A while back, I promised you a review that included a book where one quotation mark was left off of the quote at the end of the book. This is that review! Worry no more.

The Doctor is In is a boxed set of one can with a coin slot in the top, and one book. The can is decorated with a picture of Lucy at her psychiatric booth, making it something that invokes the strip rather than something that could be a prop from the strip. My tastes run toward the latter — a can that just said “Psychiatric Help, 5 cents” would be recognized by most.

The book is horizontally-oriented with the spine at the top, so that you could tent it to display either The Doctor Is In (front cover) or The Doctor Is Out (back) – although again, each has a picture of Lucy, so it’s more an invocation of Peanuts than a simulation of it. The 64 page book is full of psychiatric booth strips, with each spread having two daily and one Sunday strip. Like other strongly themed books, you can tell that there are times where they are showing you the one booth-gag strip from some longer continuity, but in general the selection of strip works fine. The book is rather small. Daily strips are run 1″x4.5″, and the Sundays are 3″x4″, so this isn’t the most cofotable format for reading. Still, with 90 strips and given its current $10.15 price, that’s less than 12 cents apiece per nickel dose of advice!

All in all, it’s not for everyone, but it’s probably a nice little piece of of ornamention for the desk of whoever at work people take their problems to.

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