Warner releases 4K Ultra HD version of the Peanuts Holiday Collection video box set

On Tuesday, October 17, 2017, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is releasing a new version of the Peanuts Holiday Collection video box set, titled Peanuts Holiday Collection Deluxe Edition 4K Ultra HD.

This latest incarnation of the set includes 9 animated Peanuts TV specials, supposedly on regular Blu-ray discs, Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, and digital copies. However, not all 9 specials are on all formats - see more below.  (DVDs are not included, but a DVD version of the set - albeit with fewer specials - has been previously released and remains available.)

If you're wondering what the heck 4K Ultra HD discs are and whether you need them, also see further below.

The 9 specials advertised as being in the set are as follows (each group appears together on one disc):

A Charlie Brown Christmas
It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown
It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
It's Magic, Charlie Brown
Charlie Brown's All-Stars

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
This is America, Charlie Brown: The Mayflower Voyagers
Play It Again, Charlie Brown

This would be the first time 3 of these specials have been released in high definition (although, again, see important warning below). The new-to-HD specials are It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown; Charlie Brown's All-Stars; and Play It Again, Charlie Brown.

Warning: despite the PR and the back box cover implying that all 9 shows - including the 3 that are new to high definition - are on both the Ultra HD and Blu-ray discs in the set, that is not the case. Only the A Charlie Brown Christmas Blu-ray disc includes 3 shows; the Great Pumpkin and Thanksgiving Blu-ray discs are copies of the old Blu-ray discs, with only 2 shows each.  Which means that the only way to see 2 of the 3 new-to-HD shows is if you have an Ultra HD disc player.  This apparently is the case will all sets currently shipping; I do not know if this is intended, or a mistake.  If I find out more, I will update this blog post.

The discs also include the "behind-the-scenes" featurettes that were created when Warner Bros. first released the specials on DVD in 2008.  (They have appeared previously on all other Warner DVD and Blu-ray releases as well.)  There are no new behind-the-scenes features.

The box set retails for $44.98 SRP.

Given the fact that the new-to-HD specials do not appear on the Blu-ray discs of this set, you should buy it only if you want the Ultra HD discs.

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The three Ultra HD Blu-ray discs mark the first time that the Peanuts specials have been released in 4K Ultra HD with HDR, which theoretically has four times the resolution and better colors than regular HD and Blu-ray.

However, you need a 4K-enabled Ultra HD Blu-ray player and a 4K TV to take advantage of this. The Ultra HD discs will not play in regular, older Blu-ray players.

If you don't have a 4K Blu-ray player and/or TV, you could still use the three Blu-ray discs that are also included - but you will not get to enjoy the 3 new-to-HD specials this way (see warning above).

You might be wondering, can the Peanuts specials actually look better when viewed in 4K Ultra HD than in just regular high definition? It seems doubtful - the regular 1080p high definition picture on the Blu-rays already reveal pretty much all the details available in the source material.  Most of these shows were created on a budget in the 1960's and 1970's... so it is unlikely that, beloved as they are, they will be the best material to showcase the extra details of 4K resolution.

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Each holiday special will also be released individually as separate releases containing an Ultra HD Blu-ray disc, a regular Blu-ray disc, and digital copy. Although again, likely only the Ultra HD disc includes both bonus shows; the Blu-ray discs may only include 1 bonus show.  The individual 4K releases have a retail price of $29.98, so getting the set with all 9 shows is a much better deal. The individual releases dates are September 26 for It's the Great Pumpkin, October 24 for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and October 31 for A Charlie Brown Christmas.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown to air October 19 and 29, 2017 on ABC

ABC will be broadcasting It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown twice in October 2017:  first in an edited version on Thursday, October 19 from 8:00 - 8:30 PM, and then the full, unedited special together with You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown on Sunday, October 29 from 8:00 - 9:00 PM (all times Eastern/Pacific).

Dark Hall Mansion's 2017 It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown limited edition prints

This year Dark Hall Mansion are offering up two different It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown prints from two different artists, Shaunna Peterson and Naoshi.  As you can see, both are full of vibrant color and numerous scenes from the beloved television special.

Each print is available in two color variations and two different sizes, as described below.

These limited edition prints go on sale Wednesday, October 4th, at 12:30 PM (Pacific time) at Dark Hall Mansion's webstore.

