Nat news

Jean Schulz, Peanuts Collection on The Today Show

Jean Schulz was on the Today Show this morning, talking to Al Roker for several minutes about Sparky, Peanuts, and The Peanuts Collection. As the writer of that volume, I’m blown away; believe me, I’m not used to this scale of promotion for my books. Yipes. If you have a …

Animated Peanuts

Peanuts animator passes

Jerry Beck reports on the passage of Bill Littlejohn, who worked as an animator on a number of Peanuts specials dating all the way back to A Charlie Brown Christmas, as well as quite a respectable list of other projects. It’s been 45 years since that first Peanuts special. As …

Administrative

Some online notes

My 5-year old daughter was playing her favorite online game Poptropica, and suddenly called me overĀ  to show me they’ve added a “Great Pumpkin Island” to the game, with Linus. Looks like they’re going to be adding more stuff to it soon. Those of you going to the actual blog …

Schulz/Peanuts news

Peanuts switching syndicates

I doubt that news in the syndication world gets much bigger than this – this coming February, after more than 60 years with United Feature Syndicate, Peanuts will instead be distributed by Universal. This is not Universal’s first venture into the Peanuts world – their publishing arm Andrews McMeel published …

Schulz/Peanuts news

Political Cartoon by Charles Schulz

Here’s a find! In mid-July, 1960, Schulz did a run of strips about Lucy trying to become a political cartoonist: Well, one newspaper asked for a copy of Lucy’s cartoon – and Schulz sent it to them! Click through and take a look. I sure do.

Schulz/Peanuts news

Cartoonists – want the sense that Schulz is looking over your shoulder?

Here’s an interesting item up for auction – a drawing board from Schulz’s studio. Now, this wasn’t Schulz’s own board, which remains properly ensconced in the Schulz Museum. No, this was the board used by Dale Hale, who worked in the studio most notably on the Peanuts comic book stories. …

Schulz/Peanuts news

Every dog should have a license

If you (like me) are in California, then you may just have a chance to get Snoopy himself on your license plate. There’s a drive now for California to offer plates decorated with a happily strolling Snoopy on your plate – which would add $50 to the price, raising money …

Schulz/Peanuts news

Peanuts licensing rights sold

For those of you interested in Peanuts-as-a-business, this is major: United Media’s licensing arm has been sold for $175,000,000 to the licensing company Iconix. Peanuts is most of that business.

Schulz/Peanuts news

Things that make me flinch

The NJ Star-Ledger ran an article on an exhibit about Schulz and the US Golf Association, an exhibit which I’d like to see. But while they spell “Schulz” correctly in the headline, that’s the only time which they do so, using one misspelling for the body of the article and …

Schulz/Peanuts news

Schulz draws Schulz

I hadn’t seen this sketch before. Hat tip: The Comics Reporter