Less than a month before the 60th anniversary of the introduction of Peanuts by United Feature Syndicate, there is the announcement that the strip will leave United Media for Universal Press Syndicate, now called UClick.
Category: Charles M. Schulz
The all-time greatest comic strip
Paw prints
Snoopy is still on the job, pitching for MetLife…
… but why is he reading The New York Times, a newspaper that has never had a comics page?
ABC for Peanuts
The Daily Cartoonist reports that ABC-TV has signed a five-year contract to continue airing the Peanuts holiday specials. Which is good, because ten years after moving from CBS, I still need more time to get used to them being on ABC!
Peanotes
The 60th anniversary of Peanuts is only two months away. Here are some related items of note:
- Jeannie Schulz was at the 2010 Comic-Con in San Diego, where she received a well-deserved Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award.
- The Santa Rosa Press Democrat has an article about Craig Schulz, who runs Creative Associates, the company his father started to handle Peanuts licensing.
- Amy Schulz Johnson had a birthday a couple of days ago. Happy birthday, Amy!
- Nat Gertler on the AAUGH! blog points out an item about the time in 1960 when Lucy van Pelt submitted a political cartoon to a newspaper.
Three deceased Greats
The 2010 San Diego Comic-Con is coming up soon. Over on Comic-Convention Memories, there are batches of photos taken at the San Diego con in 1974.
Here’s a pic of MAD cartoonist Sergio Aragonés. No! Wait! That’s not Sergio, it’s Peanuts animator Bill Melendez.
And here’s his de facto boss, Sparky Schulz, when he was — yikes! — a couple of years younger than I am now!
With special guest star, director Frank Capra! Frank Capra?? He attended a comic-book convention in 1974??? That was several years after his autobiography, The Name Above the Title, and ten years before She’s a Wonderful Wife — er, I mean It’s a Wonderful Life — was rescued from public domain abuse and rightly hailed as one of the all-time great movies.
Monte Story School
Novelist Monte Schulz’s follow-up to his dark, yet rollicking This Side of Jordan is The Last Rose of Summer, which should be out in December.
Monte has had a long association with the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. His father attended the conference for many years, as did Ray Bradbury. The conference ran into financial trouble and ended up in bankruptcy court. Monte made an offer and now he owns the conference, presumably along with all of the headaches that go with it.
WRITERS CONFERENCE SOLD: Monte Schulz, son of the late Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz, has purchased the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robin Riblet, on Tuesday, June 8, approved the $27,000 sale. Monte plans to hold the next conference next June. There was no conference this year or last due to prior owner Marcia Meier’s bankruptcy.
And with apologies to Stephen Colbert, I think the title of this post qualifies for greatest pun of all time.
