The second boxed set of The Complete Peanuts is now available for pre-order. This set has the already-released volume 3 and the upcoming volume 4 both in a slipcase at a discount price. In fact, if you order the boxed set now, it’s a mere $32.97… only about $4 more than the cover price for a single volume, and it automatically qualifies for free shipping in the US. Are you going to want these books? The complete daily strips from 1955-1958? Is that really a question.

Meanwhile, it looks like the British are getting a new edition of Why, Charlie Brown, Why?, the genuinely Schulz-illustrated adaptation of the touching animated special.

Speaking of British books, the most recent addition to the AAUGH.com reference library is a copy of Peanuts at School, which is a shortened version of the U.S. book Classroom Peanuts, an oversized volume focusing on strips set in the classroom.

Oh, wait, since I started writing that last paragraph, the mailman has brought me something nifty: the Summer 1954 issue of The Illustrator, a small magazine for the students of the through-the-mail art school where Schulz worked. This actually follows on an article they had run six years before, about Li’l Folks (which may be the very first article about Sparky). This article talks about his success, including of course the school’s part in it. They talk about the success of Peanuts, which was in 110 papers at the time (70 daily, 40 Sunday), and was already heading oversees to England, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sweden. And it may have started what I consider to be an unfortunate press tendency to focus on how much money Sparky (who they repeatedly refer to as “Charlie”) makes; in this case, they note that he “enjoys a larger yearly income than our cabinet members in Washington, D.C.” (This is a sad tendency that continues to this day; the most recent coverage of Schulz I’ve seen is on his place on the ranks of income-earning among dead celebrities.)

For the Peanuts book nut, there is a note in here that there is already one paperback book out and the next one will be a hardcover, which is confirmation that the hardcover version of More Peanuts was published before the paperback.

The seven-page piece dedicates two of its pages to a color reprinting of a Sunday strip. The magazine also has three dailies, two Li’l Folks gags, what might be an original one-panel gag to start the piece, and another Sunday run in color on the back cover.

Now I’ve just got to get that 1948 article…

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