Shaunna Peterson standard edition

Shaunna Peterson variant edition

Naoshi standard edition

Naoshi variant edition

Shaunna Peterson editions
Standard Edition of 180 in 12" x 36" $55
Standard edition of 100 in 6" x 18" $25
Variant Edition of 50 in 12" x 36" $85
Variant edition of 50 in 6" x 18" $25

Naoshi editions
Standard Edition of 100 in 18" x 24" $55
Standard edition of 50 in 9" x 12" $25
Variant Edition of 50 in 18" x 24" $85
Variant edition of 50 in 9" x 12" $25

All editions are officially licensed by Peanuts Worldwide, strictly limited, giclee printed and hand numbered.

Visit Dark Hall Mansion's Facebook page, their Instagram feed, or their blog for more information, larger pictures of the artwork, and behind-the-scenes photos.

Peanuts by Schulz: School Days DVD, with 29 more Boomerang Peanuts shorts, released Aug 29

Warner Home Video has now released a third DVD containing Peanuts shorts that aired on the cable channel Boomerang last year. Titled Peanuts by Schulz: School Days, the 2-disc set includes 29 more of the shorts, with a total runtime of 3 hours 27 minutes.

(The initial press release for this DVD incorrectly said it only included 19 shorts.  However, the front and back cover confirm that the actual number included is 29 shorts.)

The shorts were created by French animation studio Normaal Animation and first aired in France in 2014, and then in the United States in 2016; there are 104 in all. Each short is 6-7 minutes long, and is based directly on the comic strips by Charles Schulz. Drawn in a traditional 2D animation style, they were designed to be reminiscent of the printed comic page. The shorts were newly dubbed into English for the United States broadcast and DVD releases.

The 29 shorts included on the DVD set are as follows (note that the order of the shorts on the DVD is not the same as the Boomerang broadcast order):

Miss Othmar
Novel Idea
Have a Nice Day, Linus
Technical Difficulties
The Eye of the Beholder
A Friend Indeed
It's Raining, It's Pouring
Frieda
The School of Hard Knocks
A Little Nap
On the Campaign Trail
Leave Me in Peace
The Last of the Bunch
True or False
Beauty Contest
Best Friend
School Chums
Back to School
Sally
Go to School!
Marcie
It's Just No Good
Get Lucky
School Anxiety
Keep Your Chin Up, Charlie Brown
Too Cute
Colors
School Tomorrow
Problems

(For a complete list of all 104 broadcast episodes, and a few additional details about the shorts, visit the Peanuts Animation & Video Page.)

Between this and the previous two DVD sets (Peanuts by Schulz: Snoopy Tales and Peanuts By Schulz: Go Team Go), 80 of the 104 Boomerang shorts are now available on DVD. 

Peanuts By Schulz: School Days was released on August 29, 2017, has a suggested retail price of $18.94, and can be ordered now from on-line retailers such as Amazon.com, Walmart.com, or Target.com.

Looking further ahead, on October 10, Warner will be releasing a 4K Ultra HD version of the Peanuts Holiday Collection with 9 specials on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray discs. It will be the first high-definition home video release for three of those specials. Look for more details in future blog post.

Peanuts By Schulz: Go Team Go! DVD, with 19 more Boomerang Peanuts shorts, now available

Peanuts By Schulz: Go Team Go!, a 2-disc DVD set containing 19 more of the new Peanuts shorts that aired on the cable channel Boomerang, is now available from Warner Home Video. This is the second DVD set of the shorts Warner has released.

The shorts were created by French animation studio Normaal Animation and first aired in France in 2014, and then in the United States in 2016; there are 104 in all. Each short is 6-7 minutes long, and is based directly on the comic strips by Charles Schulz. Drawn in a traditional 2D animation style, they were designed to be reminiscent of the printed comic page. The shorts were newly dubbed into English for the United States broadcast and DVD releases.

The 19 shorts included on the DVD set are as follows (note that the order of the shorts on the DVD is not the same as the Boomerang broadcast order):

No Strings Attached
Snoopy the Superstar
Don't Worry, Charlie Brown
Show Dog
Good Sports
Doing It Right
Like Skates on Ice
Tennis
Even-ing the Score
School Is Out
Black and White
The Great Outdoors
Strike Out
Autumn Is Here
A Bad Mood
Amateurs
Team Spirit
Trust Me
Creepy Crawlies

(For a complete list of all 104 broadcast episodes, and a few additional details about the shorts, visit the Peanuts Animation & Video Page.)

