LIghtly outlines Peanuts

New releases

outlinesGot in a couple more books from the UK, Snoopy Saves the Day and Best of Friends. These are two Charlie-Brown-and-Snoopy oriented storybooks, telling original tales using an interesting visual style. The art by Tom Brannon (who has done some interesting modeled-looking Peanuts in the US) takes an interesting tack – he drops most of the black lines of the characters into simply darkening the color of the area they they fill… which is allowed to swell beyond the outline. It works well. I think the choice to put dialog in cursive doesn’t work as well (particularly since when dialog appears in word balloons, it’s in Schulz-style lettering), but all in all, its a cool look… and an example of something we’re seeing more and more, which is finding different ways of looking at Peanuts while still trying to keep a strong core of Schulz.

 

New releases
A different kind of coffee table book

If you have a coffee table, you should have a “coffee table book”, a large, heavily illustrated color volume that your guests can easily and casually flip through, (Charles M. Schulz: The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects is a good choice, of course.) But you …

New releases
Review: Snoopy (Classic Cartoon Character Bios)

The Abdo Kids : Classic Cartoon Character Bios books are blatant stuff-to-fill-school-libraries material. Sturdy hardcovers, lots of pictures, 24 pages, little text – about 250 words. The Snoopy volume uses Snoopy images from just about anywhere: strips (appropriately licensed), animation, photos, The Peanuts Movie publicity materials. And the simple facts it …

Classic finds
A needle-ssly fine present

Being a) an adult and b) not a Christmasian, it makes sense that I’m not given much in the way of Christmas presents. This year’s haul was just two items, both given by Dr. Mrs. The AAUGH Blogger: a Terry’s Chocolate Orange (yum!), and this Peanuts embroidery book from Japan. …