Sunday, June 12, 1955: Chomp Chomp Chomp

It's harder than you think to come up seven different ways to draw a smiling, begging dog. My favorite drawing, however, is the next-to-the-last one where Snoopy is basically threatening to eat Linus's head. The kid knows he is but a paper beagle, however.

Week of August 16-21, 1954: Airplanes must fly around clouds or else crash

August 16

It is odd to think of Pig-Pen as going to kids and bumming sand off of them. I can understand if he's unnaturally attuned to the stuff, but it can't be that expensive can it?
August 17

Lucy is kinder here than she was back on February 15 16, but it's still a mean trick.
August 18

At this point Pig-Pen is rolling along as if he's going to become a major character. It won't be for too much longer I think.
August 19

One problem with the week-at-a-time format is, often there's just not much to say about a strip. I'll probably start leaving some out before long -- I didn't mean this to become a repost of every strip....
August 20

If Peanuts were still being printed er, I meant written today, Lucy would be denying climate change. Charlie Brown's reaction is priceless. I find this kind of reaction funnier than the headaches and stomaches the poor kid's afflicted with later.
In the last panel, Lucy's laughing expression, with the slanted eyebrows, is atypical for Peanuts.
August 21

Charlie Brown brings his hand to mouth in wonder in the third panel is nice. Peanuts kid arms are usually drawn as simple tubes, so I find the shape of his arm there interesting. Not hugely interesting, but still.

Week of July 5-10, 1954: Developing personalities

July 5

This strip has been some time in coming. I love it. Charlie Brown's look of disgust in the third panel, and Schroeder's of dismay in the fourth are what make it. But also making this strip funnier is that we know by now that Schroeder is a Beethoven freak. We have that reminder in the second panel for those just coming to the strip, but Schulz is more confident that Schroeder's character is established now. Schroeder has been the least tabula rasa of the characters since that day he started playing the piano. Charlie Brown, whose attitude has been becoming steadily more defeatist, comes in second. Some other characters exhibit personality quirks (Lucy's winning streak at checkers & skill with golf, Patty's with marbles, Violet's obsession with mud pies) but not much personality yet.

Snoopy and Linus/Lucy/Schroeder-as-baby don't count, since up to this point they're mostly used in their capacity of dog and baby. Remember, the Peanuts characters got their start as a series of New Yorker-style one-off strips for the Saturday Evening Post. That kind of humor (some would hesitate to call it funny, I understand) is mostly about universal types in funny situations. Peanuts started out solidly as that kind of thing, but now the characters have made for themselves ruts, and those ruts are becoming worn in the soul.

As time passes, characters either develop these kinds of ruts (Lucy's loudness, brashness and anger management issues, Linus' philosophy, etc.) or become bland enough that they fade right out of the strip (Shermy, but also Patty and Violet eventually). It is interesting, I think, that after his success with Schroeder, who was Schulz's first unique creation, that he didn't go and try to do that with all his characters. I think it shows that he still values them as general people rather than specific ones, and perhaps that he views Schroeder's personality as something he shouldn't try to force.

Two more things:

First, although people have criticized the book Schulz and Peanuts for relating everything in the strip to Schulz's life (I think the approach has some merit, but maybe not that much), I think it might have been right about the nature of Patty, that the later character of "Peppermint" Patty is kind of a revision/realization of the original. And "Peppermint" is very strongly typed compared to original-Patty's blandness.

Second, next week we have the introduction of Peanuts' many side characters, who tend to be introduced more for having specific traits than for being every men/women. He's also by the far the longest-lived of these characters, for although gaps may occur in his appearance rate he is never forgotten about like the others.

July 6

Snoopy vs. the Living Room. It's cute, but not much else.

July 7

A group of misfits? Is this a 50s counterculture thing?

Notice the completely unnecessary birds in the background in the second panel.

July 8

But Charlie Brown, no one says you have to give some of your ice cream to Snoopy. I think your tendency to be swayed by begging is more what trapped you than your shadow.

July 9

Charlie Brown here talks to Snoopy as if he were a human. This is not necessarily unusual; I've known a few people who, even if they would admit if you directly asked them that animals don't understand our crazy moon language, still act pretty much like animals are just kind of overcoming a difficult language barrier, speaking loudly and slowly to emphasize to them some thing they aren't supposed to do. Sometimes I think animals must consider us to be crazy at best, and Lovecraftian, unknowable entities at worse.

July 10

I like this one. Schulz is referring to his own tendency to draw serif-Zs that would look at home on a wooden alphabet block.

Week of May 31-June 5, 1954: The Blanket

May 31:

I spoke too soon regarding the spelling of "coconut." Actually, it's possible this is the first time Schulz called it "cocoanut," and I misremembered. I sometimes scout ahead a few months so I know what's coming up, and I might be remembering this odd spelling from that.

Charlie Brown's distaste for coconut is one of those facts about the character that didn't really survive into the later strip.

