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Quote Of The Day: Peanuts

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Reviews, Independent

Peanuts #1"It should not be forgotten that nearly all thoughts of Peanuts, especially by those who love it, are viewed through the rose tinted bifocals of nostalgia. This was a good comic strip and it certainly had a following, but it wasn’t Watchmen."

-- Ryan K Lindsay

Wikipedia: “At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages. It helped to cement the four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United States, and together with its merchandise earned Schulz more than $1 billion. Reprints of the strip are still syndicated and run in almost every U.S. newspaper.”

Thank goodness it wasn’t Watchmen! [I have my copy of Peanuts #1 and will post a review shortly.]

Be sure to check out our other notable quotes!

[Artwork: Peanuts #1 from kaboom!]

Read More | Comic Book Resources

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Boom! Goes! Kaboom!

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Independent

Word GirlSo far, so good. Following the loss of its Pixar titles, Boom! Kids has rebranded itself as Kaboom! and outlined a number of its upcoming titles in a series of tease posts on the internet in the past week or so.

The curent line-up will feature Word Girl, based on the PBS animated series (newsstand readers and iPad owners will love this), a new Roger Langridge series called Snarked, a Star Wars parody (always a good bet) called Space Warped (which is a translated French series that someone will go in and rework all the French-specific jokes to tap into US nerd culture.

Best of all is a new Peanuts project that had keyboards smoking as the legion of armchair detectives tried to guess what it was: New? Reprints? Ultimate Peanuts by Mark Millar, oh please, internet, tell me!

Turns out it’s a new adaptation of a new Peanuts animated movie called Happiness Is A Warm Blanket Charlie Brown, which Warners Home video will release this month.


Weekend Reading: Bill Finger, Mighty Samson, The Shadow & Valerian

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Movies, Reviews, Dark Horse Comics, DC Comics, Independent, Marvel Comics

Mighty SamsonThank you internets, you’ve been great this week. So let’s share that bounty with others:

Mighty Samson: Writer J.C. Vaughn has a preview of Mighty Samson #1 at his blog. Shooter’s involved, Patrick Olliffe is the artist. Dark Horse is the publisher. I’m in!

Here’s a little more about the series at Comic Attack.

Shadow: Novelist James Reasoner has a Forgotten Book that’s a must have for fans of Maxwell Grant’s The Shadow: Gangland's Doom: The Shadow of the Pulps, by Frank Eisgruber Jr.

British Comics: Matthew Murray at Comics Beat goes all out for the new Dandy and breaks down its contents.

Peanuts: Zach Weiner finally lets Charlie Brown kick that football.

Peppers: Mark Evanier lives the sitcom life.

3-D: Ricky Sprague at Project Child Murdering Robot tells how Marvel Comics (in 3-D!) turned him into an atheist. Bonus: 3-D artwork on the internets!


Charles Schulz Real Estate Update

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Independent

Snoopy's DoghouseLet's check in with the sale of one of Charles M. Schulz's houses, shall we? The house is one that Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, lived in during the 1970s; he bought it back in 1973 for around $250,000.

Some of details original to when Mr. Schulz lived in the Montecito Heights-area house are still present in the home, like the chapel where he married second wife Jeannie Clyde in Sept. 1973.

(He purchased the home from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa shortly after divorcing his first wife, Joyce, with whom he had five children.) The book, Schulz and Peanuts, A Biography says that Schulz converted the chapel into what he called a "combination gym and family room."

Located just a few miles from Santa Rosa and the Charles M. Schulz Museum, the 7,230-square-foot home, which was built in 1949 and is located at 3699 Montecito Avenue, "is on a park-like, gated setting that has hilltop and city views. It sports four bedrooms, including the main- and second-floor master suites; five full baths plus a powder room; an in-ground pool; and a cabana with changing rooms and showers."


Mell Lazarus and Miss Peach

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials

Mell LazarusSomeone should biographize Mell Lazarus, who is still alive and—coming up on 83—still working. For a long time, he had two daily nationally syndicated comic strips, Miss Peach and Momma. He wrote a humorous novel based on his experience working for Al Capp (creator of Li’l Abner), he worked for Al Capp and was an active presence in the New York cartoon scene. Oh the stories he could probably tell. I hope he’s secretly putting them all in a book.

Continuing my series on cartooning and cartoonists, this Lazarus piece is pulled from a 1964 oversized saddle-stitched magazine from Allied Publications with the creatively-challenged title These Top Cartoonists Tell How They Create America’s Favorite Comics. It featured an introduction by Beetle Bailey’s Mort Walker and was compiled by Allen Willette.

Here’s Mell talking about how he does it:


Q&A: James Childress & Conchy (1975)

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Interviews

ConchyA million years ago, when I was but a small boy, my favorite comic strip was - and still is - Conchy by James Childress. The strip was about a group of beachcombers and it had the wackiness of early B.C. by Johnny Hart mixed with the philosophical melancholy of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. And it was extremely well-drawn. I found out about Conchy in some obscure comic magazine, then realized it was not running in my local paper, The Roanoke Times & World News (because there had to be room for Dr. Smock, right?). But it did run in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Being too broke to spend the money every day to get a copy of an out of town paper, I pulled a pre-Google and read it for free: by going to the local library every Sunday afternoon and reading a week’s worth of strips in one sitting.

I loved it and I started to piece together a history of the strip and its creator. Childress himself was syndicating the strip on his own - no big syndicate to support and promote him. I remember being impressed by that gutsy DIY attitude; I had no idea such a thing was even possible. He worked his way up as an independent and subsequently got Conchy picked up by the same folks that syndicated Walt Kelly’s Pogo, Publishers-Hall.


Charlie Brown For Sale!

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials

Charlie Brown ChristmasI know there are people out there who’d kill to have the image of Jesus appear to them on a potato chip. And there are those who get a thrill out of bumping into a celebrity - even a D-List one - at the local Costco. There’s also a group of people who’d love to live in a house that was once owned by a famous person.

As in: “I love this person so much that I want to live in his house after he’s dead.” It’s an odd fetish to have and thank goodness it’s not mine.

But if you love Charlie Brown, Peanuts and Snoopy and the Fantagraphics reprints can’t satisfy your love, there’s something that might. The Santa Rosa house on Montecito Avenue that creator Charles Schulz lived in back in the 1970s is up for sale. The two-story, 14-room house, originally built in 1949, has two master bedrooms (make of that what you will), five full baths and a powder room. There’s also a swimming pool, a cabana, a 1000 square-foot guest house (with two bedrooms and a full kitchen), and a chapel on the gated property.

Read More | San Francisco Chronicle

Polystyrene Increases Power in Biodiesal Fuel

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Science, Transportation

Packing PeanutsTwo researchers from Iowa State University figured out how to get rid of some of the excess styrofoam. Najeeb Kuzhiyil and Song-Charng Kong placed different amounts of polystyrene packing peanuts into biodiesel and found that it dissolved almost immediately. They also found that the power out increased up to 5%. Before you get too excited, the two scientists also noted that it increases the fuel’s emissions of carbon monoxide, soot, and nitrous oxides. They will continue to work on the problem, but we are thinking that the best way to get rid of the awful stuff is to not use/buy it anymore.

Read More | Physorg

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