Comic Book Resources

Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: A publishing news round-up

Little Nothings Vol. 3

• NBM announced over the weekend they will release a third volume in Lewis Trondheim's autobiographical Little Nothings series. You can read samples of the work on the company's blog.

• The University Press of Mississippi will be publishing My Life With Charlie Brown in April. It's a collection of essays, lectures and articles by Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. If April seems to far away for you, this book is coming out next month.

• Fantagraphics unveils the covers for their next Krazy and Ignatz book (designed by Chris Ware), as well as the second volume of Prison Pit.

• Van Jensen gives readers the scoop on the upcoming book tour for Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer and announces plans for a sequel in winter of next year.

• Speaking of SLG, they will be releasing an omnibus collection of Gene Yang's early work, entitled Animal Crackers, in January.

• The Kingdom of New York is a new book featuring essays and articles from the New York Observer magazine. It also sports a spiffy cover and interior art by Drew Friedman. And apparently Fantagraphics will be releasing a collection of Friedman's celebrity portraits in summer of 2010.

• I don't know if we caught this on the blog yet, but apparently Chuck Dixon and Gary Kwapisz are forming a publishing company devoted to historical comics.

• Dash Shaw, who has redesigned his Web site, apparently completely reworked his 2006 book the Mother's Mouth, cutting out pages and changing colors. The alternations are only for the French and Spanish editions, however, which seems a shame.

Send Us Your Shelf Porn!

Is it time for Shelf Porn once again? You bet your sweet bippy it is! And we've got a heck of a collection to share with you this week, from Caren Pilgrim, who runs the Peanuts Collectibles Web site. As you might imagine, she has quite the Peanuts-inspired collection herself.

Upon coming across her Web site, I emailed Caren and asked if she would be willing to share some photos of her collection with Robot 6 readers. Here's what she sent in ...

Continue Reading »

Charles Schulz gives 'em the ax

The ax

While Peanuts creator Charles Schulz was certainly known as a all-around wonderful, decent guy, there's no doubt he had a mischievous, smart-aleck side to him as well. Consider for instance this letter, recently donated to the Library of Congress.

In the letter, written in 1954, Schulz addresses a Ms. Elizabeth Swaim, who had recently written the cartoonist to express her distaste for the then new Charlotte Braun character, a loudmouth Charlie Brown lookalike that Swaim was not alone in disliking.

Schulz tells Swaim that he is taking her advice and getting rid of the character, but then reminds her, "Remember that you and your friends will have the death of an innocent child on your conscience! Are you prepared to accept such a responsibility?"

And, in the interest of driving his point home, he draws a picture of Charlotte Braun with an ax in her head. Wonder why that never made it into any of his "Happiness is ..." books?

(via)

Finally, you no longer need feel ashamed for being round-headed

If that ice sculpture story yesterday didn't grab you, perhaps this will: In honor of Peanuts' upcoming 60th anniversary, the powers that be are holding a lookalike photo contest, with the winners receiving a trip for four to Cedar Point, home of the Planet Snoopy amusement park. Other prizes include DVDs and other Peanuts related merchandise. Daily Cartoonist has the press release:

Peanuts

Peanuts fans of all ages are invited to submit photos of themselves or their children looking like one of these Peanuts characters: Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, Sally, Schroeder, Franklin, Peppermint Patty, Marcie or Pigpen, or one of Snoopy’s classic alter-egos, Joe Cool or the World War I Flying Ace. Submissions will be accepted through November 3.

Finalists, selected by a panel of celebrity judges, will be posted on November 11. The public will then be able to vote for their favorite finalist through November 30. The winners will be announced in December.

The celebrity judges include Jill Schulz, daughter of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz; country music legends Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood; “Supernanny” Jo Frost; “America’s Next Top Model” judge and fashion photographer Nigel Barker; and Victoria Reca~no, co-anchor of KTLA 5 News at 6 and KTLA 5 News at 10.

Proceeds from the contest will benefit the Boys and Girls Club of America. Winners will be announced on Dec. 5. The press release also suggests some celebrity lookalikes which ... Michael Cera as Linus I can see, but Whoopi Goldberg as Woodstock? I .... guess ....

You've become an ice sculpture Charlie Brown!

Not content with dominating the vast world merchandising, the Peanuts empire will now take on the competitive and ever-controversial ice sculpting arena, with a new exhibit that will open on Nov. 20 in Nashville, TN. Entitled ICE!, the exhibit will re-enact scenes from A Charlie Brown Christmas using 2 million pounds of ice carved by artisans from Harbin, China. No, I am not making any of this up.

The promo video is above. You can read the intro from the official press release, which I nicked from Daily Cartoonist, after the jump.

Continue Reading »

Straight for the art | O'Brien's Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown by Tim O'Brien

Do not stare too long at Tim O'Brien's portrait of Charlie Brown, lest madness overtake you.  (via Drawn)

Who will take the Schulz challenge?

The Ohio State Cartoon Library and Museum houses one of the largest and most respected collections of comic art in the United States. Now the very crowded library is looking to renovate:

Located at a highly visible location along High Street and adjacent to the Wexner Center for the Arts, the historic Sullivant Hall is in dire need of repair. The planned renovation will provide 40,000 gross square feet of space for the new Cartoon Library and Museum that will include a spacious reading room for researchers, three museum-quality galleries, and expanded storage with state-of-the-art environmental and security controls. A dedicated ground-level entry will allow for easy access to the new facility. The addition of exhibition galleries dedicated to cartoon art will facilitate public display of the Library's extraordinary collection. Total renovation costs are estimated at $20.6 million.

To help raise the necessary funds, Charles Schulz's widow, Jean (who has already given $1 million of her own money) is  declaring she will match every dollar donated to the museum, up to $2.5 million. So don't delay, head over here and send a few bucks to the OSU.

Or, see this video the library made to underscore their need to renovate:

(via the Schulz Library blog)

Talking Comics with Tim: Andrew Farago

Cartoon Art Museum

Back in late January, I completed this email interview with Andrew Farago, curator of San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum. Events on my end delayed it being run until this week. As detailed at the museum's site: "The Cartoon Art Museum is committed to fostering and promoting a greater appreciation of cartoon art.  This it achieves through collecting, cataloging, preserving and displaying the finest representations of original cartoon art as well as providing innovative educational programs designed to enrich the cultural life of our community." While I am pleased to run this interview, before launching into it, I want to offer my condolences to Farago and the museum staff on the February 26 death of Rod Gilchrist, the museum's executive director for the past 11 years. My thanks to Farago for his time.

Tim O'Shea: How long has the Museum had a Cartoonist-in-Residence program--and how did you land the latest person in residence, Mike Gray?

Andrew Farago: The Cartoonist-in-Residence program was started several years back as a joint effort between the Cartoon Art Museum, The Charles M. Schulz Museum and the Northern California chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. We wanted to take advantage of the fact that we’ve got such a wealth of cartoonists in our area and give the public a regular opportunity to interact with them (and vice versa).

The artists come to us in a variety of ways. Often, someone will contact me, or another staff or board member, about his upcoming book, or a new strip launching in a local publication, or a new piece of animation that they’ve created, and that person wants to work with us to promote it.

Continue Reading »