Peanuts By Schulz: Go Team Go! was released on April 25, 2017, has a suggested retail price of $18.99, and can be ordered from Amazon.com or any other online retailer (barnesandnoble.com, target.com, walmart.com, bullmoose.com, etc.).

"Peanuts: Through the Years" limited edition print from Dark Hall Mansion

Want to make sure more of the Peanuts characters are represented on your walls?  Then Dark Hall Mansion and artist Dave Perillo have a new limited edition print for you - "Peanuts: Through the Years" features 23 different Peanuts characters in an attractive, colorful layout.  Can you name them all?

The prints will be 12" x 36" in size, and you can choose from two different color variants or a very limited number of foil prints.  They'll all be available Tuesday, April 4, 2017 starting at 12:30 PM (Pacific).  Visit Dark Hall Manson's webstore at that time to place an order!

Prices and number of prints are as follows:

Standard edition of 280 printed on cougar natural paper stock - $65
Variant edition of 50 printed on bright white paper stock - $95
Standard edition of 10 printed on foil paper - $150
Variant edition of 10 printed on foil paper - $150

Visit Dark Hall Mansion's Facebook page, their Instagram feed, or their blog for more information, larger pictures of the artwork, and behind-the-scenes photos.

Click either of the images below for a larger version.

Standard edition 

Variant edition

Complete movie soundtrack for A Boy Named Charlie Brown now on CD!

[Update: the CD is now sold out, after just one week.]

Fabulous news for fans of Vince Guaraldi's Peanuts music!

On March 17, specialty soundtrack label Kritzerland announced the release of the complete Academy Award-nominated score from the 1969 animated film A Boy Named Charlie Brown.

The CD includes all of Guaraldi's tracks, together with all of Rod McKuen's songs and John Scott Trotter's supplemental orchestral cues, as heard in the film, and in glorious clear stereo sound. The disc also includes several bonus tracks of alternate takes and source music (such as the "Star-Spangled Banner" arrangement heard near the beginning of the movie).

This is the first true soundtrack release for A Boy Named Charlie Brown. While an LP was released by Columbia Records back in 1969, it was a "storybook" album - essentially an audiobook version of the movie, with dialog over the music. (That LP album is, of course, long out of print and was never released on CD.) Kritzerland's new release is dialog-free.

You can find more information and check out some audio samples at Kritzerland's website. Kritzerland is known for its prestige handling of expanded, long unavailable and/or previously unreleased scores. Note that the album is only available directly from Kritzerland (or other specialty soundtrack retailers, such as Screen Archives Entertainment and Intrada) - it will not be available from Amazon or brick-and-mortar stores.

Also be aware that this is a limited-issue release of 1,000 copies. Some previous Kritzerland soundtrack releases have sold out in a matter of weeks or even days, so if you're interested, don't delay ordering.  [Too late: the CD is now SOLD OUT.]  The CD costs $19.98 plus shipping, and is expected to ship by the first week of May. (This price is typical for limited edition specialty soundtracks.)

The CD comes with new liner notes written by Guaraldi expert (and FiveCentsPlease co-author) Derrick Bang; those liner notes can be viewed on Kritzerland's website. Derrick has also written supplemental track-by-track notes that you can read and enjoy on the web here. (There wasn't room to include a printed copy of them with the CD).

While two earlier albums also are titled A Boy Named Charlie Brown, neither was the score to the 1969 movie. The 1964 Guaraldi album (whose original, full title was Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown) is actually the soundtrack for an unaired TV documentary about Charles Schulz; and the 1970 Rod McKuen album with this title features new performances by McKuen of his songs from the movie, along with songs he wrote for several other movies.

This new Kritzerland CD is the true music from the feature film.

Peanuts fans, Guaraldi fans, and soundtrack fans have long wished for a soundtrack release of A Boy Named Charlie Brown's music - we've been waiting nearly 50 years! - kudos to the folks at Kritzerland, along with everybody else who worked to make this CD a reality. Now we all just have to wait impatiently for it to arrive in our mailboxes!

(Thanks to Derrick for helping write this blog post.)

Charles Schulz's vacation: a crucial archival detail

From Monday, October 2, 1950, until the final strip appeared on Sunday, February 13, 2000 — ironically, the morning after he died — Charles Schulz gave the world a total of 17,897 strips: 15,391 daily strips, and 2,506 Sundays.

This takes into account leap years, the fact that Sunday strips did not begin until January 1952, and the single vacation that he took, from November 27 through December 31, 1997 (inclusive).

