I’ve been wanting a banner image on my blog for a while now but wasn’t sure what I wanted there. It needed to be something with a connection to the main thrust of my posts which tends to be reading and writing related stuff. Last week, while reading a Peanuts collection my ever generous wife bought for me, I came across this strip from June 1952:

I love the way this strip captures the immersive nature of reading fiction, the one-on-one-ness of reader and book.  Immediately I saw this was just the thing. In my head I saw a Peanuts version of me replacing Charlie Brown, so I had a great idea, at least I thought so, but no way of turning it into a reality.

Luckily I have the email of a brilliant illustrator and comic artist, Chris Askham, who is currently hard at work on, amongst other things, a comic project written by yours truly. I emailed Chris and asked him if he wouldn’t mind drawing a version of the strip with a cartoon me in place of Charlie Brown and a character of his own design replacing Lucy. Which he did. Really bloody fast, even making edits on a Sunday morning. I really can’t thank him enough.

The result is the brilliant header image you see adorning the tip-top top of this blog. I hope you like it as much as I love it. And I hope fair use covers the parody/homage intended. If you have any interest in comic art and illustration I would recommend you check out more of Chris’s work on his blog and his website. He really is rather fantastic.

And the beautifully presented Complete Peanuts collections from Canongate really are worth picking up.