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.

Share the news!
Nat news
The AAUGH Blogger’s next Peanuts-related book

Since the news came out at Beaglefest, I might as well announce it here as well: I’ve helped Judy Sladky with the writing of her memoire. A memoir about what, you ask? Well, for those of you who don’t know who Judy is… you know how you never see Clark …

Upcoming releases
Not all strip reprints are books

Coming next April is Happiness is a Postcard, a boxed set of fifty “unique” (by which they mean there are no repeats in the box) postcards. And some of them, going by the promo image, are reprints of Sunday strips. So that doesn’t count as a “book” for my list of …

Upcoming releases
A Big Box and a Test Email

Coming in October, it’s a bunch of books that you may already have, full of strips that you may already have in other books, but now it’s in a box! It’s Snoopy: A Big Box of Happiness, and it collects into single cardboard crate the full-color strip reprints Snoopy: Boogie Down! …