"Who Messed With Charles Schulz' Drawings?" or "THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF PEANUTS … In Cinemascope"

Above: the cover to THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF PEANUTS, which has more art and expanded panels than when the strips first appeared. PEANUTS © Peanuts Worldwide LLC.

Here's a 1971 collection of 1950s era PEANUTS comic strips … but they are all wrong. They have been wrong for decades.

All of them have been altered!

These strips are in a completely different aspect ratio than when they first appeared. Everyone knows that PEANUTS is in a square. These panels are rectangular. Word balloons have been changed, backgrounds added, etc.

Here's a picture of the first couple of panels from the July 8, 1952 daily PEANUTS strip. This photo if from the first volume of THE COMPLETE PEANUTS:

I forgot. The entire strip is over at GoComics. Heck, all of the PEANUTS strips can be found there.

Okay, here's the way it originally appeared:

And here's that same strip from THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF PEANUTS. You can see that the borders have been scrubbed, and additional background details are now inked in.

So … it's kinda like the strip went from old and boxy, like TV used to be, to a new, widescreen format.

It must have been an experiment. Most of the PEANUTS paperbacks I saw just stagger the panels, one on top of another. Maybe one of the panel borders will be erased. But I've never seen the strips reformatted like in the THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF PEANUTS.

It begs the question: WHO DID THIS?

Who changed these strips? Who added details to the panels?

One guess is that Schulz himself took this on. But maybe one of the guys who ghosted Dell's comic book -- a guy like Jim Sasseville -- put this together (under Mr. Schulz' supervision, of course).

Well, if anyone knows, let me know.

In the meantime, here's some ads and the back cover just for fun:

Video: Ed Piskor "Hacking Out a Graphic Novel"

Pittsburgh area cartoonist Ed Piskor talks about his graphic novel, which was eventually collected by Top Shelf and titled WIZZYWIG. I believe this recently published video is from a talk in 2010.

Vintage TV Commercial: Glass Wax Winter Wonderland Stencils

Man oh man. We had these stencils back in the day. Simple fun. Nowadays, overshadowed by single-shooter video games and watching PACIFIC RIM on your phone. But, hey, way back then: THIS was entertainment!



Hat tip to Steve Thompson! Thanks, Steve!

Video: Remembering Editorial Cartoonist Paul Coyle

Video: Steve Benson and Brian Fairrington

Editorial cartoonists Steve Benson and Brian Fairrington recap the year's news through their cartoons. 

The Great Ham Caper

My wife, Stacy, wrote a poem way back in Christmas 2006. It's about us and our cats, Rufus and Sam.

Her poem was got some serious Web traffic, and it's been rerun annually since. Since we moved we have adopted a few more cats.

For auld lang syne, here is the poem again, starring our two cats from Brooklyn, Rufus and Sam:

The Great Ham Caper
Words by Stacy Lynch
Pictures by Mike Lynch

’Twas the week before Christmas
When Rufus and Sam
Hatched a devious scheme
To make off with the ham!

The ham that would grace
The holiday table!
Roo was the brains.
Sam, wiry and able.


They devised a plan
Of Goldbergian proportions
With pulleys and weights
And kitty contortions.

And on Christmas day
They’d eat until stuffed
(The very idea
Made their tails slightly puffed!)

’Til then, they’d lay low,
Little angels to see.
But that made us suspicious –
Wouldn’t you be?


So we snooped and we sleuthed
And uncovered their caper -
“The Ham-Stealing Plan”
Diagrammed on a paper!

“No silly cat’s gonna
Steal my roast beast,”
Exclaimed Mike. “Just watch,
I’ll ruin their feast!”So he countered their scheming
With mad plans all his own
And all I could do
Was inwardly groan!

Who’d win this contest
Of wits they were planning?
Would Mike, Roo or Sam -
Be last man or cat standing?

As Christmas day dawned
The four of us waited
For the ham to be served
With breaths that were bated.

But before the main course
Could even be plated
Their plans took a turn.
Some say it was fated...

What happened to stop them
So cold in their tracks?
Why, cat-nip and husb-nip
(in big canvas sacks)Was all that it took
To stop their foul warring.
And they rolled and purred
And drooled on the flooring.And as long as I kept
My fingers and toes
Away from a hubby and two cats
In nip’s throes -
My own Christmas day
Turned out merry and calm;
The ham moist and succulent,
The champagne, a balm.

When they “awoke”,
hostilities abated,
We all ate some ham
And went to bed sated.

And such peace we wish
To you and to yours:
An end to fighting;
An end to wars.

Happy Holidays!

Mike and Stacy and Rufus and Sam


UPDATE: and Dexter and Dropcloth and Fergus.

Happy Holidays, everyone. It's snowing here, so I gotta get more wood in and then, fire up the snowblower. Such is winter! This here blog will be quiet for a short time. I'll see you soon.

A Visit From St. Nicholas (To the Moon) by Walt Kelly

It's Christmas time and that means that it's time to sing our favorite carol ("Deck Us All With Boston Charlie") and read "A Visit From St. Nicholas (To the Moon)" as reimagined by the one and only Walt Kelly (with "apologies to Clement Moore," natch).

It's originally from a POGO book titled GONE POGO (1961, Simon & Schuster). It would be printed once more, 26 years later, newly colored by Joe Orlando (!) and Angelina Genduso, for the December 20, 1987 edition of the Daily News Magazine.

This is all copyright the Walt Kelly Estate, with Jay Maeder's piece copyright 1987 by Jay or maybe The NY Daily News. Click to enjoy them is giant Kelly inky glory.



Here is a background on Walt Kelly written by Jay Maeder. Jay describes Kelly as

"... a fairly irascible soul, given to the fine Irish melancholia and possessed of no immense generosity of spirit when it came to his fellow human specimens.'People are basically idiots,' he reflected in one published interview. 'It may come as a surprise to find you're an idiot, but the fact remains you are.'"

Well, the dichotomy is there: here's a former Disney animator, comic book funny animal artist, and, okay, yes, he may have occasionally been a Scrooge in real life, but judge him not by what he says, but by what he has done. He is, after all, the man who gave us POGO.























Maybe it sounds idiotic to you, but Happy Christmas to you, Mr. Kelly! We miss you.

-- Originally published December 17, 2009.

#‎hohodooda‬ Holiday Sketches by Mike Lynch Week 3

What? Even MORE new #‎hohodooda‬ Holiday sketches by me, Mike Lynch? Yes. (The ones I drew earlier are here and here.)

What is  #‎hohodooda‬ you may very well ask?

Here's the deal: Illustrators, both pro and am, sketch up a doodle a day and share them. The only rule is that it's holiday-themed.

Elf Portrait:

James T. Kringle:

Marley's Raspberry:

Ice Storm 2013!

Ice Storm 2013! Photos of my yard and my street today during the freezing rain today. Get your crampons out!

Tschaikowsky's Nutcracker Suite in Dance Tempo by Freddie Martin and his Orchestra

Found this great 78RPM album at a thrift store. Took a photo of it. Did not buy it since I have no turntable.

But, lo and behold, Gregory May on YouTube has put the whole thing up. Wow!