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
Review: Snoopy (Classic Cartoon Character Bios)

The Abdo Kids : Classic Cartoon Character Bios books are blatant stuff-to-fill-school-libraries material. Sturdy hardcovers, lots of pictures, 24 pages, little text – about 250 words. The Snoopy volume uses Snoopy images from just about anywhere: strips (appropriately licensed), animation, photos, The Peanuts Movie publicity materials. And the simple facts it …

New releases
Double Love

Simon Spotlight has dropped two books for the Valentine’s Day Shopping Season, and they’re pretty similar. Love is Everywhere, Snoopy! is a board book that is supposed to be Charlie Brown explaining love to Snoopy (who is said to have asked, which raises the usual how-does-Snoopy-communicate-to-Charlie-Brown question.) Charlie Brown answers …

New releases
“Books”

My grocery shopping today landed me two new Peanuts “books”. The more bookish of the two is the latest edition of The Great Big Book of Peanuts Word Seeks, volume 5 to be precise, which as I’ve mentioned before I’ll allow to qualify as a book… particularly because it not …