Fantagraphics has put up a nifty preview for Charlie Brown’s Christmas Stocking, which is due to come out late next month. Go watch it!

I’m quite happy with the result, but it’s always sort of odd to explain my pride in a project like that, because I did, well, the middle bit. Obviously, I am not Charles Schulz (promise!); I did not create the stories. And all that nice graphic polish that the book has? I didn’t do that either, that was done by the fine design folks who work for Fantagraphics. I did the middle part of the work. I was the guy who knew that these two stories were laying around, unreprinted, in almost half-century-old women’s magazines, and who figured out how they might be arranged to make a book. I wrote some “about the story” and “about the author” text, made up a simple digital dummy of the book, and showed it to Peanuts publishers until I found one that agreed with me that this was a worthwhile book. So I’m not the guy who made it good – that’s Schulz. I’m not the guy who made it look good – and I apologize for not having the names of the Fantagraphics designers at hand to cite them each individually. I’m just the guy who made it happen. People have already asked if I would sign copies for them, and I’m a mite confoodled by that (although glad to oblige), because my credit for the book is a vague one.

This nice little gift hardcover is $9.99, and is available for preorder. If you’re thinking of buying them as gifts, do remember that it qualifies for Amazon’s 4-for-3 promotion, which means if you order 4 copies in a single order, you’ll only pay for 3… plus that order come to $29.97, which means it qualifies for their Free Super Saver Shipping in the US.

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