In celebration of the cartoonist’s recent 100th birthday, Top Shelf Productions has announced an August release for Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz, an imaginative and tender-hearted tribute to the man behind Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the Peanuts gang, created in the style of Schulz by Luca Debus and Francesco Matteuzzi.
Starting with the last days of his monumental career, Funny Things jumps back and forth in time to narrate both Schulz’s artistic achievements and the personal episodes that formed him as an author and human being.
From full-color Sundays to black-and-white dailies, every strip provides a laugh as well as a piece of insight into his remarkable life story. Filled with affection, charm, and poignant observation, Funny Things imagines Schulz through the lens of the very world he created, inviting us all to meet the man behind the blanket.
« Charles Schulz stated several times that he never created any art in his lifetime, » said artist and co-writer 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, ›" said co-writer 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. »
The book will be a 440-page hardcover and will cost $39.99.
