Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz Announced
Peanuts creator Charles Schulz just turned 100. We mean his bones did — he obviously didn’t live that long. But his creation will last forever — one of the greatest comic strips of all time, often cited as THE greatest. On the day of his centennial birthday, almost every single comic strip with a syndication deal expressed their love for him in the largest cooperative tribute the newspaper funnies have ever seen.
You likely know all about Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus and the rest (and if you don’t, I have to give you the suspicious side-eye) but how much do you know about their creator? Top Shelf Productions, a division of IDW, is whipping up a new biography of the man his friends called “Sparky” in the medium he forever affected — the form of a comic strip.
How cool is this? There have been plenty of books written about Schulz at this point, but none that “speak his language” quite like this does.
“Charles Schulz stated several times that he never created any art in his lifetime,” says artist and co-writer Luca Debus. “He believed cartoons belonged to the fleeting nature of newspapers and therefore couldn’t stand the test of time. With this book, we want to prove him wrong. By narrating his life, we celebrate his legacy as arguably the most influential cartoonist to ever live and try to understand his complex identity as both the man and the artist behind Peanuts.”
“While Schulz was working on his last strip, looking back on five decades of Peanuts characters and situations, he laughed and said: ‘I really drew some funny things,’” says co-writer Francesco Matteuzzi. “That phrase, Funny Things, stuck with me since I first read it: it’s both accurate and a huge understatement of what he accomplished. So simple, and yet so powerful, just like the strips he left us which we will cherish forever.”
Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz will be published by Top Shelf in August 2023, and can be preordered today.
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