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Elizabeth Pich and Jonathan Kunz sitting beside a wooden ladder displaying a children's book titled "HI, EARTH." The book cover features a cartoon Earth with googly eyes wearing a cowboy hat, surrounded by flames. The setting includes numerous houseplants in the background, creating a cozy, plant-filled environment that appears to be a café or bookstore.

The book is here and it’s all that you can wish for – as an author and a reader. The pages are made of beautiful, thick paper and the colors are what industry professionals and bookstore owners would call vibrant. It is a huge step forward to anything we’ve done before!

Rare Tropical Birds

Yes, there are comics that you have seen before on our socials and the newsletter, but there are also brand new ones that are strictly exclusively in this book – like rare tropical birds that refuse to migrate to the digital ecosystem.

Funny comic by War and Peas named "Fuck that flower" 1. Panel: A flower says: They always say "What a beautiful flower. Lovely flower." 2. Panel: She continues: But do you know what they never say? 3. Panel: She shouts: I want to fuck that flower so hard that [redacted text] 4. Panel: A bee approaches saying "I could offer respectful love-making." The flower shouts "FUCK OFF!"

4-Panel Comic by "War and Peas" Panel 1: A person with an axe stands before a tree with a green treetop that has a simple face. The tree is speaking from a speech bubble saying "You can chop me down, but that won't fill the giant void inside you." The scene is set in a countryside with hills and mountains in the background. Panel 2: The person is now chopping down the tree with their axe, making a "CHOP" sound. The tree has fallen and the person is standing on the tree trunk. In the background, there's a truck or logging vehicle with smoke coming from it. Panel 3: The scene shifts to a lumber mill called "PAUL'S LUMBER" with industrial buildings, smokestacks, and piles of logs. The person who chopped the tree is receiving money bags from a businessman in a coat and hat. Panel 4: The final panel shows the same person now wealthy, lying on a lounge chair by a swimming pool at a luxury mansion. They're holding a cocktail and wearing sunglasses, looking discontented. A speech bubble reads "That damn tree was right..."

Worldwide Distribution

As our publisher Andrews McMeel has a worldwide distribution network, you can get the book really anywhere. Whether you’re contemplating existential dread beside a Norwegian fjord, sitting in a Brooklyn establishment where bearded men manipulate hops with the solemnity of neurosurgeons, or slowly going insane on your private island – our book will find you. It waits, lurking in the shadows, accessible to anyone close to a bookstore or with sufficient bandwidth to complete an online transaction.

Get it via Amazon, Barnes & Noble or BAM. Or order it through your local bookstore!

4-Panel Comic by War and Peas. Panel 1: A woman kneels in front of her dog, holding a leash. The caption reads, "Whenever we go outside..." Panel 2: The woman gently holds and hugs her dog. The caption continues, "...my master needs a leash to make sure she doesn’t get lost." Panel 3: The dog confidently leads the way outside, while the woman follows, holding the leash. The caption reads, "Don’t worry, anxious one." Panel 4: A close-up of the dog looking happy as they walk. The caption concludes, "I’ll take care of you."

Thanks for reading :)
Elizabeth and Jonathan

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A promotional image for the book "Hi, Earth" by Elizabeth Pich and Jonathan Kunz (War and Peas). The image shows the book cover featuring a cartoon Earth wearing a cowboy hat and sweating while surrounded by flames. Cartoon animal characters surround the book: a bee with a blue balloon above, a smiling cow on the left, and a yellow dog/squirrel on the right. The background transitions from orange to yellow, with a quote at the bottom reading: "I can't remember the last time I snorted this much while reading a book." - Patile on Goodreads.
A promotional image for the book "Hi, Earth" by Elizabeth Pich and Jonathan Kunz (War and Peas). The image shows the book cover featuring a cartoon Earth wearing a cowboy hat and sweating while surrounded by flames. Cartoon animal characters surround the book: a bee with a blue balloon above, a smiling cow on the left, and a yellow dog/squirrel on the right. The background transitions from orange to yellow, with a quote at the bottom reading: "I can't remember the last time I snorted this much while reading a book." - Patile on Goodreads.

It’s Out Now!

We still can’t quite believe it’s happening, but today we’re releasing our book “Hi, Earth” into the wild. We’ve spent years drawing talking animals, suicidal icebergs and horny flowers, trying to make sense of this beautiful mess we call home.

4-Panel Comic by War and Peas. Panel 1: A melting iceberg complains, "It is so hot! This damn climate change!" Another iceberg listens in the background. Panel 2: The second iceberg, "My great-grandfather was doing something about climate change before it was en vogue." Panel 3: The first iceberg looks puzzled and asks, "Your great-grandfather?" Panel 4: Flashback to a historical scene: a mustached iceberg watches as the Titanic sails toward it under a moonlit sky. The iceberg smugly replies, "Yeees, yeees."

