January 16 & Sunday, January 17, 1954: Trials of a Baby

January 16, 1954:

Sunday, January 17, 1954:

Surprisingly many of Peanuts characters have a special talent, one that overrides the limitations of real life.  Snoopy has many such "powers."  The force of Lucy's anger (later on) is terrifying to behold.  Charlie Brown's ability to lose has already been been demonstrated while playing checkers.  And Linus has a way of making or doing things that doesn't seem quite "right."  Stacking the blocks like he does in the first strip is an example.  He's also great at blowing up balloons halfway, and other unlikely feats of what I'm going to call, for lack of a better term, dexterity.

The second strip is the first time we get something akin to a stream of dialogue from Linus.  Until now his words have been things like "dottie dottie" or loud laughs of derision in the face of Lucy's selfishness, but here are several full sentences.  Noteworthy, however, is that although his words are in speech bubbles so generally are Snoopy's, and neither character has been shown using full sentences to communicate with the other characters.

I like how big kids are represented as running in herds that clean the floor of toys in their wake, like cattle devouring whole fields of grass.

October 24,1953: Dottie

"Dottie" could be taken for either "daddy" or "doggie," right? I don't get the cookie angle, though.

October 22, 1953: Linus nearly kills himself three times

Stylistically this is interesting for being composed of eight panels. It also ends with that frequent (although at this point still rarely-seen) concluding word "*sigh*".

Linus is physically uncoordinated enough that he can't safely step on or off a curb, but he's psychologically adept enough to feel despair for his inability.

July 3, 1953: Slow approaching doom

We haven't actually seen many of those tricks. I guess it's comforting to know that Lucy will keep on with them for a long time to come.

One thing about this strip... Linus never does catch up with Lucy in height. His development slows down due to the Peanuts Time Warp effect and he always remains just a little behind her.

Maybe Schulz ran out of ideas for baby jokes, because he now seems in a hurry to have him achieve parity with the other characters. The kid doesn't have much infanthood left.

December 3, 1952: Linus and the ball

Schroeder and Lucy have grown too much to be the strip's baby, now it's Linus' turn to have hapless infant adventures. After Linus grows to be the same age as the other characters, the strip doesn't get another new infant until Sally, and then she's the last one until Rerun, who doesn't show up for a long time.

November 4, 1952: Linus' head is too big, #1

There are a number of these strips that deal with baby Linus' head weighing him down. This is but the first.

October 27, 1952: Snoopy and Linus

Snoopy and Linus get to be a double-act at times. When Sally joins the strip later, she and Snoopy team up occasionally, sometimes against Linus.

Sunday, March 30, 1952: Lucy's developing taste in music

Lucy is especially baby-like in this one. Since the strip has a new resident infant, it frees Schroeder up to solely be the musician. Weirdly, in this strip Lucy has probably said more than Schroeder has in the entire run up to this point.

This is the first strip to exhibit Lucy's early tendency to refer to herself in the third person. Of all the Peanuts characters, I think Lucy might be the one to change the most. Even more than Snoopy.

There are weirder things still here. Lucy looks extra creepy in the first panel up there, and her words in the next-to-last panel seem oddly chosen, if explainable by her lack of skill in the language. In the last panel Schulz finds a good compromise between the circled-eyes look and general character appeal. It is a prototype of the parenthesis eyes that Lucy would adapt for the majority of Peanuts' run, the same type that Linus has out the gate.

Decembet 27, 1951: Schroeder, not Snoopy

Not one of the funnier strips, but worth linking for the image of Snoopy sleeping in three-quarter perspective in the first frame, and his angry look in panels three and four.

Oh, and for the record: Parcheesi sucks.

December 22, 1951: And A Bite For Beethoven

The teddy bear in panel two is only there to make sense out of his inclusion in Patty's words in panel three.

Although this is a baby joke strip, Schulz still slipped in that Beethoven reference in there.

Charlie Brown gets no respect.

July 19, 1951: Schroeder's still a baby

It won't be long....

June 5, 1951: They start so young

There are three broad categories of Peanuts strips from this time: kids acting like kids, kids acting like adults, and kids displaying precocious knowledge of adulthood. (There are other types, but these seem to be foremost.) This strip falls into the third category, with Violet speculating about later getting a date with a human being who's not yet old enough to talk.  Notice, by the way, Schroeder's dubious look in the second frame.  That expression is not essential to the joke, but Charles Schulz put it in anyway.  This is one of the joys of early Peanuts for me, noticing those little things Schulz just threw in.

Schroeder was an Archetypal Baby in this one.  Enjoy it while it lasts kid; it won't be long at all before you become the Archetypal Musician instead.