Showing posts with label bedtime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bedtime. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Sunday, February 28, 1954: Willful Little Lucy


Read this strip on gocomics.com.

How much of this is meant to depict Lucy herself being stubborn, and how much just a very young kid rebelling against her parents?  I think often, in Peanuts, cases of the latter evolve over time into cases of the former.  That is, strips intended as general observations end up getting sorted by character, and so the kids accrete characteristics over time and in this way become complex.

In the lead-in panels, Schulz shows Lucy being contented with a word balloon containing a musical note.  I suppose it's meant to represent her humming.  It's not the first time he's done this.

Friday, May 13, 2011

February 13, 15, 16 and 17, 1954: Lucy, Patty and Violet

The strips for February 9-12, and the 14th, are currently missing from Universal's website.  We'll skip those for about a week, then will probably try to get them from another source.

February 13, 1954:


Lucy seems to be exhibiting problems with her indoor voice.  When she's shouting, notice the post of dismay Violet is wearing.  But Lucy doesn't have "angry eyebrows" in any of these panels.
Sometimes Charles Schulz will draw a doll in one of the panels, and I'm always amazed by the effort that goes into them.  Like I said about the last strip, showing a character small isn't really like just drawing it at a smaller scale.  The doll here shows so much attention to detail looks like it could well have been a new character.

February 15, 1954:


 Here is what I meant by "angry eyebrows."
I assume this is before class started, or else I'd think Violet's outburst would cause a disruption.
The change in Charlie Brown's poses from panels 2 to 3, and from 3 to 4, are strange.  He goes from happy, to flinching like he's about to be hit, to a kind of casual leaning back.  Violet is still pretty angry in the last panel though.
For some reason my attention is drawn to Violet's exclamation in the third panel.  It doesn't have an exclamation point, and it has an apostrophe noting the removal of the "e" in "the."
This is not the first strip that shows characters in a school setting, but it might be the second.

February 16, 1954:


This is classic Lucy, and helps to show what a terror she's developing into.  Although there's no spite shown on her face it's difficult to avoid assuming some.  We also get a somersault here, although it's not the side-view one we usually get later.

February 17, 1954:


The question presented by this strip is, is Patty's long pause her intended to be hers, or are we just sort of seeing Charlie Brown's mental state illustrated?  The latter is a bit of a stretch, so I believe it's the former.
Note Charlie Brown's expression in the last panel is not a chagrimace.  It's more like a frown.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

November 20, 1951: And They Disapprove of Baby Bottles In The Orchestra Pit

Peanuts

Speaking of Schroeder....

Many strips these days aspire to just the crazy stuff from Peanuts, without copying the normal strips in-between. Those strips reset the norm, regrounding the strip's world in reality, which makes it more effective when the strip takes another flight of fancy a few weeks later.