Is This Tomorrow?
As both a Schulz specialist and a general comic book guy, one item that I’ve long wanted is Is This Tomorrow? America Under Communism, a 1947 comic book published by the same folks who put out Topix, the Catholic comic book which Schulz provided lettering and cartoons for. He also had a …
Bigger Weapon Brown
About eight years back, I reviewed Weapon Brown, a one-shot comic that collected and expanded Jason Yungbluth’s take on the Peanuts characters having grown up in a post-apocalyptic world. While I thought he did the work to find ways of combining those two realms, my review was summarized by “But not …
The Peanuts crew shows how to write right
With the help of this Japanese writing guide, I could soon learn to write Japanese. Which would be really cool. But then I would have to get another book that teaches me how to read Japanese, or I’ll have no idea what I’ll have written. The book is illustrated with …
Now I’ve seen that which should not be seen.
I have in my collection various… let us say “ribald”… parodies of Peanuts, including ones that have taken actual Schulz material and, um, enhanced it with sexual, scatalogical, or drug material. Some of them are done with art and craft, some less so. I didn’t think anything in this realm …
Peanuts to Peanuts
The mail carrier has just brought me my latest eBay purchase, Happy Birthday Person to Person. For those of you less than about half a century old, “person-to-person” is an old telephone term. You could either call “station-to-station”, which basically means that you get charged for the call when anyone answers …
What happens when fun is illegal
Back in 1975, the Department of Commerce put out a booklet called The American Economic System… and Your Part In It. It used a number of Peanuts illustrations along with its text to help explain the economy. Now, materials produced by employees of the US government as part of their work are …
What was in Nat’s box
I mentioned yesterday that I’d received a box, and that I anticipated what was inside making me a very happy Peanuts collector boy. And boy, it did! In the past, I’ve discussed Charlie Brown’s Career Education Program, a series of film strips from 1979. I even showed you some scans …
Oh, No! Charlie Green!
While looking into Kanrom, the company that published the books I reprinted in Happiness is a Rat Fink and Unhappiness is a Dirty Dog, I discovered that wasn’t the last time that company took on Schulz’s work. In 1971, they put out a booklet (which was much of what they published, …
Happiness is a Dry Martini
After the post I made about the various parodies and follow-ups to Happiness is a Warm Puppy (including the two I just reprinted), I received some questions about one that I’d mentioned, but did not show a picture of. Happiness is a Dry Martini is credited to Johnny Carson – yes, the …
Happiness Is Widely Copied
WARNING: This piece does include an announcement of something I’ve just published. Back when the Peanuts gift book Happiness is a Warm Puppy was published in 1962, it was huge. Not in size, it’s just about five and a half inches square, but in impact. This little thing spent forty-five weeks …