Peanuts has been adapted into comic books as well as the short form comic strips. The first comics were published in the 1950s and 1960s and initially featured newspaper strip reprints. Wanting to expand the market of their strips, United Feature Syndicate began licensing the Peanuts characters for use in comic books. At first, the Peanuts material published in comic books was limited to reprints of existing strips, but when Dell Publishing gained the rights to distribute Peanuts in a comic-book format during the mid-to-late 1950s, they began commissioning original stories to be printed.
Charles M. Schulz, inundated by his work on the newspaper strip, provided very little original work for comic books, and handed comic book responsibilities to his friend and associate Jim Sasseville. In 1959, Sasseville left, and Schulz's other associates, Dale Hale and Tony Pocrnick, replaced him as the artists for the Peanuts stories in Dell's publications. Schulz also drew original covers for all issues titled Peanuts. By 1960, Hale and Pocrnick left and Dell began using their in-house artists and writers for their Peanuts stories, which are notable for deviating greatly from Schulz's original works. In 1962, Gold Key Comics assumed control over Dell's properties and used their own staff to continue original Peanuts stories until 1964.
Few Peanuts comics were published until Kaboom! Studios acquired a license to create new stories in the 2010s. Kaboom! Studios normal comics issues (in Volumes 1 and 2) feature a mix of reprinted classic strips and new stories. Kaboom! Studios has also produced new stories in individual graphic novels.
Checklist[]
UFS/St. John: Newspaper Strip Reprints[]
- Sparkle Comics #33
- Sparkler Comics #115, 120
- Fritzi Ritz #27–28, 30–33, 37–38, 43–47, 50 (re-titled from United Comics)
- Peanuts Volume 1 #1
- Nancy #142
- Tip Top Comics #173, 184–210
- Tip Topper #16–22, 24–28
- United Comics #21–26 (re-titled Fritzi Ritz)
Dell/Gold Key: New Original Stories[]
- Four Color Comics (bearing the title Peanuts) #878, 969, 1015
- Nancy/Nancy and Sluggo #146–192
- Fritzi Ritz #57–59
- Tip Top Comics #211–225
- Peanuts Volume 2 #4–13
- Peanuts Volume 3 #1–4 (Gold Key reprints of Dell Four Color Comics 878, 969, 1015 and Peanuts v2 #4)
Kaboom![]
- Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown (2011)
- It's Tokyo, Charlie Brown (2012)
- Peanuts Volume 1 #0–4 (2011)
- Peanuts Volume 2 #1–32 (2012)
- Trade paperback volumes 1–10
- Peanuts: Friends Forever (2016)
- Peanuts: The Beagle Has Landed, Charlie Brown (2014)
- Peanuts: The Snoopy Special (2015)
- Peanuts: Where Beagles Dare (2015)
- Peanuts: A Tribute to Charles M. Schulz (2016) – collection of original Peanuts strips by famous creators
- Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown! (2018)
- Snoopy: A Beagle of Mars (2020)
- Peanuts: Scotland Bound, Charlie Brown (2021) - adaptation of an unproduced special storyboarded by Charles M. Schulz and Bill Melendez
Other[]
- Topix Comics features the gag panels Just Keep Laughing by Schulz in issues #5 and 7 (1947)
- Unseen Peanuts (Fantagraphics, 2007) – reprints strips not reprinted until The Complete Peanuts books
- Mission (Out of) Control (2018) – a 15-page new original story sold exclusively at San Diego Comic-Con