LIghtly outlines Peanuts

New releases

outlinesGot in a couple more books from the UK, Snoopy Saves the Day and Best of Friends. These are two Charlie-Brown-and-Snoopy oriented storybooks, telling original tales using an interesting visual style. The art by Tom Brannon (who has done some interesting modeled-looking Peanuts in the US) takes an interesting tack – he drops most of the black lines of the characters into simply darkening the color of the area they they fill… which is allowed to swell beyond the outline. It works well. I think the choice to put dialog in cursive doesn’t work as well (particularly since when dialog appears in word balloons, it’s in Schulz-style lettering), but all in all, its a cool look… and an example of something we’re seeing more and more, which is finding different ways of looking at Peanuts while still trying to keep a strong core of Schulz.

 

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New releases
The World According to Snoopy and sundry other things

I just picked up a copy of The World According to Snoopy, which was released in the UK late last year. This hardcover book, with its cover akin to a 1970s textbook, falls into the “inspirational messages” category. It’s pages are a mix of single-page displays of individual Peanuts strips (always …

New releases
Peanuts books all a-board!

The mail brought two new Peanuts board books this week, and the web offered up images of another, so I guess that’s the theme for the day. Cheering You On, Charlie Brown looks first at how Charlie Brown has a lot of difficulty in life, but then at how he …

New releases
Shiny edges

So I got the new board book edition of It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown. And, well, it is what it is, a board book edition of a previously-published adaptation. I’m not sure full episode adaptations are absolutely ripe for board books, simply because they’re too long, too much text, for …