Yes, it's true: Schulz took a vacation, no doubt to re-charge his batteries. During that time, the syndicate re-ran old strips ... a detail that Fantagraphics fails to mention in the 1997-98 volume of their Complete Peanuts series.

A casual reader thus would conclude, incorrectly, that the strips during 1997's final five weeks were new at the time, just like all the others that year. 

Sharp-eyed fans will note, however, that each of these repeated strips bears a three-digit date (i.e. 12/25/97) as opposed to the two-digit dates (12/25) usually placed each day.

And yes, anticipating the obvious question, we can tell you which reprints ran on which day:

11/27 — 11/25/92
11/28 — 11/26/92
11/29 — 12/28/88
11/30 — 11/27/88
12/1 — 12/3/87
12/2 — 12/8/89
12/3 — 11/29/90
12/4 — 12/1/90
12/5 — 12/4/90
12/6 — 12/5/90
12/7 — 12/18/88
12/8 — 12/6/90
12/9 — 12/8/90
12/10 — 12/10/90
12/11 — 12/11/90
12/12 — 12/12/90
12/13 — 12/13/90
12/14 — 12/3/89
12/15 — 12/10/91
12/16 — 12/8/92
12/17 — 12/21/89
12/18 — 12/22/89
12/19 — 12/23/89
12/20 — 12/29/87
12/21 — 12/20/87
12/22 — 12/13/89
12/23 — 12/9/89
12/24 — 12/24/87
12/25 — 12/25/91
12/26 — 12/13/88
12/27 — 12/14/88
12/28 — 12/2/90
12/29 — 12/15/88
12/30 — 12/17/88
12/31 — 12/31/92

We at FiveCentsPlease always try to go the extra mile!

Two Valentine's Day Peanuts specials air Friday, February 10, 2017 on ABC

It's the annual hour of love and heartbreak for the Peanuts gang: ABC will be showing Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown together with A Charlie Brown Valentine from 8 - 9 PM (Eastern/Pacific) on Friday, February 10, 2017.

Big batch of Valentine's Day limited edition prints from Dark Hall Mansion

Dark Hall Mansion has a bumper crop of Valentine's Day-themed Peanuts prints this year - so you can pick whichever print matches your heart's desire when they go on sale on Friday, February 3, 2017 at 12:30 PM (Pacific time)!

Your choices are: "Friends Are Always There" by Dan May, "Happy Valentine's Day, Charlie Brown" by Steve Thomas, and "Love Forever" by Mike DuBois.

The Dan May and Steve Thomas prints are glicee-printed, hand-numbered, and available on both high-quality paper and canvas. The Mike Dubois prints are screen printed, hand-numbered, signed by the artist, and available as standard prints or groovy foil editions.  Each DuBois print is also accompanied by an additional mini-print.

See below for details, and Dark Hall Manson's webstore to place an order!

Click any of the images below for a larger version.

Dan May editions:

"Friends Are Always There" Standard

"Friends Are Always There" Variant

Steve Thomas editions:

"Happy Valentine's Day, Charlie Brown" Standard

"Happy Valentine's Day, Charlie Brown" Variant

Mike DuBois editions:

"Love Forever" Standard

"Love Forever" Variant

"Love Forever" Lava Foil Standard (also available in variant color)

"Love Forever" Sparkle Foil Standard (also available in variant color)

Prices, sizes, and number of prints are as follows:

Dan May Editions: 
Standard 18" x  24" edition of 280  $65
Variant (pink moon) Edition of 50 $95
Select 18" x  24" Canvas Edition of 10 (based on Std editon art) $150
Select 18" x  24" Canvas Edition of 10 (based on Variant pink moon art) $150
2-Print Set: 11" x 14, includes BOTH Std + Variant Dan May paper editions. Edition of 100: $55

Steve Thomas Editions:
Standard 18" x  24" edition of 280  $65
Variant (pink) Edition of 50 $95
Select 18" x  24" Canvas Edition of 10 (based on Std editon art) $150
Select 18" x  24" Canvas Edition of 10 (based on Variant pink art) $150
2-Print Set: 11" x 14, includes BOTH Std+Variant Steve Thomas paper editions. Edition of 100: $55

Mike Dubois Editions:
Standard 12" x  12" edition of 195  $45
Variant (pink) 12" x  12" edition of 175  $60
Foil Lava-Standard Printed on Lava Foil  Edition of 45 $75
Foil Sparkle-Standard Printed on Sparkle Foil  Edition of 45 $75
Foil Lava-Variant (pink) Printed on Lava Foil  Edition of 45 $75
Foil Sparkle-Variant (pink) Printed on Sparkle Foil  Edition of 45 $75

Visit Dark Hall Mansion's Facebook page, their Instagram feed, or their blog for more information, larger pictures of the artwork, and behind-the-scenes photos.

