Batter up Charlie Brown? Why, are you planning to deep fry him??

Upcoming releases

Batter Up, Charlie Brown "graphic novel" coverIt looks like Simon & Schuster’s Simon Spotlight imprint is keeping a reasonably aggressive bimonthly schedule for their Peanuts Graphic Novel series, as they’ve just announced the third one, coming in May. This will be the baseball-themed Batter Up, Charlie Brown!, and like the other volumes will include one new short story, but will mostly be made up of reprints from the Kaboom Peanuts comics and some genuine Schulz strips. In this case, the bulk of the reprint material will be the 2012 graphic novel It’s Tokyo, Charlie Brown! (which they push as it being a “classic” graphic novel; I guess things become “classic” quickly these days.)

If the title sounds familiar, well, yes, it’s the title of a still-in-print baseball-themed strip collection. I appreciate the Peanuts folks’ dedication to keeping my collectors guide necessary, so it can straighten out things like this.

And as long as I’m putting up a blog post, I’ll quickly note that Hallmark has made last year’s huge attempt at an Ultimate Charlie Brown Christmas adaptation, the one with lights and sounds and pop-ups, available again for this Christmas. Usually we would not see Christmas book availability announced this early, but I guess as this is an available-again thing, no reason to hide it, it won’t be a big reveal. Besides, Hallmark may be facing the same problem as other retailers: overstuffed warehouses. All those deliveries that were delayed by supply chain problems are now showing up, just as inflation is making people be a bit more cautious about their spending, so stores are putting out product earlier than normal because they don’t have the warehouse room to keep it stored. This too shall pass.

Upcoming releases
Destined to blow up

Puffer Jacket Snoopy is a thing… enough of a thing that I’ll be discussing an item that only barely qualifies for this blog (it comes with a book… a tiny book of stickers.) Amazon is now listing for October release a Desktop Inflatable Puffer Jacket Snoopy. It’s one of the …

Upcoming releases
The Return of What’s Necessary

Coming in April is a reissue of Only What’s Necessary, Chip Kidd’s second book on the art of Peanuts, reissued for the 75th anniversary of the strip. (My review of the original 2015 edition is here.) For those keeping track, this is the third cover for this book. Here are the …

Upcoming releases
Covers to coming things

It’s that time when all the computer systems update and suddenly we’re seeing covers t0o some of the books that are rolling down the road toward us. The big one in this batch is probably Snoopy: The Story of My Life, which is the Cartoon Art Museum’s Andrew Farago ghosting …