Topic: Comics
The Unseen Peanuts
"Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts is the most-reprinted comic strip of all time, with literally hundreds of collections published in the last 50 years. You would expect that by now every Peanuts strip has been collected more than once... and you'd be very wrong! In fact, hundreds of Peanuts strips were never reprinted..."
I was a HUGE Peanuts fan as a kid. A whole shelf of Charlie Brown books adorned my wall.
When I was twelve, I hiked up Pecos Baldy in New Mexico with my Boy Scout troupe. Late in the hike, I was struggling to keep up having fallen far to the rear of the party. Our Scout Master, Dr Poindexter, tugged on my pack.
"Why is your pack so heavy!?!"
I shrugged. Hell, I didn't know. It just was.
He opened it to find that it was FULL of books. Peanuts books.
"Why did you pack books for this hike?!?!"
I stared at him, amazed at his profound stupidity. "You gotta have something to read."
Damn... what the hell was this guy a doctor of? P.E.?
Yes, I made my Peanuts bones a long time ago.
I confess to being somewhat of a Peanuts purist... I never cared for Snoopy walking upright. Also, the more 'produced' Schulz' art became, the less interested I was. Schulz had this wonderful, raw style in his early work that he refined away in later years. His work after the late seventies appeared manufactured, absent the genuine heart of his work in the sixties.
And maybe that's what I found to be missing - true feeling.
This collection of strips unseen since their initial printing is exactly what the doctor ordered. Well, not Dr. Poindexter. But a real doctor would order it.
And hey, it's FREE on Saturday.
Free Comic Book Day is May 5th. Don't miss it!!!
Aron Head
www.EvilBastard.net
It's no secret. I loves me some Superman. 
Free Comic Book Day is this coming Saturday, May 5th. Never heard of Free Comic Book Day (FCBD)? It's just like it sounds. It's the day the world celebrates the joys of comics by getting them free! 
Interesting day...
The handsome fellow to the left is Napalm (tm). He's a character I created back in my college days. As my senior project in my Advanced Drawing class, I spent all semester producing a complete comic book in pencils.
Justiciar(tm) is my rather cynical answer to Superman. In my comicverse he is hailed as the world's noblest superhero. Very few outside of the halls of power in the Pentagon and the White House know him for the amoral opportunist that he is. The Pentagon maintains a public relations taskforce whose role it is to ensure that Justiciar (tm) remains at the height of his popularity. Everywhere in the world, one can readily purchase Justiciar action figures, t-shirts, ball caps, and pogs. If the world really knew what sort of person he is and of the atrocities that he has performed, his name would be anathema throughout the globe. As it is, those outside of the Beltway who find out about Justiciar don't tend to live too terribly long.
The man known to the world as The Ranger(tm) was originally a Texas Ranger in the Rio Grande valley back in the late 1880's. For many years he served as a Captain in the Texas Rangers carrying out the policies of the Governor and Legislature. Of course one of the policies he was required to carry out was the elimination of Indians from the territory.
Most memorable of all of the books I got that day was the story arc in the Superman books that involved him getting hit so hard by some outerspace alien that he wound up being knocked back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Now, my brother is five years older than me and he had hit me pretty hard before and I never got knocked through time. I thought, this alien guy must be bad news.