Peanuts By Schulz: Snoopy Tales DVD, featuring 32 Boomerang Peanuts shorts, released January 24

Peanuts By Schulz: Snoopy Tales, a new 2-disc DVD set containing 32 of the new Peanuts shorts that aired on the cable channel Boomerang, is now available from Warner Home Video.

The shorts were created by French animation studio Normaal Animation and first aired in France in 2014, and then aired in the United States in 2016; there are 104 in all.  Each episode is 6-7 minutes long, and is based directly on the comic strips by Charles Schulz. Drawn in a traditional 2D animation style, they are designed to be reminiscent of the printed comic page. The shorts were newly dubbed into English for the United States broadcast. They are well done and fun to watch, although perhaps best enjoyed in small doses (your kids may disagree!)

The 32 shorts included on the DVD set are as follows (note that the order of the shorts on the DVD is not the same as the Boomerang broadcast order):

Come on Snoopy!
A Day with Snoopy
My Blanket
Crazy Mutt
Good Dog
Sound & Sensibility
Train Your Dog
Going My Way
The Call of the Wild
A Pretty Picture
Beware of the Dog
Winter Wonderland
A Hard Winter
Word of Mouth
Too Cold
Woodstock
Christmas is Coming
Telling Stories
Man's Best Friend
Off Key
Not My Day
A Little Love
Good for Nothing
Let It Snow
Security
Nice Doggy
Company
Reach for the Stars
Fly
Feeling Insecure
Always Right
Even the Score

(For a complete list of all 104 broadcast episodes, and a few additional details about the shorts, visit the Peanuts Animation & Video Page.)

Peanuts By Schulz: Snoopy Tales is released on January 24, 2017, and has a suggested retail price of $18.94.

A second DVD set titled Peanuts by Schulz: Go Team Go!, featuring 19 more of the shorts, is due out April 25.

Happy New Year, Charlie Brown airs December 26, 2016

It's nearly the end of the year, which means it's time for the last Peanuts special broadcast of the year - ABC will be broadcasting Happy New Year, Charlie Brown together with She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown on Monday, December 26, from 8 - 9 PM (Eastern/Pacific).

A Charlie Brown Christmas airs again on Thursday, December 22, 2016

If you missed it the first time - or just felt it was too early in the season to watch - you can still catch A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV when ABC shows it a second time on Thursday, December 22, 2016 from 8 - 9 PM (Eastern/Pacific).

Meanwhile, the cable channel Boomerang will be airing six new Peanuts shorts, most with a Christmas or winter theme, on Saturday December 24 and Sunday December 25, 2016 from 11 AM - 12 noon Eastern (the same six shorts air each day).  After this broadcast, Boomerang will have aired all 104 of the shorts that were produced - although hopefully they will continue to cycle through them as repeats.

And if you don't get Boomerang, good news: Warner Home Video is releasing Peanuts by Schulz: Snoopy Tales, a two-DVD set containing 32 of the shorts, on January 17, 2017.

I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown airs December 17, 2016 on ABC

Just a quick reminder that the holiday special I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown, starring Rerun, Snoopy, Spike, and the rest of the Peanuts gang will be broadcast on Saturday, December 17, 2016 from 8 - 9 PM (Eastern/Pacific) on ABC.

The Complete Peanuts is truly complete: Volumes 25 & 26 (the last two!) now available

The final box set containing the last two volumes (#25 & #26) of The Complete Peanuts went on sale a couple of weeks ago. (Both volumes are also available to purchase separately, but as has been the case in all previous years, if you buy the box set, you get them in an attractive slipcase and save money.)

At last, after 12 1/2 years, every single Peanuts comic drawn by Charles Schulz - all 17,897 of them - has been reprinted in this monumental collection of 26 volumes from Fantagraphics.

Volume 25, released earlier this year, reprints the comics from 1999 and the strip's final days in 2000 - and it features a brief introduction from no less than President Barack Obama.