June 1:

This is the first strip in which Linus holds a blanket, and the first one in which we're told he does it for security-related purposes, although the explicit term "security blanket" isn't in use yet.

June 2:

On the art of extracting comfort from flannel. Lucy isn't really opposed to it at this point -- in fact, I think you can probably find several strips in which Lucy is anti- and pro-blanket. Their grandmother, however, is less divided about it.

June 3:

Snoopy keeps one part of his brain awake at all time to watch for food opportunities. It's like a processor devoted to background tasks.

We get the serif-Z representing sleep here again.

June 4:

We've seen versions of this strip before. An early strip had them playing hide-and-seek, and the width of Charlie Brown's head gave him away.

In fact his head isn't that much wider than the others, it just seems to stick out more. Patty would have trouble hiding behind that tree without the sign (also because her dress extends out wider).

June 5:

Snoopy vs. The Yard: The Faucet

Even assuming the dog isn't familiar with the workings of human gardening apparatus, it's an oddly specific place to choose for a nap.

April 5, 1954: Snoopy will not be deterred

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Another Snoopy power! This makes sense once you realize that Snoopy's open mouth is magnetically attracted to treats. (Oh if you want to be boring you could say he just smelled it.)

Snoopy is slowly becoming looser in design, and it has been good for the character. He was almost like a piece of clip-art at first, but now he's slowly growing larger (more obvious when he's walking -- note how large he is in the last panel compared to the rest of the strip) and his mouth is capable of opening wider, in the second panel here particularly. He's slowly turning into the outgoing, wildly imaginative werewolf we all know.

January 18, 1954:

January 19, 1954:

January 20, 1954:

January 21, 1954:

Let's do a few this time:
January 18: This strip is a callback to December 16, 1953.  Like that earlier strip, Schroeder's legs reveal attention to how they're braced against the fence.  Nowadays it seems weird that a kid would get off of school for his birthday, or that of any random classical composer.  That fence is weird -- it's in both strips.  This must be the edge of Schroeder's yard.  Chagrimace!

Of note for trivia contests: Schroeder's birthday is January 18.

January 19: It would be so easy to derive a political message from this strip.

January 20: This strip is something of a callback to July 2, 1953.  In that strip the kids are saddened by the prospect of being left with a babysitter.  Here, they're gloating at the prospect of the other being left behind.  Gradually, their relationship is evolving.

January 21: I like this one for how the shape of the notes in the last frame fill in the space between the top and the piano.

Sunday, January 4, 1953: The Cookie-Hound

Snoopy at his cutest harasses the hapless Linus for his cookies. Eating a whole box of the things probably isn't very good for either of them.

Question for you. If Linus weren't on the scene yet, would it be suitable to use this same strip, all other things being equal, with Lucy when she was an infant? Even with her put-upon early personality, it doesn't quite seem like it would be a suitable strip for her, which indicates that the characters' do have a developed personality at this point.

November 6, 1952: Snoopy follows the trail

I'm linking this one because there's been a running gag for a little while now, one that intensifies a bit in the months to come, about Snoopy's ability to infallibly seek out someone with some kind of snack treat and beg. He carries this skill to great heights in upcoming strips.

April 30, 1952: Smaller characters

This strip seems a little under-depicted. Watching Snoopy sliding to a halt in the third panel seems abrupt without seeing him run in the second panel.

Look at the first panel here. The characters viewed from a distance are rendered a little more simply to simulate the increased distance from the reader. Particularly, Lucy's eyes are simple dots instead of circles, making her look a bit more like modern Lucy.

January 29, 1952: Snoopy's Pride

Snoopy doesn’t stoop to begging for treats... unless someone else might get it instead.

What kind of candy is this that it’s equally suitable for kids and dogs?

November 1, 1951: Money or Eats

It's that profile doorstep scene that would play a role in so many later strips. I don't think this is its first appearance though.

"Tricks or treats, money or eats," did Trick or Treaters really use that line? Seems awfully mercenary to me. Around here I don't think it's common for people to give money for Halloween.

February 5, 1951: Sitting at the kids' table

More Snoopy cuteness here.  Here we see him begging and standing in a normal dog-like pose.  Awww.

But the real reason I picked this strip out is the size of Charlie Brown's table.  Not only is it his size, but it looks a little funny in order to squeeze his legs under it and have his arms above it.  Notice that he's pulled a bit away, probably because he can't sit close to it!  Visual puzzles like this must have been a tremendous test for Charles Schulz's ingenuity in the early days.

February 1, 1951: Candy isn't good for dogs

More Snoopy cuteness.  With his tongue in panel two and his head-tilt in panel 3, he's very puppy-like here.  Schulz is known to have said that, once Snoopy developed a personality and began living in his own fantasy world, ordinary dog jokes became progressively less-suitable for him.

Snoopy's design is so winning in the early days that I'm sure there's a market for Classic Peanuts Snoopy toys, in the same way you can get stuff with the original, un-Disneyfied Pooh characters on them.

By the way kids, please do not feed your own dogs candy. Chocolate is really bad for them!