Warning: this post is a bit promotional. With my publisher hat on, I just put out a new book, Great Golf Gags by Classic Cartoonists, which features golf cartoons by six respected 20th century cartoonists. Does this include Schulz? You betcha! A nice big helping of Schulz. Having said that, if you have one of the About Comics collections of “It’s Only a Game”, you already have most of the Schulz cartoons here… but not all. This book contains two single-panel cartoons that, by the best of my recollection, have never appeared in a Schulz-specific book. However, AAUGH Blog readers have already seen one of them – that cartoon of a woman driving a golf cart I included with my piece of Schulz’s history with women’s sports. Those two non-Peanuts cartoons were both ones that Sparky drew for the programs Bing Crosby’s annual Pro-Am golf tournament (he also drew a lot of Peanuts cartoons for the programs over the years, some but not all of which were in The Complete Peanuts volume 26.)

In fact, those programs are the source for all the non-Schulz material in the book. And what other cartoonists are represented? Well, there’s a couple of strips by Bill O’Malley, but just a couple. A half dozen or so by Gus Arriola – you might not know his strip “Gordo”, but cartoonists sure do; the guy had a beautiful lush line and a love for his characters. Some Hank Ketcham – the guy who created “Dennis the Menace”. A good chunk of Virgil Partch, but then if you know of Partch, it should come as little surprise that he was putting out good amounts of work; when he died, he already had the next six years of his daily panel “Big George” drawn and ready to publish. And then there’s Eldon Dedini, whose lovely lush work you may or may not admit to having seen in Playboy. (The cover painting is a Dedini as well.)

It’s a 100-page paperback, $9.99. Should make a good stocking stuffer for any golf or classic cartooning fan. And I don’t mean waiting for Christmas, just go and stuff it into whatever stockings they’re wearing right now.

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