Peanuts Valentine's Day special double feature to air February 11 on ABC

ABC will broadcast two Valentine's Day-themed Peanuts television specials on Saturday, February 11, 2012.

First will be Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (1975), in which Charlie Brown hopes for Valentines cards at the school Valentine's Day party and Linus worries about how to show his affection for his teacher, Miss Othmar.

Then in A Charlie Brown Valentine (2002), Charlie Brown tries to impress the little red-haired girl, but instead Peppermint Patty asks him to a Valentine's Day dance.

The two half-hour shows will air back-to-back from 8-9 PM (Eastern/Pacific).

Limited edition Valentine Day's prints available January 24 from Dark Hall Mansion

Dark Hall Mansion has announced their latest batch of limited edition Peanuts fine art prints, celebrating both Valentine's Day and Snoopy with artwork by Belgian artist Laurent Durieux.  Unlike Dark Hall Mansion's previous two Peanuts print releases, the new prints aren't based on a television special and instead present a unique and different take on Peanuts art.

There will be two different prints, "Snoopy Just Married" and "Snoopy LOVE," each with be two variations.  (Click the thumbnails below for larger images, although even those don't do justice to the detailed shading and linework in the prints.)

Snoopy Just Married (Standard) 

Snoopy Just Married/Winter

Snoopy LOVE (Standard)

Snoopy LOVE/My Blue Valentine

Visit Dark Hall Mansion's blog and Facebook page for more images and information about the prints and artist Laurent Durieux.

Both prints will be available for order from Dark Hall Mansion's webstore on Tuesday, January 24 starting around 9-10 AM PST, with prices and editions as follows:

Snoopy Just Married (Standard Edition of 275) - $65
Snoopy Just Married/Winter (Edition of 50) - $100

Snoopy LOVE (Standard Edition of 275) - $65
Snoopy LOVE/My Blue Valentine (Edition of 50) - $100

Each piece of artwork will be numbered, 18" x 24", and printed on 310 Gsm Hahnemuhle German etching paper with archival pigments.  Orders are expected to ship in time to arrive by Valentine's Day.

Dark Hall's previous limited edition Peanuts prints have sold out very quickly, so if you're interested, be ready to order as soon as they go on sale.

Happiness is... Peanuts: Team Snoopy DVD announced for May 1

Warner Home Video has announced their next Peanuts DVD, titled Happiness is... Peanuts: Team Snoopy.  The DVD will be released on May 8, 2012, and will feature two half-hour shows: the 2003 special Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown and "Snoopy's Brother Spike," episode #15 of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show from 1985.

(This DVD was originally announced for May 8, but the release date was moved up one week to May 1.)

In Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown trades Lucy to Peppermint Patty's baseball team in hopes of getting a better player and winning some baseball games.  Lucy Must Be Traded was released on DVD by Paramount, but that DVD has been out of print for several years.

"Snoopy's Brother Spike" consists of three different skits:

• "The Pelicans" - Peppermint Patty makes Charlie Brown dress up in a pelican costume to be her baseball team's mascot.
• "Great Pumpkin" - Peppermint Patty and Charlie Brown compete in a bowling tournament while Linus and Sally wait for the Great Pumpkin in a nearby pumpkin patch.
• "Spike" - Lucy attempts to fatten up Snoopy's skinny brother Spike in preparation for a fight with the Cat Next Door.

This will be the first U.S. DVD release of "Snoopy's Brother Spike."

There are no special features on the DVD. Happiness is... Peanuts: Team Snoopy will have a suggested retail price of $14.97.

Two interviews with the artists and writers of the Peanuts comic book

If you'd like some behind-the-scenes insight into the new Peanuts comic book line, these two recently published interviews will be of interest.

First there's a piece about artist Matt Whitlock and writer Shane Houghton at LA Weekly; and then there's an chat with artist and creative director Paige Braddock at Comic Book Resources.

Peanuts #1 comic book arrives in stores January 4

Peanuts #1, the first monthly release of the new Peanuts comic book, arrives in stores today, Wednesday, January 4. Like the Peanuts #0 preview issue, this $3.99 comic blends new stories featuring the Peanuts gang (yes, drawn and written by artists other than Charles Schulz) with reprints of classic Peanuts Sunday strips.  You can see a 5-page preview of Peanuts #1 at Comic Book Resources.

Your local comic book store is the best place to get each issue, but if that's not an option, you can order it directly from the publisher, Boom Studios — but do note that shipping for one comic costs as much as the comic book itself!

Boom Studios also offers a "variant" cover edition of Peanuts #1, featuring a vintage 1950 Schulz drawing of Charlie Brown on a yellow background. But quantities of the variant cover edition are deliberately very limited, so your comic book store may not have one — and even if they do, it likely will be quite a bit more expensive than the regular cover version. For example, Boom Studios lists the variant cover edition on its website at a cost of $19.99! We think most folks will be happy with the regular cover version and don't need to spend money on deliberately scarce "collectible" versions of the comic.

Although this new Peanuts series is advertised as being monthly, that's not entirely true; the comic books will be published as a series of four issues over four months, followed by a break of a few months, and then another set of four, and so on. (So, Peanuts #2-#4 will follow from February through April, followed by a pause.) After each set of four comics is published, they'll subsequently be collected into a trade paperback edition. The first trade paperback, which will collect Peanuts #1-4 and presumably the special preview issue Peanuts #0, is due out in August and can be pre-ordered from Amazon. We've no information at this time regarding the possibility of bonus material in the trade editions.

So, if you want to experience the pleasure of getting a new Peanuts comic each month, now's the time to head out and get Peanuts #1!