Snoopy Soars to Space

New releases

The first of the new Peanuts Graphic Novels line dropped this week, Snoopy Soars to Space. Whether it’s a “graphic novel” depends on which of the fuzzy definitions of the term you’re using; it’s mostly reprints of pre-existing stories, although the first one is The Beagle has Landed, Charlie Brown, which was indeed released as a book of its own and thus does qualify as a graphic novel. After that, it has six space-themed short stories from the Kaboom!-published Peanuts comic book series, plus one all-new tale, the 11-page “Kickoff to the Moon” by Jason Cooper and Robert Pope. There’s also a couple of Schulz Sunday strips and some behind-the-scenes material, 160 pages total.

A panel from "Twinkle Thinkle" -- Rerun and Lucy look on as Linus points into the starry night sky.One thing that I was wondering was whether it would include the three-pager “Twinkle Thinkle”, which I wrote and Jeff Shultz drew, and indeed it does! What’s weird is that this is the second week in a row that a book came out where 1.5 to 2% of the book is a comics story I wrote — last week saw the comic shop debut of Milestone Compendium Two, a thick whomper of a book that collects 54 issues worth of 1990s comics from the inclusive superhero line Milestone… one issue of which I wrote. It ain’t fame, but it’s still nice that my older work can be seen, even if it’s only tiny fractions of books. (As it happens, this story, which is basically the most mainstream published superhero credit I have, was the first professional comics work of one Humberto Ramos, who has gone on to bigger things.)

New releases
Look! A mook!

Mooks – that is, items with magazine-like content but sold more like a book – are popular in Japan. Many of them come bundled with extra items, and there have been a fair number with Peanuts items. Most often these are bags – a handbag or a tote of some …

New releases
Bringing up the rear

I’m interrupting my coverage of the shipment of books I got from Japan to cover another foreign book that just arrived. Now, I don’t try to collect every foreign Peanuts book. My collection is out of control as it is. I try to find books in languages that I don’t …

New releases
Writing Japanese, I think I’m writing Japanese, I really think so…

My main goal of ordering Peanuts books from Japan was to get a copy of the new Japanese edition of Charles M. Schulz: The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects, the book that I co-wrote for the Schulz Museum. After all, I want to have Peanuts …