Got 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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