A return for an old favourite feature today at Broken Frontier as we resume our ‘Covers Album’ posts that previously ran on the site in two bursts in 2017 and 2021. If you would like to contribute to this series please contact our Andy Oliver here.
In ‘Covers Album’ each Tuesday, we ask comics creators, publishers, and commentators to pick three of their favourite comic covers…but with a small twist. One must be chosen for aesthetic reasons, one for inspirational reasons, and one for pure nostalgia!
Today, Benjamin L. Clark, curator of the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, and who curates the exhibitions at Snoopy Museum Tokyo, shares some Schulz favorites. The latest exhibition in Santa Rosa is Peanuts Paperbacks, which runs until September 10th. The 75th anniversary of Peanuts is being observed throughout 2025.
In 2023, he and co-writer Nat Gertler were awarded the Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book, Charles M. Schulz: The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects.
Inspirational Choice: Peanuts (1952) by Charles M. Schulz (Rinehart & Co)
This first Peanuts paperback book, published in July 1952 by Rinehart & Co., was the first Peanuts thing outside the newspaper comic strip. This is the object that launched the global brand we all know today. I love the simplicity of this cover. Schulz drew it specifically for the book, riffing on a theme he’d used before in earlier strips, returning to his pre-Peanuts work of a kid taking a photograph with one of the old Brownie-style cameras. I also love that he centers Schroeder and his piano here, who, with his faithful depictions of Beethoven’s music, caught the attention of John Selby, the editor at Rinehart who did not read comics but loved music and took a chance on this promising up-and-comer. I love how Rinehart forgot to print the price on the cover, so some poor warehouse people were tasked with ink stamping $1.00 on every cover of the first printing. This book introduced Peanuts to cities where local newspapers did not yet run the comic strip.
Aesthetic Choice: Peanuts (1953) by Charles M. Schulz (United Features Syndicate)
United Feature Syndicate, which owned Peanuts, thought to reformat and reprint comic strips into comic books. This was their only standalone Peanuts comic book, published in 1953, which reprints forty-two daily strips. Later, they would add Peanuts strips to other titles and then license it to other comic book publishers, like St. John, Dell, and Gold Key. I love this cover. A great baseball set-up, with a beautiful mid-century modern fireplace, the fire screen as a backstop, the plant on the mantle, the mirror, Patty’s little tongue sticking out is hilarious, and the puppy Snoopy looking very cute. It’s all wonderful. I even like the color. You can imagine the rest of the infield mixed in among the living room furniture, and the absolute mayhem that’s about to destroy someone’s house.
Nostalgic Choice: What Was Bugging Ol’ Pharaoh (1964) by Charles M. Schulz (Warner Press)
This is my copy of What Was Bugging Ol’ Pharoah by Charles M. Schulz. I can remember finding this book, though I’m not totally sure if it was among my parents’ books at home or among some books at church, but either way I swiped it and kept it ever since. I was fascinated that there was this whole other thing by Schulz that obviously didn’t find the success of Peanuts, but it was still out there. It made him more human to me. Although this panel comic is about a group of young people that all go to church together, it’s still a fun read, even if you no longer attend services like you once did.
Article by Benjamin L. Clark
