Patty is probably the most girlish girl Charles M. Schulz ever put into Peanuts. Look at her body language in the first, second and fourth panels. Here she pines that Shermy and Charlie Brown don't love her, and they stage a mock fight over her to cheer her up. It works, too.
The fight in the third panel is interesting because the characters speak in order to make the fight seem more severe than it would without the text. I put this down to insecurity on the part of CMS that his abstract characters could depict motion well. I notice here that they say "What a battle" and "What a struggle" both in the same panel, which is a little awkward from a writing standpoint.
I don't know...I think Sally may beat Patty for girliness, with her big hairbow and constant swooning over Linus. (Sweet baboo!)
ReplyDeleteI love the blog!
Hm, you may have a point there with Sally. I tend to forget she exists sometimes....
ReplyDeleteI think the text is quite poetic. The whole tone and feeling of these comics really reminds me of much older (ca. 1900s) work, especially the writing, like Nemo in Slumberland, etc.
ReplyDeleteThere's Frieda, too, of the naturally curly hair and floppy cat. Although I guess her rabbit-centered bloodlust might mitigate her girlishness a bit.
ReplyDeleteDmL: Hadn't thought of it like that. Good observation!
ReplyDeletekarlosthejackal: Hm... I got the feeling that Frieda was just trying to help Snoopy to become more dog-like. She and Snoopy had a good double-act going.
More Peanuts characters were abandoned over the years than most comic strips even have.
Good pose of Patty in the last panel. I think Shermy simply outgrew his role [as you've stated, John, he was rather older.]
ReplyDeleteFrieda disppeared as wel. Of course if a Roger Rabbit-like crossover over of a certain other rabbit with his OWN comic [Bugs] has transpired, and Bugs Bunny had somehow crossed into the cartoon Twilight Zone to challenge Snoopy, Frieda would get her answer as to why Snoopy wouldn't chase rabbits. [If he did it would give the cats one less dog to fear, especially since Frieda herslef had one, but then Snoopy is scared of cats, too, as one circa 1957 strip incidicated.]
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