Lest you think Fantagraphics has no love for the Peanuts book collector nerds among us, let me show you the real cover (as opposed to the original preview cover) of The Unseen Peanuts, which will be available for free on Free Comic Book Day (Saturday, May 5th) at many, many comic book stores.

That’s right – it’s their take on the old Holt, Rinehart, and Winston book covers, made shocking by the inclusion of Charlotte Braun – the character who hadn’t appeared in any of the Peanuts books before The Complete Peanuts, whose very existence was little more than a trivia question (although she qualified for her own Wikipedia entry, which I suppose says more about Wikipedia than about Charlotte), gets her own cover! You can look up Free Comic Book Day locations at www.FreeComicBookDay.com – not all of them will be giving away The Unseen Peanuts, but many will.

And speaking of Free Comic Book Day, those of you in the San Diego area will have a chance to see how horribly ordinary a Schulz book blogger appears. I will be appearing at Comickaze Comics & More, 5517 A/B Clairemont Mesa Boulevard. I’m not exactly one of the most famous comic book creators (although I qualify for my own Wikipedia entry, which I suppose says more about Wikipedia than about me), but I’ll be gladly signing comics. I’ll have about a hundred copies of the first issue of Licensable BearTM to give away (and issues 2 and 3 to sell, in addition to some of my other comics works). If I remember, I’ll drag along a preview copy of Schulz’s Youth to show off. I should even have some Schulz’s Youth ad postcards to remind you to come back to Comickaze and buy the book when it comes out.

So stop on by and say hi! Think about it… free comic books. What more could you want?

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