The new edition of the first Peanuts book, titled simply Peanuts, doesn’t hit regular bookstores until next month, but it’s already landed at comic book stores. The reproduction is good and sharp, they reproduced from an early printing so it still have the introduction in it that was missing from later printings. The cover is a disappointment; I’ve always liked the feel of the matte cover of the original, but this has a standard modern glossy cover – understandable for production reasons, but still disappointing.

I did have to twitch a bit at the new text on the back cover, which explained that this facsimile has a sampling of the best of the early years of the strip, including the very first newspaper strip.

But it doesn’t. Because it’s an accurate facsimile, and that book never had the very first strip.

Still, if you want a nice little collection of early strips without paying the price of the first volume of The Complete Peanuts, this is a good deal… particularly at the moment, when Amazon is still taking preorder for $3.46 (that price may change by the time you click it.

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