Look at Patty in the distance in panel 2. Would someone only familar with Peanuts' later days recognize her as being a Charles Schulz character? But the design, as opposed to many other comics of the time, is unquestionably modern; you could probably find a recent illustrated children's book out there somewhere with a character that looks like Original Patty.
Also in this one, we see the cartoon shorthand of showing anger with a word balloon containing a scribble. The scribble of shame.
This comic is also interesting because it definitively tells us that Snoopy does NOT live with Charlie Brown at this point.
ReplyDelete(Or with Patty, either, now that I think about it. If they lived together, she'd say something like "we live in that direction" instead.)
Actually, the weirdest part of this strip is that Charlie Brown doesn't know where Snoopy lives, or (apparently) who he lives with.
True, that.
ReplyDeleteThe large differences between early and later Peanuts make these strips fascinating to me. I'm looking for signs of the strip changing to become like the modern style.
One of those differences is CB's being made Snoopy's owner, and the retconning of the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm as his origin. I'm hoping, as we go, to identify the strip where Schulz finally tells us Charlie Brown is Snoopy's owner.