I put the “facts” in “factsimile”!

Upcoming releases

Titan Books has announced an April release for a facsimile edition of 1965’s Sunday’s Fun Day, Charlie Brown. It’s described as “The 11th Facsimile edition of the original 1960 classic Peanuts paperbacks first published in 1965 featuring 126 Sunday Peanuts newspaper strips from 1962-1965.” I have a couple of things to say about that.

The first is that while they are reprinting a 1965 book, they’re not reprinting a 1965 edition. The solicited cover is not the original yellow cover design, which you should see here (although even that image is not a first printing, but a fifth printing from 1967.) The white-edged cover format was introduced to the line later; I don’t have a full list of the various printings of Sunday’s Fun Day, but it probably switched over around 1970. And you know what? I think it’s fine they’re using that later printing, a good idea actually. Part of the sales of these are as nostalgia items, I reckon, and they already have ten books in this series out for those who are nostalgic for the original covers. To a lot of people, the white-cover versions would’ve been their first Peanuts books (particularly since hardcover editions of this design were available through the Weekly Reader book order forms in school), and we might as well feed that group’s nostalgia as well.

The other note is that their descriptor is a little bit off, although less than 2%. Assuming this is an accurate facsimile, it will have 124 Sunday strips, not 126. It’s a 128 page book, one Sunday per page, but with four pages of front matter. But it’s still a nice book for $6.99 (which is less than it cost in 1965, allowing for inflation.) This should make a nice stocking stuffer… for anyone who puts out their stockings in April!

Upcoming releases
2025 in Peanuts

Happy New Year, all you AAUGH Blog Readers! 2025 has come, like it or not, and it brings with it the 75th anniversary of Peanuts! Now, we’ve seen at least some attempts to play off 0f the big anniversary year since at least last summer, more than a full year …

Upcoming releases
A book I’d not expected to resurface

Back in 2011, Schulz’s granddaughter Dena Hodges issued the first two chapters of  a memoir called In the Shadow of the Family Dog. As I noted in my review at the time, the chapter and the description of the project made it clear that the focus was her relationship with …

Upcoming releases
A box of squares

This May, Fantagraphics is collecting the various small square Peanuts books they’ve published into a new box set, Peanuts All Year Round Mini Collection. This includes: A Valentine for Charlie Brown — Valentine’s Day and romance strips Batter-Up Charlie Brown! — baseball strips Waiting for the Great Pumpkin — Halloween …