We never set out to create something profound. Honestly, we just wanted to draw comics that made us laugh during our own late-night anxiety spirals about the state of the planet. Somehow those drawings about Timmy the terrified teenage praying mantis and aliens who can’t decide if they want to take over the planet or not, are now bound together in actual book form.

4-Panel Comic by War and Peas. Panel 1: A UFO hovers in the night sky, beaming up a man named Jerry with a bright yellow tractor beam. Panel 2: Two people watch the abduction. One exclaims, "They're abducting Jerry!" Panel 3: As the UFO flies away, the two people remain unbothered. One says, "Thank God! I never liked him." The other replies, "Yeah, me neither." Panel 4: Onboard the alien spaceship, Jerry is seated on a throne, surrounded by decorations, gifts, and an alien celebration. An alien reassures him, "They didn't deserve you, Jerry."

In these strange times, we’ve found that laughing at colorful pictures about the apocalypse helps us cope better than spiraling into despair. We hope maybe it might do the same for you. Sometimes sharing a nervous laugh about the things that terrify us can make them feel a little more manageable.

We’re endlessly grateful to the infamous publishing house Andrews McMeel for taking a chance on our odd little collection.

4-Panel Comic by War and Peas. Panel 1: A news reporter, standing in a floating transparent water pod, says, "Since becoming a water planet, things have been difficult." Panel 2: The reporter continues, "We’ve adapted by using water pods as a mode of transport." In the background, people are seen moving around inside similar floating pods. Panel 3: Two people inside separate pods try to kiss, but their pods squish against each other with a squeak sound. Panel 4: The reporter, maintaining a serious expression, states, "It has made reproduction quite difficult," while in the background, the couple struggles with their pods.

If you pick up “Hi, Earth,” we hope it gives you a quiet chuckle, or if we’re really lucky, a full-on snort-laugh that makes the people around you uncomfortable. That’s really all we were aiming for.

Get it via Amazon, Barnes & Noble or BAM. Or order it through your local bookstore!

With humble appreciation,
Elizabeth and Jonathan

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Illustration of a cool, anthropomorphic book with muscular arms, wearing sunglasses and fishnet tights, flexing its biceps in front of a blurred bookstore background. The bold, hand-drawn text reads: 'Preordering Books Matters,' emphasizing the importance of preordering books to support authors and retailers.

Imagine a world where books you love magically appear in abundance, where your favorite authors are given the green light to write more, and where indie bookstores stay alive and well. That world exists – it just requires a little thing called preordering.

Here’s why that’s a great idea:

1. Shelf it up

When you preorder a book, you’re doing more than just guaranteeing that a fresh copy will land in your eager hands within a couple of days of its release. You are also whispering – no, shouting – into the capitalist void: Hey, we care about this book. Stock this book. Give this book a fighting chance.

Retailers respond to numbers. If a book gets a lot of preorders, bookstores order more copies, ensuring it doesn’t vegetate away in a dark warehouse next to unsold Ayurveda diet guides. If preorders are bad, that book might be DOA before it even gets a chance to charm (or traumatize) readers.

2. Signal to the Publisher

Strong pre-order sales send a signal to the publisher that the book might be thriving and not being avalanched by self-published werewolf romances. The publishing house can now increase the marketing budget and adjust the print run to meet the demands.

3. The self-fulfilling prophecy of lists

Let’s talk about bestseller lists. They don’t just add up what’s sold after release – it’s mostly about preorders. A book with strong preorder numbers can land on Amazon’s “Best in Category XYZ” lists or even make its way onto those prestigious bestseller lists that determine what gets splashed across airport newsstands. In short: preordering isn’t just buying a book – it’s voting for it.

Witch reading a book

Try it out now

Does that all sound like exactly the world you want to live in? Then we have a recommendation that you can pre-order right now: Our new book HI, EARTH comes out on April 1 (no joke but still a lot of jokes) and we love every single page of it.

It contains our best comics about our favorite planet and its inhabitants.

Get it via Amazon, Barnes & Noble or BAM.

Promotional image for the book 'Hi, Earth' by Elizabeth Pich and Jonathan Kunz (War and Peas). The book cover features a cartoon Earth with large, worried eyes, sitting on a wooden chair while surrounded by flames, wearing a fedora. The title is in bold, blocky letters. To the right, a quote describes the book as 'bittersweet but lighthearted,' roasting human folly while appreciating the planet. The text at the bottom announces the release date: 'Available April 1st. Wherever books are sold!'

Something Else

We get it: clicking preorder on a big retailer’s website is easy and requires no human interaction. But if you want to be a true literary champion, preorder from your local bookstore. It keeps them thriving, fosters community, and lets you pick up your book in an actual store, where you can also impulsively buy a tote bag you definitely need.

