Preview: Happiness Is… Funny Things, The Comic Biography Of Charles M Schulz

by Richard Bruton

Charles M ‘Sparky’ Schulz’s 100th birthday would have been on 26th November 2022 and to celebrate Top Shelf Productions has announced Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz.

Funny Things is promised as, and looks like it may well deliver, “an imaginative and tender-hearted tribute to the man behind Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the Peanuts gang.” The book is created in the style of Schulz by Luca Debus and Francesco Matteuzzi and is scheduled for publication in August 2023.

The genius of Schulz is obvious, the brilliance of his creation just as obvious with the years and years of enjoyment provided to millions of readers and now Top Shelf and creators Debus and Matteuzzi are paying tribute to the master by telling his life story in the most fitting medium. They jump back and forth in time to detail Schulz’s artistic and personal life, all shown through the lens of the rich world he created, full of the poignancy, laughter, charm, and love that comes from every reading of Peanuts.

“Charles Schulz stated several times that he never created any art in his lifetime. 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.” – Artist and co-writer Luca Debus

“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.’ 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.” – Co-writer Francesco Matteuzzi