Wednesday, May 20, 2009

March 22, 1951: A lot of hope

Peanuts
Some good gags around this time.  Schulz's attention to detail should be noted here; in the first two panels the lock on the chest is plainly visible, and Patty is leaning against it, keeping Charlie Brown inside, in the third. Patty's leaning would be an unusual pose for Charles Schulz later on, but earlier the characters were a lot more dynamic in their posing, probably due to their increasingly-stylized designs. While the strip would unquestionably become much better in a few years, there's a part of me that wishes it could have kept some of the dynamism of the early days.

1 comment:

  1. I love Patty's casual lean, combined with the serene smugness of her facial expression in that panel.

    But I really can't stop laughing at Charlie Brown's face in the last panel, which I feel doubles, at least, the impact of the joke. (Also good is Violet's hand-on-chin pose...)

    Note the dramatic shift of perspective in the second panel, something else that I feel we'll be seeing less of as the strip stabilizes.

    ReplyDelete