Note: you are receiving this newsletter because your address
\nwas specifically sent in a request for this newsletter. If
\nyou believe you were enrolled in error, or if you want to
\nstop receiving the newsletter for any other reason, simply
\nsend a message to removeme@AAUGH.com . Include in the body
\nof the message the email address where you received this
\nnewsletter. This is not spam, and we are not evil spam people.<\/p>\n
In this issue:
\n* THE COMPLETE PEANUTS VOL. 1: A REVIEW
\n* LI’L FOLKS, BIG BOOK<\/p>\n
No news this time out (well, I’ll sneak in a mention of
\nBallantine Book’s upcoming fall book Trick Or Treat: A Peanuts
\nHalloween here in the intro), just reviews…. and not of some
\nlittle minor kiddie board book this time.<\/p>\n
THE COMPLETE PEANUTS VOL. 1: A REVIEW<\/p>\n
Some days, being the AAUGH.com guy mainly means spending
\nhours fixing links and figuring out why the tables on
\nthe website look wrong in certain web browsers. And some
\ndays are like today, where it means sitting there for
\nseveral hours and reading a thick book of Peanuts
\nstrips, many of which I’ve never read before.<\/p>\n
I think you can guess which days I prefer.<\/p>\n
The copy of THE COMPLETE PEANUTS: VOLUME 1, 1950 TO
\n1952 which I got to read was an advance\/uncorrected
\nproof. Not all of the design work is complete, and
\nthere are a number of little details which will need
\nattending to before the book is released. But that
\ndoesn’t matter: you’re going to want to buy this book.<\/p>\n
And the reason you want to buy this book is the
\nstrips. It has every Peanuts newspaper strip from 1950,
\n1951, and 1952. Many of these have never been in any
\nbook (at least not in English, I cannot vouch for
\nother languages.) And many others were only in books
\nwhich last saw print about 3 decades ago. They are
\nwell reproduced and if they’re a little smaller than
\nI would ideally like them, they are clear and the art
\nis displayed well. The strips are run in order, with
\nthe copyright bar and daily PEANUTS title bar removed,
\nbut with the date information intact. The Sundays are
\nin black and white, and do suffer a little bit for it;
\nthe strips are drawn in a more open style that invites
\ncolor to solidify it. But they are run with the full
\nfirst panel that was cut out of many collections.<\/p>\n
Even if you have read a lot of the earlier strips in
\nvarious places, reading them all and in order builds
\na much better picture of the development of Peanuts.
\nYou see themes introduced, developed, and then let
\nfade away. (When Violet first appears in the neighborhood,
\nthe boys are interested in her as the attractive new
\ngal.) You see Schulz trying different things — different
\nangles, expressions, putting the zig-zag on Charlie
\nBrown’s shirt — and keeping the things that work,
\nletting the ones that don’t fall by the wayside.
\nYou see new character bloom and shift, and even in the
\ncourse of the first volume, you see old ones (well,
\nShermy) fade away.<\/p>\n
You see Schulz realize that he has to introduce his
\ncharacters. While Charlie Brown gets named in the
\nvery first strip (and his name is constantly bandied
\nabout by the characters), Patty isn’t named for
\nmore than 3 weeks, Snoopy for more than 5 weeks, and
\nthe other original character, Shermy, goes unnamed
\nfor almost five months! By that point, Violet had
\nalready entered with a proper introduction, and even
\nthe character Olsen had gotten named in the only
\nstrip he appeared in.<\/p>\n
And by having the dates on there, you get to do nerd
\nthings. When I saw that on November 5th, 1951,
\nCharlie Brown was looking at a comic book rack that
\nincluded the comics NANCY and TIP TOP, I had to
\ncheck. As it turns out, this would have come out
\nbefore the real TIP TOP comic book included Peanuts
\nin its features (and years before NANCY would), so
\nsadly there was no chance that Charlie Brown would
\nreach out and read his own adventures. And when I saw
\nthe November 1, 1952 strip, it confirmed for me that
\nthe character in the pumpkin-headed ghost costume in
\nthe 1952 Halloween-themed Sunday strip in PEANUTS: THE
\nART OF CHARLES M. SCHULZ couldn’t have been Charlie
\nBrown. So it’s all great stuff for Peanuts nerds.<\/p>\n
And the strips aren’t all that are in there. Each volume
\nin this series will start with an introduction by some
\nfamous Peanuts fan. In this case, it’s Garrison Keillor,
\nof the Prarie Home Companion radio show. Keillor writes
\nan introduction that is much like his radio it work. It
\nis kind and well-intentioned… and yet, like his tales
\nof Lake Woebegon, it speaks of something that is never
\nquite really there. After reading him say “…Peanuts is
\nmore about St. Paul than it is about Santa Rosa, I’d say.
