Monday, September 19, 2011

November 15-20, 1954: I've known people like that

November 15

This strip begins a sequence where Charlie Brown frets over Lucy's willful ignorance of the world. Coupled with the Sunday strip we just saw, I think we're now just at the beginning of Peanuts' "classic" period, where Schulz comes to more fully inhabit his characters and deal with them as people, with developing personalities.

November 16

Sarcasm is no use; Lucy is impervious to it.

November 17

One interesting thing about this sequence is that Charlie Brown is depicted as really worked up over Lucy's ignorance. Could it be that she's trolling him? From a modern perspective, from all the willful ignorance we see in the world today, I think I sympathize with Charlie Brown a bit more here.

November 18

For some reason here, I imagine Lucy as Stephen Colbert and Charlie Brown as one of his guests. That's a pretty funny drawing of Charlie Brown there, although it seems to suggest he might have a neurological condition.

November 19

Panel three here, that's one of the most frustrated looks we ever get out of Charlie Brown, I think. Later on he's more the type to suffer with a sigh, but he boils over here.

November 20

To finish out the week, a bit of silliness with Snoopy. Every one of these drawings of him is a winner, but I especially like the ones in the first and last panels. Peanuts have to be drawn carefully, I'd say; the characters depend heavily on the angle they are viewed at to read properly. This is actually true of most comic strips, but it's especially true of Peanuts. If the top of Snoopy's head were facing away from the reader in the last panel, I'm not sure there's any way he could be drawn that would read well. (Although it's entirely possible there IS such a way; I just can't think of it.)

1 comment:

  1. Let's see. The kids were still aging more-or-less normally at this point; if they hadn't frozen, Lucy would be just about the right age to be a Fox News pundit.

    I can so see that.

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