommon edition of Security Is A Thumb And A Blanket. Many of you collectors probably have a copy of Security Is A Thumb And A Blanket, but for those who don’t: it’s one of a series of small square books issued in the 1960s by Determined Productions. Each two-page spread in these books contains a platitude ("Security is having a home town") and a matching picture (Linus hugging a sign that says "Pinetree Corners, Population 3260.") So what’s special about this edition? It’s in Braille. The American Brotherhood For The Blind made this special version by taking a standard copy of the book, cutting apart the pages, and adding in the middle of each two page spread a pair of thick plasticy pages. One page has the platitude text in Braille, the other page has a raised version of the picture, so that a blind person can feel it. They even add texture to certain items. The whole thing is designed to be held together with spiral binding, although on the copy I have the spiral has apparently come off, and it’s held together with three binder rings. Don’t bother asking where you can get this. They made this over three decades ago, and I doubt they made very many of them to begin with. As you can imagine, I’m sure not willing to part with mine. But if you stick with Peanuts book collecting long enough, you’re likely to come across a few weird things yourself!
Well, that’s it for this newsletter. Because the Peanuts book situation is in such a flux, I expect to continue issuing these more often than our usual one-per-month. Let’s hope that if there’s any unexpected news, it will be good this time. Meanwhile, if you like this newsletter, and you like my site, be sure to tell your friends about http://AAUGH.com (and feel free to forward this email to them!)

–Nat Gertler Proprietor AAUGH.com

Charles "Sparky" Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, died in his sleep at 9:45 PM, February 12th, 2000. He was 77.

Today (Feb. 13), his final Peanuts strip will run in the Sunday newspaper. As with his final daily strip (January 3rd), this one is a farewell note to his fans. In the weeks before his death, he had been shown many thank you notes from his friends a peers, thousands which appeared via the mail and hundreds which arrived via the Internet. For a brief biography of Sparky, see:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/nat/schulz.htm
When I got on the computer, I was ready to write a standard AAUGH.com newsletter, alerting you to various changes on the site and pointing out some minor newly-listed books. Then I see the news, and that seems so unimportant. What follows is a message I wrote to share with my Internet friends.
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Sparky has passed on.

At this point, it doesn’t pay to be too sad. He had a full life, with wives and children, and a career so successful that it completely redefined both creative and commercial success in his field. He seemed to know this was coming, and had time to say goodbye to his friends.

And I owe him a big thanks. It wasn’t until I really thought about it that I realized how much his work has shaped my life. I don’t mean just my out-of-control hobby of collecting Peanuts books, or the online Peanuts bookstore I run in my spare time. I mean, it got me into comics, and set me on the path to my career as a comics writer. It got me reading, and set me on the path to becoming a writer in general. It taught me what it means to be a friend, and informed the comic delivery which is still a lot of how I deal with people.

In recent weeks, I’ve had to write Schulz-oriented articles for various publications. One of the toughest parts of that work has been keeping it abstract, dealing with what he did rather than how it effected me. He and his work are not things I can view dispassionately.

He did great things with funny pictures, entertaining millions with an amazing quantity of high-quality material, crafted single-handedly. He did what he loved, and he loved what he did. He was respected by his peers and loved by his fans, and has a permanent spot in the history of his artform.

There is no reason to be too sad.

But I am.

–Nat Gertler proprietor http://AAUGH.com