{"id":6111,"date":"2011-11-07T20:49:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-08T01:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=6111"},"modified":"2015-11-06T16:48:08","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T21:48:08","slug":"on-things-ive-been-reading-36","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=6111","title":{"rendered":"On Things I&#8217;ve Been Reading: Peanuts #0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Peanuts #0<\/b><br \/>\nBOOM! Studios\/kaboom!<br \/>\nCreated by Charles Schulz<br \/>\nWritten by Ron Zorman &#038; Vicki Scott<br \/>\nArt by Zorman, Scott, and Paige Braddock<\/p>\n<p>Earlier in the year, BOOM! Studios published <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?page_id=5740\"><i>Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown<\/i><\/a>, a hardcover graphic novel adaptation of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5717\">the most recent <i>Peanuts<\/i> animated special<\/a>, which was based on a number of <i>Peanuts<\/i> comic strips published over the years.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/STK451797-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"STK451797\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-29308\" \/>Last week, kaboom! released <i>Peanuts<\/i> #0, a 24-page comic book that included a couple of classic <i>Peanuts<\/i> comic strips, the first four pages of the <i>Happniness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown<\/i> graphic novel (which just came out in paperback), and two brand-new <i>Peanuts<\/i> stories, all at the budget price of just one dollar.<\/p>\n<p>The first story, &#8220;Carnival of the Animals,&#8221; is, according to the index page, an &#8220;adaptation&#8221; by Rob Zorman.  I&#8217;m not sure if it&#8217;s an adaptation of a series of Schulz strips or an adaptation of the non-Schulz <i>Peanuts<\/i> comic books of the early 1960s.  Either way, it&#8217;s a slice of early &#8217;60s <i>Peanuts<\/i> in look and feel, with Charlie Brown musing to Violet about how Snoopy isn&#8217;t content with being a beagle; he has to be other animals, too.  This leads to an argument between Charlie Brown and Violet, which leads to come cutting comments by the later, and finally the kind of sardonic emotional <i>denoument<\/i> typical of Schulz&#8217;s work.  A comment I made in relation to <i>Happiness is a Warm Blanet<\/i> applies very well to this six page story: &#8220;Essentially, <i>Happiness is a Warm Blanket<\/i>, the graphic novel, reads like an alternate universe <i>Peanuts<\/i> where, instead of being a comic strip, <i>Peanuts<\/i> was a single-page gag comic book.&#8221;  While each of the first four pages could be reformatted to a four-panel <i>Peanuts<\/i> strip in terms of narrative and pacing, the fifth page does something that Schulz simply couldn&#8217;t have done in a comic strip.  Overall, it&#8217;s an entertaining piece of 60s-era <i>Peanuts<\/i>, and I could head Peter Robbins as the voice of the exasperated Charlie Brown.<\/p>\n<p>The second story, Vicki Scott&#8217;s &#8220;Woodstock&#8217;s New Nest,&#8221; has Snoopy attempt to find Woodstock a new home when his nest has been destroyed.  Scott&#8217;s Snoopy is wordless, owing more to the Snoopy of the animated <i>Peanuts<\/i> specials than to Schulz&#8217;s Snoopy who, even though he couldn&#8217;t talk, had wordy word balloons.  Each page has Snoopy taking Woodstock to a new place in search of a new nest.  First, Snoopy tries to put him in the nest of Woodstock&#8217;s bird friends, who want nothing to do with him.  Then, Snoopy tries to fix Woodstock up with a swing.  Finally, Snoopy finds Woodstock a new home, and tiring of the bird&#8217;s pickiness, Snoopy leaves him.  With its silent storytelling, this story felt like a segment from <i>The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show<\/i> of the mid-80s.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to these and the first four pages of <i>Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown<\/i>, there are a couple of <i>Peanuts<\/i> Sunday strips from over the years.<\/p>\n<p><i>Peanuts<\/i> #0 is cute and amiable.  The stories may not be Schulz originals, they may not break new <i>Peanuts<\/i> grounds, but they have the Schulz <i>feel<\/i>, and for me that&#8217;s good enough.  And really, for a dollar, you can&#8217;t go wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peanuts #0 BOOM! Studios\/kaboom! Created by Charles Schulz Written by Ron Zorman &#038; Vicki Scott Art by Zorman, Scott, and Paige Braddock Earlier in the year, BOOM! Studios published Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown, a hardcover graphic novel adaptation of the most recent Peanuts animated special, which was based on a number of<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=6111\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On Things I&#8217;ve Been Reading: Peanuts #0&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[61,62,4092,4099,4100],"class_list":["post-6111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comic-books","tag-charles-schulz","tag-charlie-brown","tag-comic-books","tag-peanuts","tag-snoopy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}