Category: Charles M. Schulz

The all-time greatest comic strip

Foot Don’t Fail Me Now

Snoopy accurately captured my present situation in yesterday’s Peanuts reprint (presented here with permission, for a nominal fee).

PEANUTS © 1977 Peanuts Worldwide LLC. Dist. By ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

I’m in physical therapy for the collapsed arch in my right foot. I’ve been good about doing the exercises at home, and the results are promising.

Yesterday, the foot felt good enough to go running, but I don’t dare risk undoing the progress I’m making. As I told the podiatrist and the therapist, my goal is to avoid surgery. If that means no longer being able to go running, then so be it.

Better Call Snoopy

Last weekend, Bob Odenkirk and his daughter Erin were at the Charles M. Schulz Museum, talking about their new book, Zilot.

https://schulzmuseum.org/zilot/

So Snoopy has competition, imagining himself as a world-famous attorney.

If Bob and daughter Erin visit the Norman Rockwell Museum, I’ll be there!

Bob and Erin Odenkirk looking over some unfinished Peanuts originals by Charles M. Schulz

Happiness is… Facsimile Editions

Until the publication of The Complete Peanuts, my favorite books with Charlie Brown & Co. were the old Holt, Rhinehart & Co. reprints that sold for $1. Reading them on Christmas mornings is a particularly happy childhood memory. Forty years ago I happened to come across a large collection of the original paperbacks for cover price at a used bookstore. As a bonus, most of them are first printings.

My buddy Denro surprised me with a few facsimile editions of the paperbacks, published by Titan Comics. A direct comparison with the original books shows they are indeed exact replicas. Peanuts, from its modest Truman-era beginning to its LBJ glory, really comes alive in these collections.

For a deep dive into what Sparky Schulz created with pencil and ink on paper, there is the Unpacking Peanuts podcast.

https://www.unpackingpeanuts.com/podcast/

A very different Schulzian world is found within Monte’s new novel, Metropolis. It’s complex, and densely packed, with many quotable lines. A review will be coming up, as soon as I get to a million other things that have “best if done by” dates associated with them.

https://www.amazon.com/Metropolis-Monte-Schulz/dp/1683965795/