I like to own copies of all the different editions of books I wrote or did major work on. And I also like owning Peanuts books, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. So lately, I’ve been tracking down copies of The Complete Peanuts 1950-2000: Comics & Stories, aka The Complete Peanuts 26, done for different languages. After all, I and two cohorts were the team that tracked down as much outside-the-newspaper-strip Schulz-drawn Peanuts content as we could to fill out this book. Not every foreign edition of the Complete Peanuts series has made it to volume 26, some seem to have petered out earlier. But now I have it not only in English, but in Polish, German, and Italian as well.

One thing that made the hunt a little hard is that the name for the Italian edition of The Complete Peanuts is named The Complete Peanuts, so I actually saw it several times before realizing it was a foreign language.

And I have to admit, this caused a weird feeling. The first 25 volumes were made up of all the strips that had appeared in the newspapers, and these had all been translated already for at least some of the languages here, and even if a language never had all the strips done before, it likely had most of them. But we threw things into this book that had never been translated, and would likely never see print in any form again if we hadn’t dug it up. What I’m saying is that if it wasn’t for me and my team, these European nations would never have translated into their native tongues the extolling of the wonders of the 1961 Ford Falcon.

So should civilization fall, and should future humanoids or alien visitors discover the AAUGH.com Reference Library and realize that they can use these four matched volumes as their Rosetta Stone, then parts of worldwide culture may ultimately be resurrected because a small band of dedicated Peanuts fans caused ads for the Ford Falcon and Butternut Bread to be translated into other tongues.

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