Coming out in December is a facsimile edition of Detective Comics issue 500, the big thick issue-versary release from 1981. Detective Comics is a series that began in 1937, although it really picked up steam in 1939, when issue 27 introduced a little character called “The Batman”. Reaching issue 500 is an achievement …

I give up too quickly. A couple weeks after I wrote to the address that I found for 1956’s Peanut of the Year Ruth Figi, I reckoned the note had not reached her. The internet has a lot of out of date addresses for people who have since moved or …

In 1956, the Minneapolis Star newspaper ran a contest for “Peanut of the Year”, asking parents or kids themselves to submit letters of 150 words or fewer of whey a certain 5 to 10 year old was like a Peanuts character, or deserved to be part of the cast. The …