Monday, October 31, 2011

December 30, 1954-January 2, 1955: Once upon a time they lived happily ever after

gocomics' archives are missing the strips from December 27-29, 1954. Anyone have access to these strips? Perhaps it's just as well as, other than the Sunday strip, these aren't particularly inspiring, IMO.

December 30

The doggy tradition of eating anything offered to them has its pitfalls.

December 31

But the wool fibers are the best part!

January 1, 1955

Another of the surprisingly long-running series of strips involving Snoopy trying to watch television.

Sunday, January 2

This is a good one. The exchange in the lead panel, "Charlie Brown" in a sing-song voice delivered by Lucy followed by a weary "Good grief" from the other, was probably duplicated in at least one football strip. We've had one strip so far in which Lucy pulled away the football that Charlie Brown was trying to kick (twice), but it was accidental, and it hasn't become a yearly tradition yet. This strip brings us closer to the antagonistic relationship that is at the heart of the football strips.

It's also pretty witty. "Once upon a time they lived happily ever after. The end." That's what we call simplifying the equation right there.

3 comments:

  1. Lucy uses the same reading technique on Linus later on. "A man was born, he lived, and he died." "Fascinating," Linus says. "Almost makes you feel as if you knew the fellow."

    Or something like that.

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  2. Re. the 1/1/55 strip (Snoopy watching TV), television was still a novelty in 1955, and people were likely still working out the etiquette around proper viewing. This routine may seem odd and a bit dull to us today, but back then it was probably quite clever -- the equivalent of building a gag around the use of an iPad today.

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  3. Exceptt that an iPad gag would likely be the direct result of Apple paying for product placement, like it does for EVERY MOVIE MADE ANYMORE.

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