I often think that my affection for type comes from countless hours spent reading Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. Sure neither one was especially good with letters, but what they did with a little black and and a lot of negative space never stops amazing me.

I know. This is what drew me (pun not intended, lol) to this type of art style; the ability to express whole volumes in a few black lines. My own strips have never met with the kind of success as Schultz, but I will always enjoy doing them because they are fueled by my love of the craft (as well as those who craft them).

This may be of interest, but I recently found out there is a museum dedicated to Charles Schulz in Santa Rosa, CA.

www.schulzmuseum.org

I loved Peanuts as a kid -- even though I did not become a cartoonist, I think it had a pretty big influence on me. I would draw my favorite characters from the strip, and was fascinated with Snoopy's novel-in-progress, which always began, "It was a dark and stormy night." :-)

With this collection, Seth and Fantagraphics have done Schulz proud.

And the museum is going to have a Schulz & Beethoven exhibition. I think I can see that and die happy.

Sure neither [Peanuts nor Calvin and Hobbes] was especially good with letters....

I respectfully disagree.

So do I. Any cartoonist worth his mettle does his own lettering by hand. The lettering is a talent as much as the drawing is. I remember my first job as an entry level drafter fixing all the company's technical illustrations and doing all the lettering by hand. It came naturally to me, just like lettering my own comics does. It's an inborn ability just like the drawing. Also cartoon style fonts are as much an art form as any other font (and I'm not speaking of Comic Sans MS). My favorite sites for finding cartoon fonts are Blambot and Comic Book Fonts.

I love being a cartoonist and I love being a part of that field because no matter how bad a day I'm having cartoons can always make me smile :)

Any cartoonist worth his mettle does his own lettering by hand.

Yeah. Charles Schulz drew and lettered everything himself... He famously never had, or wanted, an assistant. "Peanuts" was a completely personal creation.

Just to clarify, I didn’t mean that either of those artists was a bad letterer. It was very poor phrasing on my part.

Little Chicago was my first strip I ever created. Originally I had created a character called Hopps - a bullfrog - and the rest of the characters I just developed over time. These are a group of critters who all live in a large park in the middle of the Windy City. I used to draw out these strips in pencil and then ink them with a black Flair pen. You may view one of these old strips here. This was the first of my cartoon strips I scanned into Photoshop and colored. D. C. Wayne is my pen name; a take on my actual name just with the letters switched around. I always liked names with initials (J. R. R. Tolkien, for example).

And if you have the money, you can pick up this horribly overpriced, slightly gaudy looking version of the series.