Happiness is baking cookies during the holidays
and reading the great Schulz biography , and the chronological fantagraphics collections of Peanuts.

Fantagraphics has released the complete run (only about 2 months) of Jack Coles brilliant daily strip Betsy and Me.
Cole was something of a cartooning genius moving from one triumph to the next. He created the iconic rubber man Plastic Man, illustrated some fill-ins on the Spirit, worked on the infamous Murder, Morphine and Me strip used in the anti comic book study Seductiion of the Innocent, defined the look of the Playboy Magazine cartoon gag panel for Heffner using gorgeously watercoloured pages
and then achieved many a cartoonists dream by selling his syndicated daily strip Betsy and Me.
Illustrated in a stipped down UPA/Peanuts style with lots of playful graphic invention its a pleasure to finally read these. Funny, clever and very "50's" in the best way they are of course tinged with
sadness knowng that Cole took his own life at the beginning of its run. One can't help but read the strip and read things
into it but I won't do that here. Buy it and enjoy, this is fantastic stuff!

Yesterday was our first big snowstorm here in Toronto and after shovelling the driveway I strolled around the
neighborhood and took some pictures.