If you look at this ad, you may be wondering (as I did when I stumbled across it) why Charlie Brown is advertising a television show in 1963… and why, of all shows, he’s advertising The Untouchables. (Or you may be one of the many people now populating the earth too …
As proud as I am of my Peanuts Book Collectors Guide, it is not the be-all and end-all guide…. and as much as I have visions of making it so, the real life of being a father of two, the runner of a business, a make of dinners, and a …
As you may have seen discussed elsewhere, as of today, the first couple Mickey Mouse cartoons are in the public domain in the United States. That means that people are free to make not just copies of the cartoons, but derivative works based on those cartoons. It doesn’t mean that …
Why am I dubious that the Kindle book pictured on the left is a properly authorized edition of the physical book seen on the right? Is it because of the art? No, they are both obviously cartoon masterpieces. Is it that the one on the left is published by “Canongate …
Bootleg Peanuts items abound. Our Facebook feeds are filled with unlicensed Snoopy shirts, Amazon has unlicensed Peanuts books. But the big unlicensed item in the early 1980s? LSD. The popular form of blotter acid was those decorated with images of Joe Cool, or the World War I Flying Ace, or …
For those of you who like to keep track of every time Peanuts characters appear on screen, Maestro, the new Leonard Bernstein biopic by Bradley Cooper, has the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade passing by outside a window, including prominent use of Snoopy. You can see the Snoopy moment with some commentary from …
Sources are reporting that KKR is buying Simon and Schuster, probably currently the biggest publisher of Peanuts thanks to their Little Simon-published storybooks, from the current owner, Paramount. Sometimes, when one company buys another, it makes no real difference, just a slight change in letterhead. However, KKR isn’t a media …
While searching for something else, I stumbled across this announcement of the Kaye Ballard Peanuts album in the Chicago Sunday Times Magazine for January 15, 1961. Now, let’s take a zoom in on that drawing… and its caption. Magazine sections are generally created with a long lead time, allowing them to …
I publish things. I also research things. And really, the two efforts are often one and the same: I research stuff and find that it’s worth publishing; I publish stuff and in the process I’m doing research. That all just happened for me with a syndicated comics panel called “Spot” …