Many times now I've mentioned how this strip seems like modern Peanuts, or this other strip seems like something Schulz would have drawn years later, or Charlie Brown seems depressed in this one like he does later on, or so forth.
In this strip it is particularly strong, I think. It is the interaction of two characters, one of the exhibiting a personal quirk, and understatedly referring to it in the last panel.
And then, why shouldn't we be having this feeling more and more often right now? Before our eyes it is transforming from early to classic Peanuts. Linus will be showing up before too much longer, who I think is the character who best illustrates the difference. Linus has the same parenthesis-eyes that Lucy has, but he never goes through that phase of having circle-eyes. And Linus's quietly philosophical personality is much in tune with the best qualities of Peanuts. Other comics have Charlie Browns, Sallys, Peppermint Pattys and many, many Lucys and Snoopys (strong characters are easy to write and popular with the crowd), but I can't think of any that have a Linus-like character in them. Often he is serene. Hobbes maybe has some qualities in common with Linus in his more reflective moments, I can't think of others.
By the way, unlike the last strip, Lucy again refers to herself in third person here. I suspect Schulz worked on the daily and Sunday strips on different schedules, and so changing character attributes might be a little out of sync between them.
He actually DOES reuse this gag in the "modern Peanuts" period, with either Linus or Sally, and uses the much better punchline, "when you cut'em, they lose all the flavor."
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for mentioning that, YOS, because I remembered the updated version and thought I must be misremembering it after seeing this.
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