A thing that might have been
In 1958, the vocal jazz/pop band The Hi-Lo’s were riding high. Having released their first album in 1954, they were already working on their eighth… and they wanted to name it after a Peanuts book. As the Washington D.C. newspaper The Sunday Star reported, they were floating the idea of …
Charles’s Angel
In 1961, Charles Schulz designed a promotional character for the United Fund (i.e., the group that is now called United Way.) He gets named “Little Angel”… or, depending on the press release, “Little Good Guy”. The character appears in promotions for a few years. The reworks of him, which are …
Up and down, up and down
AAUGH Blog reader D.D., who heads the fine blog The Daily Cartoonist (go check it out), put in the time to find an example of the one eight-panel Peanuts daily in vertically-stacked format, as I mentioned wanting to find in a previous post. Go take a gander at its verticalness! …
Random little catch-up items
So many little things to catch up on. So much going on… and my life is so full (my son is heading off to college this week.) What can I cover? While Dolores goes unnamed in the A Summer Musical special, I am told that she is named in the Cantonese …
Addendum to the The Wolf video
Shortly after I posted the video about the comic strip”The Wolf” which suggested ways in which it set the path for “Peanuts”, my pal and co-writer, Schulz Museum curator Benjamin L. Clark, pointed out something I had missed — while “Willie” had offered strips run in a two-tier format before …
Unquote alone
The warning signs about the new book Rediscovering the True Meaning of Christmas with A Charlie Brown Christmas”: Celebrating Christmas with a Charlie Brown Touch starts with the title, and its curious use of a single double-quotation mark. That’s part of the name every time it’s listed, whether on the …
Candidate Snoopy
The promotion of “Snoopy for President” dates back to at least 1961 (possibly earlier, I don’t have great reference on it.) The idea is not limited to US presidential election years, but it does tend to swell then. There was not only merch but newspaper articles on it in 1968. …
Coming to America
Remember a few months back when I got that manga biography of Schulz and it made me really happy, even thought I couldn’t read it? Well, that may be in for a change, because coming in October is Manga Biographies: Charles M. Schulz, The Creator of Snoopy and Peanuts. I …
Chef Snoopy is coming
Weldon Owen must be doing okay with their series of Peanuts cookbooks, because yet another one is one the way. Chef Snoopy Cookbook is aimed at kids, and includes a range of recipes for various meals and snacks. Unlike with at least some of their previous efforts, this time they’re …
Joe Matt, RIP
Word is going around about the death of cartoonist Joe Matt, of heart attack at his drawing board, at age 60. Best known for his blunt autobiographical comic book series Peepshow, his relevance to the Peanuts world is as one of the three alt cartoonists who reworked Peanuts strips to …