Since there wasn't a full year's worth of comics in 2000 (as Schulz passed away early in the year), Fantagraphics has filled out the rest of the volume with a complete set of reprints of "Li'l Folks," the weekly comic panel that Schulz drew from 1947 - 1950, prior to creating Peanuts. (When you read them, you'll see that Peanuts was an evolution of Li'l Folks.)

While this is nice thought for readers who haven't seen those panels before, unfortunately the presentation is very awkward. The Li'l Folks panels are printed sideways on the pages, in order to maximum the reproduction size. But that means to read them, you also have to turn the book sideways, and because The Complete Peanuts volumes are much wider than they are tall in their normal orientation, it's quite difficult to hold the book sideways because now it's really tall and thin and the pages try to flop down.

For a superior presentation of the "Li'l Folks" panels, fans should consider getting the book Li'l Folks: Li'l Beginnings, published by and available to be ordered online from the Charles M. Schulz Museum. This book, published in 2003, also reprints all the Li'l Folks panels and was designed with them in mind, so it can be held like a normal book. Plus, the panels are reproduced in a larger size, and is full of annotations and editorial commentary on the panels from Peanuts historian Derrick Bang. (Disclaimer: Derrick is a co-host of FiveCentsPlease.org. But I'd be suggesting the Li'l Beginnings book regardless, due to its more sensible layout.)

This is not to say you should avoid Volume 25 of The Complete Peanuts - far from it, since you'll want it for the final Peanuts comic strips - but the fact that it includes the Li'l Folks panels should be regarded only as a modest bonus.  Nevertheless, kudos to Fantagraphics to trying to make it a truly complete collection and bringing a complete collection of all 50 years of the Peanuts strips to us.

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Since Volume 25 reprints the final Peanuts comic strips, what is in The Complete Peanuts Volume 26, you ask? Over the years, Charles Schulz drew a variety of Peanuts material outside of the comic strip itself. This volume collects much of that work, a lot of it out of print for decades, and some of it never previously collected in a book at all. The contents include:

• Peanuts storybooks, such as Snoopy and the Red Baron, Snoopy and "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night," Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking, and more;
• Peanuts comic books, drawn by Schulz himself (while most Peanuts comic books were not drawn by Schulz, he did draw a few with his own hand);
• Two series of Peanuts panels on the subject of "Things I Learned After It Was Too Late;"
• Themed books on golf and tennis, including Snoopy's Grand Slam and Snoopy's Tournament Tips;
• Strips and panels drawn specifically for advertisements, such as for the Kodak Brownie camera, the Ford Falcon car, and Butternut Bread;
• All 17 of the single-panel cartoons Schulz contributed to the Saturday Evening Post;
• A nice, long afterword from Jean Schulz reflecting on the life, times, and work of her husband.

All in all, it's a worthy addition to a Peanuts fan's collection, although as with the "Li'l Folks" panels in the previous volume, sometimes the material in Volume 26 is ill served by puzzling and suboptimal layout choices (for example, why were the storybooks printed three panels to a page, resulting in very small panels and wasted space on the page that could have been used to make the panels larger, if there were only two to a page? Why did they decide to alternate between white and yellow backgrounds in some of the other storybooks, when the content did not call for alternating colors?)

Nevertheless, if you've been buying all the volumes of The Complete Peanuts, you'll definitely want to get this final volume too - most of the material is just as charming, entertaining, and clever as the Peanuts comic strip itself.

And if you haven't been buying The Complete Peanuts, now's the time to start - or make a fellow fan or relative very happy by putting 26 volumes underneath their Christmas tree!

(Disclaimer, again: FiveCentsPlease.org co-host Derrick Bang was among the researchers who helped find and suggest material to be reprinted in The Complete Peanuts Volume 26.)

By the way... if for some reason you don't want a nice set of hardback The Complete Peanuts, Fantagraphics has also started releasing the volumes in paperback. However, they're only up to Volume 6 in paperback (just released last month), so you'll have to wait a long while before you can complete your collection!

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Also recently published by Fantagraphics is the fourth volume of Peanuts Every Sunday, covering the years 1966-1970. This series of books - published once a year - reproduces the Sunday Peanuts comic strips in their glorious original color at a coffee table book size of 13 1/4" x 9 1/2".  (Unlike The Complete Peanuts volumes, where Sunday strips are reprinted in black & white and much smaller.)  Seeing the comics as they originally appeared in the Sunday funny pages is another great joy for Peanuts fans.  (The Peanuts Every Sunday volumes are also available in slipcased box sets of two.)