The AAUGH Blog

I’ve finally got the line-up of things that will be at the Peanuts shop at Comic-Con… but before I get to that, let me note that my Comic-Con plans have changed, and I will now be there only on Thursday. If anyone wants to mee with me, it can probably be arranged; drop me a line. It looks like this year’s Peanuts shop (and remember, this is the one inside the convention, with a totally different set of items than the one outside) will be focused on board-riding, whether Surf or Skate. Ya got…

The famous San Diego Comic-Con is just a couple weeks away, and if you were hoping to go but don’t have tickets yet, well, you’re far too late. These sell out months in advance. (But if you happen to be in San Diego during this time, keep reading, there’s some information for you.) Information is still coming out, so I expect to be adding to this later, but this is what we know so far of Peanuts-y plans there: PANEL: On Thursday at 1 PM in Room 5, it’s “Good Grief! The Enduring Legacy of…

We just purchased a (used) display case, so it finally became time to put together the set of Japanese Snoopy’s Book Cafe miniatures that I’d purchased a couple years back. Rather than using the two-pieces-of-cardboard backdrop that comes with the set, we purchased a larger, plastic set of walls and floors, and my daugther (who did most of the assembly) painted it. The set came with little plastic “books”, some permanently closed, others that are permanently open (and you used stickers to put…

I can think of a number of times that Peanuts storybooks have been converted into board books, often with some shortening and simplification. And I can think of once or twice that the stories from board books have been included inside non-board anthologies of stories. But I can’t think of any case where a board book was converted into a stand-alone non-board book… until now. Coming in January is a non-board edition of Be Kind, Be Brave, Be You! The original board book edition came out in 2018,…

We’ve got the first listed Peanuts book for 2027, and while it’s a board book for kids, it’s going to have something for all you Freida fans. In Snoopy’s Bunny Fun!, Freida wants Snoopy to go after rabbits, but Snoopy has other plans. And if bunnies are your thing, January also brings It’s Easter Snoopy!, a coloring and activity book with crayons.

First, let me note that the Great Pumpkin Carols book which I talked about a while back is now available for preorder. And while I’m doing that, I’ll remind you both that when you preorder, Amazon will give you the lowest price they list the book for between now and when it’s released (often a bit of a savings)… and I’ll also remind you that The AAUGH Blog makes a little bit of income every time you click through on one of these links and order something. Yes, there is some underlying…

I just picked up a copy of The World According to Snoopy, which was released in the UK late last year. This hardcover book, with its cover akin to a 1970s textbook, falls into the “inspirational messages” category. It’s pages are a mix of single-page displays of individual Peanuts strips (always in black-and-white) with pages that work more as mini-posters, with a quote from a Peanuts character at bottom and an image of that character (which kinda matches the quote but which is probably not…

I got interviewed about Peanuts on the WHI Podcast, which is normally a political podcast… which is why, perhaps, we end up talking about the polarization of the nation, now and in the past, within the context of the popularity of the Peanuts strip. Watch and see why I should never do another video podcast until I choose to regrow my beard! https://youtu.be/izv_9Jj0GUY

The legal goings-on this week regarding Peanuts require a bit of a preface: while Peanuts Worldwide (or really Peanuts Holdings) owns Peanuts, they don’t own everything Peanuts. Lee Mendelson Film Productions has rights regarding the classic TV and film material. If I understand correctly (and that’s a real caveat, there are so many things in this world that I don’t understand), they own the rights to all that great Vince Guaraldi music, both the rights to the compositions (i.e., what you see…

The folks at Apple TV (they have dropped the plus-sign) just announced a batch of news for Peanuts animation fans, featuring both offering up more old content and premiering some new material. June 26: a new season of Camp Snoopy drops. July 3: added to the package is This Is America, Charlie Brown, the eight-episode miniseries from 1988 that uses the Peanuts characters to explore American history. (That show about the Mayflower that you ight have seen after an airing of A Charlie Brown…

One of the odd things about being a Peanuts book collector is when looking for books in Japanese, when you’ll discover that “book” gets rather broadly defined. If it can be packed into a rectangle, it may get distributed as a book. Generally, it’s items that can be well-flattened — bags and cases of various sorts are the most common.