Find your local bookstore:

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We are so happy to announce that the short story A Job is a Job is coming out today, namely in our brand new book Once Upon a Workday!

"A Job is a Job" short story from War and Peas. "Another day breaks, you pour out of bed. Not a minute away and in creeps the dread. The gloom of the world waiting outside your door. With its deadlines, its meetings, its burdens its chores. You feel uninspired as you sit in your cube. A few minutes of joy watching cat clips on Youtube. When your colleagues ask a friendly How Do You Do? You simply say Fine but you'd like to say Blue. You say to yourself: That's the way it must be. There are duties and schedules and your kid's dentist fees. A job is a job and a job must be done. There's no time to sit around and simply have fun! So you slumpity slump your way through each day. As you gripe and you type as you labor away. No this will not do, this simply won't do. Who's running the show here? It's you, my dear, YOU! It's time to start asking what do you want to do. Plan some time for yourself, two, three hours a day. Leave your smartphone at home, just go out and play! Why did we stop playing? How silly, how wrong! To think growing up means being earnest all the day long. Remember you liked to go out and dance? And you once played guitar in that weird indie band. Or painting – whatever did happen to that. Strange how all those passions fell flat. Now a job is a job and a job must be done. But a you is a you and you must also have fun. So take a week off, one or two, six or eight! This is your mental health and that simply can't wait. Taking care of yourself is the first job of all. If you don't work at that, soon you'll have no job at all. So eat a grand meal, sing a song, learn Malay. Not just once in a while, do these things every day. Yes a job is a job and a job must be done. But taking care of yourself is job number one.

Once Upon a Workday is a collection of funny and heartfelt stories about the ups and downs of adulthood, being overworked and under-appreciated, while mustering up the resilience to keep going on your path. The six short stories will console and inspire the burnt-out professional in all of us. The beautiful hardcover is being released by Andrews McMeel – the publishing house that brought you Peanuts as well as Calvin & Hobbes.

We are incredibly proud of this book and we’re sure you’ll love it, too. It’s available wherever books are sold as well as these online platforms!

Cover Reveal of "Once Upon a Workday – Encouraging Tales of Resilience"

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Cover Reveal of "Once Upon a Workday – Encouraging Tales of Resilience"

Cover Reveal

It’s a big day for us! We finally get to show you the cover of our upcoming book Once Upon a Workday which will be released on April 2nd at the publishing powerhouse Andrews McMeel!

The book is different from everything we’ve done so far. It’s about the exhausting, the hopeful, the struggle and the beautiful of everday life. It’s about work-life balance, creative blocks and the overwhelming feeling of having a restless heart. While we know our way around a sleepless night pondering the uncertainty of the universe, we also know the frustration of formulating the right farewell in an email. No matter how big or small, you will find our musings on the creative’s life questions in this book.

Once Upon a Workday features the short story “A Job is a Job” that many of you loved and kept asking us about. You can preorder the book wherever books are sold and via this link list!

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Elizabeth Pich and Jonathan Kunz holding their comic book in Italian

Ciao! We are overjoyed to announce that our debut book “War and Peas – Funny Comics for Dirty Lovers” is now available in Italian!

The book – released by Edizioni BD – is beautifully titled “War and Peas – Fumetti spassosi per amanti scandalosi” and we can’t stop repeating this title over and over again like a mantra.

After Spanish, French and German, this is now the fourth language in which the book has been published and we are delighted with the increasing popularity in the international community.

Italian comic strip by War and Peas about a wedding

So if you have a friend who wants to learn Italian or want to give it a try yourself, you’ll find links on this page!

BACI BACI!

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The Most Important Comic Book on Earth: Stories to Save the World

We’re very happy to announce that we are part of the project REWRITING EXTINCTION and THE MOST IMPORTANT COMIC BOOK ON EARTH.

300 creators got together to write 150 stories and create 1 world-saving book. We wrote a story with film legend Richard Curtis. Also in it: Jane Goodall, Ricky Gervais, Taika Waititi, Cara Delevigne and many many more. Check out the full list of contributors here.

The plan is to create a campaign to raise money and awareness to tackle BOTH the climate and the biodiversity crisis. To support, check out these projects and consider making a donation. You can also start with pre-ordering THE MOST IMPORTANT COMIC BOOK ON EARTH which is an amazing story collection.

You can pre-order from anywhere: Your local book store, your favourite online book seller or your regional Amazon service.

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War-and-Peas-Des-Sorcières-et-des-hommes-bd

We are thrilled to announce that are book is now available in French, too! 

Thanks to our dear collaborator and translator Benjamin Garcia who also runs the “War and Peas en Français”-Instagram account and to the whole publishing team behind First Éditions!

Get the book War and Peas: Des sorcières et des hommes – une BD hilarante et féministe at your local book store or here.