Last year, I found The Big Book of Peanuts Comics, a single volume which collected all of the Peanuts daily strips (i.e., no Sundays) from the 1970s, for sale for about $20 at Costco. A number of you wanted to lay your hands on a copy, but the only place I could find them was Costco, and then they were gone from there, and I was so sure they’d show up on the Barnes & Noble cheap pile or other similar spots, but no. I searched and searched.

But today, I was in Costco, and saw that they had just put out their table of gift books for the holidays, and there not only did I find that that book was back, I found that it had brought a friend!

The second book is also titled The Big Book of Peanuts, but this one has all of the dailies from the 1980s. That’s over 3000 strips for less than a penny apiece. They’re reproduced smaller than in a Complete Peanuts book, a full week’s worth on each large page (the book is about 9″x12″), in black and white, as nature intended.

Now, if you just want to give someone a large amount of Peanuts strips, these books are a fine way of doing so… but I’d recommend the 1970s volume. It’s a better era. The 1980s are probably the weakest decade of Peanuts, which makes it still better than most decades of most strips. But for $20, either of them is a great bargain. Also, big and heavy and great for womping spiders. If you’re a Costco member, get there before they’re gone again!

To be a real Peanuts books collector these days, you not only need a lot of bookshelves, you need big, sturdy ones. Between these books, the Peanuts Every Sunday volumes, and that IDW original art edition volume, that’s a lot of inches and a lot of pounds.

(By the way, if anyone needs a smaller book with the minimum amount of Peanuts comics, I do have spare copies of Boom! Studios Halloween Fright Fest 2014, the giveaway comic with two Sunday strips in it.)

Share the news!