The mail brought two new Peanuts board books this week, and the web offered up images of another, so I guess that’s the theme for the day. Cheering You On, Charlie Brown looks first at how Charlie Brown has a lot of difficulty in life, but then at how he has a bunch of friends to support him…. although, frankly, some of the examples of support are a little questionable, as CB’s friends often seem to be a cause of stress. “When Charlie Brown needs to talk, he can always count on Peppermint…

I’ve been looking at some of the past lawsuits over Peanuts. The various owners of Peanuts over the years have been aggressive — generally appropriately so — about protecting their rights to the characters and going after unlicensed use of them. I am not sure if they’re just more aggressive when the use can be seen as vulgar or if that’s just more likely to draw newspaper coverage, but during the late 1970s and early 1980s, it certainly drew coverage. In 1979, a Chicago maternity store made the…

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund‘s Jeff Trexler caught sight of this headline appearing to announce a very unlikely musical. And since I’m sending something out, let me note that Free Comic Book Day is coming up this Saturday. (Also, so is Comic Giveaway Day. This is the result of one comic book distributor having bought exclusive rights to the original name. No one is calling it that, though.) Most local comic shops in the US and beyond will let you wander in and walk out with at least one,…

The world of Print On Demand has continued to generate unlicensed and undesired Peanuts books. If you were carefully searching this past Christmas, you might have found Charlie Brown and the CHRISTMAS COMET That Changed Its Mind (capitalization theirs), a full-color tale. Inside its 32 pages, you get low word-count storytelling and images that are off model to even the casual eye. That book would have set you back a mere $12.99. “But what if I want to get rid of even more money on unlicensed…

I have noted before that there seems to be a fair bit of lasting affection out there for The Peanuts Book of Pumpkin Carols, a booklet of Halloween-related lyrics for famed tunes that Hallmark put out in the 1960s and redesigned and reissued a few times. It’s clear that Chronicle Books wants to tap the spirit of that booklet and pump it up a bit for this fall’s Peanuts: Great Pumpkin Carols book. Now, this is not a reprint of the old booklet with its old songs. Instead, it has new ones written…

It wasn’t that long ago that we had no comics-format biographies of Charles M. Schulz. Now we have the manga biography and the series-of-strips biography (ooh, steeply discounted at the moment)… and coming December, we have just a basic comic book biography. Tribute: Charles M. Schulz is from Tidal Wave, a publisher that has done a lot of biographies of political figures, pop stars, and the like. If you’re looking for the comic book content but want something that sits on your shelves, in…

I saw a comics writer talking about a new project where he was taking some inspiration from Peanuts – as well as some from other sources — to do a story about a comic strip creator who is bringing his strip to an end, in a way with deep personal involvement. Called Good Grief: the End of Talking Back, that the story is going to be told primarily by showing this final run of strips is something I respect and actually reflects some projects I’ve wanted to do. I could tell you more about it, but…

As I type this, there’s a bit under 24 hours left to go in that Humble Bundle deal where you can download the complete run of Peanuts for $25. If you’ve been taking time to think about it… well, it’s time to stop thinking! (Offer good in the US. Not …

The idea of Apple TV making a new feature-length Peanuts film caught some people off-guard. Sure, they make Peanuts “specials”, but the last time a feature film was made, it became the lowest grossing film that that studio had released, despite also being the best reviewed. Today, I looked at …

If you’re good with digital books, Fantagraphics and Humble Bundle have a frankly amazing deal. You can get 43 Peanuts books in download form for $25. What does this mean? You get every Peanuts newspaper strip, via The Complete Peanuts, every Peanuts Sunday strip in color via Peanuts Every Sunday, …

In late October 1957, newspaper reporter Rolla Crick meant to be visiting the US Navy’s south pole station (Amundsen-Scott) only briefly, but the engine on the US Navy Neptune that had brought him and others there had  broken down and they were all stuck to stay there for weeks. That’s …