The latest addition to the AAUGH.com reference lbrary is Il grande libro dei Peanuts. Can’t wait for the Complete Peanuts? This big, thick book with every single daily (i.e., not Sunday) Peanuts strip from the 1960s. Which would be absolutely great if the strips weren’t in Italian. I mean, I’m looking at Peanuts strips that I’ve never read before, and I can’t read them now!

The quality of the reproduction is variable, as they had to go to a variety of sources to get the strips to reprint, but it’s all readable. (If you happen to get a copy and see my name on a short list at the beginning, it’s there because I provided them with some scans of some elusive strips. And yes, the Roy Thomas you’ll see on that list is indeed the long-time comic book writer.)

One weird thing about the use of various sources is that it makes the lettering quite variable. Many of the strips use existing translated versions, but there were also plenty of strips that hadn’t seen print in Italian and needed fresh translation. The lettering style can vary radically on a single page, an odd effect.

The strips are, of course, in order. The date code and copyright notice have been left in place on each strip, so you can tell the date.

This is actually the second volume in this series. The first volume covered the dailies of the 1970s. I don’t know whether other volumes covering other decades are planned.

The price of the new volume is 39 euros, not a bad price for more than 1/6th of all the Peanuts strips ever! Might even be worth taking Italian lessons!

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