With HBO showing their new Liberace biopic, I thought I’d take note of a reference to that popular piano player in Peanuts. This image comes not from the strip, but from the comic books… specifically, issue 147 of Nancy, which has a 4 page Peanuts story.
You might be momentarily taken back by the picture of an adult in Peanuts, but that is actually legitimate. There are plenty of examples of images of representations of adults in Schulz’s strip, whether it’s a picture of Linus’s drawing, or a flannelgraph with an image of a shepherd, or something far more common (and which plays a role in this comic book story): a bust of Beethoven.

Coming in September is Snoopy and Friends Cupcake Kit, which is showing up on book searches even though the closest thing it has to a book is a recipe card (oh, okay, part of the detail claims a 6 page book, but I have my doubts. Ever try to make a six page book?) That’s what happens when it’s produced by a book publisher, rather than a, ummm, baking stuff publisher.

Oh, and speaking of things-that-aren’t-really-books being put out by book publishers, now shipping is the Peanuts Finger Puppet Theater.

Be Thankful and Be Friends both be shipping September 3rd.

And remember a few weeks back when I noted a new book titled A Charlie Brown Christmas by Charles M. Schulz and I voiced my suspicion that this was not a new book adaptation of the special, but rather a reprinting of Lee Mendelson’s history of the project, A Charlie Brown Christmas: The Making of a Legend? Well, I was right!

Oh, yes, here’s the box for this year’s Complete Peanuts boxed set:

Order lots!

But it’s not a mistake. I mean it. Peanuts by Shultz.

Look at this picture. It’s from a story slated for issue 10 of the current Peanuts comic. Entitled “Twinkle Thinkle”, it is written by yours truly…

…and drawn by Jeff Shultz.

Dedicated fans of comics aimed at the younger audience will recognize Mr. Shultz’s name for the many stories he has drawn depicting the adventures of Archie, Betty, Veronica, and their chums. His style is clean, round, and attractive.

(And just to prove that spelling problems don’t befall just Charles Schulz, let me note that the Grand Comic Book Database has 196 credits for Jeff Shultz and 221 for Jeff Schultz.)

Anyway, Mr. Shultz is slated to draw two stories (only one of which is my script) for issue 10, which ships at the end of July… which means that comics retailers are working on their orders for it now. When you go into the comic book store this Saturday for Free Comic Book Day, ask the retailer if they’ll order a copy of Peanuts 10 for you, and be ready to soak in the Shultz goodness. (Many comic shops do run a “hold” service, so that you can get them to order all the issues of Peanuts for you and not worry if it sells out before you get to the shop.)

As you can guess, I’ve been going around telling everyone that one of my Peanuts stories is being drawn by Shultz himself. Hey, is it my fault if they can’t hear the spelling?

For those of you who are solely about things Peanutsy, there is indeed something for you, if something small. One of the books being offered for Free Comic Book Day is Kaboom! Summer Blast, an anthology of stories form the Kaboom! line of kiddie comics. Included in it are pages from Peanuts issue 2, featuring Vicki Scott’s story “How to draw Linus Van Pelt as demonstrated by Charlie Brown”. You can see an excerpt of this excerpting freebie here.

You can look up your local participating shops at the Free Comic Book Day website. Please note that while most shops will have ordered this comic, nobody orders an unlimited quantity, so they may run out before you get there. No promises.

Two of these, Be Brave and Be Kind, are matched books. They’re gift books, small but not miniature, each 72 pages of strong bright white paper. One each spread (and occasionally on a single page) is a command to be something (“Be sensitive”, “Be endearing”, “Be professional”) paired with a color Peanuts image and often (but not always) a quote from the strip, demonstrating the command at work. The art is Schulz-based work by the inside team at Creative Associates, whose work you would recognize from the Kaboom comic books: pencils by Vicki Scott, inks by Paige Braddock, colors by Alexis Fajardo. The quotes are well chosen. These are not the books to introduce anyone to Peanuts, but they should do the job of being a nice little gift item for folks who know the characters – which would be most people, I reckon. More books are planned in this series; I wonder if they will run short on things to “be”.

Be Yourself is aimed at kids (where the other two books are put out by “Running Press”, this is put out by “Running Press Kids”), and is a larger square hardback book, 40 pages (plus a couple pages of stickers), full color on slick paper. It features Tom Brannon’s Peanuts art – if you’ve seen some of the recent book adaptations of classic Peanuts specials, you’ve seen his highly-modeled colorings of the characters. This book also tells you to “Be” something (such as “a friend” or “determined”), and then will demonstrate that with Peanuts images and, at times, explanations of that image (“Be a friend” has “Friends like Snoopy come to the rescue” as he patches up Woodstock’s birdhouse, and “Marcie counts on her friend Peppermint Patty in tough situations”.) Again, I think that the reader will have to be familiar with the Peanuts milieu to get anything out of it, and given the younger targeting of the book, that’s less of a sure thing. But if you like the Tom Brannon look, here’s a couple dozen images of it, plus fifteen stickers of those images!