I thought that the earlier post on the Australian Comic Hits comic was, well, actually more than anyone would want to read on it. But a kind note from AAUGH Blog reader and comic shop owner Jim reminds me that prudence dictates I say a wee bit more.

I don’t know how this book was manufactured. It likely comes down to one of three ways:

• The American publisher, Dell, send the films used for making these three comics to Australia, where they were reprinted. There is reason to be leery of this explanation, as Australian reprints from about this era were generally in black-and-white.
• The American publisher printed extra copies of the guts of these three particular issues, and then either bound them in the US or sent them to Australia to be bound. There was a similar set of books done for a newsstand chain in the 1980s, with issues having a specific set of DC Comics guts from the same month.
• The American publisher supplied just a huge pile of whatever guts they had excess of, which were bound together for this market (possibly making sure there was at least some Tom & Jerry in every copy, to match the cover). The American EC Comics Annuals of the 1950s were done that way.

The reason I bring this up is that last possibility. I wouldn’t want some enthusiastic Peanuts collector to go through all the effort of hunting down this issue (and I suspect it would be quite a hunt – I can’t find reference online to any copies of this book besides the one I bought!) only to find that their copy didn’t have any Peanuts content.

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