\nSnow falls on Snoopy’s doghouse. Nobody hits anybody”,
\nthe reader then goes on to read a volume without any
\nsnow on the doghouse and a fair amount of hitting taking
\nplace. (And even more threatened violence; jokesters
\ngenerally spend the last panel fleeing from angry justice
\nat the hands of their joke victims.) And Keillor describes
\nSchulz as not having lived “to see the rise of graphic
\nnovels but he would have admired them as he admired all
\ntrue artists” — while the graphic novel has certainly
\ncontinued to grow since Schulz’s death, they had already
\nbeen around for him to admire for decades. Schulz
\nknew a number of graphic novelists; I can’t say for sure
\nwhether he admired the works, but I don’t think it was
\nentirely accidental that he once invited Maus creator
\nArt Spiegelman to visit, for example. Keillor’s piece
\nis focused on ascribing a certain Midwesterness to Peanuts,
\nwhich may be accurate but doesn’t seem to hit the mark
\nin a significant way. Ah, but that’s all more commentary
\nthan this intro, clearly meant to help sell the book to
\nthe mass audience (and more power to it for that) deserves.<\/p>\n
Following the strips we get a biography written by
\nDavid Michaelis, which nicely keeps the focus on the
\nemotional underpinnings of Schulz’s life. (Michaelis
\nis working on a full-length Schulz biography, slated
\nfor a 2006 release.) After that is one of the more
\nsubstantial interviews with Schulz, this one having
\noriginally run in a 1992 issue of the comics arts
\nmagazine Nemo.<\/p>\n
And in the very back is, yes, yay, an index! If
\nyou want to find all the strips in which Beethoven
\nappeared, check out Von Beethoven, Ludwig, read
\nwhere it says “see Beethoven, Ludwig Von”, then
\ngo find the list of all the pages with Beethoven.
\nThey do a good job of anticipating what characters
\nand what themes people will want to look up
\n(although poor Olsen doesn’t get an entry. Ah, Olsen,
\nwe hardly knew ye.)<\/p>\n
This book is gonna be a thick one. It was already a
\nsubstantial book in the proof edition I read, and the
\nfull edition will have some more pages, thicker paper,
\nand the hard covers themselves. I heard a few people
\nwhining just a bit at the pricing of this book, but
\nyou will get a substantial book for that price.<\/p>\n
And, of course, you can save by ordering through
\nAAUGH.com. At the moment, it’s more than 8 bucks
\noff the cover price if you preorder it now:
\n http:\/\/AAUGH.com\/to.htm?156097589X<\/p>\n
And for the curious, here’s an interview with
\nthe book’s designer and with a rep from the publisher:
\n http:\/\/www.comicbookbin.com\/charlie.html
\n==========================================================
\nLI’L FOLKS, BIG BOOK<\/p>\n
I got a good look at a preview of CHARLES M. SCHULZ: LI’L
\nBEGINNINGS, the new book coming in February from the
\nCharles M. Schulz Museum. This is a book you’re going to
\nwant. It collects all of Sparky’s pre-Peanuts Li’l Folks
\ncartoons, plus cartoons from the Saturday Evening Post
\nand Topix. Everything is reproduced from printed copies,
\nwithout a lot of digital enhancement, but the cartoons
\nare printed very large and are clear to read.<\/p>\n
Each installment of Li’l Folks, made up usually of
\nfour gag panels, is given a full page, with another
\npage just for annotations about that installment.
\nThese annotations are by Derrick Bang, who was the
\ndriving force behind the 50 YEARS OF HAPPINESS: A
\nTRIBUTE TO CHARLES M. SCHULZ anniversary book, and they
\ncomment on recurring themes in Li’l Folks, on gags
\nthat were reused in Peanuts (with the Peanuts strips
\nreproduced), and other items of interest. Derrick
\nalso provides significant introductory text, with
\na foreword by Schulz’s widow Jean. There’s even a
\nhandy index to characters and themes.<\/p>\n
But with all the good stuff that’s in the foreword
\nand the introduction and the annotations and such,
\nI’m going to suggest that you skip them… on the
\nfirst pass. Buy the book (of course) and read it
\nthrough once just reading the cartoons. Schulz was
\nalready a very good cartoonist when he did this work,
\nand there’s a lot of entertaining material to be
\nfound here. Then, once you’ve done that, read the
\nbook -again-, this time reading all of the text as
\nwell. There’s a lot of interesting stuff there for
\nfolks with an interest in Schulz and Peanuts. It’s
\na good book to read with a scholarly eye… but it’s also
\na good book to read for some pure comics entertainment.
\nIf you want to take a peek at some Li’l Folks comics
\nto see if they’re to your liking, head on over to:
\n http:\/\/www.indyworld.com\/indy\/preview_schulz\/index.html<\/p>\n
The book, a hardcover about 300 pages long, will be
\navailable only through the museum and its website.
\nThey’re launching the book February 21st and 22nd with
\nDerrick talking at the museum and signing copies, so if
\nyou want to be there for the event, start making plans now!
\n============================================================
\nWell, that’s it for now. It may be a bit of a while
\nbefore the next newsletter — I’ve gotten quite busy not
\nonly with my writing and publishing, but with spearheading
\n24 Hour Comics Day, a day for cartoonists pro and amateur
\nto try creating a complete 24 page comic book story in
\njust 24 hours. If that sounds interesting to you, check out
\nhttp:\/\/www.24HourComics.com\/<\/p>\n
–Nat
\n proprietor
\n http:\/\/AAUGH.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Note: you are receiving this newsletter because your address was specifically sent in a request for this newsletter. If you believe you were enrolled in error, or if you want to stop receiving the newsletter for any other reason, simply send a message to removeme@AAUGH.com . Include in the body … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}